The Sacred Pause
As many of you know, I am in the middle of my second term of graduate school. While I am still in the process of getting to know this new city, I'm also building a new student base while working to remain connected to my dear old one.... and now i've got a slew of midterms, papers, and projects?? Yikes! Did i mention that my spiritual practice is the most important thing in my life, the thing that sustains me and nourishes me? My refuge from the storm? Exactly what time of day does that come in? Another yikes!!
One of my mentors recently reassured me "There's no way to be doing it all right now. It's normal to feel like you can't fit it all in-- you can't!" These words were simple and true, and yet so helpful. This helped me to realize that I can't have 2 hours a day for practice-time like I have in the past, and that for right now, that needs to be okay.
It's important to know the difference between a consistent style of living that doesn't allow room for nurturing the inner life -- this style is defined by over-committing, over-scheduling, getting addicted to being "connected" and in-touch all the time -- and a period of time in life when we're doing a lot because it is what's right -- a time like this could be defined by graduate school, parenting young children, working on a big personal/professional project, supporting a family member or loved one through a personal or health crisis.
If it's a style of life that we're hooked into, we need to practice saying no, and making space for the things that nurture our inner lives -- yoga, meditation, having quiet time, being outside in nature, reading the dharma, etc. We need to look at the life-long habit patterns that have set us up for this way of living. We need to inquire -- what we are avoiding and why? And even if we think it's just a period of time that we're busy, we need to be honest with ourselves-- does this period of time of being busy get followed with another, and then another, and then another? Now it is starting to sound like style of living that we need to look at more closely.
When it's the situation of a period of time of life -- for me, it's graduate school -- we need two things on a practical level. One: take as many opportunities as possible during the day to return to presence. And not just in a general sense, but in a clearly connected, present, sustained sense, for 5 whole minutes.
Two: seek out days or parts of days devoted to extended practice, whenever possible. Without this, our well will begin to run dry, and the 5 minute pit-stops during the day won't mean much because there won't be anything in the well to draw from. For me, this means finding a day-long of meditation practice every quarter or so during the semester, and going away on retreat during my breaks from school whenever possible. For others of you, it might mean going to class instead of practicing at home, or going to sit with a group once a month instead of always sitting by yourself.
Below is a link to one of my favorite dharma teachers speaking about the practice of pausing and paying attention. I invite my fellow students and mothers and teachers and support providers to use this practice -- in addition to extended periods of practice whenever possible -- to bring the home ground of awareness into your lives at any moment, on and off the mat/cushion.
Until next time, much love to you all!
"I want to unfold
Let no place in me hold itself closed,
for where I am closed, I am false..."
-Ranier Maria Rilke
We know that yoga is a process of unfolding the places in our bodies where we have been tight, constricted, or shut down. We lengthen the muscles that have shrunken from under-use, we stretch out the connective tissue that has gotten knotted and gnarled from stress and aging, we bring awareness into parts of our bodies that we didn't even know were there. As we move and breathe, the rigid resistance of the body's armoring melts, and we are able to breathe life back into the energy body as well.
As the energy body opens, the effects of the practice expand beyond the physical. Now the places in our minds and hearts where we have been tight, constricted, or shut down begin to reveal themselves. The openings that are occurring in the physical and energy bodies bring about a freshness of perspective that allows us to become more aware of the assumptions, beliefs, defenses, and judgments that have limited us in the past.
As these previously "enfolded" parts of ourselves emerge, it is very important to remember the basic guidelines of support that we offer our bodies during the physical practice. We commit ourselves to staying with our breath, feeling our body sensations, and remaining open and non-judging towards whatever is arising. Just as we learn to stay present during the difficult moments of the physical practice in class, we learn to turn towards what arises in our hearts and minds with unconditional presence. Instead of turning away from what we dislike or feel uncomfortable about, we gently "unfold" ourselves--opening the body, mind and heart to the great richness and depth of our experience.
This unfolding process can sometimes feel like a glorious liberation (you've probably felt that before in class during your favorite pose) or at other times it can feel like trying to make your way through a sludgy swamp (you've probably felt that before in class during your least favorite pose!). The transformational process of unfolding, healing, and growing is challenging at times. Go slow, be patient, practice compassion. Our edges are not be conquered, they are reminders of our humanity, and they can be gently ushered into dissolution simply by bringing our non-judging awareness to them, again and again.
It can also help to hold the larger perspective of your process of awakening. What are the costs of remaining closed or shut down? When we are contracted in our bodies, hearts, or minds, our experience of life grows smaller and smaller. Do we want to get used to living in a state of contraction? Or do we want to make a choice to go towards the fullness and richness of life as it is actually unfolding inside and all around us?
I believe in all that has never been spoken.
I want to free whatever waits within me
so that which no one has dared to wish for
may for once spring clear
without my contriving.
I want to mirror your immensity
I want to unfold.
Let no place in me hold itself closed,
for where I am closed, I am false.
I want to stay clear in your sight.
If this is arrogant, forgive me,
but this is what I need to say.
May what I do flow from me like a river,
the way it is with children.
Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
These deepening tides moving out, returning,
I will sing you as no one ever has,
Streaming through widening channels,
Into the open sea.
-Ranier Maria Rilke
Let no place in me hold itself closed,
for where I am closed, I am false..."
-Ranier Maria Rilke
We know that yoga is a process of unfolding the places in our bodies where we have been tight, constricted, or shut down. We lengthen the muscles that have shrunken from under-use, we stretch out the connective tissue that has gotten knotted and gnarled from stress and aging, we bring awareness into parts of our bodies that we didn't even know were there. As we move and breathe, the rigid resistance of the body's armoring melts, and we are able to breathe life back into the energy body as well.
As the energy body opens, the effects of the practice expand beyond the physical. Now the places in our minds and hearts where we have been tight, constricted, or shut down begin to reveal themselves. The openings that are occurring in the physical and energy bodies bring about a freshness of perspective that allows us to become more aware of the assumptions, beliefs, defenses, and judgments that have limited us in the past.
As these previously "enfolded" parts of ourselves emerge, it is very important to remember the basic guidelines of support that we offer our bodies during the physical practice. We commit ourselves to staying with our breath, feeling our body sensations, and remaining open and non-judging towards whatever is arising. Just as we learn to stay present during the difficult moments of the physical practice in class, we learn to turn towards what arises in our hearts and minds with unconditional presence. Instead of turning away from what we dislike or feel uncomfortable about, we gently "unfold" ourselves--opening the body, mind and heart to the great richness and depth of our experience.
This unfolding process can sometimes feel like a glorious liberation (you've probably felt that before in class during your favorite pose) or at other times it can feel like trying to make your way through a sludgy swamp (you've probably felt that before in class during your least favorite pose!). The transformational process of unfolding, healing, and growing is challenging at times. Go slow, be patient, practice compassion. Our edges are not be conquered, they are reminders of our humanity, and they can be gently ushered into dissolution simply by bringing our non-judging awareness to them, again and again.
It can also help to hold the larger perspective of your process of awakening. What are the costs of remaining closed or shut down? When we are contracted in our bodies, hearts, or minds, our experience of life grows smaller and smaller. Do we want to get used to living in a state of contraction? Or do we want to make a choice to go towards the fullness and richness of life as it is actually unfolding inside and all around us?
I believe in all that has never been spoken.
I want to free whatever waits within me
so that which no one has dared to wish for
may for once spring clear
without my contriving.
I want to mirror your immensity
I want to unfold.
Let no place in me hold itself closed,
for where I am closed, I am false.
I want to stay clear in your sight.
If this is arrogant, forgive me,
but this is what I need to say.
May what I do flow from me like a river,
the way it is with children.
Then in these swelling and ebbing currents,
These deepening tides moving out, returning,
I will sing you as no one ever has,
Streaming through widening channels,
Into the open sea.
-Ranier Maria Rilke
Winter Solstice Poem
For Courage
When the light around you lessens
And your thoughts darken until
Your body feels fear turn
Cold as a stone inside,
When you find yourself bereft
Of any belief in yourself
And all you unknowingly
Leaned on has fallen,
When one voice commands
Your whole heart
And it is raven dark,
Steady yourself and see
That it is your own thinking
That darkens your world,
Search and you will find
A diamond-thought of light,
Know that you are not alone
And that this darkness has purpose;
Gradually it will school your eyes
To find the one gift your life requires
Hidden within this night corner.
Invoke the learning
Of every suffering
You have suffered.
Close your eyes.
Gather all the kindling
About your heart
To create one spark.
That is all you need
To nourish the flame
That will cleanse the dark
Of its weight of festered fear.
A new confidence will come alive
To urge you toward higher ground
Where your imagination
Will learn to engage difficulty
As its most rewarding threshold!
- John O'Donohue
(from To Bless the Space Between Us)
www.johnodonohue.com
Some wise words from David Whyte....
The Poetic Narrative of Our Times
Night mist hangs on the Conamara mountainside above Mameen, hiding the immensity of its sleeping, background bulk and at the same time magnifying its presence, bringing out its depth and making known to us its essential rough, unspeakable mountain-ness even as it veils and takes full sight of it away from us. Over stone precipices, the lazy movement and hanging drifts of fine-silvered water vapor outline and enhance what we call the beauty of the mountains, by enabling us to see them again and again, as if new and reborn through each shifting pattern. We are strangely delighted by our imagined fears of what it would be about to be abroad in teh dark and the mist and the stones, out on their ridges and peaks, in that night where so much is hidden. Then, above the ridgelines, a full moon suddenly appears from between clouds, accentuating its own luminosity and the luminosity of the mountains by its swift appearance, seeming to demonstrate its very essence through a sheer, round, isolated contrast with what it looks down upon.
Looking up from the lit door of Keane's Pub in the heart of Conemara, these clouds, landscapes, and even the Irishness of the night seem fuller and more essential through their disappearances as much as through their appearances. Human beings stand at the center of these sometimes swift, sometimes slow, always moving patterns of presence and absence, but rarely intuit their own essence might be revealed and magnified by what is veiled and hidden, or by what has been taken away. Yet this form of subtraction may be the very hallmark of our time. At the present time we are asked to live in companionship with patterns and dynamics that are either disappearing, have not fully emerged or can never be fully named; patterns perhaps already changing into forms for which we have yet no language.
It is tempting, in this limbo time between the traumas of a world once said to be in ceaseless war with terrorism and a not yet fully formed future ideal, to feel righteously lost. Everything seems to be paused and hanging in a mist-wrought, barely moving dance. The world's economic systems, the world's ecological systems, the relations between haves and have-nots, the sovereignty of nation states upon which many millions of individuals have based their identities, all these are taking forms which we cannot quite recognize, and in that movement through form seem to be on the verge of disappearing. Even the recent worldwide enthusiasm for the American presidential elections has waned, as the poetic narrative that put Obama so enthusiastically in the White House is dissipated by the cares of office and the sense that he is already half-captured by the very denizens of Wall Street that brought everything so dangerously to the brink. The problems seem immense; the forces at play absorbing and able to deflect the need for reform.
Little wonder then that if we prefer the appearance of stability or clear unobstructed vision we will manufacture fake narratives to replace the complexity, changeability and raw beauty of real ones, especially if the stories we always wanted to be true seem to shimmer and disappear. The flat earth vision of Thomas Friedman is well articulated, but ultimately based on a human identity parsed solely through economics, as if human life can be defined by whether one is more productive or educated than the next person. It is the task of poetry, and the poetic narrative, to bring our eyes to bear on the raw immensity of these patterns and the heartbreaking nature of our disappearances, which are unavoidable no matter our economic standing or our education; what Yeats called the terrible beauty that is a consequence of being alive in this world, no matter how relentlessly positive we may be. It is the province of poetry to be more realistic and present than the artificial narratives of an outer discourse, and not afraid of the truthful difficulty of the average human life. A good poem looks life straight in the face, unflinching, sincere, equal to revelation through loss or gain. A good poem brims with reflected beauty and even a bracing beautiful ugliness. At the center of our lives, in the midst of the busyness and the forgetting, is a story that makes sense when everything extraneous has been taken away. This is poetry's province; a form of deep memory; a place from which to witness sthe intangible, unspeakable thresholds of incarnation we misname an average life.
I think of a good friend, once robustly healthy, adventurous, hard working, inventive and entrepreneurial, now confined to a wheel chair and barely able to function intellectually after a terrible accident. His wife and children have lost many of the outer stories they had told themselves about their future but the central story, the one that lives under the busy surface of a family's life, the one that was always there, still remains clearly, luminously at the center. HIs wife has spoken many times of the essence of his spirit and the essence of her love for that spirit, which remains as a thing of beauty in and of itself, informing all the work that must be done to adjust and adapt to the new outer narrative.
It might be liberating to think of human life as informed by losses and disappearances as much as by gifted appearances, allowing a more present participation and witness to the difficulty of living. What is real can never be fully taken away; its essence always remains. It might set us a little freer to believe that there is no path in life - in the low valley, in the shelter of Keane's comfortable bar, snug by a turf fire or abroad in the mountain night, that does not lead to some form of heartbreak when the outer narrative disappears and then reappears in a different form. If we are sincere, every good marriage or relationship will break our hearts in order to enlarge our understanding of our self and that strange other with whom we have promised ourselves to the future. Being a good parent will necessarily break our hearts as we watch a child grow and eventually choose their own way, even through many of the same heartbreaks we have traversed. Following a vocation or an art form through decades of practice and understanding will break the idealistic heart that began the journey and replace it, if we sidestep the temptations of bitterness and self-pity, with something more malleable, compassionate and generous than the metaphysical organ with which we began the journey. We learn, grow and become compassionate and generous as much through exile as homecoming; as much through loss as gain, as much through giving things away as in receiving what we believe to be our due.
It may be that we live in a time of collective heartbreak, where for the first time in history we are being asked to witness the disappearance and reappearance on a global scale of what it means to be fully human; to give away our identity and see how it is returned to us through a sincere participation in the trials and necessities of the coming years. Part of that heartbreak is the sense that we might not be equal to the ecological, political and economic transitions that are necessary, that our own selfishness may be writ too deeply into our genes and that the future is therefore untenable and unreachable. We do not as yet know if this is true, but the old humanistic story around ourselves as a successful species, always on the up and up and appointed to some special destiny, is fading and silvering into the night air, and we are left, at this point in history, contemplating the unknown immensity of the night behind it.
MAMEEN
Be infinitesimal under that sky, a creature
even the sailing hawk misses, a wraith
among the rocks where the mist parts slowly.
Recall the way mere mortals are overwhelmed
by circumstance, how great reputations
dissolve with infirmity and how you,
in particular, live a hairsbreadth from losing
everyone you hold dear.
Then, look back down the path as if seeing
your past and then south over the hazy blue
coast as if present to a wide future,
recall the way you are all possibilities
you can see and how you live best
as an appreciator of horizons
whether you reach them or not,
admit that once you have got up
from your chair and opened the door,
once you have walked out into the clean air
toward that edge and taken the path up high
beyond the ordinary you have become
the privileged and the pilgrim
the one who will tell the story
and the one, coming back
from the mountain,
who helped to make it.
- David Whyte
The Poetic Narrative of Our Times
Night mist hangs on the Conamara mountainside above Mameen, hiding the immensity of its sleeping, background bulk and at the same time magnifying its presence, bringing out its depth and making known to us its essential rough, unspeakable mountain-ness even as it veils and takes full sight of it away from us. Over stone precipices, the lazy movement and hanging drifts of fine-silvered water vapor outline and enhance what we call the beauty of the mountains, by enabling us to see them again and again, as if new and reborn through each shifting pattern. We are strangely delighted by our imagined fears of what it would be about to be abroad in teh dark and the mist and the stones, out on their ridges and peaks, in that night where so much is hidden. Then, above the ridgelines, a full moon suddenly appears from between clouds, accentuating its own luminosity and the luminosity of the mountains by its swift appearance, seeming to demonstrate its very essence through a sheer, round, isolated contrast with what it looks down upon.
Looking up from the lit door of Keane's Pub in the heart of Conemara, these clouds, landscapes, and even the Irishness of the night seem fuller and more essential through their disappearances as much as through their appearances. Human beings stand at the center of these sometimes swift, sometimes slow, always moving patterns of presence and absence, but rarely intuit their own essence might be revealed and magnified by what is veiled and hidden, or by what has been taken away. Yet this form of subtraction may be the very hallmark of our time. At the present time we are asked to live in companionship with patterns and dynamics that are either disappearing, have not fully emerged or can never be fully named; patterns perhaps already changing into forms for which we have yet no language.
It is tempting, in this limbo time between the traumas of a world once said to be in ceaseless war with terrorism and a not yet fully formed future ideal, to feel righteously lost. Everything seems to be paused and hanging in a mist-wrought, barely moving dance. The world's economic systems, the world's ecological systems, the relations between haves and have-nots, the sovereignty of nation states upon which many millions of individuals have based their identities, all these are taking forms which we cannot quite recognize, and in that movement through form seem to be on the verge of disappearing. Even the recent worldwide enthusiasm for the American presidential elections has waned, as the poetic narrative that put Obama so enthusiastically in the White House is dissipated by the cares of office and the sense that he is already half-captured by the very denizens of Wall Street that brought everything so dangerously to the brink. The problems seem immense; the forces at play absorbing and able to deflect the need for reform.
Little wonder then that if we prefer the appearance of stability or clear unobstructed vision we will manufacture fake narratives to replace the complexity, changeability and raw beauty of real ones, especially if the stories we always wanted to be true seem to shimmer and disappear. The flat earth vision of Thomas Friedman is well articulated, but ultimately based on a human identity parsed solely through economics, as if human life can be defined by whether one is more productive or educated than the next person. It is the task of poetry, and the poetic narrative, to bring our eyes to bear on the raw immensity of these patterns and the heartbreaking nature of our disappearances, which are unavoidable no matter our economic standing or our education; what Yeats called the terrible beauty that is a consequence of being alive in this world, no matter how relentlessly positive we may be. It is the province of poetry to be more realistic and present than the artificial narratives of an outer discourse, and not afraid of the truthful difficulty of the average human life. A good poem looks life straight in the face, unflinching, sincere, equal to revelation through loss or gain. A good poem brims with reflected beauty and even a bracing beautiful ugliness. At the center of our lives, in the midst of the busyness and the forgetting, is a story that makes sense when everything extraneous has been taken away. This is poetry's province; a form of deep memory; a place from which to witness sthe intangible, unspeakable thresholds of incarnation we misname an average life.
I think of a good friend, once robustly healthy, adventurous, hard working, inventive and entrepreneurial, now confined to a wheel chair and barely able to function intellectually after a terrible accident. His wife and children have lost many of the outer stories they had told themselves about their future but the central story, the one that lives under the busy surface of a family's life, the one that was always there, still remains clearly, luminously at the center. HIs wife has spoken many times of the essence of his spirit and the essence of her love for that spirit, which remains as a thing of beauty in and of itself, informing all the work that must be done to adjust and adapt to the new outer narrative.
It might be liberating to think of human life as informed by losses and disappearances as much as by gifted appearances, allowing a more present participation and witness to the difficulty of living. What is real can never be fully taken away; its essence always remains. It might set us a little freer to believe that there is no path in life - in the low valley, in the shelter of Keane's comfortable bar, snug by a turf fire or abroad in the mountain night, that does not lead to some form of heartbreak when the outer narrative disappears and then reappears in a different form. If we are sincere, every good marriage or relationship will break our hearts in order to enlarge our understanding of our self and that strange other with whom we have promised ourselves to the future. Being a good parent will necessarily break our hearts as we watch a child grow and eventually choose their own way, even through many of the same heartbreaks we have traversed. Following a vocation or an art form through decades of practice and understanding will break the idealistic heart that began the journey and replace it, if we sidestep the temptations of bitterness and self-pity, with something more malleable, compassionate and generous than the metaphysical organ with which we began the journey. We learn, grow and become compassionate and generous as much through exile as homecoming; as much through loss as gain, as much through giving things away as in receiving what we believe to be our due.
It may be that we live in a time of collective heartbreak, where for the first time in history we are being asked to witness the disappearance and reappearance on a global scale of what it means to be fully human; to give away our identity and see how it is returned to us through a sincere participation in the trials and necessities of the coming years. Part of that heartbreak is the sense that we might not be equal to the ecological, political and economic transitions that are necessary, that our own selfishness may be writ too deeply into our genes and that the future is therefore untenable and unreachable. We do not as yet know if this is true, but the old humanistic story around ourselves as a successful species, always on the up and up and appointed to some special destiny, is fading and silvering into the night air, and we are left, at this point in history, contemplating the unknown immensity of the night behind it.
MAMEEN
Be infinitesimal under that sky, a creature
even the sailing hawk misses, a wraith
among the rocks where the mist parts slowly.
Recall the way mere mortals are overwhelmed
by circumstance, how great reputations
dissolve with infirmity and how you,
in particular, live a hairsbreadth from losing
everyone you hold dear.
Then, look back down the path as if seeing
your past and then south over the hazy blue
coast as if present to a wide future,
recall the way you are all possibilities
you can see and how you live best
as an appreciator of horizons
whether you reach them or not,
admit that once you have got up
from your chair and opened the door,
once you have walked out into the clean air
toward that edge and taken the path up high
beyond the ordinary you have become
the privileged and the pilgrim
the one who will tell the story
and the one, coming back
from the mountain,
who helped to make it.
- David Whyte
Taking Refuge in the home practice....
As we mature on the yogic path, the home practice becomes an important part of our practice life.
During this busy time of year, you might find it harder to get to class, or you might find that you need the support of practice time in between classes, Your home practice can be a lovely way to expand and deepen your relationship to yoga and to yourself.
Many students share with me the feeling of really wanting to have a home practice, and yet feeling equally challenged in making that happen. There are several common issues that come up for students, inspiring the list of suggestions below.
1. Set aside a time, perhaps the same time every day, and schedule it as though it is a commitment or an appointment. Turn off phones and computers and let family members know that this is your personal, quiet time.
2. Set out your mat, and/or meditation cushion, to help remind you of your commitment. Decide on a practice "area" and keep it the same. It's a great idea to leave your mat and/or cushion right there as a reminder!
3. You can start off by using candles or music if these are things that will feel inviting for you.
4. Decide on a length of time that you want to practice, making sure that it is very manageable. 15--45 minutes is a great place to start.
5. Take extra care to invite yourself into the practice in a kind, encouraging way. If you are critical and judging towards yourself on the days that you don't make it to the mat when you had hoped you would, your commitment will die away very quickly.
6. Take care to maintain that kind, encouraging tone as you practice. Your gentle, patient presence during your home practice will help you to inspire you to return again and again.
7. Use your body sensations as a guide-- i.e. do the poses that really **feel** right to you. Try to use your body as your guide, not your head.
8. A few minutes is MUCH better than nothing.
Your home practice can be a wonderful time to connect deeply to yourself, and to offer yourself respite and refuge from the challenges of whatever is going on in your everyday life. Treat yourself very kindly in this. The more patient and kind you are, the more you will want to return to the mat again.
*****
Here are is a suggested sequence for a home practice. Use it as a jumping off point and add the things as you go that feel right that day.
1. Sit and breathe for a few minutes.
2. Lay on your back and come into a gentle laying down twist. 5-8 breaths on each side.
3. Come to seated, and come into a badda konasana forward fold for 3-5 minutes.
4. Come onto your belly for sphinx for 3 minutes.
5. Come back to seated, for a straight legged forward fold for 3-5 minutes
6. Come into downward dog ( 5-10 breaths)
7. Come into a low lunge with the left foot forward and right knee down. In between sides, you can move through plank and either cobra or boat pose. Hold the lunge for 6- 8 breaths. Repeat on the other side with the right foot forward and the left knee down.
8. Repeat this same thing, only with Warrior 2 on each side, instead of lunge. Move through plank and either cobra or boat pose. Hold Warrior 2 for 6- 8 breaths. Repeat on the other side.
8. Come into pigeon (10-20 breaths each side)
9. Come onto your back for happy baby ( 5-10 breaths)
10. Rest.
During this busy time of year, you might find it harder to get to class, or you might find that you need the support of practice time in between classes, Your home practice can be a lovely way to expand and deepen your relationship to yoga and to yourself.
Many students share with me the feeling of really wanting to have a home practice, and yet feeling equally challenged in making that happen. There are several common issues that come up for students, inspiring the list of suggestions below.
1. Set aside a time, perhaps the same time every day, and schedule it as though it is a commitment or an appointment. Turn off phones and computers and let family members know that this is your personal, quiet time.
2. Set out your mat, and/or meditation cushion, to help remind you of your commitment. Decide on a practice "area" and keep it the same. It's a great idea to leave your mat and/or cushion right there as a reminder!
3. You can start off by using candles or music if these are things that will feel inviting for you.
4. Decide on a length of time that you want to practice, making sure that it is very manageable. 15--45 minutes is a great place to start.
5. Take extra care to invite yourself into the practice in a kind, encouraging way. If you are critical and judging towards yourself on the days that you don't make it to the mat when you had hoped you would, your commitment will die away very quickly.
6. Take care to maintain that kind, encouraging tone as you practice. Your gentle, patient presence during your home practice will help you to inspire you to return again and again.
7. Use your body sensations as a guide-- i.e. do the poses that really **feel** right to you. Try to use your body as your guide, not your head.
8. A few minutes is MUCH better than nothing.
Your home practice can be a wonderful time to connect deeply to yourself, and to offer yourself respite and refuge from the challenges of whatever is going on in your everyday life. Treat yourself very kindly in this. The more patient and kind you are, the more you will want to return to the mat again.
*****
Here are is a suggested sequence for a home practice. Use it as a jumping off point and add the things as you go that feel right that day.
1. Sit and breathe for a few minutes.
2. Lay on your back and come into a gentle laying down twist. 5-8 breaths on each side.
3. Come to seated, and come into a badda konasana forward fold for 3-5 minutes.
4. Come onto your belly for sphinx for 3 minutes.
5. Come back to seated, for a straight legged forward fold for 3-5 minutes
6. Come into downward dog ( 5-10 breaths)
7. Come into a low lunge with the left foot forward and right knee down. In between sides, you can move through plank and either cobra or boat pose. Hold the lunge for 6- 8 breaths. Repeat on the other side with the right foot forward and the left knee down.
8. Repeat this same thing, only with Warrior 2 on each side, instead of lunge. Move through plank and either cobra or boat pose. Hold Warrior 2 for 6- 8 breaths. Repeat on the other side.
8. Come into pigeon (10-20 breaths each side)
9. Come onto your back for happy baby ( 5-10 breaths)
10. Rest.
Awakening Now
Why wait for your awakening?
The moment your eyes are open, seize the day.
Would you hold back when the Beloved beckons?
Would you deliver your litany of sins
like a child's collection of sea shells, prized and labeled?
"No, I can't step across the threshold," you say, eyes downcast.
"I'm not worthy, I'm afraid, and my motives aren't pure.
I'm not perfect, and surely I haven't practiced nearly enough.
My meditation isn't deep, and my prayers are sometimes insincere.
I still chew my fingernails, and the refrigerator isn't clean."
Do you value your reasons for staying small
more than the light shining through the open door?
Forgive yourself.
Now is the only time you have to be whole.
Now is the sole moment that exists to live in the light of your true Self.
Perfection is not a prerequisite for anything but pain.
Please, oh please, don't continue to believe in your disbelief.
This is the day of your awakening.
-from: Go In and In: Poems From the Heart of Yoga
By Danna Faulds
The moment your eyes are open, seize the day.
Would you hold back when the Beloved beckons?
Would you deliver your litany of sins
like a child's collection of sea shells, prized and labeled?
"No, I can't step across the threshold," you say, eyes downcast.
"I'm not worthy, I'm afraid, and my motives aren't pure.
I'm not perfect, and surely I haven't practiced nearly enough.
My meditation isn't deep, and my prayers are sometimes insincere.
I still chew my fingernails, and the refrigerator isn't clean."
Do you value your reasons for staying small
more than the light shining through the open door?
Forgive yourself.
Now is the only time you have to be whole.
Now is the sole moment that exists to live in the light of your true Self.
Perfection is not a prerequisite for anything but pain.
Please, oh please, don't continue to believe in your disbelief.
This is the day of your awakening.
-from: Go In and In: Poems From the Heart of Yoga
By Danna Faulds
Week 4: Awakening the Heart
The idea here is that bodhichitta, this capacity for love and care, is inherent in us and we can tap into it; the image often is given of a spring of fresh water that is encased in rock and then make a crack in the rock by starting to do these practices. It is like a crack in your heart, breaking open your heart. And once the crack is there the force of the bodhichitta is so strong that it is unstoppable. The crack starts getting wider and wider and wider amd wider until the capacity to love, the capacity to feel compassion is actually unlimited. This is what is said: do these practices to connect to what you already have but what you actually find is that by doing these practices the force of the bodhichitta, just like the force of water that has been encased in rock, will expand by itself.
-Pema Chodron
The word bodhichitta refers to our awakened heart-mind, a natural state of wisdom, clarity, warmth and compassion. This week we discussed the way that specific yogic teachings can help to awaken this bodhichitta.
It is important to start with a clarifying distinction-- we are not contriving or "efforting" to be more kind or loving. We are doing the practices that help to awaken the naturally occurring kindness and warmth that is intrinsic to our nature. The wisdom traditions understand that as we awaken, compassion is our natural, expressive response.
We can begin at the fundamental level-- bringing warmth and gentleness into our everyday foundation practices. In fact, we can practice anything -- yoga, meditation, inter-personal communication-- with gentleness and warmth. Practicing anything with lightness, gentleness, open-ness -- a true generosity of spirit -- calls on and brings out the intrinsic warmth and openess that is at the essence of who we already are.
We can also learn the specific practices that help these innate capacities to expand and unfold with more fullness of expression. Metta Practice -- the practice of generating goodwill towards ourselves and others -- is one of the foundation practices of the Buddhist tradition. Metta is Pali word (the original language of the Buddha) that translates as "friend". Metta is the form of meditation practice that helps us to generate a genuine friendliness towards ourselves, others, and the world at large. This friendliness is not contrived, or syrupy sweet. It is a solid, grounded, courageous quality of open-ness and warmth. It is our willingness to soften our defenses and let the tenderness of our hearts shine through.
Here are some classic metta phrases. Try practicing metta by repeating one or more of these phrases for 5-20 minutes. (I often practice metta at the end of a shamatha or vipassana practice.)
May I be at peace. May all beings be at peace.
May i be free from harm. May all beings be free from harm.
May I be at ease in body, heart, and mind. May all beings be at ease in body, heart, and mind.
May I be happy. May all beings be happy.
May I be well. May all beings be well.
As a final suggestion: practice being kind to yourself throughout your day, especially when you notice that you are not being kind. Keep in mind that our areas of challenge and messiness so often stem from places where we've been hurt, places where we've disconnected from ourselves because we don't know what else to do. The nature of this material merits extra tender, loving care. True compassion practices starts with making friends with ourselves, even our shadows. Especially our shadows.
These teachings run radically against the grain of the typical way we interact with ourselves, so it can be helpful to have resources that support your inquiry.
1. Poems of Self Compassion, by David Whyte (This is CD that can be ordered from David Whyte's website. On this CD, David Whyte collects a number of extraordinary poems related to the path of personal awakening and weaves a beautiful journey of poetry and inspirational teachings all with the theme of self compassion.)
2. Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of the Buddha.
This beautifully written book, by psychotherapist and meditation teacher Tara Brach, guides us in integrating some of the most powerful practices of the wisdom traditions into our daily lives.
3. Start Where You Are by Pema Chodron.
Comfortable with Uncertainty by Pema Chodron
Awakening Compassion ( CD) by Pema Chodron
-Pema Chodron
The word bodhichitta refers to our awakened heart-mind, a natural state of wisdom, clarity, warmth and compassion. This week we discussed the way that specific yogic teachings can help to awaken this bodhichitta.
It is important to start with a clarifying distinction-- we are not contriving or "efforting" to be more kind or loving. We are doing the practices that help to awaken the naturally occurring kindness and warmth that is intrinsic to our nature. The wisdom traditions understand that as we awaken, compassion is our natural, expressive response.
We can begin at the fundamental level-- bringing warmth and gentleness into our everyday foundation practices. In fact, we can practice anything -- yoga, meditation, inter-personal communication-- with gentleness and warmth. Practicing anything with lightness, gentleness, open-ness -- a true generosity of spirit -- calls on and brings out the intrinsic warmth and openess that is at the essence of who we already are.
We can also learn the specific practices that help these innate capacities to expand and unfold with more fullness of expression. Metta Practice -- the practice of generating goodwill towards ourselves and others -- is one of the foundation practices of the Buddhist tradition. Metta is Pali word (the original language of the Buddha) that translates as "friend". Metta is the form of meditation practice that helps us to generate a genuine friendliness towards ourselves, others, and the world at large. This friendliness is not contrived, or syrupy sweet. It is a solid, grounded, courageous quality of open-ness and warmth. It is our willingness to soften our defenses and let the tenderness of our hearts shine through.
Here are some classic metta phrases. Try practicing metta by repeating one or more of these phrases for 5-20 minutes. (I often practice metta at the end of a shamatha or vipassana practice.)
May I be at peace. May all beings be at peace.
May i be free from harm. May all beings be free from harm.
May I be at ease in body, heart, and mind. May all beings be at ease in body, heart, and mind.
May I be happy. May all beings be happy.
May I be well. May all beings be well.
As a final suggestion: practice being kind to yourself throughout your day, especially when you notice that you are not being kind. Keep in mind that our areas of challenge and messiness so often stem from places where we've been hurt, places where we've disconnected from ourselves because we don't know what else to do. The nature of this material merits extra tender, loving care. True compassion practices starts with making friends with ourselves, even our shadows. Especially our shadows.
These teachings run radically against the grain of the typical way we interact with ourselves, so it can be helpful to have resources that support your inquiry.
1. Poems of Self Compassion, by David Whyte (This is CD that can be ordered from David Whyte's website. On this CD, David Whyte collects a number of extraordinary poems related to the path of personal awakening and weaves a beautiful journey of poetry and inspirational teachings all with the theme of self compassion.)
2. Radical Acceptance: Embracing Your Life with the Heart of the Buddha.
This beautifully written book, by psychotherapist and meditation teacher Tara Brach, guides us in integrating some of the most powerful practices of the wisdom traditions into our daily lives.
3. Start Where You Are by Pema Chodron.
Comfortable with Uncertainty by Pema Chodron
Awakening Compassion ( CD) by Pema Chodron