It's hard to be aware. One of the lessons from Gio's class Saturday was that to be unaware sometimes is normal -- being a yogi means experiencing the joy of rediscovering awareness, and not berating yourself for the daysmonthsyears you not have been fully awake.
Sometimes I feel like as soon as I set a goal, I immediately start doing my best to do the opposite.
"Be aware." Immediately, denial.
"Focus on work." Immediately, no focus -- I may work harder, but frenetically. I start too many projects and, after a short time, feel unfocused, lost, unproductive, unsuccessful. I berate myself for not being focused.
I'm thinking that part of this "being aware" is to slow down.
Slowing down also creates the opportunity to discover your own wisdom--to discover what you really think, what you really know. I've been thinking about this more and more lately. This something beautiful about the yoga practice. If you let it, yoga prepares your body to allow real reflection. That was the original purpose of the asanas -- to prepare the body for meditation.
But I'm not talking about physically conditioning the body so it doesn't start aching during a long meditation practice. I'm talking about something I don't quite have words for yet. But it's something I've started to experience in yoga workshops, and in popular education training. It has something to do with the mind in the body, the mind as body.
It has something to do with slowing down and letting the mind body process happen before leaping to the next thing.
So, this is something I'm thinking about lately.
It's related to new insights I've had on Svadyaya. Sometimes this concept is defined as study of the self. Sometimes it's defined as study of scripture. How can it be both?
Studying the Gita, I read this (Sri Swami Satchidananda): "Written scriptures are only here to show you that since they also say the same things, we can trust our own experiences... " They confirm what you already know. They validate your experience. The trick is knowing what is your own experience. And to do that, you have to slow down.
Monday, August 25, 2008
Thursday, June 19, 2008
Tuesday, April 29, 2008
The Gift
Yesterday I opened "The Gift" for the first time in many months. This was the poem I randomly opened to:
This
Sky
Where we live
Is no place to lose your wings
So love, love,
Love.
It turned out to be the perfect closing for my yoga lab that night. Love is the gift we give ourselves so we don't lose our wings. Yoga is the gift of love to ourselves.
Do I need to say more?
This
Sky
Where we live
Is no place to lose your wings
So love, love,
Love.
It turned out to be the perfect closing for my yoga lab that night. Love is the gift we give ourselves so we don't lose our wings. Yoga is the gift of love to ourselves.
Do I need to say more?
Tuesday, April 08, 2008
More on effort, Abhyasa: Do or do not, there is not try
I've been thinking a lot about effort lately. (Actually, it looks like I've been thinking about it for a while!) In terms of my yoga practice and new teaching, effort seems to be emerging as the central theme. Abhyasa means practice. But it's not rote. It's effortful, intentional. It's value is in the process itself.
It's also related to a distinction I want to make regarding a concept I put forward in my last entry: happiness. When I talk about happiness here, I don't mean pleasure. I mean the satisfaction that comes with effort. There is no substitute for it.
In my yoga lab last night, we worked on two things: effort and focus. My client has the tendency to shut her eyes and sort of drift through the postures. My mantra for her was: Open your eyes! And I gave her a workout--right from the start. Lots of teaching assists. Lots of what I think of as coaching: push! energy! We worked her abs right at the beginning. We flowed through surya namaskara A three times. She broke into a sweat. She kept her eyes open. And in the end, her sivasana was more satisfying.
Effort is subtly different from "trying." It's value is in the process, but it's not without outcome. I think it's more that the outcome of effort, the result of effort may not be what you thought it would be, but it is more satisfying than something delivered by chance.
As Gioconda said, no one can do your yoga practice for you. It is your practice. Mary said, no one is going to steer your boat. It is your life. You had to do it for yourself. I want to emphasize that my understanding here is on the word DO. You have to DO. Krishna tells Arjuna he must act. Juan challenges me to ask myself why I teach one thing and not another, why I think something is a good idea. You must act with intention.
Therein lies the satisfaction.
It's not that the unexamined life is not worth living. It's not that the unlived life is not worth examining.
It is simply, both.
It's also related to a distinction I want to make regarding a concept I put forward in my last entry: happiness. When I talk about happiness here, I don't mean pleasure. I mean the satisfaction that comes with effort. There is no substitute for it.
In my yoga lab last night, we worked on two things: effort and focus. My client has the tendency to shut her eyes and sort of drift through the postures. My mantra for her was: Open your eyes! And I gave her a workout--right from the start. Lots of teaching assists. Lots of what I think of as coaching: push! energy! We worked her abs right at the beginning. We flowed through surya namaskara A three times. She broke into a sweat. She kept her eyes open. And in the end, her sivasana was more satisfying.
Effort is subtly different from "trying." It's value is in the process, but it's not without outcome. I think it's more that the outcome of effort, the result of effort may not be what you thought it would be, but it is more satisfying than something delivered by chance.
As Gioconda said, no one can do your yoga practice for you. It is your practice. Mary said, no one is going to steer your boat. It is your life. You had to do it for yourself. I want to emphasize that my understanding here is on the word DO. You have to DO. Krishna tells Arjuna he must act. Juan challenges me to ask myself why I teach one thing and not another, why I think something is a good idea. You must act with intention.
Therein lies the satisfaction.
It's not that the unexamined life is not worth living. It's not that the unlived life is not worth examining.
It is simply, both.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Actually, a LOT of effort is required
I looked back to my New Year resolution for 2007--to be Aware. That was a good one. I think I tried it, off and on. But sometimes it takes frogs falling out of the sky to really wake up. And nothing close to that happened until late summer, early fall. But, a process has begun.
This year I didn't write here about my New Year's resolution. Ironically, without this public assertion, I've been more successful at keeping it in mind. Sounds simple, but it's actually been quite difficult:
DO the things that are good for me, are fulfilling and make me happy.
DON'T do things that are bad for me, leave me feeling wasted, and make me unhappy.
This has involved a great deal of tugging and pulling against my tendency to keep my head in the sand about some things. It's involved great efforts to identify, acknowledge and most importantly act on my own understanding of what those things are. It's meant expanding my awareness that some things make me happy (and I should DO them -- or NOT FOREGO them, or not sacrifice them) and add to my life and some things don't (and DON'T do them!).
My yoga practice has contributed to my ability to keep this intention in mind. I'm about six months into yoga teacher training; I've increased my practice schedule back up to where it used to be; and I've enrolled in another immersion with yoga teacher Mary Keator.
The central focus of our meditation and practice for this immersion is discernment, jnana yoga--wisdom. It's been an amazng experience--challenging, confrontational, self-affirming and liberating. Somehow she is able to put the theoretical teachings into the asana practice, making them real. I do need to meditate on it, more, though. I'll use this space to do that.
Mary said: Until you are rooted, you can't grow.
That is what I'm working on.
This year I didn't write here about my New Year's resolution. Ironically, without this public assertion, I've been more successful at keeping it in mind. Sounds simple, but it's actually been quite difficult:
DO the things that are good for me, are fulfilling and make me happy.
DON'T do things that are bad for me, leave me feeling wasted, and make me unhappy.
This has involved a great deal of tugging and pulling against my tendency to keep my head in the sand about some things. It's involved great efforts to identify, acknowledge and most importantly act on my own understanding of what those things are. It's meant expanding my awareness that some things make me happy (and I should DO them -- or NOT FOREGO them, or not sacrifice them) and add to my life and some things don't (and DON'T do them!).
My yoga practice has contributed to my ability to keep this intention in mind. I'm about six months into yoga teacher training; I've increased my practice schedule back up to where it used to be; and I've enrolled in another immersion with yoga teacher Mary Keator.
The central focus of our meditation and practice for this immersion is discernment, jnana yoga--wisdom. It's been an amazng experience--challenging, confrontational, self-affirming and liberating. Somehow she is able to put the theoretical teachings into the asana practice, making them real. I do need to meditate on it, more, though. I'll use this space to do that.
Mary said: Until you are rooted, you can't grow.
That is what I'm working on.
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