Tag Archives: yoga

Happy times

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“I feel happy and they all feel happy being there, so they make me happy and I make them happy. We just spend a little happy time together, that’s all.”1 That’s how Swami Satchidananda describes giving a dharma talk, sharing yoga, and essentially – what yoga is. Happy times.

Last week I subbed a Restorative Yoga class. Teaching restored my own energy, my sense of self, my connection with the Divine. The most beautiful thing about teaching for me is feeling peace and joy resonating from the students. That’s the whole point to me. And in turn I receive and emit that energy as well.

While teaching may seem like giving (and it is) I get so much in return that I’m thankful for the opportunity to serve even when it feels like I have nothing more to give. Teaching nourishes me, lets me practice, and reconnects me to what is important.

As a mom my priority is always my son but lately I’ve been running on empty. The years of sacrifice and giving have drained me and even my son recognizes that I’m not the same person. “I have two mommies, is the other one coming tomorrow?” He may mean something completely different in his 2 ¾ year old mind – but it breaks my heart anyway.

I took the time this weekend to be alone, to be quiet, to be slow. I smelled the newly sprung flowers, lay in the sunshine and stared up at puffy clouds forming and reforming in the bright blue sky above. Those moments, while short in the big picture, melted away long held tension. I felt like me for a moment again.

I watched bees discover blossoms and nestle inside. Bees take nectar for themselves and in turn give pollen and help create more flowers, more nectar, and more life. Taking enough to keep yourself going is necessary when it prepares you to have more to give. Sometimes we forget that we need to take sometimes, we need to take care of ourselves in order to take care of others, we need some nectar to sweeten our lives in order to create more sweetness in the world.

Yoga gives me a little happy time to remember that sweetness.

1 Satchidananda, Swami, The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali/translation and commentary by Swami Satchidananda, Integral Yoga Publications, Yogaville, 1990. Book 1 Sutra 15

Riding the waves

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Santa Cruz is a beach town, a Northern California college town, a yoga teacher haven. The old hippy vibe never left even though the population has changed over the decades.  Trees are there for the hugging, dogs romp in the surf on their very own beach, drum circles hold the heartbeat, fog blankets the mountains. Strawberries, artichokes, brussel sprouts fan out in neat rows from the highway. Old adobes, ranch houses, and the odd yurt mix it up with modern developments, strip malls, and box stores.

It’s a place of paradox. “Keep Santa Cruz Weird” clashes with Starbucks and American Apparel. SUVs, hybrids, motorcycle gangs, skateboard crews, yuppie stroller squads.

One thing that doesn’t change is the ocean, the waves rolling in and the longing to be on a wave feeling absolutely free. I grew up on that bay and learned a healthy fear of the power of the Pacific, rip tides, undertows, jagged rocks, sudden massive waves, and great white sharks. But finally in my 20s, with a trusted guide who had been surfing Cowell Beach for 50 years, I suited up from head to toe, and paddled out into the deep blue.

I love to swim in the ocean, I have dived into many salty waters (all warmer than this part of the Pacific), and felt that singular kind of isolation looking back at land, fully focused on breath and the movement of the ocean, aware of my body alive and moving in this other body of expanse and power, much stronger than me, much greater than me, relentless in its constant change.

But there was something very different about sitting on a surf board, gently rising and falling, feeling the energy of the ocean beneath me rather than on me. It was incredibly peaceful. I felt a deep stillness and feeling of ease. There was a friendliness out there, away from the world on land, a community of joy.

I tried catching a wave numerous times before I finally felt the exhilarating sensation of being carried. I lost the momentum and the wave. I tried again. And again. And again. Suddenly I was on a wave, one foot planted, one knee grounded into the board and I felt a rush. When I tried to stand, I fell. Eyes stinging from the salt water, I heaved myself up onto the board and paddled back wanting more. Finally I managed to plant both feet, knees deeply bent, arms out, going on feel not technique and the wave moved me. My face was one big goofy grin. I rode that small wave all the way to the beach.

Happiness melted every aching muscle.

I struggled and worked and believed and then I let go and allowed the wave to take me to a place of peace and freedom. The little waves didn’t seem so daunting after that. I would have to work harder to deal with anything bigger. One day I might be able enough to ride any wave I meet.

Yoga doesn’t have to be found in a class or in a book. Nature is ready and willing to show us all we need to know if we just listen and feel and make ourselves fully present in the moment.

 

Laugh, seriously.

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Have you ever burst out laughing in a yoga class? Or stifled a giggle? Or bit your lip to squelch a guffaw? Yoga can be pretty funny. Sometimes even seriously hilarious.

Yoga teachers ask us to be aware – aware of our breath, aware of our body, aware of our mind. I guess on this particular day I wasn’t in the mood to follow instructions. I followed the sequence the teacher dictated but ignored the very detailed guidance to focus on the micro alignment of my toe knuckles, and to rotate an extra millimeter to feel synovial fluid flow through fascial release, and to sigh with all the other moaners in the room on cue.

I just moved.

There were sixty students mat to mat in a humid room with strong overhead lighting beaming down on us. I couldn’t see the teacher way up at the front of the room without my glasses. I brought my focus to the narrow navy blue rectangle below me, my allotted space.

In adho mukha svanasana (downward facing dog) I looked down at my shadow. I saw an antique oil lamp on my mat. My hips were the base (round and stable), my torso the body (rippled like my shirt around my waist), my head the wick, and my arms were the glass enclosure reaching up leaving space for the light. I moved my head to flicker the flame and laughed at myself a little.

On all fours we stretched one arm to the front and one leg to the back, balancing. The shadow of the foot of the person in front of me landed right into the shadow of my palm. I tickled her shadow foot with my shadow hand. I wondered if she could feel it. I imagined my son uncontrollably laughing when tickled. I smiled.

As we sat in gomukhasana (cow face pose), arms and legs pretzeled. I slowly leaned forward and saw seven big round splashes of sweat all in a row, lined up exactly like the chakras. The biggest splash was over the imaginary heart chakra. At least I was sweating in alignment.

After bhujangasana (cobra pose) we pushed back to sit in vajrasana and I noticed the sweaty mark I had left from laying on my chest. I giggled. Two big circles with an extra big blotch in the middle of each, like cartoon eyes, and a little round nose. My little cartoon guy stared up at me unwavering with his big eyes. I smiled back at him.

I laughed at myself and at the practice. My body felt warm and steady, my breath slow and calm, my mind content. Not focusing had been a wonderful practice. Feeling instead of thinking, being present to see the unexpected had made me smile.

Sometimes the best way to still the mind is to laugh. One of my favorite things is laughing meditation. You get comfortable and then you laugh and laugh and laugh. You laugh everything out of you – thoughts, feelings, tension – and when the laughter stops you are left completely still. It’s a very deep practice.

Laughing is yoga.

Finding your edge

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As we moved from asana to asana, the teacher wove through our mats and urged us to: “find your edge”, “push to reach your limit”, “ease past your comfort zone”. This is common language in a vinyasa class.

Hearing these suggestions, I realized where I was at – I had no comfort zone. I wasn’t living in a stable place of ease and routine and comfort that I had a need to push beyond. My existence since my son was born had already been past my limit and beyond my edge. I had been struggling to get back to a sense of home, of ease – to find my down dog in the middle of the vinyasa. I had been looking for that slow deep breath of stability in the midst of persevering through effort – that moment of stillness within perpetual movement.

In class that day I wasn’t looking to push further in the effort. I was resistant to the message. I wanted slow, steady, calm, comfortable, expected. I feel at home in a yoga class because it is routine and known to me. I don’t have to think or learn; I can just do and be.

I spent much of my daily life in resistance so I decided to not resist the message, to let go and not let my thoughts about limitations block my movements. I would just do. I would accept the challenge. I would trust that pushing myself, even though I felt like I had nothing more to give, would bring more ease in the end than just going through the motions in a comfortable way, without awareness, distracted by my mind.

I found that as I focused on my body, I got out of my head and my thoughts and into my body. I forgot about the diaper delivery that didn’t come, cleaning up vomit in the middle of the night, and how I struggle to not hold onto resentments in my life and instead focused on the release of tension from my hip in eka pada rajakapotasana (pigeon pose). I noticed where my imbalance was coming from in sirsasana (headstand) and how many breaths I could last before coming down. I felt my bone alignment and struggling flexibility in hanumanasa (splits).

I pushed – I wanted to feel the pain, the release of toxins from my muscles, and breathe it out of my body. I wanted to feel something that wasn’t heartache, frustration or exhaustion. I wanted to feel my own body again, not my body in relation to my child (a wonderful yet binding attachment) – just me. I felt like I needed a physical pummeling. In a good way!

The most profound moment of the class was in savasana (corpse pose) when the teacher massaged my shoulders and head. That healing touch let me know what I was missing. Baby hugs and kisses and tickles are like nothing else – the epitome of sweetness and softness and pure love. But I needed to be kneaded, I needed the tension manipulated out of my body, I needed physical help releasing all that I had been holding onto.

I needed to be challenged to push myself, to be guided out of my head, to be put into savasana and a deep level of rest, and I needed healing touch. I went beyond my beyond and it pulled me back to a place of ease.