Resistance Revisited

It is a curious thing.  I have been intermittent with my entries to the blog over the past month or so and I know it is resistance.  More than a month ago, I gave myself the assignment that Maya Tiwari calls "Ancestral Journal-Keeping."   I journaled on my parents for over a month and it was a trying time throughout. Intense sadness and anger kept rising to the surface. Part of the assignment is to return to what I wrote and read and reflect on it.  I know I have been avoiding reading those entries.  I have been creating busyness for myself, focusing on the drama of my work life and allowing things to get in the way.  This is such a pattern for me.  I could have been writing about other things, but since I was avoiding the reflection, all writing ground to a halt. 

"If anger or any other emotion prevents you from being able to write, put down your journal and practice a food, breath, or sound sadhana...." --Maya Tiwari

I know I need to reflect. I can feel it all the way down to my bones. But I also feel the fear of doing that reflection exercise all the way down to my bones.  Competing feelings—one of fear and one of trust--leave me frozen and agitated.  Hence, the focus of the last blog post (November 29th).  Fear and trust are so deeply intertwined their entanglement clog my creative fire.  Sitting here writing this I am overpowered by the fear.  Yet I am still writing.  I’m staying. 

"...When you engage in the practice you move energy and breath through your body, which allows the rhythms of your thought processes to become more fluid...." --Maya Tiwari

Malasana. That is why I took the challenge of doing malasana each day (see November 8th entry). And I did it. I sat in malasana for five minutes each day for a week—and it felt amazing. Energy was moving. I could feel the pose grounding me—bringing me to earth gently and with love.  My hips are often the place I hold intense emotions and I could feel the muscles simultaneously fighting and succumbing.  But I allowed curiosity to settle into those spaces.   I found a way into the dense and complex musculature of that region of my body.  No, I have not mastered malasana.  Each day with the pose is different.  Some days it’s easy to sit there; other days it feels like I’m going to freak out.  But I realized how much I love the pose and how much my vata nature needs the pose.  I haven’t been doing it everyday, but I do it often. 

"...You may find positive solutions to problems or emotional issues that seem insurmountable and have made you feel stuck." --Maya Tiwari

Although I'm less stuck as a result of the malasana practice, I'm still struggling to write and reflect. One thing that arose for me today is how much I am struggling with vata. Usually kapha is a wonderful place to lay blame during this time of year for my general lack of energy.  I have felt tired and creatively drained over the past month or more, but this morning I realized it's not out of the lethargy and the heaviness of kapha.  I had a deep sleep last night and awoke refreshed and alive.  It was glorious. Reflecting in meditation, I realized I was drained because I have not been sleeping well.  My mind has been busy at night, waking me up, spinning around my thoughts. Vata-mind.  Often, I am afraid that if I indulge vata too much, I will push kapha into imbalance. It's as though I prefer to be in vata-excess out of fear that kapha will stomp her way into my life.  She will dominate me with her wet, heavy, earthiness, leaving me lost in her darkness. Yet sometimes we need that darkness.  Seeds must grow in the wet, heavy, earthiness. Yet we need light air and space to keep energy moving. But as my yoga teacher reminds me, winter is the time of opposites. That means our work is to find balance, and since I am a vata-kapha, that is a big task.  I’ve struggled with kapha imbalances in the past. It is a difficult energy to get moving when it gets too heavy.

Although vata and kapha are largely opposites, there are things about these two doshas that make them complementary. And not always in the greatest ways.  They both lean to the cold side of things.  They both thrive on fear.  And they both can be tremendous roadblocks to creativity: kapha for its pull to stasis and lethargy; vata for its pull to frantic lack of focus. Sitting in meditation this morning with my mind jumping from one thing to the next, I realized that vata has been frantically unraveling my creative focus.

I found this picture online and I couldn't stop looking at it. It mirrors my internal state.  The frenetic flight of the bird's wings on a crumbling facade.  There is part of me that knows some of the facade does need to break down and crumble. I sense the reflection process will lead to crumbling.  Hence, the resistance. The frantic bird shuttering to hold onto that facade.  I look at the picture and keep thinking, "Why can't I just let go?"