Tag Archives: Yoga

When Rest is More Difficult than Activity

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Leaving yoga last weekend, my daughter, a relatively new practitioner, noted with pride that she had not taken a child’s pose “the whole practice.”  And she had not.  Hearing this, I was struck by multiple emotions simultaneously.  I felt proud of her commitment to this new activity and her willingness to dive right in to difficult poses.  I felt a little envious that her nice young joints and muscles had cooperated with her this way in her first real Vinyasa class.  And, I felt a little chagrined to realize that I had probably contributed to her belief that taking child’s pose during a practice was some sort of failure.  The moment passed and we went on with our day, but it came back to me with a vengeance today.

Sunday was devoted to celebrations and family time, so my yoga moment consisted of some mindful meditation.  Today, Monday, I realistically could have worked in a practice after I came home and made dinner for the family, but I didn’t.  I’m just plain tired and having some sciatica, and the house has been in a bit of an uproar – so, I didn’t.  And now I feel guilty and uneasy and as if I have “copped out” on my practice.  And, thinking about it, I know that I do not always (or even often) take a child’s pose in class that isn’t instructor led, and when I do, I feel a sense that I’m doing it wrong – even though my wonderful instructors always are sure to mention in each class that child’s pose is a good thing and a perfectly valid pose and not a failure in any way.

So, what’s the problem?  We (and by we, I guess I’m speaking for the entire U.S. and  a good portion of the industrialized world, so please pardon my complete presumptuousness) don’t do rest very well.  We are much much better at busy.  Busy busy busy.  Even when we are resting, we stay busy.  We watch TV, chat on the phone, text our friends, surf the internet, write emails, jot notes, scrapbook, crochet, shop.  We can’t make it through 10 minutes of waiting at the doctor’s office without picking up a magazine or checking our work emails.  We seem to have a constant underlying feeling that we shouldn’t be “wasting” time; we have to DO something with it.

But, how can we waste our own time?  It’s our time.  We cannot store it away for later; we are always “using” the time – regardless of what we do in any given moment.  And, fundamentally, my moments are only mine.  Yes, my actions are part of the interconnected stream that is the living world, but my individual moments of behavior and being in my body are mine.  There is not some larger goal that I have to meet in this lifetime – no minimum number of emails that must be sent, no particular amount of books that must be read, no afghans that have to be crocheted for the good of humanity.  Our time can be wasted only if we mindlessly and thoughtlessly engage in behavior that does not -in any way- serve us.  Sometimes it serves us to surf the web and text with our friends.  But, sometimes we do it almost as a reflex action as part of our urge to stay busy busy busy.  Does this serve us?

Look at your dog.  If you don’t have a dog, run down the block and look at your neighbor’s dog.  Go ahead, I’ll wait – I have time.

Ok, so what was that dog doing?  Chances are pretty good that he or she was resting.  Not texting or surfing the web (unless you have a VERY talented dog).  Not reading the stock report or looking in the mirror for his latest wrinkle – just resting.  And, don’t we all envy the dog (or the cat) sometimes for that ability to just sink into a rest in the blink of an eye?  Yet, though we envy it in them, we find it so hard to do for ourselves.

I don’t know how to fix this culturally – though I’m pretty sure that we aren’t headed in that direction (do you remember nap time in kindergarten? – they don’t have that any more – too much to do).  Maybe we need to teach children, and adults, Balasana and schedule it into our days until we get accustomed to recognizing what it feels like and how to stop resisting it.  As for me, I guess it’s just one day at a time, one rest at a time, one moment at a time.  And for you, just remember that even on Gilligan’s Island there was “the rest.” (ooohhhh)

Seeing Yourself from the Inside Out

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Looking in the mirror is always a crapshoot, isn’t it?  Some days you can do it and feel pretty good.  Other days you do it with no noticeable reaction.  And then there are the days when you look in the mirror and think “Oh my heck, what happened to me?”  Depending on who you are, the proportions of one to another experience can change pretty dramatically.  But, there is another way to look at yourself, and that’s from the inside out.

I’m not talking about who you are emotionally or socially, though that is important too.  I’m talking about your body awareness and the image of body that you carry around in your head.  Now, I would guess that for most of us this is not a static thing.  There are times when we think about our bodies from the inside and the image we get is bad – very bad.  But, there are other times when it’s not.  When you are very happy and enjoying yourself, if you try to picture your face, isn’t it a nice face?  Isn’t it a lovely face – with no bad judgments about wrinkles or bags or age spots?  And for the rest of the body the same is true.  There is probably some thing, some time, that produces for you the internal image of a beautiful body.  Perhaps it’s when you are running.  Maybe it’s during meditation.  It could be when you are pushing a child on a swing.  Maybe it’s when you are performing on stage or even during sex.  Whatever it is, at that moment, you see your body from the inside and it’s beautiful.

For me, not too surprisingly, this most often happens during yoga.  At some point during  many yoga practices, my body suddenly “looks” graceful, fluid, long, and lean.  I don’t see saggy arm backs, or belly wrinkles, broken capillaries, or a slouchy back.  Recently, I was trying to check how I was doing a pose and what I needed to adjust to get my shoulders/hips in the right position, so I did some yoga in front of a mirror.  And, I was shocked and not so happy.  During poses where my internal image was of a beautiful flat back, I was still slumped over.  During the forward bend split, where my leg felt like it was beautifully extended high into the air, it was barely above my hips.  It was not a pleasant surprise.

So, here is my plan.  I’m not doing yoga in front of a mirror any more.  I have good instructors who don’t hesitate to give me tips about what I can adjust and how, so I will trust them to do that when they think it’s right.  Otherwise, I’m just going to go with what my internal image says.  Because it doesn’t matter.  Maybe I’ll consider this issue more when I make my decision about pursuing certification (because I don’t want to create a whole new generation of yoginis with bad posture) but for my own practice, what I see on the inside is good enough, and those moments when my body is a beautiful thing to me are rare enough.  Why let them go for the sake of a more “realistic” view?

Beautifully yours,

L

It’s Like Herding Cats

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Minds like to wander.  They do.  And they are hard to rein in, because even if you get the alpha mind headed in the right direction, suddenly you realize that the beta mind is off in the corner thinking about something completely different.  So, you head over and nip at its heels until it comes in line.  And… then you notice that now you are thinking HARD about what you are or are not thinking about and how short your attention span is and how hard it is to stop thinking – and you’ve completely forgotten to meditate or breathe.

I’ve been really trying to work on this lately during meditative yoga poses and during Savasana.  Sometimes, I feel like it’s working, and other times I get part way through and realize that I am so busy thinking about how hard I need to try not to think that I haven’t really even begun to meditate.  Or, I notice that my “back mind” has been sneaking around planning dinner or writing a blog post (ahem) while my “front mind” is trying to cooperate.

What to do, what to do?  Nothing.  And that’s the catch, isn’t it?  We aren’t very good at doing nothing.  Our minds aren’t very good at doing nothing.  Busy! Busy! Busy!  I don’t actually think it’s a lack of attention – I think it’s more that we cannot stop attending to all the things we have going on long enough to be in the moment.

So, here’s what I’m trying now – we’ll see if it works!  First, at this moment, concentrating on breathing is just not working for me.  My brain wants to be busier than that.  So, I need a mantra.  Sometimes it’s extremely simple, like “be here now.”  Sometimes it’s a little more complex (last week in yin it was “I release stress; I release anger;  I cultivate happiness; I cultivate peace”).  If the surroundings or my physical position are more distracting, like in yin poses that I find very uncomfortable and even painful if I think about the physical sensations too much, then I go for a more complex mantra.  For Savasana, I tend toward something simple.  Second, I made a very unfancy set of mala beads (in bracelet form for easy portability) to bring with me when I’m meditating or doing yin.  I gave it a trial run last week with a crochet row counting bracelet that I had recently made, and I liked it.  So, that’s another tactic I’m going to work with for now.  And last, I’m really really going to try to stop berating myself for thinking when I’m trying not to be thinking, because then the judging becomes its own thinking, which increases the self-critique and so on in an infinite cycle.

Now, if you’ve ever seen a dog actually try to herd cats – and I have – you know that it’s one thing to have a plan and a strategy and it’s quite another thing to actually end up with the cats where you want them.  And I’m pretty sure my dogs’ frustration strategy, which consists of running up and barking in the cat’s face, won’t really work with my thoughts, so I’ll have to do what I can.

Nameste,

L