Synchronicity

Gnome Home-Pier One-Procrastination
I'll start with the most recent and most tangible synchronicity I've had this month.  This came with my new gnome home that Matt had made for me.  I was looking for a way to display this beautiful work of art.  I wanted it to be seen, but I wanted it to be safe.  So Matt and I decided to get a shelf for it. We both kept procrastinating, though. We finally went to Menards and found a board that I would stain and we would brace it to the wall so the gnome home could sit safely.  I stained the wood and then Matt began to second guess if this was the best way to display the gnome home. When we went to hang it up, we couldn't find a stud to hang it securely.  This solidified Matt's assertion that hanging was not the best idea. We needed a stand.  I was growing frustrated. I wanted it displayed. I was feeling hurried and impatient.

So I procrastinated more.  I couldn't really find a stand that worked.  Finally I decided we just needed to go to Pier One--just for a quick look. To get some ideas.

There is was. The perfect stand.  I walked around and suddenly I saw it.  The stand is metal with a glass top.  It has three thin metal legs. The legs were fashioned into tree branches with metal leaves and a metal bird perched on one of the branches.  It was perfect.  Matt was not sure it would be secure enough with the three-legged set up.  But I knew I wanted it.  Then he thought about it and realized that the round wood I had stained would be a perfect platform for the stand. He could place braces on it and secure the stand to the wood, so it would sit securely.  I found this a synchronistic moment in which patience payed off in the form of a beautiful and perfect moment of collaboration.



Defiance-Veiled Prophet-Family
My family research has been heavily concentrated on my maternal side.  For good reason.  My mother's side has been the one with the greatest support and influence.  My maternal grandparents were almost like a second set of parents. I lived with them off and on over the time I was growing up.  They were there when I really needed them.  They came to my graduations and would visit me often when I moved away from California.  As I often call them, they were the grounding posts of what I considered my family.  This isn't to say that my paternal family is unimportant.  They are very important.  And synchronicity reminded me of that.

About a month ago I stopped by Matt's house and he was watching a television show called Defiance.  A futuristic show on the SyFy network.  When he told me the title, I paused and said, "that's the name of the town where I lived.  It's where the farmhouse of my childhood was located."  He went on to tell me it was a post-apocalypse show that's set in St. Louis. I started watching and the Arch factored into many scenes. All I kept saying as I watched was, "whoever created this show has to be familiar with the area to know the town of Defiance." Missouri was not done with me yet, though.

My dad's family are largely from Missouri. St. Louis to be precise.  I remember one summer in particular, my maternal grandparents took my sister and I to Knoxville, Tennessee for the World's Fair.  I was pretty young, but it was the first time I remember going on a summer vacation.  Most of our vacations were moves from the west to the midwest.  Back and forth between Missouri and California.  This time was different. I'd get to stay in a hotel for the first time I could remember.  No camping or sleeping in the back of the truck. An actual hotel. It felt luxurious.

While we were gone, my parents went to the Veiled Prophet Fair. At the time, I knew it as the VP Fair.  It was that summer, while we were all gone from the old farmhouse, that somebody attempted to steal my beautiful doberman, Ussay.  When we returned from Tennessee, we heard the story of my parents partying at the St. Louis waterfront. Ussay soon returned with a tar scraped face from what I can only guess was him jumping out of a truck to return home.   To me, the VP Fair was a crazy Fourth of July party that nearly ended with the loss of my dog.

Then a few weeks ago, Matt and I were watching the show, Masters of Sex.  This is a show about Masters and Johnson, early sex researchers.  I've been intrigued by the show because it touches on many taboo topics from sexuality to race to gender in the 1950s. Also, it references parts of the St. Louis area that were familiar to my childhood. Forrest Park.  University of Missouri.  Everything that seemed so big and overwhelming to me as a child.  It brought St. Louis back to me.  Anyway, this particular episode focused on the Veiled Prophet Fair. Something I hadn't heard referenced since I was a child. A lost memory that started to reemerge as I watched the show and started to understand the deeper history behind this event I only knew as a Fourth of July party that nearly ended with the loss of my dog.  From the show, I realized the fair was something altogether different than I knew.  So I Googled the fair to see if I could find out more about its history.

I stumbled upon this article in The Atlantic Monthly:  http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/09/fair-st-louis-and-the-veiled-prophet/379460/

Talk about a wellspring of material.  There were so many linkages to the history of Victor, Colorado, that I could finally see how Missouri and Colorado are a tangled history-beyond just the history of me.  This could only be called synchronicity. Inspiring further thought.  Deeper thought.  Opening my eyes to new and exciting journeys.

Meditating-Veins of Gold-Mountains-Creativity
Entering into my reading of Julia Cameron's Veins of Gold, I have been hit over and over again with the metaphor of mountains and mining.  The symbolic meaning of mining for gold is more about tapping into the creative spirit in Cameron's book. My creative spirit. Yet, the reality of my journey into creativity is through the literal mountains of my grandmother's childhood.  It is interesting to think about how important mountains are to me when I'm currently living in the flattest of flatland.  But what that means to me at this moment is that it requires a deeper symbolic journey into the mountains of my life. The mountains holding fire, heat, and incredible resources.  Why do people strip mine?  To exploit all those beautiful resources.  I don't want to exploit.  I want to mine to revel in those resources. What became clear is that this deep winter season is very much about diving in.  Going deep into those veins, finding the larger source of energy and creative fire.  Golden fire.

My recent meditation reminded me of that.  I was meditating on Kali.  And she didn't hold back. She dragged me deeper into my inner landscape.  Pulling me down, down, down.  After 20 minutes of meditation, she was still dragging me down.  The next day in meditation, my visualization went right back to the downward sailing until I landed on a strange beach.  The beach had an organic structure that looked like a large furnace that funneled upward--from where I came.  She was building the fire and I walked to be beach and saw an infinite ocean.  Water and fire together in this place.  And as I stood there taking it all in, I realized how it was the place I have been, but have been too afraid to allow myself to consciously address. I was no longer afraid and I knew this place was exactly where I needed to be. No longer afraid.  I know it sounds a bit trippy, but meditation is often a waking dream for me.  More vivid than most of my dreams.

And it is in this space that I begin the juncture into deep winter.

Ancestral Memories; Total Abandon

The new year is supposed to bring in reflection, but I had an early start on that reflection.  I finally read through the ancestral journal practice that Maya Tiwari outlines in her book, The Path of Practice (see December 15th entry). I was met with a variety of emotions: anger, desolation, exhaustion, sadness, boredom, furiousness, and a smattering of hope.

Anger was dominant because my childhood memories are filled with loss.  My anger was pointed at my mother and father, but it was most severely pointed at myself.  I was angry at how little I really knew my parents back then. But then I started to realize how deep that sadness trailed, because I know even less about them now.  I thought about how much I miss out.  I miss out on not knowing my parents.  Honestly, what emerged was the growing realization that I don't really have parents anymore.  Anger turned to desolation.  Bleak and barren.  That is exactly what I feared would happen when I entered back into those ancestral journals.  The reality that there was nothing alive about my relationship with my parents.  All I had were memories and the memories I have are so filled with torment that left me dry, like a desert.

Soon the desolation turned to exhaustion.  I was just tired of reading the same things over and over again in my journal.  Just plain tired of the same stories to tell and the stories didn't really open up a door to something alive or new.  It all just left me with incredible sadness. The reality that my parents are strangers to me. The reality that my strong emotions toward them were no more.  They were more like dried leaves in the fall--just blowing, blowing, blowing away. I couldn't figure out where to go with what I was feeling. I kept sitting and drifting with the feelings, however faint, yet relentless they were.  And then the boredom came.  I was so tired of the words.  Reading the same narrative over and over again.  The victim narrative. The disempowered narrative.  I became so furious at myself. I could see how the memories of my parents are drenched with the shame I hold for them and the desire to be something, anything, other than them.  I didn't learn any deep life lesson from my parents, except how to survive.  Perhaps that is not such a little thing.  I have learned to survive.  I am a survivor.  But I never learned what it meant to thrive.  I never learned what it meant to experience unbridled joy. I never knew what it meant to be totally loved and totally safe in the world. I never learned what it was like to embrace an empowered sense of myself.  I must do that now. But to do that, much to my horror,  I need to let go of anything and everything I think I know about my parents.

I'd like to say that I learned something from the ancestral practice that left me alive and full of love for my parents, but I did not. I had growing anger toward Tiwari.  I kept thinking to myself, "I don't have your wonderful father, who held so many rich traditions and practices to pass on to you, his daughter. I have emotionally bankrupt parents, who can barely take care of themselves. I have to fashion my own practices and traditions.  I have to find something meaningful out of the rubble my parents handed off to me."  I was honestly pissed off at her as much as I was my parents, because she exposed another level of rememory in my life that I thought was resolved.

Not resolved.

"The pain of unresolved memories causes part of our psyche to engage in constantly blocking out the ancestral secret, even as another part is trying to unmask it. This doesn't make things easy for us.  But try to think of this paradox as similar to the opposing forces at work when we try to break a bad habit or go on a diet: part of us still wants the forbidden food or behavior while the other part wants to be free. With an ancestral memory, it's good for you to break through to the forbidden memory." -Tiwari, p. 197

What is the forbidden memory?  What is the ancestral secret? I have yet to figure these things out.  I want to be free of my parents and the incredible sadness that is enmeshed with them.  The idea of being free of what I know of them scares me.  It feels so finite. It feels cruel. What surfaced, though, is that I hold on to the hope that something grandiose and meaningful will emerge out of that shitty past.  I hold out hope for that beautiful pearl in the mud.  And the more I keep writing here, but more I start to wonder if the secret is that there isn't a pearl to be found there, in that relationship. In that past. Similar to Sethe in Toni Morrison's Beloved, there is a time when a person must let go of that memory before it totally consumes.  Sethe started to see how much life she gave that past and how little life she gave her present existence. Perhaps it's time to find the pearl of the present instead of grasping to refashion a faux pearl that blinds me from who I am here. Now.


I just finished the book Wild and at the end Cheryl Strayed writes,

"To believe that I didn't need to reach with my bare hands anymore. To know that seeing the fish beneath the surface was enough. That it was everything. It was my life--like all lives, mysterious and irrevocable and sacred. So very close, so very present, so very belonging to me." (p. 311)

I think for me, I'm holding on to whatever that was in the past, because I want to write about it. I want to touch it, rewrite it, make it more beautiful than it really was. Refashion that faux pearl. But I realize now that to write about that past, I need to fully let it go, so I can see it as it emerges, not as I want it be seen. I need to see it as the past imperfect. Imperfectly passed, but imperfectly present and so very close, so very present, so very belonging to me.

The very last line of Wild knocked me out: "How wild it was, to let it be." 

Lessons in Receiving

To take into one's possession; to have something bestowed, conferred upon you; to have delivered or brought to you; to be burdened with; sustain; to hold, bear, or contain.

My Gnome Home

These are definitions of receiving. I have been thinking about receiving a lot over the past couple of weeks.  The holidays heighten gift-giving and gift-receiving rituals.  I love exchanging gifts. I love giving in all ways. But I find a particular tension with receiving. Receiving, from one vantage point and level of intentionality, leaves me feeling loved, thought about, considered, a part of the world.  From other vantage points and levels of intentionality,  receiving leaves me feeling at a disadvantage, indebted to others, unable to live up to expectations, separated from the world.  It is a terrible feeling, because it exposes all my insecurities.  A beautiful and loving gift triggers shame for me. This beautiful and thoughtful gift from Matt made me realize how hard it is for me to receive something so loving.  What did I do to deserve this beautiful gift? Did I give/do/be enough to earn such a gift?  What do I need to do to level the playing field? 

My Gift

In my typical fashion, I needed to deconstruct, pull apart the meaning to create a new line of entry. A rhizomatic line of entry that enables me to find joy where most of my life I have learned shame, guilt, conditionality.

To take into one's possession. To have something given to me out of kindness and thought. The idea that this gnome home is now mine. The idea that somebody would think of me enough to give me something so meaningful.  But I didn't earn it, did I?  Did I earn it because I gave something to him or did I earn it for some future expectation of my allegiance?  This is so cynical of me. But I honestly struggle to feel deserving. Yet, what in this definition says anything about having to be deserving? Or to have earned it? Nothing. 

To have something bestowed, conferred upon you. To be given something as an honor.  My doctoral degree was conferred upon me. I earned this.  I worked hard for six years to receive my degree. How does one earn honors?  Through hard work, right?  How else would I have something bestowed upon me?

To have delivered or brought to you. I have things I bought delivered to me: books, furniture, teas.  I earn them (so to speak) because I could afford to purchase these items. 

To be burdened with. This one I understand.  I often feel burdened when I receive. Burdened because I wonder what I did to earn this gift. I wonder what I'll have to do to make sure he knows how much I appreciate it.  I wonder what I can get them that is as meaningful and caring.  Of course, worrying about all of that strips me of any ability to act out of love and grace and to give back in an organic and meaningful way.  I'm so worried about relieving the burden, in other words, equalizing and quantifying the relationship, that the quality dissipates. 

I think back to when I was in about the 2nd or 3rd grade.  Our class had a secret Santa gift exchange for Christmas and so each of us had to buy a gift for some unknown other student. My family had such little money that I was immediately rapt in fear over asking my parents to buy a gift. That fear shifted to whether or not my gift would be nice enough to bring to class.  

I found a stocking with a mix of things--coloring book, puzzle book and a few trinkets--that my mom said we could afford.  It was one of those plastic mesh stockings that you can buy with an assortment of cheap toys and items.  I chose that particular one because it seemed the most interesting.  But I worried it was too cheap for anybody to really enjoy and I felt guilty bringing it to school. I secretly hoped I would draw my own gift to spare myself any embarrassment.  But I went to school with it all wrapped up. 

Sustain. This definition, at first, did not make sense to me.  What does receiving have to do with sustaining?  But I can't help but think about how receiving is sustenance.  It is what sustains us as humans in relation to ourselves and one another. I am sure this is not the intended definition, but it is what touches me deeply in my struggle to receive and it is something I know I need to learn to do gracefully, lovingly, and with humility. 

When we traded, I ended up with a fun toy from a friend in class, but I watched the look on the face of the boy who received my gift.  I could see he was underwhelmed.  The kids in class started to compare and trade gifts to get the things they wanted, so I decided to trade what I received for the gift I wrapped so carefully.  I went to him and asked if he wanted to trade. Puzzled, he looked at what I had and asked if I was sure and I said confidently, "Yes. I really like all that stuff." 

We traded, but when my friend came over to ask how I liked her gift, I vainly tried to hide the fact that I traded her gift away.  I could see her crestfallen face when she saw I had traded it.  I felt so guilty and I didn't know what to say.  I had disappointed my friend out of my own shame.  I couldn't receive even in the 3rd grade.  Where did I learn this? 

To hold, bear, or contain. This definition gets deeper into the core of my struggles with receiving.  To hold space for the relationship, the space to nourish, foster, develop something filled with joy and life. It scares me. Receiving shouldn't be a burden. It should be a responsibility born out of love and respect.  Not a burden born out of fear and expectation. Receiving is part of the larger practice of friendship, love, intimacy.  Much of my life receiving has been a burden.  It usually came with expectations, unquestioned loyalty, forgiveness for unforgivable actions, amelioration of guilt.  It was almost always conditional.  I have been trying to feel, really feel, unconditional love. But it scares me. It feels like a responsibility that I can't live up to. I worry that if I don't return in kind I will fail to live up to whatever it was that initiated the giving.  I don't know how to contain. I get so scared of failing to meet expectations that those beautiful thoughtful gifts sit like hot potatoes burning through my hands and so I must quickly pass it back in kind or everything will fall apart in the relationship--the love, respect, all of it.  And as I reflect, I feel sad that this is how I think about receiving.  I get angry that I have not learned the skill of receiving by this stage of my life. Resentful. 

When I got home with my own gift, my mom asked me how that happened.  I told her I wanted this gift and that it was by chance that I ended up with it.  I never told her that I traded to get my own gift back. Until now, I never fully understood why I had traded to get my own gift.  But in light of my exploration of receiving, it is clear how deeply this rhizomatic shame runs within me.  The funny thing about a rhizome, though, is that I can dig in the dirt a bit more and find a new direction.  I so much want to find the thread to joyful receiving. 

I am a lucky person.  Full of wonderful people.  I have a life that is meaningful and awake.  And this is reflected in the beautiful gifts I receive day in and day out not only from those wonderful people in my life, but also myself and the universe. I look at this gnome home and I see it as an exploration in receiving. It is a practice in seeing myself as something more than my childhood self.  This gnome home feels like the conglomeration of all the missteps and victories in my life. The intricate little pieces, each thoughtfully placed with incredible detail. Thought and intention. That somebody would do something for me so rich in thought and cost is beyond my comprehension.  It was the trigger I needed to delve into. Matt has given me a gnome home that is filled with hidden treasures to explore.  Our relationship always provides the space to grow and reflect and now there is a tangible reflection of our relationship. Receive, Christina. Joyfully receive. 

Gnome Home Full View

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?"  

Winter: States of Trust and Fear

Trust is the word this week and it is the work of this juncture.  I have been working on establishing trust in my yoga practice and must now turn the trust lens toward my work with Ayurveda.  Trust is not an easy thing to establish—even within oneself (or maybe especially within oneself).

When I looked up the work trust, descriptors such as reliance, truth, confidence, and faith emerged in a variety of ways.   Confidence in something or someone.  Faith in oneself or another.  To be able to rely on something or someone—or oneself.  

And right now I’m searching for trust in the work I have done over the past several years. Trust that the work I have done can help me stay the course as I move into places that do not look familiar.  Yet in many ways things do look familiar.  The way we move through the world. Pressing up against the seasons. Each year winter has a similar smell, taste, and texture.  But the air is different.  The crisp cold sun that shines down is not the sun from last year.  It is new, yet the same. Winter brings with it different challenges each time it cycles into my life. New challenges.  Deeper challenges.  I want to feel like I’ve mastered the art of winter.  So I try to engage the same strategies and routines I established last year.   I seek out familiar feelings even as my body reminds me over and over that those are not what I need. I want to default to what came before because I struggle to trust what is next. I do not feel confident in myself to handle what is to come, so I look back and try to hold tight to the familiar.  I realize how much I lose myself in that process. I lose out on possibilities. I lose out when I forget that there is an art to winter.  There is an art to establishing trust and finding joy in those new winter spaces. And when I forget that, I sit frozen in fear because I am scared of what comes next. 

The opposite of trust could be fear. 

Fear has words such as dread, apprehension, distress, and danger to define it.  Impending doom, whether real or imagined, is a great definition for fear.  When one cannot trust the unknown, fear settles in. When I cannot trust myself to handle the unknown, fear settles in.  It seems that the fear of the unknown has been growing for me in this juncture.  

My routines have been shifting and I am still searching for new routines, but I’m struggling to hear what I need. I’m struggling to figure out what is going within me. 

So I go back to a photograph, capturing a place where fear and trust coexist.  Trust takes a great deal of courage and I think about my hike up the Cog Rail at Manitou Springs, Colorado this past summer.  A straight hike up. I was excited for the adventure. I didn’t know what was ahead and there was no dread.  I trusted myself to make it. At every level in which the trail grew steeper, I trusted myself to make it.  I was scared at times.  Tired.  I had moments in which regretted my decision to hike.  But I never doubted that I would make it.  And I did. In the golden warmth of that mountain, I trusted myself to face the unknown.  In the steely cold of these plains, I am riddled with fear.  It’s silly, I know.  I can trust myself to make it up a steep hill, but I am terrified of presenting my research to the community.  If only I could channel the feeling on that mountain and bring it here. Bring it here to calmly and slowly make my way through challenges.  To feel my body with each word, each step. Taking my time.  Enjoying the view. I need to figure out a way to cultivate trust in this time of year.  

The opposite of fear could be trust. 

Resistance and Malasana

Resistance.

That is probably the best way to describe what I have been experiencing these past few weeks since my last entry. As per my usual process, I will try to delve into the word to better understand what it is I'm experiencing.

Resistance, according to Merriam-Webster: the refusal to accept something new or different; effort made to stop or fight against something; the ability to prevent something from having an effect.

I seem to be in resistance mode.  My sense is that I'm trying to fight against the shifts naturally taking place this time of year.  If I think about it, it's a big shift.  We are moving from a time in which we are in full bloom throughout summer and into a time of shedding those dying blooms and retreating inward to strengthen our resources, our fire. But it doesn't feel that way.  It just feels like everything is drying up and blowing away from me. I feel like I have to work harder to see and feel the beauty of the world.

At the same time, the sun is present less and less.  She is fading through the changing angles and motions of the earth and I just don't like it.  I realize that it has to happen. I'm trying hard to embrace that transition, but it is not easy. I'm trying to be kind to myself as I experience resistance, but I can feel by body stiffen, brace itself, worry, fortify, and do everything I can to resist things I can't control.  Futile, perhaps.

Iyengar's Beautiful Malasana

Symbolic of this struggle is my relationship to the yoga pose, malasana.  Garland pose. Iyengar does this pose so beautifully.  But me?  I am the purple bear below trying to access the pose.  Except I'm not smiling. I get angrier and angrier with my body when it won't do what I want it to do.  I stiffen, brace myself, worry, fortify, curse, and stop listening to what my body wants me to hear.  What I know, though, is that the angrier I get, the more impossible it is to do this pose in an effective way.

I will say, though, that I had a moment of serendipity as I started this blog post, because I was looking for descriptions and images of malasana online.  I found a random blog called "five-minute yoga" (http://myfiveminuteyoga.com/411/take-the-five-minute-malasana-challenge/).  The post asks its readers to take the five minute malasana challenge for seven days.  I have been sort of doing this each morning--taking several minutes to practice malasana and get angrier and more upset with my limitations.  But it redirected and reminded me that the point is not to look like Iyengar, but to embrace my heavy-bear moments. It became clear to me this morning in my yoga practice that when I come to this pose, I stop feeling. It becomes more a matter of conquering, accomplishing, this pose.  Why, though? To feel good about myself?  What happens if I stop and just feel the pose?

What happens is that I truly experience the discomfort of my tight hips. I fully experience the fear my body holds with the idea of letting go.  Total resistance.  I realize I need to send my hips love and compassion so they know it is okay to relax and let go.  They do not feel safe in my brutal attempts at fighting my way into the pose and it makes the pose miserable. I can't feel where the tightness centers itself. I can't feel my body at all. I'm on the surface of my skin, bossing my muscles around and as a result, they resist.  They do not want forceable change.

Not unlike in malasana, my body fights against the changes that start moving me into winter. It's like I try to strong-arm myself into accepting the transition from summer through fall and into winter.  I sit at the surface and try to boss myself around and tell myself I need to just be okay and pretend that the world around me isn't changing.  So then my body resists enjoying fall and the release of the beautiful blooms. I try to hold on so tightly to some sort of forever summer and I know it is not sustainable. Yet, I often don't even realize that is what I'm doing.  I lose intention and no longer really know why I'm doing anything that I'm doing.  I'm doing things totally out of habit (even if it is a good habit). Or I do the same practices expecting the same results all the time. That is when I know I'm not doing any of those activities with intention and I can't reap all the benefits that I could.  Fall is the time of harvest. It is the time to reap benefits, but instead of reaping those benefits I find myself worrying and waiting and bracing for some storm to arrive.

Impending doom, as Brene Brown calls it.  I can't enjoy the moment, because I'm so afraid of some other shoe dropping or some bad thing happening to somehow reinforce all my negative talk. You know that talk when you convince yourself that you do not deserve to experience pure joy.  It is such a tender area for me. And this is such a tender season for me.  I need to remember that and be kind.  Therefore, I will take the seven day malasana challenge and practice it with kindness.  I will practice it with intention, reminding myself that it is time to shed the impending doom voice.  Or, at the very least, not let it be the dominant voice in my busy mind.

I hereby promise to report back next week on the outcome of this practice. I will spend this last week of fall holding myself accountable to the season and to malasana.

Grounding, Organization, Focus

As I enter into my third year of intentional focus on ayurveda practices, I am starting to find clarity in my work for each season.  The resonance of what I need to keep working on as autumn continues has strengthened over the past week.  

Grounding, Organization, Focus

Challenging practices for me in this season.  

What became clear over the past week was that my coping strategies for stress deteriorated.  I could feel myself fall into a vortex of self-critique and numbing.  Older residual habits that I've managed to avoid over these years.  And that is the issue.  I have out run some of those old habits, all the time fearing the moment they come back to dominate my life.  That means those habits are far from gone; they leave me reactive and at times responding in ways that are not always true to who I am now.

When I sat in that revelation for a few days, I could almost feel another layer of my older self peeling off of my body.  And what I realized was that I had to admit that those deeper fears of myself still had a pretty firm hold on me.  Bringing those fears out of my unconsciousness and into my conscious, intentioned self, I knew I needed to develop ways to handle that process with awareness and clarity, so I do go into reactive mode.

Grounding, Organization, Focus

Muscles I need to locate and strengthen.  

Grounding: To place on a foundation; to fix firmly; to settle or establish.  This is probably one of the hardest practices for me.  It is easy for me to loose touch with all that is beneath me. I forget to feel the earth. Attempts at settling down often produce greater unsettling. I can remember to ground in my yoga practice, but off the mat, it easily slips out of grasp. Yet, I know that in order to pay attention to my reactivity, I must stop and actually feel the ground.  Feel the world around me.  Feel the hardness of the ground. Feel the soft carpet tickling the bottoms of my feet. Feel the pointed tips of the grass between my toes. Feel my feet shuffling through leaves as I walk through my backyard.  But how do I remind myself of grounding in the moment? That will be my challenge.  


Organization: The state of being organized.  But what does it mean to be organized? I found an interesting definition: "to give organic structure or character to."  I like the idea that organization emerges organically, responsively to what is happening.  But not reactively. It means, for me, that the practice of organizing has to be done intentionally and with awareness. And even in the past few days, even the tiniest task to organize with intention has provided me calmness and relief.  Clearing out my dead and dried annuals and putting the planters under the deck provided the space for me to observe the way nature prepares for and responds to the changing seasons. Organizing my deck helped me embrace the end of a season of outward growth and welcome autumn's preparations for pulling inward. 

Focus: An act of concentrating interest or activity on something. To have focus on something, for me, means finding flow. Finding the zone.  Finding total absorption in something always puts me in a euphoric space.  I want to get in that zone with my research and writing.  Not simply to do the work in order to soothe some arbitrary ego requirement, but to feel the joy in the work.  I want to keep myself attuned to those spaces that bring me joy.





This is my work for the season. I have to stay awake and intentioned.  Focus, organization, and grounding. They all work together. They reinforce one another.  They feed and work on one another.