perspective

Prerequisite to Letting Go

Elizabeth Advice, Knowledge , , ,
04-08-15 blog image

04-08-15 blog image

“Understanding the transitory nature of all things is prerequisite to letting go of expectations and attachments.”
The Path of the Yoga Sutras, Nicolai Bachman

Over the past few weeks in yoga classes, I suggested that students focus on the concept of “letting go.” After all, it is spring, and spring brings up the idea of cleaning, letting go of the detritus of winter. At a more internal level, it can mean letting go of those attitudes, habits, behaviors that no longer serve us.

As students discussed that one thing that they would like to let go of, I was reminded of the difficulty of doing this. Letting go of a house filled with things accumulated over a lifetime can feel like a heavy weight when a person wants to downsize to something more modest and easier to keep up. Such a task requires not only much work, but also the giving up of objects that feel connected to family and friends. Even recognizing that the objects are just that – material things – they can come to represent that person who is now gone.

In my last blog, I wrote about the concept in yoga of parinama vada, meaning “everything changes.” This reminds us that all those material things in our world change – the seasons, the weather, a house, ourselves. Even a mountain changes over time, as will our sun.

But yoga also teaches us that there is something which is constant, unchanging. That constant within us is called purusa, which means “that which sees,” or “that which sees correctly.” Unfortunately, the ability of purusa to see correctly is, for most of us, hampered. Purusa can only see through the window of the mind. Yet, past experiences, memories, beliefs, feelings cloud this window with thoughts about what we see in the material world. This happens constantly and most often we are unaware they are obstructing our ability to see clearly.

For example, I am at the food store, and I see a woman I used to work with walking toward me. Our relationship had been difficult, and I had always felt she had been critical of my work. So now, the old feelings are triggered along with these memories. I am seeing her through a window clouded with thoughts and feelings from the past. When she greets me smiling and with a warm hug, my response is hesitant. I cannot see her as she is in the present moment because my mind is so filled with the past.

We have been given the tools of yoga so that we might be able to clean the window of the mind. When purusa can shine, allowing us to see the world clearly, we have the ability to discern the best path for ourselves. We may decide good reasons exist for keeping the house we have been living in for so long, and as a result feel more accepting of our choice.

Alternatively, we may see our best interest lies in letting go so we might have a home easier to manage. In either case, we choose with a sense of acceptance because the clarity of purusa allows us the discernment to choose wisely.

The elegance of yoga rests in the opportunities it offers us to live our lives with greater peace and freedom. It is also the promise for those willing to come to practice with faith, constancy, and a positive attitude.

Spring, the Sky…

Elizabeth Health, Mindset, Seasons , , ,

First signs of Spring

Spring, the sky rippled with geese,
But the green comes on slowly…”
From “March 16,” in Ted Kooser’s Winter Morning Walks

We have almost arrived at the end of March, and I have been observing its fluctuating energy throughout the month. What have you noticed this month? And, not just about the weather. How has your body been feeling? What has your energy been like? How have your moods been?

It is in the nature of March to reflect both the winter we have barely left and the spring that is promised. And each season has an energy that influences each individual depending upon his or her unique system.

A friend of mine with whom I spoke on one of March’s first sunny, warm days talked about feeling a sense of excitement without knowing why. I thought it funny she expressed it that way as I had been experiencing a similar sense of excitement. It was only when she mentioned this that I began to relate it to what was going on around us.

On a warm sunny early spring day there is a feeling of potential energy. My friend described it as “pregnant energy.” I had just noticed earlier in March how daffodils in my yard had pressed through the cold, hard earth, undeterred by snowfalls. They were growing greener and taller each day. “Pregnant energy” had pushed them toward the sun with a promise of blossoms, energy expressed in their opening. That pregnant energy is an energy of anticipation, excitement, a movement toward birth, renewal, fulfillment.

But even now as the vernal equinox is behind us, we can still feel the fluctuating energy of this season. Ted Kooser expresses this best in a short poem in which he speaks of “The pond, still numb from months of ice,” and juxtaposes it to the nearby “budding maple whose every twig is strung with beads of carved cinnabar, bittersweet red.” On a chilly, overcast March day, one perhaps even offering some wintry precipitation, we may relate more to ice barely cleared on the pond, or, for us living close to the Susquehanna, to ice barely cleared in the river. On such days the excitement of spring is dampened, and we feel a heavier, denser energy of winter not ready to let go to make room for spring.

Transition is often difficult. And the transition between the pregnant potential of a promised spring and weighty, internal energy of winter can bring a sense of agitation, confusion, or maybe even a sense of just being worn down.

One of the teachings of yoga that helps me with the fluctuating days of this seasonal transition is parinama vada, translated as “everything changes.” We learn that everything in the material world is in flux. It is the nature of things to be constantly changing, including ourselves, which we see as we grow from children, to adolescents, to young adults, to middle age, and to elders.

A regular yoga practice attunes us to the changes around us and within us. We learn to live in the present moment and accept that change and transitions are inevitable.

When the moody indecision of March plagues our bodies, energy and dispositions and disappoints our desire for a more consistent diet of pleasantly warm and sun, we can remind ourselves that it will change. That is assured.

Pay Attention

Elizabeth Advice, Current Events, Seasons , ,

Frozen Conodoguinet Creek

Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?”
…from “The Summer Day,” Mary Oliver

Thirteen degrees on our back porch as I poured sunflower seeds in a bucket to carry to and fill the bird feeders. Thirteen felt very cold, but as I walked across the front yard, I swear the sun warmed my face and penetrated the layers of clothing I wore. I like to think this was a February duel between the Arctic’s breath, not ready to recede, and the sun’s promise of the spring to come.

Standing beside the Conodoguinet, I looked upstream as I often do. Mostly frozen, the creek’s current continued to insist upon a stream of open water. But where only days earlier Canada geese had bedded down on the ice, and hooded mergansers had fished, all was still and quiet, save for a faint birdcall now and then.

Climbing the steps from the creek and crossing yard, still covered here and there with snow, I looked for the prints left by animals that had ventured out. A pair of large prints, perhaps a raccoon, led from the front of the house to under our neighbor’s porch. Clearly the community of rabbits, squirrels, birds, mice and moles, with whom we share this small plot of ground on the creek, have been busy in spite of the cold.

Several times I have run into friends over the last few weeks who, knowing I had taken February as a hiatus month, have asked, “How it was going?” I have found myself answering that it has been a month, so far, of mixed blessings. What it certainly has been is a month of paying attention. To the birds, to the weather each day, to the footprints in the snow, to cats, to the fire in the wood stove, to knitting and books, to the voices of friends and family, to the spirals of my own voice.

The poet Mary Oliver comes back again and again to this directive: “pay attention.” And, so it is with yoga, giving us the tools with which to bring attention to our practice, to ourselves, to our relationships, to our lives.

When Mary Oliver asks, “…what will you do with your one wild and precious life?,” I think my answer will be, “Pay attention.”

Joy

Yoga 4 Healthy Living Mindset , ,

Note: Joy is one of our eleven Benefits of Yoga

Joy imageYoga identifies five dimensions in our human system: the physical or annamaya, the energetic or pranamaya, the intellect or manomaya, the personality or vijnanamaya, and the emotional or anandamaya. The word ananda, in the emotional dimension, is translated as “joy that never stops.” This level of our system is capable of joy because it is not linked to habitual ways of thinking that cause suffering.

Habitual patterns of thoughts may be things such as ruminating over regrets about something in the past, or thoughts of failure because we have less than our friends, or fears about our future or our children’s future. When our minds our engaged in these kinds of negative thoughts, we feel constricted, ill at ease: we cannot experience joy.

Since yoga acts on all the different parts of our human system, doing postures, simple breathing techniques, and using sound or other tools of yoga can allow us to see negative patterns of thought and help free us from them and the frustration and unhappiness they engender. Over time, an appropriate, regular yoga practice helps us to see those things creating “non-joy” so we may let go of them, and those things linking us to that joy inherent within us. Through our yoga practice, we can choose to move toward what is positive, toward what nourishes joy at our deepest level.

How Often Do You Experience Joy?

Elizabeth Advice, Mindset , ,

Blue Horses poetry bookThis question has lingered in my mind since it was asked on a form I was filling out for my first reflexology session with my friend and reflexologist Lori Sweet. The question stopped me. I had no idea how to answer it. And, I began to ask myself “what is joy for me?”

Yoga teaches that joy – ananda – resides in the subtlest aspect of our being. It is there for all of us, yet may seem elusive, even mysterious.

After reflecting on this question, I can best describe the feeling of joy to be a profound opening of myself to all that is around me: it is a connection and a deep gratitude. It may be brief or linger, a glow in the sky of my being after the sun slips below the horizon.

Yoga teachings tell us we have a choice whether to move toward joy or away from joy. We have to reflect on what brings us “non-joy” and say “no” to that. The great gift of yoga is a quieting of the mind, which helps us to discern those things that bring us joy and those bringing us “non-joy.”

This morning after returning from the veterinarian with my most lovable fluffy 14-year-old kitty, Bagheera, I sat in the chair in the living room with a cup of coffee. Looking out the window to the snow clinging to the sycamore, I could feel myself leaning into a space of inertia. Bagheera was going to OK, but I was slipping into malaise with the day.

I don’t think I was conscious of making a choice, but I did pick up a book of poetry my husband had given me for Christmas. The poet was Mary Oliver. I read poem after poem until I reached “Franz Marc:s Blue Horses,” in which the poet imagines herself stepping into the painting “Blue Horses.” The poet reflected on the painter who “died a young man, shrapnel in his brain,” but also on the beauty of the blue horses in the painting and her gratitude.

I do not know how to thank you, Franz Marc.
Maybe our world will grow kinder eventually.
Maybe the desire to make something beautiful
is the piece of God that is inside each of us.”

I read the poem again and again, and then found myself holding the book close to my heart. It broke me open to something beyond the living room and the snow and the sycamore. I realize now I had made a choice to move toward joy. And that has made all the difference in my day.

So what about you?
How does joy feel to you?
What are you going to connect to that will bring you joy?

 

A New Year, A New Beginning

Elizabeth Current Events, Mindset, Seasons , ,

Creekside in Winter

I think most of us like New Years because its message is “begin again.” Perhaps we never got around to doing a fifteen minute yoga practice in the morning, or eating a healthier lunch, or getting more rest, or spending time with friends we haven’t seen in a while, or nourishing a spiritual life. The list can go on and on. I am sure you could add to my examples, but I think you get the point.

The New Year feels like a time to start over something that didn’t go well last year, or renew something that did go well, or just plain begin something brand new we haven’t done before. It can be the work of giving up something that no longer serves us, and finding something that does. It can be a change in thinking, or speaking, or listening, or acting. It can be simply a time to reflect on the path we are on and to look at ourselves in our life with courage.

A new beginning for me this year is to take off one month this winter as a time to reflect upon the directions I want to take in teaching and in my life. To allow myself this space, I will not be offering classes the month of February. Our classes will begin again Wednesday, March 4 and Friday, March 6. We will be continuing with the theme of Whole-hearted Living, focusing on yoga as a tool to help us live more fully and with greater acceptance in our relationships and in our attitudes toward ourselves.

You will notice another new beginning in the upcoming weeks as a redesign of the Yoga 4 Healthful Living website is launched. It is my wish that the site is as simple, useful, and aesthetically pleasing as possible for users on all kinds of electronic devices. I am working with my wonderful “web guy” Ric Albano at 33 Dimensions to bring this about and will welcome feedback on your experience.

I realize this is not the type of blog I usually post, but I believe examining where we are and where we are going to be an important part of yoga. It is a svadhyaya, a kind of self-observation and examination. In this way we can construct an appropriate plan going forward.

How many times have you heard me tell you that yoga is about balance? Recently I came across the following definition of a “balanced lifestyle:” It is “a state of being in which one has time and energy for obligations and pleasures, as well as time to live well and in a gratifying way.”

If ever there is an over-arcing principle that can guide our reflections on and our choices in our work and life, it is this. As you begin this New Year of 2015, it is my wish that you find and enjoy this kind of balanced lifestyle.

 

Enough

Elizabeth Advice, Mindset , , ,

Sunset at the beach

I don’t know what I expected when I went to “Ted Talks” on the web to listen to Brene Brown talk about vulnerability. All I know is my friend told me, “you have to watch this.”

The thirty minute talk set off a flurry of reflections for me. But what has stayed with me, returning again and again in my thoughts, came in the final moments when she spoke of how to practice “whole-hearted vulnerability:” love with our whole hearts; practice joy and gratitude; believe we are enough. It was the last element that has been the biggest stumbling block for me, and for so many other women I know.

Friday was a journey. We rose at 5:15 am. I said good-bye to each of my dear kitties, and then we drove to Baltimore to board a five plus hour flight to Los Angeles and arrive in what seemed like chaos in the Los Angeles airport. Our reward was seeing our daughter and family and being with our oldest grandson to celebrate his college graduation. But the preparation for leaving during the previous five days had left me feeling as if I had gone beyond “enough.” I had been trying to take care of things in all areas of my life before leaving town, as if all had to be in order so I could go. I was not conscious of my thinking until I looked back. When I did, I realized I was operating with the belief that by completing all these tasks, I would have done enough. I would be enough.

I have been in the “doing enough to be enough” place many times. We live in a culture that reinforces this belief constantly. After all, our economy is about production and consumption and progress; we receive these messages all the time, in media, from other people, from our teachers. It is as if we are enculturated into the belief that there is always more to do, to accomplish, to buy, and to be. If we come to a place where we accept ourselves as we are and believe what we do is enough, we usually notice we are swimming against the current.

But we pay a price for trying to be enough by doing more. When I feel that way, my heart, not to mention my mind, feels depleted, and I have little emotional energy or ability to be present or patient. Doing too much in order to feel I am enough robs me of what is most important, my connection to those dear to me and to myself.

The ability to observe our reactions and behavior is called svadhyaya in Sanskrit. This is one of the three elements of kriya yoga, the yoga of action, as described by Patanjali in Yoga Sutra 2.1. Svadhyaya offers us the possibility of seeing how we create suffering in our own lives, things like believing we are not enough. This sutra tells us to develop a practice to deal with behaviors or attitudes causing problems. The practice, called tapas, requires effort and continued self-observation to make sure it is reducing the negative effects. The last element of kriya yoga is isvara pranidhana, requiring an acknowledgement that there is a power greater than ourselves to whom we must turn over the results of our actions.

Our tapas could be a mantra we include in a meditation each day. One student in my Wise Women class told of a therapist who had given her a mantra that could be used: “I am enough. I do enough. What I do, I do well.” The svadhyaya becomes our continued self-observation. Since our old way of thinking has become a habit, at some point we face resistance. The old pattern will be pushing us to do more so we can feel we are enough, yet our practice will be linking us to a new message, one that assures us we are enough as we are. Inevitably this resistance creates heat, the heat of tapas, as we move to create the new positive pattern, and so effort over time is required to transform the old pattern. To maintain the effort required we need humility and faith that something positive will come to fruition, over time, through our efforts – isvara pranidhana.

There is a price we pay for staying in our old patterns, which is continued suffering. And, there is a price we pay when we engage in making change, which is effort. But there is a pay off eventually as we begin to move from “not enough”‘ to a place of believing we are enough. When we live in the place of believing we are enough, we are kinder and gentler to ourselves and others. We feel connection in our relationships, and we are able to touch joy and peace within ourselves. The universe is full, the Veda-s tell us. And indeed it is when all is enough.