It began before I left to take my friend Sam to the airport at the end of his weekend visit. Panic. Anxiety. An unsteady feeling, as if the floor beneath me had disappeared, leaving me spinning my legs in an ethereal nothingness.
I thought about what was causing this feeling half an hour later as I pulled away from the curb at the airport and started crying.
Sam is a good friend -- so good that he served as an usher in our wedding. But he is not someone I see or speak with often. My life does not flow by checking in with his. In fact, he met Jake for the first time on this trip. While it is true that time does pass so quickly these days of motherhood I sometimes feel as if I already have one toe in the grave, when you go well over two years without seeing someone, you do not tend to fall apart when he departs after a three-day visit.
The anxiety, I think, had more to do with my visit to Asheville than his. For perhaps the first time since moving here six months ago, I was a little bit less of a mother in Asheville and a little bit more just me.
What I mean is, I gave myself a break.
Even before I had Jake, I was a person who felt comfortable with structure. But since his birth, structure has become a crucial way of life. It's good for him, I tell myself, and I do believe this is true, at least when "structure" means something flexible like "pattern." But it's also a way of knowing I can hang on until the end of the day, of ensuring that I have some quiet time to read a book, of avoiding crazed mornings because I know I will have prepared his lunch the night before even though all I want to do is get into bed with that book. As parents, we keep ourselves from going crazy by imposing a structure on the multiple lives for which we find ourselves responsible.
In imposing this structure, we also make ourselves a little bit crazier.
When Sam's visit was looming, I felt crowded, rushed. So much to do before he got here, so pulled between hostessing and mothering. My need for the structure was so great, I had trouble conceiving of a few days when it might melt and bend slightly.
And then it was Friday evening, Sam was here, and the sitter had arrived. We have used a sitter just once before, so the adventure of being Jake-less for a whole night is new to me indeed. Even newer -- in an I-once-used-to-do-this-regularly old way -- was finding myself, 20 minutes after the sitter arrived, sitting at an outdoor table enjoying a gimlet.
I will repeat this for anyone who knows me and knows I rarely drink anything, and then only half a glass of wine. I was drinking a gimlet. I was standing up from the table to head to dinner a little unsteady on my feet. I was a little bit loud and a little bit loose and uncomprehending of the headache that would creep up on me in the next hour or two.
My buzz was a perfect metaphor for a weekend where I didn't worry about structuring our sightseeing around Jake's nap time -- going so far as to wake him up when we arrived at the Nature Center. I let Mike take over the bulk of the baby duties without so much as checking in to make sure he knew that Jake likes his bread untoasted, screams if you try to help him maneuver spoon to mouth, and -- a recent discovery -- will go from sleepy to wide awake if you try to read him books at bedtime.
Some of you may recognize this behavior as Taking a Break. Many of you will not recognize it at all because you haven't tried it yourself. I never noticed how much I don't give myself breaks until I finally did.
I didn't realize just how much of a break this was -- and, believe me, it's not as if I abandoned Jake to the arms of his father and sundry sitters -- until it was time for Sam's visit to end. Because mine was ending too.
Finding the Balance in Your Life
I'd say it's a guilty pleasure to sneak out for a drink with an old friend and feel like a young, childless, attractive person again. Except that guilty pleasure would suggest a balance of guilt and pleasure. The guilt -- or anxiety or panic -- that arises when you have to return to mothering can easily outweigh the pleasure. If you let it.
Here's what I was really feeling as I left Sam -- and my childless, carefree self -- at the curb. I was feeling panicky at the thought of returning to my neglected work. I was wondering how I will avoid breaking down this evening when Jake and I play alone and I feel the bright, active, rested person I used to be slipping back into my past. I was dreading bedtime tonight, when Jake will remind me that for the past several nights we have been too busy relaxing with our guest to impose our usual bedtime ritual of dinner, bath, and to-bed by 7:30.
Superimposed on this normal end-of-vacation anxiety was a new cherry on the chocolate sundae that is motherhood. I felt terrible that I felt so terrible about returning to full-time mothering.
Here's the crux of the problem: We all need a break. We all deserve it. It is a struggle to believe that we do deserve it -- because who, after all, wants to take a break from being a mother except someone who doesn't properly appreciate being one in the first place?
Finally, we overcome the reluctance to take care of ourselves as well as we take care of our child, we give ourselves permission to get a little bit drunk, to be a little bit lax about our child's days, to let our partners stay home with him while we go out for sushi on Sunday night. And we don't want to go back.
That's a hard thought to have. It's not that I don't want to go back to having one-on-one time with my boy. Or that I don't want to get him back to a daily pattern that makes him feel safe and secure and happy. But all that beauty comes with a price tag. I am perennially tired; I have less time for myself; I have to be content to be a little less energetic, dynamic, pretty than I once was.
Recognizing the difference is akin to finding that one point of balance -- not tipping too far in one direction or the other, not thinking too much about it, not shifting energy once you find the truth. The truth that it is possible to love your child more than anything -- to be willing to make any sacrifice it takes to ensure his happiness and safety -- and, at the same time, to want a break from the work of mothering.
How to Find Your Balance
As I said, the thing about balance is that it's gone the second you overthink it. You have to simply let it come to you and sit with it. This is not something I'm good at.
I was unable to literally balance in yoga class for my first full year of practice. When it finally started coming to me -- in short, simple, tree-pose increments -- I was living on an ashram studying for my teaching certification. Hours of daily chanting and meditation, immersion in a yogic lifestyle, a vacation from the pressing realities of life -- these all no doubt contributed to me finding my way to balancing on one foot. That and the fact that the yoga studio at the ashram was carpeted, giving my toes something to grip to.
Only as I gained strength and confidence has my balance become something I can do without thinking. And even now it is precarious. I must work to not think, to let gravity shake me without giving up, to trust my ability to find my center and balance before crashing to the floor. Perhaps more importantly, I have learned to fall out of balance gracefully, without disruption, so I can find it again.
The secret -- as much as I have discovered it -- is in caring more about the process of finding balance than about being balanced.
If you think about it, our ability to engage equally as mothers and individuals separate from our children is short-lived. The second you find that place of balance, you are bound to think of your child again. Or -- probably far less often -- that mythical place we long to return to before we had childrren where we were always beautiful and vivacious and like nothing so much as Julia Roberts in Pretty Woman, only with era-appropriate clothes that don't look quite so shockingly bad when we watch it again.
This weekend, by giving myself a break, I was actually achieving a rare moment of balance. I was with a friend who knew me before I was a mother, when I was in my thirties and even -- gasp -- late twenties and full of the energy that, frankly, dissipates with age as much as parenthood. At the same time, I was mothering my child, and no less for letting Mike put him to bed every night.
Once my reason for letting go got on a plane back to DC, I crashed to the ground.
Rediscovering my balance now will take something different. I don't think the answer for me is to let go of our daily rituals because -- as I said before -- I think they're good for Jake and at this point in my life I know they're necessary for me. I need to find a new way to balance when I have work to do and bills to pay and dreams to pursue in addition to a little boy to parent with my hardworking husband.
I have no idea how I'll find this new balance. I do know that once I find it, it will be fleeting and I will soon be back on the path to discovering a new way to balance who I am with a child. And knowing this, I feel the anxiety subside. Because I have found the grace to fall calmly, to seek balance patiently, to know that the point isn't to find it, but to live with the search, the place where the growing comes from.
A Balancing Challenge: Uttita Hasta Padangustasana
Standing balances are the place where calm happens for me -- because it has to. The more excited I get about finding my balance, the more conscious of the other students behind me watching me fall, the more likely I am to spend my time tapping the floor with the foot that is supposed to be floating somewhere near hip-level.
I find the standing balances the most calming because I am a person who tends toward motion. If you are someone who tends to be calmer being still, you may find better balance in an arm balance (like bakasana, crow pose, which I will discuss tomorrow) because arm balances are more heating.
For today, I offer uttita hasta padangustasana -- Extended Hand to Big Toe pose. Doesn't sound any easier in English, does it?
Uttita Hasta Padangustasana
I've read that this is considered one of the hardest poses in the astanga series. Which is sort of like saying Dulce de Leche is the most fattening of the Haagen Dazs flavors . This means you really do have to approach this pose as one about finding your balance, not finding the actual balance.
1) Stand in tadasana (mountain pose). Take a moment to find your balance with two feet on the floor. I like to place my hands in angeli mudra (prayer position) at my heart to find my center.
2) When you are ready, shift your weight to your left foot. Strengthen your leg, tuck your tailbone, and find your balance. When you have found it, start to draw your right knee toward your chest.
3) Each time you lose your balance, try to place your right foot on the floor gracefully and enjoy (ha!) the process of finding your balance and starting over.
4) When you can reach your right leg, either take hold of your right toe with the first two fingers and thumb of your right hand (this is called a yoga hold) or, if you have less flexible hamstrings or less experience with standing balance, place your right hand under your right thigh or calf as a support. You may also use a strap around the sole of your right foot and hold the ends in your right hand. The point is to find balance, so any tools you use that help with this purpose are right for you.
5) Slowly lengthen your right leg in front of you. Think of lengthening toward your body to keep your right hip from floating up and knocking you off balance. When you have reached the pose, stand still, counting 5 slow breaths.
6) If you would like to continue the challenge, you may open your leg out to the right. This requires thinking of your standing leg as rotating in (inner thigh toward the back of the room) and your floating (right) leg rotating out (inner thigh toward the ceiling). Advanced balancers may turn their head to look over the left shoulder. Hold this for 5 breaths. If you start to lose your balance, you may gracefully bend your right knee or return your right foot to the floor.
7) Return your right leg to the front. Draw your navel in strongly and let go of your toes. Place your hands on your hips and keep lifting your right leg up, pointing your toes, for 5 long, slow breaths.
8) Gracefully release to the ground. Repeat on the left side.
If you're like me, you will spend most of your time in uttita hasta padangustasana gracefully falling. Which is pretty much what I've been doing since leaving the airport. Because there's no way I can keep myself from losing my balance right now. But I can choose to do it with grace.
Monday, March 31, 2008
Friday, March 28, 2008
Learning to Trust (Including Yourself)
My favorite yoga class begins in 10 minutes, and I will not be there.
I ensured this outcome by eating breakfast a few minutes ago because I knew I could not be trusted to resist throwing on my yoga clothes at the last minute and dashing out the door. [One should not eat ideally 3 hours prior to an asana practice -- although many studios, recognizing the realities of our daily lives, suggest at least 1 1/2 to 2 hours.] The class is in astanga style, which means it has a set opening sequence -- allowing one to arrive late and slip right into the practice, sort of like finding your seat at the movies during the previews.
Yesterday I passed along the common wisdom that when your body is feeling ill you should not practice strong asanas. I then blithely proceeded to explain that I had every intention of ignoring this advice even though it came from wiser yoga minds than my own.
I arrived at my 12:15 yoga class feeling reasonably well. It was a little bit disappointing to find the last available spot in the very back of the studio by the door, but I recalled my own admonition to students that one should not become wedded to a single spot in the studio. Changing perspective can change one's perspective.
I can't say when it began to dawn on me that I wasn't in peak form. But I've practiced with less arcing sweeps of my arms; I've backed out of my twists; I've surrendered binding poses to the less intense versions. "Honor your limitations," I tell myself. If I were prepared to really listen to the words, I probably wouldn't have been there in the first place.
My first moment of doubt came with the adho mukha svavasana (downward facing dog) where I found myself wiping tears from my eyes. It wasn't that I'd cleared a particularly painful memory from my body or had a sudden flash of worry for Jake, who'd cried and clung a bit when I dropped him off at school. My eyes were just really watery.
Then I was in uttanasana, a forward fold, my head draping toward the floor, the blood rushing into it. And my eyeballs began to hurt.
This is a disconcerting feeling, hurting eyeballs. It's different from a sore finger or a cut knee. Eyeballs are not supposed to feel much of anything, ideally.
Still, I practiced on, trying to free my mind from this pressing distraction. What a good little yogini I was being -- using this opportunity to focus my practice. Or so I told myself.
Instead, I was really worrying while I practiced aerobics. What was wrong with my eyes? I wondered, carelessly folding over my front leg in parsvottanasana (pyramid pose). Should I be on my way to the opthamologist, or was this merely part of the strange coughing illness that has afflicted my family? I muttered as an assistant lifted my leg for me in standing splits. Even worse, could it be allergies? I thought, forgetting for the moment that I was even in pigeon pose. I've never, ever had allergies before, despite living in cities famed for inducing them, and to succumb now would seem like a defeat. Especially when I can barely muster compassion for myself for getting sick so easily. How great would it be if motherhood brought me allergies as well?
On I pushed myself, my mind ultimately and easily wandering to Jack, the one object I do not even try to coax my mind to abandon. Was he miserably crying for his mother? Were his eyeballs hurting like mine? What was I doing here?
Continuing to practice yoga -- erm, I mean, at this point, aerobics (you know, lots of body motion, no mind discipline) -- of course.
And then came the cough.
This was not a polite little cough. It was not a short fit, jarring to all in the room but over before anyone can throw you a dirty look. This was a gasp and choke and dash out of the studio, eyes watering. Finally, I felt grateful for the imposition of a new spot for my mat in the very back of the studio by the door. I grabbed at the drinking fountain and made desperate huhing noises as I tried to drink, breathe, and cough simultaneously.
Naturally, I returned to practice as soon as I was able.
I made it to savasana, corpse pose, with a new focus on relaxing enough to thwart the cough bubbling just below each breath. And with this intense relaxation I found a lesson. I was reminded of Trust.
Trust
Trust is one of those concepts like faith. It can be taken too far, used so broadly it loses its meaning, but used often because it sounds profound even if you don't really know what it means.
We hear it all the time as mothers -- "Trust your instinct." "Trust yourself, you're his mother." -- but I wonder how sincerely we take it to heart. I doubt many of the people saying it are all that sincere themselves. "Trust your instinct," someone might say as you resist giving your child Robitussen PM to help him sleep through his cough. At the same time she is thinking, "What a cruel and selfish mother, denying her child the medicine that will make him feel better. I wouldn't make my child suffer for my own principles." Even though I will probably give Jake Robitussen if he coughs tonight like he did last night -- to the point of choking -- I will hear the judgment in that person's voice. She will be telling me to trust myself, but I will hear "trust" as something that is less than absolute.
It's often the same thing when I say it to myself. "Trust yourself," I'll chide, as I endlessly debate whether Jake needs to sleep covered with a quilt in addition to his sleep sac, wonder whether I should just turn the heat up so he can sleep even if I can not, and resist the urge to creep out of bed in the middle of the night to make certain he has not wound himself up in the quilt and stopped breathing. The thing is, I don't really trust myself, or I wouldn't revisit the issue the next night.
And so, yesterday, I didn't trust myself when I wrote that one should probably skip a strenuous asana practice when laid a little bit low by illness. What I really heard was my mother saying, "Go to school, you're not that sick" and myself thinking, "If you can move, you can practice yoga."
More fundamentally, I didn't trust my body. I figured I'd move past the ache in my muscles. I'd be stronger than the bug that's taken up residence in my lungs. I'd ignore the fact that I haven't had a real night of sleep in close to a week, thanks to sleeping next to a fretful, coughing baby. (Thank you, thank you, Mike, for ceding the daybed to me last night.)
It's a fine line -- trusting our bodies while still transcending discomfort in our yoga practice. It requires us to really examine what "discomfort" means. Surely it means losing some sleep when we have young children. But does it mean if I can keep pushing myself to be the one who gets no more than a few hours of rest next to Jake every single night, I should? At some point, my body should have a say.
I'm about to say, "It's the hardest thing about motherhood," yet I know I'll find something else equally hard to report in the next few days. But, really, it's got to rank near the top of the list. How do we trust ourselves when we're supposed to be perfect mothers to our kids? How do you trust your instinct about how to best care for your child and yourself when you can always push to do more?
I sure don't have this one figured out. But then, don't for a second believe I have figured out any of the things I've commented upon here. All I can do is offer some wisdom from yoga to help approach them. And all I can offer now to help us figure out the issue of trust is . . . trust.
That, I suppose, is why they call it a practice. You try and try and try and then, for one precious, crystalline moment, it just is. Trust.
A Trusting Pose: Urdhva Danurasana (Upward Facing Bow)
You actually show trust every time you put yourself in a yoga pose. You trust that your teacher is presenting the poses in a way that is beneficial and won't hurt you. You trust that your legs will support you, your muscles will hold, the energy around you will infuse your body. You trust that the person on the mat next to yours won't fall over and bring you crashing to the floor with her.
So take a moment to be in that trust. Grasp for a moment the delicate state of not grasping too hard for it.
Then try urdhva danurasana, upward facing bow.
Urdhva Danurasana
If you are still new to yoga, or if you have any back issues, please do not practice this pose. It requires great strength and flexibility, and you must trust yourself to know truly whether you have enough to protect yourself as you try it. You can gain many of the same insights practicing setu bandha sarvangasana, or bridge pose.
1) Lay on your mat with your knees bent and your feet flat on the floor. You should be able to just brush your heels with your fingertips.
2) Take a moment to let your sacrum (lower back) melt into the mat. Draw your tailbone toward your heels and your navel toward your spine and up toward your heart. Let your shoulderblades rest on the floor, far from your ears.
3) Place your hands near your ears, elbows facing the ceiling, fingers pointing toward your shoulders. Try to draw your elbows toward each other so they are pointing directly at the ceiling, not splaying out to the sides. Appreciate the energetic space you have created between your arms.
4) When you are ready, lift your hips off the floor. Trust your heart to lift after them, allowing you to lift your head briefly and rest the crown of your head on the floor. (Even if you are practiced at this pose, I suggest taking this step.) Your heart should continue to guide you, so you feel light and don't place too much weight on your head.
5) I know it's awkward here, but trust your body and heart to support you as you realign yourself. Draw your elbows toward each other again and feel the energy this creates. It may help to move your hands slightly so your fingers point toward your neck. Feel your knees in a straight line -- not too close to each other, not splaying out to the side -- and note the energy this generates.
6) When you are trusting of the energy you have created and the openness of your heart, let your heart lift you up as your arms straighten.
7) If you feel any pain or fear, lower yourself down. Try to tuck your chin so you land on the back of your head instead of the crown. (It's much easier on your neck.) Relax and observe how you trusted yourself to begin the pose. Feel gratitude for the huge amount of trust it took to back out before you hurt yourself.
8) If you make it all the way up and trust you can maintain this pose, work on pressing your palms and feet into the floor, lengthening your spine, and letting your heart sing. Be sure to keep your neck relaxed -- I often find myself looking toward my feet, but this position compresses the neck.
9) If you have done urdhva danurasana many times, and this pose is not challenging you to discover trust, try some variations: Lift one leg at a time off the floor, drawing the knee into your chest and then straightening your leg as if you are going to stand on the ceiling (bend the knee into the chest before placing it back on the floor); lift one arm at a time off the floor by shifting your weight to the other arm and trusting your back strength to hold you (to fully engage in this variation, place your lifted hand on your hip for a moment); or try to lift opposite hand and foot at the same time (right hand/left foot; left hand/right foot).
Take this sense of trust with you off of your mat and into your day. Practice trust constantly. And be kind to yourself when you have trouble finding it.
Trust that you will.
I ensured this outcome by eating breakfast a few minutes ago because I knew I could not be trusted to resist throwing on my yoga clothes at the last minute and dashing out the door. [One should not eat ideally 3 hours prior to an asana practice -- although many studios, recognizing the realities of our daily lives, suggest at least 1 1/2 to 2 hours.] The class is in astanga style, which means it has a set opening sequence -- allowing one to arrive late and slip right into the practice, sort of like finding your seat at the movies during the previews.
Yesterday I passed along the common wisdom that when your body is feeling ill you should not practice strong asanas. I then blithely proceeded to explain that I had every intention of ignoring this advice even though it came from wiser yoga minds than my own.
I arrived at my 12:15 yoga class feeling reasonably well. It was a little bit disappointing to find the last available spot in the very back of the studio by the door, but I recalled my own admonition to students that one should not become wedded to a single spot in the studio. Changing perspective can change one's perspective.
I can't say when it began to dawn on me that I wasn't in peak form. But I've practiced with less arcing sweeps of my arms; I've backed out of my twists; I've surrendered binding poses to the less intense versions. "Honor your limitations," I tell myself. If I were prepared to really listen to the words, I probably wouldn't have been there in the first place.
My first moment of doubt came with the adho mukha svavasana (downward facing dog) where I found myself wiping tears from my eyes. It wasn't that I'd cleared a particularly painful memory from my body or had a sudden flash of worry for Jake, who'd cried and clung a bit when I dropped him off at school. My eyes were just really watery.
Then I was in uttanasana, a forward fold, my head draping toward the floor, the blood rushing into it. And my eyeballs began to hurt.
This is a disconcerting feeling, hurting eyeballs. It's different from a sore finger or a cut knee. Eyeballs are not supposed to feel much of anything, ideally.
Still, I practiced on, trying to free my mind from this pressing distraction. What a good little yogini I was being -- using this opportunity to focus my practice. Or so I told myself.
Instead, I was really worrying while I practiced aerobics. What was wrong with my eyes? I wondered, carelessly folding over my front leg in parsvottanasana (pyramid pose). Should I be on my way to the opthamologist, or was this merely part of the strange coughing illness that has afflicted my family? I muttered as an assistant lifted my leg for me in standing splits. Even worse, could it be allergies? I thought, forgetting for the moment that I was even in pigeon pose. I've never, ever had allergies before, despite living in cities famed for inducing them, and to succumb now would seem like a defeat. Especially when I can barely muster compassion for myself for getting sick so easily. How great would it be if motherhood brought me allergies as well?
On I pushed myself, my mind ultimately and easily wandering to Jack, the one object I do not even try to coax my mind to abandon. Was he miserably crying for his mother? Were his eyeballs hurting like mine? What was I doing here?
Continuing to practice yoga -- erm, I mean, at this point, aerobics (you know, lots of body motion, no mind discipline) -- of course.
And then came the cough.
This was not a polite little cough. It was not a short fit, jarring to all in the room but over before anyone can throw you a dirty look. This was a gasp and choke and dash out of the studio, eyes watering. Finally, I felt grateful for the imposition of a new spot for my mat in the very back of the studio by the door. I grabbed at the drinking fountain and made desperate huhing noises as I tried to drink, breathe, and cough simultaneously.
Naturally, I returned to practice as soon as I was able.
I made it to savasana, corpse pose, with a new focus on relaxing enough to thwart the cough bubbling just below each breath. And with this intense relaxation I found a lesson. I was reminded of Trust.
Trust
Trust is one of those concepts like faith. It can be taken too far, used so broadly it loses its meaning, but used often because it sounds profound even if you don't really know what it means.
We hear it all the time as mothers -- "Trust your instinct." "Trust yourself, you're his mother." -- but I wonder how sincerely we take it to heart. I doubt many of the people saying it are all that sincere themselves. "Trust your instinct," someone might say as you resist giving your child Robitussen PM to help him sleep through his cough. At the same time she is thinking, "What a cruel and selfish mother, denying her child the medicine that will make him feel better. I wouldn't make my child suffer for my own principles." Even though I will probably give Jake Robitussen if he coughs tonight like he did last night -- to the point of choking -- I will hear the judgment in that person's voice. She will be telling me to trust myself, but I will hear "trust" as something that is less than absolute.
It's often the same thing when I say it to myself. "Trust yourself," I'll chide, as I endlessly debate whether Jake needs to sleep covered with a quilt in addition to his sleep sac, wonder whether I should just turn the heat up so he can sleep even if I can not, and resist the urge to creep out of bed in the middle of the night to make certain he has not wound himself up in the quilt and stopped breathing. The thing is, I don't really trust myself, or I wouldn't revisit the issue the next night.
And so, yesterday, I didn't trust myself when I wrote that one should probably skip a strenuous asana practice when laid a little bit low by illness. What I really heard was my mother saying, "Go to school, you're not that sick" and myself thinking, "If you can move, you can practice yoga."
More fundamentally, I didn't trust my body. I figured I'd move past the ache in my muscles. I'd be stronger than the bug that's taken up residence in my lungs. I'd ignore the fact that I haven't had a real night of sleep in close to a week, thanks to sleeping next to a fretful, coughing baby. (Thank you, thank you, Mike, for ceding the daybed to me last night.)
It's a fine line -- trusting our bodies while still transcending discomfort in our yoga practice. It requires us to really examine what "discomfort" means. Surely it means losing some sleep when we have young children. But does it mean if I can keep pushing myself to be the one who gets no more than a few hours of rest next to Jake every single night, I should? At some point, my body should have a say.
I'm about to say, "It's the hardest thing about motherhood," yet I know I'll find something else equally hard to report in the next few days. But, really, it's got to rank near the top of the list. How do we trust ourselves when we're supposed to be perfect mothers to our kids? How do you trust your instinct about how to best care for your child and yourself when you can always push to do more?
I sure don't have this one figured out. But then, don't for a second believe I have figured out any of the things I've commented upon here. All I can do is offer some wisdom from yoga to help approach them. And all I can offer now to help us figure out the issue of trust is . . . trust.
That, I suppose, is why they call it a practice. You try and try and try and then, for one precious, crystalline moment, it just is. Trust.
A Trusting Pose: Urdhva Danurasana (Upward Facing Bow)
You actually show trust every time you put yourself in a yoga pose. You trust that your teacher is presenting the poses in a way that is beneficial and won't hurt you. You trust that your legs will support you, your muscles will hold, the energy around you will infuse your body. You trust that the person on the mat next to yours won't fall over and bring you crashing to the floor with her.
So take a moment to be in that trust. Grasp for a moment the delicate state of not grasping too hard for it.
Then try urdhva danurasana, upward facing bow.
Urdhva Danurasana
If you are still new to yoga, or if you have any back issues, please do not practice this pose. It requires great strength and flexibility, and you must trust yourself to know truly whether you have enough to protect yourself as you try it. You can gain many of the same insights practicing setu bandha sarvangasana, or bridge pose.
1) Lay on your mat with your knees bent and your feet flat on the floor. You should be able to just brush your heels with your fingertips.
2) Take a moment to let your sacrum (lower back) melt into the mat. Draw your tailbone toward your heels and your navel toward your spine and up toward your heart. Let your shoulderblades rest on the floor, far from your ears.
3) Place your hands near your ears, elbows facing the ceiling, fingers pointing toward your shoulders. Try to draw your elbows toward each other so they are pointing directly at the ceiling, not splaying out to the sides. Appreciate the energetic space you have created between your arms.
4) When you are ready, lift your hips off the floor. Trust your heart to lift after them, allowing you to lift your head briefly and rest the crown of your head on the floor. (Even if you are practiced at this pose, I suggest taking this step.) Your heart should continue to guide you, so you feel light and don't place too much weight on your head.
5) I know it's awkward here, but trust your body and heart to support you as you realign yourself. Draw your elbows toward each other again and feel the energy this creates. It may help to move your hands slightly so your fingers point toward your neck. Feel your knees in a straight line -- not too close to each other, not splaying out to the side -- and note the energy this generates.
6) When you are trusting of the energy you have created and the openness of your heart, let your heart lift you up as your arms straighten.
7) If you feel any pain or fear, lower yourself down. Try to tuck your chin so you land on the back of your head instead of the crown. (It's much easier on your neck.) Relax and observe how you trusted yourself to begin the pose. Feel gratitude for the huge amount of trust it took to back out before you hurt yourself.
8) If you make it all the way up and trust you can maintain this pose, work on pressing your palms and feet into the floor, lengthening your spine, and letting your heart sing. Be sure to keep your neck relaxed -- I often find myself looking toward my feet, but this position compresses the neck.
9) If you have done urdhva danurasana many times, and this pose is not challenging you to discover trust, try some variations: Lift one leg at a time off the floor, drawing the knee into your chest and then straightening your leg as if you are going to stand on the ceiling (bend the knee into the chest before placing it back on the floor); lift one arm at a time off the floor by shifting your weight to the other arm and trusting your back strength to hold you (to fully engage in this variation, place your lifted hand on your hip for a moment); or try to lift opposite hand and foot at the same time (right hand/left foot; left hand/right foot).
Take this sense of trust with you off of your mat and into your day. Practice trust constantly. And be kind to yourself when you have trouble finding it.
Trust that you will.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Taking Care of Yourself When You're Sick Instead of Pretending You're Not
Once again, Jake is sick and -- despite my best efforts at denying it -- so am I.
Just a cough and a scratchy throat. Plus this weird thing where I wake up with my eyes all puffy and glued shut. But enough for me to feel tired and defeated and like a complete wuss.
Used to be, I got a cold every time the weather changed. This is not such a huge deal when you grow up in Los Angeles, where the weather rarely changes. But it becomes more of a burden when you go off to college in Rhode Island, where there is plenty of weather (most of it kind of nasty).
I first became aware of this pattern during my junior year, after three years of surviving primarily on keg beer, french fries dipped in a regretful concoction of yellow mustard and mayonnaise, and sad scraps of iceberg lettuce deemed the "salad bar" at the dining hall. I slept about as much as any college student, wore insufficient clothing for the weather, and considered the "dance aerobics" class in the gym -- in which we rocked from heel to toe to the tune of Bruce's "Glory Days" -- real exercise.
Slowly, over the years, I began to give my body a fighting chance. Living in Boston after college, I caught on to the benefits of mad bouts on the Stairmaster blasting a pre-Idol Paula Abdul's "Forever Your Girl" on my Walkman. Unfortunately, the walks home in the snow with sweat-wet hair probably didn't help fight off any viruses.
I also learned to run, compliments of one of my Boston roommates. I kept it up when I moved to New York, where the combination of running and enthusiastic early-90's step aerobics (remember those weird over-the-tights underwear thingies we wore?) should have boosted my immune system. If the depression wrought by law school hadn't laid it low.
It took many more years and many more modes of calorie-burning for me to finally settle into something that was good for my body and my spirit, the key, I am convinced, to good health. I am only pointing out the obvious when I reveal that that something was yoga.
Treating Your Body with Respect
I'm not saying yoga magically makes you impervious to illness, that it is the slam-dunk solution to the annual "should I get a flu shot?" dilemma. (I never have, but not without some worries now that I have an toddler who, by all rights, should also have a flu shot. But by the time I finished dragging my feet about getting him one, the only ones available had thimerosol in them, so end of discussion.)
But I do believe that truly practicing yoga makes it a whole lot easier to avoid the tangled mess of western medicine, where you take one drug to make you better and another to counteract the side effects of the first and then come down with an odd strain of the disease that the meds don't address anyhow.
I don't mean the kind of yoga practice where you go to class three days a week and sometimes carry your yoga mat out to the car just to look like you're cooler than you are. I'm talking about practicing in your life. I'm talking about practicing yoga when you eat -- choosing unprocessed foods, foods you prepare yourself, foods that feel nourishing and grown from the earth. I'm talking about calming your mind to ease your stress levels. I'm talking about honestly getting enough sleep (when a yelling, coughing 15-month-old isn't interrupting it for you). I'm talking, in short, about treating your body with respect.
How Do I Respect Myself When I'm Sick All the Time?
See, I've just set myself up. Because if I am getting sick all the time again, it must be because I have let my yoga practice go.
Well, of course I've let my yoga practice go. I have a 15-month-old child. I can't possibly get enough sleep, prepare healthy food, practice asanas and pranayama daily, and approach life through a calm haze of mindfulness. That's the whole point of this blog, the whole point of the website that will one day grow out of it (when I have time, when I have time), the whole point of the book idea that gave rise to it all.
Compounding the problem of practicing yoga when you have a young child, the bugs are all coming to our house in the body of that same 15-month-old. Two months ago, when he was recovering from a scary bout of viral pneumonia, Mike asked the doctor if there was anything we could have done to help prevent it. "You aren't smokers, are you?" she asked. We shook our heads in a vigorous and unmistakable couple of NOOO!'s. "Does he go to daycare?" she continued.
I must have turned white. Or maybe just choked a little.
The doctor was quick to tell me it wasn't my fault my child had viral pneumonia. "You can't beat yourself up," she said so quickly and practically that I know her children once attended daycare as well. "Either he gets sick now or he gets sick in kindergarten," she finally assured me. I tell myself this all the time.
So. Not only am I responsible for my child's illness, not only does he bring the viruses home to share with me and Mike, but I am also responsible for ultimately contracting them myself because I don't practice my yoga with enough dedication. I don't practice my yoga with enough dedication because I am busy nursing my sick boy while dealing with my own illness.
There's only one thing to do. Let it go.
Really. So I have a little cough. It's actually a whole lot less annoying than the sinus infections I kept getting during the winter. At least now I don't have to pant my way through yoga classes, grabbing slimy bits of tissue from under my mat for a quick blow during down dog. And if I pop a couple of Tylenol now and then, big deal.
Yoga, I am reminded over and over, isn't about being perfect. It's about embracing our imperfections, and the messy, uncontrollable quality of life. By getting sick, I am actually gaining the opportunity to practice yoga just as fruitfully as I did when I went through a pancha karma cleanse and was the healthiest person within a ten-mile radius. (Mike will no doubt dispute this, having witnessed me eating nothing but kitchiri -- a gloopy, tasteless concoction of rice, dahl, and ghee -- for six weeks.)
Plus, when I'm feeling tired and a little bit achy and weak, it's kind of nice having an excuse to just be still and reflect for a moment. A little bit of a hooray! for being sick.
A Restorative Pose: Supta Baddha Konasana (Reclined Bound Angle Pose)
I can't recommend undertaking a vigorous asana practice when you're sick. I know many teachers do not recommend it. Thing is, if I can manage a single cadarana (push-up), I generally will go to class, and I usually end up feeling kind of better.
If you are going to practice asanas while your body is battling illness, at least take the opportunity to be honest about your body's limitations. Let it be a humbling experience; take advantage of the fact that your ego is necessarily going to be body-checked at least once or twice during the practice.
Better yet, stay home and practice another restorative pose. They don't call them "restorative" for nothing.
Supta baddha konasana (Reclined Bound Angle Pose)
Reclined bound angle. Sounds lovely, doesn't it? Well, if it doesn't, it will once you experience it.
1) Sit on the floor comfortably. Take a folded blanket and fold it in thirds, like a letter. Place it behind you, with the folded end against your sacrum (lower back). The long end should extend behind you, where your spine will rest when you recline.
2) If you have a belt, draw it around you so the middle rests on your sacrum and you hold one end in each hand. Draw the soles of your feet together so your knees move out to the sides. Let each end of the belt go over your thighs (it will be like a line under your inner knees) and then draw the ends together under your feet. Pull the ends to one side so you can loop one end of the belt through the buckle. Tighten it gently -- it should not be too tight because it will get tighter as you recline. You are now in a supported baddha konasana.
If you don't own a belt, no worries. Just let your feet rest together and your knees open outward. At least you don't have to figure out those confusing instructions for how to use it.
3) In either case, place some pillows or blankets under your knees so they have something to sink into for support.
4) Remembering to keep the belt slightly loose around your legs, slowly recline onto the blanket behind you. Your spine should feel comfortably supported. You may push a wrinkle into the blanket behind your neck for additional support or, if the blanket is not long enough to support your head as well, place another blanket under it. The key is to do what's comfortable for your body.
5) Tighten the belt until you feel you have reached your edge -- the spot where you feel just a bit of discomfort but do not feel pain. The discomfort will melt away quickly; pain will only get worse and call your bluff.
6) Let your arms open about 45 degrees from your sides, palms up in a gesture of reception. Your shoulders should start to open outward and toward the floor with the gentle pull of gravity.
7) Relax your knees into the pillows or blankets or belt supporting them. Slowly let go and trust that you are safe and supported.
8) Close your eyes and spend some time seeing where you are tense and where you can let go. Breathe through your nose if you can, lengthening your exhales to release the toxins, inhaling deeply to draw energy into your tired body.
9) Stay here for as long is it feels good. You can pull gently on the belt to tighten it as your hips release. Remember to go only to your edge, the place where you are able to release.
10) When you are ready to come out, try to loosen the belt while you are still reclining, if possible. Use your hands to gently guide your knees together so your feet slip out of the belt and rest on the floor. If it feels good, draw your knees toward your chest for a moment to release your back. Then roll to your right side and rest here before helping yourself up to a seated position.
It may not work as well as chicken soup, but at the very least, this pose should relax you for a nice, rejuvenating nap. Maybe I'll try it after my strenuous yoga practice.
Just a cough and a scratchy throat. Plus this weird thing where I wake up with my eyes all puffy and glued shut. But enough for me to feel tired and defeated and like a complete wuss.
Used to be, I got a cold every time the weather changed. This is not such a huge deal when you grow up in Los Angeles, where the weather rarely changes. But it becomes more of a burden when you go off to college in Rhode Island, where there is plenty of weather (most of it kind of nasty).
I first became aware of this pattern during my junior year, after three years of surviving primarily on keg beer, french fries dipped in a regretful concoction of yellow mustard and mayonnaise, and sad scraps of iceberg lettuce deemed the "salad bar" at the dining hall. I slept about as much as any college student, wore insufficient clothing for the weather, and considered the "dance aerobics" class in the gym -- in which we rocked from heel to toe to the tune of Bruce's "Glory Days" -- real exercise.
Slowly, over the years, I began to give my body a fighting chance. Living in Boston after college, I caught on to the benefits of mad bouts on the Stairmaster blasting a pre-Idol Paula Abdul's "Forever Your Girl" on my Walkman. Unfortunately, the walks home in the snow with sweat-wet hair probably didn't help fight off any viruses.
I also learned to run, compliments of one of my Boston roommates. I kept it up when I moved to New York, where the combination of running and enthusiastic early-90's step aerobics (remember those weird over-the-tights underwear thingies we wore?) should have boosted my immune system. If the depression wrought by law school hadn't laid it low.
It took many more years and many more modes of calorie-burning for me to finally settle into something that was good for my body and my spirit, the key, I am convinced, to good health. I am only pointing out the obvious when I reveal that that something was yoga.
Treating Your Body with Respect
I'm not saying yoga magically makes you impervious to illness, that it is the slam-dunk solution to the annual "should I get a flu shot?" dilemma. (I never have, but not without some worries now that I have an toddler who, by all rights, should also have a flu shot. But by the time I finished dragging my feet about getting him one, the only ones available had thimerosol in them, so end of discussion.)
But I do believe that truly practicing yoga makes it a whole lot easier to avoid the tangled mess of western medicine, where you take one drug to make you better and another to counteract the side effects of the first and then come down with an odd strain of the disease that the meds don't address anyhow.
I don't mean the kind of yoga practice where you go to class three days a week and sometimes carry your yoga mat out to the car just to look like you're cooler than you are. I'm talking about practicing in your life. I'm talking about practicing yoga when you eat -- choosing unprocessed foods, foods you prepare yourself, foods that feel nourishing and grown from the earth. I'm talking about calming your mind to ease your stress levels. I'm talking about honestly getting enough sleep (when a yelling, coughing 15-month-old isn't interrupting it for you). I'm talking, in short, about treating your body with respect.
How Do I Respect Myself When I'm Sick All the Time?
See, I've just set myself up. Because if I am getting sick all the time again, it must be because I have let my yoga practice go.
Well, of course I've let my yoga practice go. I have a 15-month-old child. I can't possibly get enough sleep, prepare healthy food, practice asanas and pranayama daily, and approach life through a calm haze of mindfulness. That's the whole point of this blog, the whole point of the website that will one day grow out of it (when I have time, when I have time), the whole point of the book idea that gave rise to it all.
Compounding the problem of practicing yoga when you have a young child, the bugs are all coming to our house in the body of that same 15-month-old. Two months ago, when he was recovering from a scary bout of viral pneumonia, Mike asked the doctor if there was anything we could have done to help prevent it. "You aren't smokers, are you?" she asked. We shook our heads in a vigorous and unmistakable couple of NOOO!'s. "Does he go to daycare?" she continued.
I must have turned white. Or maybe just choked a little.
The doctor was quick to tell me it wasn't my fault my child had viral pneumonia. "You can't beat yourself up," she said so quickly and practically that I know her children once attended daycare as well. "Either he gets sick now or he gets sick in kindergarten," she finally assured me. I tell myself this all the time.
So. Not only am I responsible for my child's illness, not only does he bring the viruses home to share with me and Mike, but I am also responsible for ultimately contracting them myself because I don't practice my yoga with enough dedication. I don't practice my yoga with enough dedication because I am busy nursing my sick boy while dealing with my own illness.
There's only one thing to do. Let it go.
Really. So I have a little cough. It's actually a whole lot less annoying than the sinus infections I kept getting during the winter. At least now I don't have to pant my way through yoga classes, grabbing slimy bits of tissue from under my mat for a quick blow during down dog. And if I pop a couple of Tylenol now and then, big deal.
Yoga, I am reminded over and over, isn't about being perfect. It's about embracing our imperfections, and the messy, uncontrollable quality of life. By getting sick, I am actually gaining the opportunity to practice yoga just as fruitfully as I did when I went through a pancha karma cleanse and was the healthiest person within a ten-mile radius. (Mike will no doubt dispute this, having witnessed me eating nothing but kitchiri -- a gloopy, tasteless concoction of rice, dahl, and ghee -- for six weeks.)
Plus, when I'm feeling tired and a little bit achy and weak, it's kind of nice having an excuse to just be still and reflect for a moment. A little bit of a hooray! for being sick.
A Restorative Pose: Supta Baddha Konasana (Reclined Bound Angle Pose)
I can't recommend undertaking a vigorous asana practice when you're sick. I know many teachers do not recommend it. Thing is, if I can manage a single cadarana (push-up), I generally will go to class, and I usually end up feeling kind of better.
If you are going to practice asanas while your body is battling illness, at least take the opportunity to be honest about your body's limitations. Let it be a humbling experience; take advantage of the fact that your ego is necessarily going to be body-checked at least once or twice during the practice.
Better yet, stay home and practice another restorative pose. They don't call them "restorative" for nothing.
Supta baddha konasana (Reclined Bound Angle Pose)
Reclined bound angle. Sounds lovely, doesn't it? Well, if it doesn't, it will once you experience it.
1) Sit on the floor comfortably. Take a folded blanket and fold it in thirds, like a letter. Place it behind you, with the folded end against your sacrum (lower back). The long end should extend behind you, where your spine will rest when you recline.
2) If you have a belt, draw it around you so the middle rests on your sacrum and you hold one end in each hand. Draw the soles of your feet together so your knees move out to the sides. Let each end of the belt go over your thighs (it will be like a line under your inner knees) and then draw the ends together under your feet. Pull the ends to one side so you can loop one end of the belt through the buckle. Tighten it gently -- it should not be too tight because it will get tighter as you recline. You are now in a supported baddha konasana.
If you don't own a belt, no worries. Just let your feet rest together and your knees open outward. At least you don't have to figure out those confusing instructions for how to use it.
3) In either case, place some pillows or blankets under your knees so they have something to sink into for support.
4) Remembering to keep the belt slightly loose around your legs, slowly recline onto the blanket behind you. Your spine should feel comfortably supported. You may push a wrinkle into the blanket behind your neck for additional support or, if the blanket is not long enough to support your head as well, place another blanket under it. The key is to do what's comfortable for your body.
5) Tighten the belt until you feel you have reached your edge -- the spot where you feel just a bit of discomfort but do not feel pain. The discomfort will melt away quickly; pain will only get worse and call your bluff.
6) Let your arms open about 45 degrees from your sides, palms up in a gesture of reception. Your shoulders should start to open outward and toward the floor with the gentle pull of gravity.
7) Relax your knees into the pillows or blankets or belt supporting them. Slowly let go and trust that you are safe and supported.
8) Close your eyes and spend some time seeing where you are tense and where you can let go. Breathe through your nose if you can, lengthening your exhales to release the toxins, inhaling deeply to draw energy into your tired body.
9) Stay here for as long is it feels good. You can pull gently on the belt to tighten it as your hips release. Remember to go only to your edge, the place where you are able to release.
10) When you are ready to come out, try to loosen the belt while you are still reclining, if possible. Use your hands to gently guide your knees together so your feet slip out of the belt and rest on the floor. If it feels good, draw your knees toward your chest for a moment to release your back. Then roll to your right side and rest here before helping yourself up to a seated position.
It may not work as well as chicken soup, but at the very least, this pose should relax you for a nice, rejuvenating nap. Maybe I'll try it after my strenuous yoga practice.
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
When I'm Sleepy I'm Even More Critical of Myself
It never really goes away, does it? How many times your brand new baby wakes you up every night and how you get him back to sleep morphs into whether, when, and how to sleep train. Once you're over the guilt and/or exhaustion produced by your decision, a bout of teething sends you over the edge and into thoughts about buying stock in infant Tylenol.
And, of course, there's illness.
I can't say exactly how many nights it's been since Jake slept through on his own because I am sleep deprived and fuzzy and probably should not be doing legal work today any more than I should be operating heavy machinery. I can say that I have come to accept that if Jake needs his mother in the middle of the night something is actually wrong. A few weeks ago I would have suggested he was merely torturing his mother by calling for her at 2:30 a.m., but, like all angry thoughts associated with lack of sleep, this one merely makes me feel really guilty when I recall thinking it.
At any rate, something has been amiss, and when the something amiss a couple of months ago was viral pneumonia, you forgive yourself for being overly cautious where your son's health is concerned. Overly cautious enough to bring us to the pediatrician's office this morning for the third time in six days.
Last night's cry at 11:00 engendered little discussion beyond Mike's offer to let me sleep on the daybed in the office. Since I knew I would jerk awake at every cry and cough anyhow, I preferred to be able to hold Jake close when I did.
Sounds like what mothers do, right? You comfort your child, putting aside your own needs, caring selflessly for your love. An image from the John Adams miniseries we're watching springs to mind: Laura Linney as Abigail Adams cleaning the puss off her sick daughter's small pox, pulling it together the second her voice begins to crack. And she also had to run a farm and raise four kids by herself while her husband hung out in Philadelphia finding his way into history books. Plainly, this is the prototype for mothers everywhere.
I'm proud to say I only shushed Jake once or twice last night. I uttered a single, "OW!" when he hit me in the face. Presumably, receiving the forecast of how the night would go before I hit REM sleep prepared me to be patient.
But it wouldn't be motherhood if I didn't feel I had done something unforgivably wrong. Like seek a comfortable position for my own sleep that did not involve letting Jake sleep on top of me. And failing to have a bottle of juice ready on the bedside table -- a source of particularly acute pangs of guilt when I reached for my own glass of juice to calm my coughs. I propped us up so he could sleep on an incline only some time around 4 or 5, another inexcusable offense. And, mostly, I didn't keep him from coughing, I didn't ease his discomfort, I didn't make him magically better.
This morning at breakfast, Mike said, "When we have one of these nights when Jake's up sick and he's cranky in the morning, even though I really don't like my job and have been liking it even less these past few weeks -- I'm really glad I get to go to it." He added a sweet note of appreciation for all I've done taking care of our sleep-deprived, occasionally cranky, always demanding, but also incredible boy these past few days. (He said "cookie" today! I mean, how incredible is that?)
Here's the really painful part: I totally agreed with him. I didn't doubt for a second that I have done something comparable to volunteering with the Red Cross in Sudan taking care of my own child for a few days. I didn't feel grateful to be the one with the flexible job who gets to stay home when Jake is sick. I even toyed with asking Mike to take the day off if we didn't get an okay from the doctor to go back to school. I sure did heave a sigh of relief when I left him there, playing on the new climbing castle.
What happened to Abigail and her selfless ministrations?
Practicing Compassion for Yourself
If there's one thing 15 months of motherhood has taught me, it's that if I ever run out of other people to criticize my parenting choices, I can always turn to myself. I know I do my best, I recognize that I am truly a patient person, I incorporate my yogic beliefs into how I treat my child. But after the fact, there's always room for improvement.
Like last night. I did not lose my patience in a desperate plea to let me sleep, dear god, let me sleep. I did that during Jake's last bout of nighttime neediness, and of course it made me feel like crap the next morning even though I was, um, really tired when I said it. But rather than feel good that I could be more patient last night, I focused on all the things a truly GOOD mother would have done -- the juice and the holding and the propping up. Because, don't you know, there is a camera set up in my room just like the ones on Big Brother so the whole world and all my in-laws can watch me being a bad mother.
Here's what I owe myself -- and I'm not alone here. We all deserve a little compassion from ourselves. Sure, no one else is going to push and criticize and make sure we do everything humanly and inhumanly possible for our children. But no one else is going to give us the break we are able to give ourselves either.
If one of my friends were to describe a night like my last one to me in tones of weepy regret, I'd tell her she did an amazing job. I'd say what her child really needed was her right there, and that's where she was. Whether she had her child sleep beside her in bed or rocked him until she could put him back in his crib or left her partner to deal with it, I would have told her she did the right thing. Because every mother needs someone else to tell her to take care of herself sometimes.
Today I'm going to say it to myself because I have a ton of work to get to and, after nearly two days of unplanned child caring, I don't have time to call a friend and let her say it for me.
I need to take care of myself sometimes. If I don't, I won't be able to take care of my child. That means that sometimes I will sleep instead of immediately meeting his needs. I will send him to school when I have work to do. I will try to sneak in a peek at the front page of the New York Times when I am supposed to be playing with him.
Compassion. It's a lot of what yoga is about.
A Compassionat Pose: Viparita Karani (Legs up the Wall)
When you're ragged and sleep-deprived, you might not need a strenuous yoga practice. "Shoot!" I thought this morning as I finished my breakfast. "Now I can't practice yoga." As if that's what I needed.
Restorative poses, on the other hand -- what a beautiful way to gain the psychic and spiritual benefits of yoga without punishing your poor body. Here's the great, simple, good-for-everything pose you can give yourself as a gift of compassion:
Viparita Karani (Legs up the Wall)
Legs up the wall -- it's the pose you know you should do instead of inversions when you're having your period but that you rarely actually do. Why let everyone else know you're having your period? Why look like a wimp who doesn't have the strength left to do headstand or shoulder stand? Viparita Karani, we hard core yogis tell ourselves, is for senior citizens with back issues.
Yeah? Try it and see if it isn't for tired moms as well.
1) Place a pillow or a folded blanket against a wall. Whatever you use should be comfortable, big enough to support your sacrum (lower back), and 2-4 inches in height.
2) Sit with your right hip against the wall and the pillow/blanket at your lower back, knees bent. You are sitting next to the wall.
3) Gently lean back and rotate your body so your buttocks come to the wall and you find yourself lying perpendicular to the wall, your sacrum supported by the pillow/blanket. Your legs should reach comfortably up the wall.
If this makes no sense or is impossible to execute, no worries! Just set yourself up however works for you. I like this method because it brings your butt right up to the wall without a lot of scrunching around.
4) Let your arms flop out about 45 degrees from your body, your palms facing the sky in a gesture of reception. If you'd like something under your head, just make sure you aren't crunching your neck. You can experiment with leg positions as you like.
5) Close your eyes and receive. You don't have to work in this pose. Just let your body relax, let the Universe do its thing, let it feel good. For a long time. You deserve it.
And don't you dare think of ditching this pose for headstand!
And, of course, there's illness.
I can't say exactly how many nights it's been since Jake slept through on his own because I am sleep deprived and fuzzy and probably should not be doing legal work today any more than I should be operating heavy machinery. I can say that I have come to accept that if Jake needs his mother in the middle of the night something is actually wrong. A few weeks ago I would have suggested he was merely torturing his mother by calling for her at 2:30 a.m., but, like all angry thoughts associated with lack of sleep, this one merely makes me feel really guilty when I recall thinking it.
At any rate, something has been amiss, and when the something amiss a couple of months ago was viral pneumonia, you forgive yourself for being overly cautious where your son's health is concerned. Overly cautious enough to bring us to the pediatrician's office this morning for the third time in six days.
Last night's cry at 11:00 engendered little discussion beyond Mike's offer to let me sleep on the daybed in the office. Since I knew I would jerk awake at every cry and cough anyhow, I preferred to be able to hold Jake close when I did.
Sounds like what mothers do, right? You comfort your child, putting aside your own needs, caring selflessly for your love. An image from the John Adams miniseries we're watching springs to mind: Laura Linney as Abigail Adams cleaning the puss off her sick daughter's small pox, pulling it together the second her voice begins to crack. And she also had to run a farm and raise four kids by herself while her husband hung out in Philadelphia finding his way into history books. Plainly, this is the prototype for mothers everywhere.
I'm proud to say I only shushed Jake once or twice last night. I uttered a single, "OW!" when he hit me in the face. Presumably, receiving the forecast of how the night would go before I hit REM sleep prepared me to be patient.
But it wouldn't be motherhood if I didn't feel I had done something unforgivably wrong. Like seek a comfortable position for my own sleep that did not involve letting Jake sleep on top of me. And failing to have a bottle of juice ready on the bedside table -- a source of particularly acute pangs of guilt when I reached for my own glass of juice to calm my coughs. I propped us up so he could sleep on an incline only some time around 4 or 5, another inexcusable offense. And, mostly, I didn't keep him from coughing, I didn't ease his discomfort, I didn't make him magically better.
This morning at breakfast, Mike said, "When we have one of these nights when Jake's up sick and he's cranky in the morning, even though I really don't like my job and have been liking it even less these past few weeks -- I'm really glad I get to go to it." He added a sweet note of appreciation for all I've done taking care of our sleep-deprived, occasionally cranky, always demanding, but also incredible boy these past few days. (He said "cookie" today! I mean, how incredible is that?)
Here's the really painful part: I totally agreed with him. I didn't doubt for a second that I have done something comparable to volunteering with the Red Cross in Sudan taking care of my own child for a few days. I didn't feel grateful to be the one with the flexible job who gets to stay home when Jake is sick. I even toyed with asking Mike to take the day off if we didn't get an okay from the doctor to go back to school. I sure did heave a sigh of relief when I left him there, playing on the new climbing castle.
What happened to Abigail and her selfless ministrations?
Practicing Compassion for Yourself
If there's one thing 15 months of motherhood has taught me, it's that if I ever run out of other people to criticize my parenting choices, I can always turn to myself. I know I do my best, I recognize that I am truly a patient person, I incorporate my yogic beliefs into how I treat my child. But after the fact, there's always room for improvement.
Like last night. I did not lose my patience in a desperate plea to let me sleep, dear god, let me sleep. I did that during Jake's last bout of nighttime neediness, and of course it made me feel like crap the next morning even though I was, um, really tired when I said it. But rather than feel good that I could be more patient last night, I focused on all the things a truly GOOD mother would have done -- the juice and the holding and the propping up. Because, don't you know, there is a camera set up in my room just like the ones on Big Brother so the whole world and all my in-laws can watch me being a bad mother.
Here's what I owe myself -- and I'm not alone here. We all deserve a little compassion from ourselves. Sure, no one else is going to push and criticize and make sure we do everything humanly and inhumanly possible for our children. But no one else is going to give us the break we are able to give ourselves either.
If one of my friends were to describe a night like my last one to me in tones of weepy regret, I'd tell her she did an amazing job. I'd say what her child really needed was her right there, and that's where she was. Whether she had her child sleep beside her in bed or rocked him until she could put him back in his crib or left her partner to deal with it, I would have told her she did the right thing. Because every mother needs someone else to tell her to take care of herself sometimes.
Today I'm going to say it to myself because I have a ton of work to get to and, after nearly two days of unplanned child caring, I don't have time to call a friend and let her say it for me.
I need to take care of myself sometimes. If I don't, I won't be able to take care of my child. That means that sometimes I will sleep instead of immediately meeting his needs. I will send him to school when I have work to do. I will try to sneak in a peek at the front page of the New York Times when I am supposed to be playing with him.
Compassion. It's a lot of what yoga is about.
A Compassionat Pose: Viparita Karani (Legs up the Wall)
When you're ragged and sleep-deprived, you might not need a strenuous yoga practice. "Shoot!" I thought this morning as I finished my breakfast. "Now I can't practice yoga." As if that's what I needed.
Restorative poses, on the other hand -- what a beautiful way to gain the psychic and spiritual benefits of yoga without punishing your poor body. Here's the great, simple, good-for-everything pose you can give yourself as a gift of compassion:
Viparita Karani (Legs up the Wall)
Legs up the wall -- it's the pose you know you should do instead of inversions when you're having your period but that you rarely actually do. Why let everyone else know you're having your period? Why look like a wimp who doesn't have the strength left to do headstand or shoulder stand? Viparita Karani, we hard core yogis tell ourselves, is for senior citizens with back issues.
Yeah? Try it and see if it isn't for tired moms as well.
1) Place a pillow or a folded blanket against a wall. Whatever you use should be comfortable, big enough to support your sacrum (lower back), and 2-4 inches in height.
2) Sit with your right hip against the wall and the pillow/blanket at your lower back, knees bent. You are sitting next to the wall.
3) Gently lean back and rotate your body so your buttocks come to the wall and you find yourself lying perpendicular to the wall, your sacrum supported by the pillow/blanket. Your legs should reach comfortably up the wall.
If this makes no sense or is impossible to execute, no worries! Just set yourself up however works for you. I like this method because it brings your butt right up to the wall without a lot of scrunching around.
4) Let your arms flop out about 45 degrees from your body, your palms facing the sky in a gesture of reception. If you'd like something under your head, just make sure you aren't crunching your neck. You can experiment with leg positions as you like.
5) Close your eyes and receive. You don't have to work in this pose. Just let your body relax, let the Universe do its thing, let it feel good. For a long time. You deserve it.
And don't you dare think of ditching this pose for headstand!
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
How Getting Knocked Off My Feet Helped Me to Grow
Yesterday I surveyed the field of unexpected obligations suddenly stretching between me and my YogaMamaMe website and declared myself okay. Getting published, I realized, had become too much of a goal, and I should feel deep gratitude to the Universe for throwing a bunch of other things at me as a reminder that I don't call the shots. Best to slow down, enjoy the journey, and appreciate what it brings to me, I reasoned.
Which is all well and good. But today life got in the way of my yoga class.
In theory, nothing has changed. I thought I had reworked my priorities so as to regain some modicum of control over my life and my career. Just to show me there is no such thing as control over one's life and one's career, the Universe threw me a few more curveballs, just in time for the start of the baseball season.
No sooner had I put the finishing touches on my blog posts than I got the dreaded call from Jake's school. "You don't have to come for him," the caregiver said immediately. Was I usually so churlish when I heard her voice? "I just thought you ought to know that Jake's not feeling well at all." She proceeded to describe a boy lying on his cot, thumb in mouth, staring listlessly at the ceiling. Not my boy at all.
So, once again, I gathered myself together and tried to salvage something of the rest of my day before the rest of my day became all about Jake. Before I had left the house, another call came. "His temperature is 102.7," she informed me. Just to ratchet up the stress level.
It's actually perfectly okay with me to spend an afternoon snuggling on the couch with my boy, especially after the doctor had assured me he was not suffering from a violent and potentially fatal reaction to his inoculations. The baby Tylenol he loves so well worked rapidly, rendering him able to hit me in the face and show me his bellybutton while I was still talking to the doctor.
I was even prepared to share the bed with him last night. I got kicked a bunch of times and, between his coughs and mine, hardly registered any sleep. But when I'm prepared for such a night my patience is remarkable, my determination not to yell angrily, "Jake! Go to sleep and stop poking Mommy in the eye!" unshakable. I greeted the morning tired but saved from the self-flagellation mode where I moan about how good mothers never yell at their children, no matter how tired they are.
But where would be the practice of life if it were this easy to adjust to a change in plans?
The challenge, you see, is that by North Carolina law, a child must be (I can hear the caregiver repeating it stubbornly to me last time I tried to look for a loophole) "fever free for 24 hours" before he can go back to school. "See you Wednesday!" she said cheerily when I carried my fevered boy to the car yesterday.
I have come to grips with the fact that I am simply not built to hang out with a toddler all day. I find myself wondering how anyone can spend an entire morning watching her 15-month-old stack alphabet blocks with constant glances up to make sure Mommy is watching instead of reading the paper. I consider the possibility that most toddlers are perfectly content to sit in a corner with their parking garage and entertain themselves, that Jake is the unfortunate exception. I decide the real problem is that I don't have ten other toddlers playing in my living room to help entertain Jake without me.
I hate admitting that I don't have the ability to stay home with my child and stay sane at the same time. It is hard for me to start my day when it is 22 degrees outside and thus too cold to entertain a 15-month-old boy anywhere but within the confines of our suddenly shrinking home. We had breakfast. We said goodbye to Daddy. We sat on his new potty seat. We pulled books off the shelves in his bedroom, sat in Mommy's lap for the first page, and then departed to pull down more books he wasn't interested in hearing me read. We danced to Bare Naked Ladies. And, finally, it was nap time.
So, okay, I weathered it, and I took the opportunity to remind myself as often as I had to that this time with Jake was a gift. I didn't worry about the work not getting done, the Mommy time denied, the fact that my chest feels like someone stuck an empty beer keg in it during the night. (If you could hear my coughs you'd stop looking puzzled and think, "Yep, beer keg.")
But before I give myself the big Pat on the Back Award for Grace, did I mention that I can not go to yoga class today? Might I point to my last couple of blogs pointing out that I did not go to yoga class yesterday? Or the day before?
Three days without yoga. No class to go to tomorrow. Work that at some point will demand priority over yoga class. A friend visiting all weekend. Do you see my grace crumbling?
Practice Is Always a Challenge
You will never, ever meet a person who can perform every yoga pose. You will never, ever be able to perform them all yourself.
For example, my fear of falling over in sirsasana, headstand, is formidable, even four years after I became able to do it without a wall. I have yet to figure out how to keep my knees from crashing into my arms when I try to jump through from adho mukha svanasana (downward facing dog) to sitting. And the ability to balance will always, always be a rare gift that comes and goes.
But that's the fun and the beauty of a yoga practice. There's always something new to discover. My hips are ridiculously flexible, thanks, I'm convinced, to years of doing my homework crossed-legged on the floor in front of the television. But they get even more flexible with every eka pada rajakapotasana (that's pigeon pose and a good reason to give up on the sanskrit names).
In short, every yoga practice is a chance to grow. And, dare, I say it, every day of life is as well.
Part of me resists the notion that my relative grace yesterday -- or at least my attempt to act graceful in this blog -- earned me the deeper challenge of today. I certainly don't believe the Universe was sitting around watching me deal with something as minor as a doctor's appointment and a legal project getting in the way of my assuredly imminent publication and decided, "Hey, if she can handle that, let's see what she does when she has to take a whole day off and miss yoga class."
The Universe does not make things happen to us. They just happen. And we make our choices.
Today, I have chosen to view the sudden change of events as a challenge and a chance to learn more about myself. I have chosen not to view it as proof that nothing interesting will ever happen in my life again now that I am a mother. (Although, choice or no, there have been moments when those have been my thoughts exactly.)
Any moment, Jake will awaken from his nap, I will turn from my computer, and I will go have fun with him. I'm thinking maybe Health Adventure, where for the first time I can watch him toddle in the toddler room instead of crawl.
Hanumanasana (Forward Splits): The Challenge Is to Have Fun
In the spirit of Jack at Health Adventure, I'm going to propose you approach this or any asana you practice today with a sense of play. See if it doesn't become a little bit less challenging.
Hanumanasana, if I'm being honest, has never felt the least bit playful to me. Perhaps because it is a pose that, shall we say, offers much for me to explore.
* Hanuman is often referred to as the Monkey God. He is a playful entity, and this pose is designed to emulate him as he leaps across rivers and mountains. Try to have the same spirit of adventure as you approach it.
1) Stand in a straddle position, feet wide apart, but not too wide to support yourself.
2) Turn your torso to face over your right leg. Turn your feet to face the same direction as your face.
3) Bend both knees and reach your hands to the floor. As your back knee reaches the floor, you will find yourself in a lunge position.
4) Slowly, remembering to have fun, start walking your front (right) foot forward, working your way to splits.
5) Some people will reach the floor, both legs straight. They may reach their hands toward the sky -- not in a position of triumph over those of us who will never know how it feels, but to further explore the pose.
6) The rest of us will explore by finding our edge -- a place where we experience some discomfort, but not pain. To avoid the pain, use blankets, blocks, or anything else you need to support yourself.
7) And here's the challenge. Let go of the notion that this is the last thing you want to be doing right now, and embrace it. Discover new things about your body and about yourself. You might even decide to make it part of your regular practice. If you like a challenge.
Which is all well and good. But today life got in the way of my yoga class.
In theory, nothing has changed. I thought I had reworked my priorities so as to regain some modicum of control over my life and my career. Just to show me there is no such thing as control over one's life and one's career, the Universe threw me a few more curveballs, just in time for the start of the baseball season.
No sooner had I put the finishing touches on my blog posts than I got the dreaded call from Jake's school. "You don't have to come for him," the caregiver said immediately. Was I usually so churlish when I heard her voice? "I just thought you ought to know that Jake's not feeling well at all." She proceeded to describe a boy lying on his cot, thumb in mouth, staring listlessly at the ceiling. Not my boy at all.
So, once again, I gathered myself together and tried to salvage something of the rest of my day before the rest of my day became all about Jake. Before I had left the house, another call came. "His temperature is 102.7," she informed me. Just to ratchet up the stress level.
It's actually perfectly okay with me to spend an afternoon snuggling on the couch with my boy, especially after the doctor had assured me he was not suffering from a violent and potentially fatal reaction to his inoculations. The baby Tylenol he loves so well worked rapidly, rendering him able to hit me in the face and show me his bellybutton while I was still talking to the doctor.
I was even prepared to share the bed with him last night. I got kicked a bunch of times and, between his coughs and mine, hardly registered any sleep. But when I'm prepared for such a night my patience is remarkable, my determination not to yell angrily, "Jake! Go to sleep and stop poking Mommy in the eye!" unshakable. I greeted the morning tired but saved from the self-flagellation mode where I moan about how good mothers never yell at their children, no matter how tired they are.
But where would be the practice of life if it were this easy to adjust to a change in plans?
The challenge, you see, is that by North Carolina law, a child must be (I can hear the caregiver repeating it stubbornly to me last time I tried to look for a loophole) "fever free for 24 hours" before he can go back to school. "See you Wednesday!" she said cheerily when I carried my fevered boy to the car yesterday.
I have come to grips with the fact that I am simply not built to hang out with a toddler all day. I find myself wondering how anyone can spend an entire morning watching her 15-month-old stack alphabet blocks with constant glances up to make sure Mommy is watching instead of reading the paper. I consider the possibility that most toddlers are perfectly content to sit in a corner with their parking garage and entertain themselves, that Jake is the unfortunate exception. I decide the real problem is that I don't have ten other toddlers playing in my living room to help entertain Jake without me.
I hate admitting that I don't have the ability to stay home with my child and stay sane at the same time. It is hard for me to start my day when it is 22 degrees outside and thus too cold to entertain a 15-month-old boy anywhere but within the confines of our suddenly shrinking home. We had breakfast. We said goodbye to Daddy. We sat on his new potty seat. We pulled books off the shelves in his bedroom, sat in Mommy's lap for the first page, and then departed to pull down more books he wasn't interested in hearing me read. We danced to Bare Naked Ladies. And, finally, it was nap time.
So, okay, I weathered it, and I took the opportunity to remind myself as often as I had to that this time with Jake was a gift. I didn't worry about the work not getting done, the Mommy time denied, the fact that my chest feels like someone stuck an empty beer keg in it during the night. (If you could hear my coughs you'd stop looking puzzled and think, "Yep, beer keg.")
But before I give myself the big Pat on the Back Award for Grace, did I mention that I can not go to yoga class today? Might I point to my last couple of blogs pointing out that I did not go to yoga class yesterday? Or the day before?
Three days without yoga. No class to go to tomorrow. Work that at some point will demand priority over yoga class. A friend visiting all weekend. Do you see my grace crumbling?
Practice Is Always a Challenge
You will never, ever meet a person who can perform every yoga pose. You will never, ever be able to perform them all yourself.
For example, my fear of falling over in sirsasana, headstand, is formidable, even four years after I became able to do it without a wall. I have yet to figure out how to keep my knees from crashing into my arms when I try to jump through from adho mukha svanasana (downward facing dog) to sitting. And the ability to balance will always, always be a rare gift that comes and goes.
But that's the fun and the beauty of a yoga practice. There's always something new to discover. My hips are ridiculously flexible, thanks, I'm convinced, to years of doing my homework crossed-legged on the floor in front of the television. But they get even more flexible with every eka pada rajakapotasana (that's pigeon pose and a good reason to give up on the sanskrit names).
In short, every yoga practice is a chance to grow. And, dare, I say it, every day of life is as well.
Part of me resists the notion that my relative grace yesterday -- or at least my attempt to act graceful in this blog -- earned me the deeper challenge of today. I certainly don't believe the Universe was sitting around watching me deal with something as minor as a doctor's appointment and a legal project getting in the way of my assuredly imminent publication and decided, "Hey, if she can handle that, let's see what she does when she has to take a whole day off and miss yoga class."
The Universe does not make things happen to us. They just happen. And we make our choices.
Today, I have chosen to view the sudden change of events as a challenge and a chance to learn more about myself. I have chosen not to view it as proof that nothing interesting will ever happen in my life again now that I am a mother. (Although, choice or no, there have been moments when those have been my thoughts exactly.)
Any moment, Jake will awaken from his nap, I will turn from my computer, and I will go have fun with him. I'm thinking maybe Health Adventure, where for the first time I can watch him toddle in the toddler room instead of crawl.
Hanumanasana (Forward Splits): The Challenge Is to Have Fun
In the spirit of Jack at Health Adventure, I'm going to propose you approach this or any asana you practice today with a sense of play. See if it doesn't become a little bit less challenging.
Hanumanasana, if I'm being honest, has never felt the least bit playful to me. Perhaps because it is a pose that, shall we say, offers much for me to explore.
* Hanuman is often referred to as the Monkey God. He is a playful entity, and this pose is designed to emulate him as he leaps across rivers and mountains. Try to have the same spirit of adventure as you approach it.
1) Stand in a straddle position, feet wide apart, but not too wide to support yourself.
2) Turn your torso to face over your right leg. Turn your feet to face the same direction as your face.
3) Bend both knees and reach your hands to the floor. As your back knee reaches the floor, you will find yourself in a lunge position.
4) Slowly, remembering to have fun, start walking your front (right) foot forward, working your way to splits.
5) Some people will reach the floor, both legs straight. They may reach their hands toward the sky -- not in a position of triumph over those of us who will never know how it feels, but to further explore the pose.
6) The rest of us will explore by finding our edge -- a place where we experience some discomfort, but not pain. To avoid the pain, use blankets, blocks, or anything else you need to support yourself.
7) And here's the challenge. Let go of the notion that this is the last thing you want to be doing right now, and embrace it. Discover new things about your body and about yourself. You might even decide to make it part of your regular practice. If you like a challenge.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Why Waiting for What You Want (and Maybe Not Even Getting It) Is a Gift
So, I've been working on this being a writer thing more or less steadily since I quit my teaching job in 2003. And, not for the first time, I feel like I'm on the verge of it actually panning out. All I've got to do is finish my YogaMamaMe book proposal, get the website up and running, and finally use the spa gift certificate Mike gave me for Christmas because only then will I deserve a full, indulgent day off.
It is, I should explain, not possible for me to do any of this with Jake in the house. Jake loves him a computer. He feels it is just plain rude of me to sit down at my laptop without including him in the fun of hitting keys and brushing his fingers along the touch pad. Given my laughable knowledge about designing a website, I obviously need to spend every last second he is in school hunched over my computer screen.
I figured that's what I would be doing this week. I've got a friend coming to visit for the weekend, but in my reasonably confident of my abilities mind, I felt this would merely serve as a nice break to celebrate the launch of a spiffy, impressive, soon-to-be-crawling-with-visitors website. In other words, my writing "career" was gaining momentum, and I was feeling a cautious optimism.
It was, therefore, inevitable that my life would suddenly get very, very busy. Too busy to accommodate finishing a book proposal and figuring out how to start a website this week.
This is not unfamiliar territory for mothers. If there's one thing young children teach us, it's that control is a big, fat illusion just waiting for a sweet child to pop it like a soap bubble with a cute, fat baby finger.
In this case, all Jake needed was a trip to the pediatrician for his 15-month check up. A more organized mother than I would probably have suggested we combine his 15-month check up with last Thursday's impromptu trip to the pediatrician for a note allowing him back in school with the cherry red, rash-y cheeks caused by the school's laundry detergent. The school apparently harbored some concern about contagion, but this concern seemed to me to be largely misplaced, since the contagious rash that had them worried is viral and no longer contagious by the time the actual rash part happens. But anyone who sends their child to daycare or preschool or school quickly learns that she serves at the whims of the administrators and will save herself a great deal of frustration if she plays along without question.
So not only did I waste my and the doctor's time getting Jake his note on Thursday, but I managed to waste my time today by going back for more or less the same exam. As I said, a more organized mother could have prevented this time fart. If such a mother truly existed. I am fairly convinced she is a combination of fairy dust and old wives tales designed to make us human mothers feel even more frazzled and incompetent than we really are.
Okay, I told myself as I watched my website-creating time fritter away, I'll be home in plenty of time to hit that computer. Except. Why do we notice that we are out of milk only once we are out of it?
Once I got Jake back to school, I was on my way to EarthFare, figuring I'd get in and out as quickly as possible. Which isn't all that quick for me and grocery stores. Worse, halfway through my aisle-by-aisle "efficient" survey of the store it occurred to me that I could have done my shopping this evening with Jake adorning the cart like a cheerful hood ornament. Instead, I was wasting more valuable computer time.
Right, I muttered to myself on the way home. Post a quick YogaMamaMe piece (is there such a thing?). And might as well post this week's story on Hillish Life as well, just because I don't want it hanging over me. Then, finally . . .
Oh, wait. Huge legal project waiting in my email in box. And, oh yeah, I've got to order those contact lenses. And change the secondary beneficiary on my life insurance. And do a couple of loads of laundry. And. And. And.
Waiting Is a Gift
I like to believe there is a reason all these tasks are conspiring to slow me down just as I reach the cusp of finally, finally, maybe making some money for writing something. (Okay, I got that one check for humiliating myself in Newsweek a year and a half ago, but it was a bitter triumph, especially when they refused to print a follow-up piece about how I did in fact get pregnant at 39 and their letter-writing readers who made fun of me were just plain mean and wrong.)
I am being slowed down, I believe, because getting published is becoming a goal, rather than part of my journey as a writer.
What's the difference?
Setting goals is nothing more than a way of fooling ourselves into thinking we are in control. "If I can just achieve that goal, my life will be much better," we tell ourselves. "If I can lose 15 pounds. If I can make six figures a year. If I can be published already."
What happens if we meet these goals? Life is pretty much the same, or modified but still really hard. And we create more goals and spend so much time looking forward to the day we achieve them that we forget to notice all the things happening in our lives while we get there. Chances are, the things we're missing are even more fulfilling than achieving some goal that is probably pretty meaningless in the end.
Even worse, what if you don't achieve that goal? You feel pretty crappy, right? So, let me ask you, why would you set yourself a goal you might not achieve and thus end up feeling crappy with no one to blame but yourself?
This is not to say we should lack ambition. Rather, we need to put our ambitions in perspective. As a yoga teacher, I talk about intentions rather than goals.
For example, if my intention is to touch my toes in uttanasana -- forward fold -- my body will move in that direction, find the proper alignment, and open up in the beneficial ways uttanasana is intended to promote.
If, on the other hand, I set out with touching my toes as my goal, I will likely bend my knees or hunch up my shoulders, noticing nothing but the shortening distance between my fingers and my toes. I will not notice that my hamstrings are untouched, my shoulders are getting bunched up and tense, and my spine is being denied a lovely chance to align itself. I'm missing the yoga journey -- the purpose -- because I have eyes only for the goal.
Living with Intentions
Now, I'm not saying I'm pleased to be giving up my goal of getting published already. Who wants to spend her life plodding along hoping to have someone who isn't a family member or very kind friend read her work? "This is my journey," I am supposed to hum sunnily, like a placid, lobotomized Randle Patrick McMurphy at the end of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
Sorry, can't do it.
The thing is, I don't know that this is my fate. I have no idea what work of mine will be published. I can't predict whether something even more meaningful is going to come my way. And I surely shouldn't discount the joy that is being Jake's mother, published author or not.
Intentions (as opposed to goals) are lovely ways of giving our lives some personal meaning. They are, I feel certain, absolutely crucial for mothers, especially ones like me just emerging from the haze of infant care. You just have to be something more than your child's mother. You don't have to define yourself by a career, just by something that sits in your heart next to your beautiful child.
It's sort of like taking a vacation in Paris. Some of us can wander aimlessly without a destination in mind and be perfectly content to return home a week later without catching sight of the Eiffel Tower, the Arch de Triomphe, a single painting by Matisse, a single water lily by Monet, or the Mona Lisa. (Actually, it's not too tragic to skip the last, hidden behind plastic as I recall her being.)
Most of us, however, would like to see some of the great things we can see nowhere but Paris. So we sit down every morning and map out the places we'd like to go.
Even here we face a choice -- and this is the part of the analogy you should pay attention to if you already feel your mind wandering fuzzily toward a picture of you seated at a sidewalk cafe along the Champs Elysees eating a croissant as a handsome, courtly man inquires whether this seat is taken.
One choice is to make certain we see every point we have mapped out and pay attention to nothing in between so as to not be distracted as you just were by your fantasy of an affair with a French man. How much of Paris will you really have seen if you make this choice?
Or you can set out with the intention of seeing the places marked on your map but remain open the joy of discovering what comes along the way. Pick your head up from your map, and Paris surrounds you, full of treasures you couldn't have planned if you tried.
So I guess that leaves me with Asheville as my Paris. It may or may not be the place I am living when I am published. I may live here the rest of my life without ever selling another piece.
But one thing I do know. Every time I stand up from the computer after finishing a blog entry I feel calm, peaceful, centered. Because I am doing what I love. And if life occasionally has to intervene to distract me from my goals, I should be very, very grateful that it bothers to do so.
Practicing Intention in Uttanasana (Standing Forward Fold)
You knew I'd suggest uttanasana, the forward fold I used as an analogy. And you're probably pretty bored at the idea, since nearly all of us have done a forward fold at some point in our lives and don't exactly need to read a blog to be introduced to this less than novel idea.
But it's not the pose that matters in yoga. It's how you approach it. I've performed uttanasana a million and one times. I've done it when my hamstrings were still massed with scar tissue from years of distance running. (Talk about goal oriented.) I've done it in heated rooms where I was noodly and lean and could place my palms flat on the floor. I've even done it with a belly full of Jack and my legs straddled wide to accommodate him. And it's been different every single time.
So try it mindfully, with an intention to let go of goals.
1) Stand in tadasana, mountain pose, either with your feet hip distance apart or your big toes together, whichever is more comfortable for you. As you engage your quadriceps and draw your navel into toward your spine and up toward your heart, you should feel rooted and steady. Inhale and feel your heart lift. Let your shoulders slide down your back and your tail bone release.
2) Note whether you are tense or relaxed. Are you trying to be a mountain? Or are you letting the idea of a steady, strong mountain inform your intention while you honor where your body is at the moment?
3) When you're ready, place your hands on your hips and, leading with your heart, fold halfway so that your torso is parallel to the floor. Slide your hands down to your thighs or shins for support. Take a moment here to notice if you have already begun to bend your knees, if your shoulders have begun to creep up tensely toward your ears. Relax.
4) Inhale again and let your heart reach forward, lengthening your spine. As you exhale, keep this length and let your head move toward the floor as you fold forward. Place your hands wherever they can rest comfortably -- shin, ankle, the floor, you know it makes no difference.
5) On your next inhale, feel as if you are drawing energy up from your heels to your buttocks. As you exhale, release your navel in and let your upper body drape forward.
6) Be here and be present with your intention.
It is, I should explain, not possible for me to do any of this with Jake in the house. Jake loves him a computer. He feels it is just plain rude of me to sit down at my laptop without including him in the fun of hitting keys and brushing his fingers along the touch pad. Given my laughable knowledge about designing a website, I obviously need to spend every last second he is in school hunched over my computer screen.
I figured that's what I would be doing this week. I've got a friend coming to visit for the weekend, but in my reasonably confident of my abilities mind, I felt this would merely serve as a nice break to celebrate the launch of a spiffy, impressive, soon-to-be-crawling-with-visitors website. In other words, my writing "career" was gaining momentum, and I was feeling a cautious optimism.
It was, therefore, inevitable that my life would suddenly get very, very busy. Too busy to accommodate finishing a book proposal and figuring out how to start a website this week.
This is not unfamiliar territory for mothers. If there's one thing young children teach us, it's that control is a big, fat illusion just waiting for a sweet child to pop it like a soap bubble with a cute, fat baby finger.
In this case, all Jake needed was a trip to the pediatrician for his 15-month check up. A more organized mother than I would probably have suggested we combine his 15-month check up with last Thursday's impromptu trip to the pediatrician for a note allowing him back in school with the cherry red, rash-y cheeks caused by the school's laundry detergent. The school apparently harbored some concern about contagion, but this concern seemed to me to be largely misplaced, since the contagious rash that had them worried is viral and no longer contagious by the time the actual rash part happens. But anyone who sends their child to daycare or preschool or school quickly learns that she serves at the whims of the administrators and will save herself a great deal of frustration if she plays along without question.
So not only did I waste my and the doctor's time getting Jake his note on Thursday, but I managed to waste my time today by going back for more or less the same exam. As I said, a more organized mother could have prevented this time fart. If such a mother truly existed. I am fairly convinced she is a combination of fairy dust and old wives tales designed to make us human mothers feel even more frazzled and incompetent than we really are.
Okay, I told myself as I watched my website-creating time fritter away, I'll be home in plenty of time to hit that computer. Except. Why do we notice that we are out of milk only once we are out of it?
Once I got Jake back to school, I was on my way to EarthFare, figuring I'd get in and out as quickly as possible. Which isn't all that quick for me and grocery stores. Worse, halfway through my aisle-by-aisle "efficient" survey of the store it occurred to me that I could have done my shopping this evening with Jake adorning the cart like a cheerful hood ornament. Instead, I was wasting more valuable computer time.
Right, I muttered to myself on the way home. Post a quick YogaMamaMe piece (is there such a thing?). And might as well post this week's story on Hillish Life as well, just because I don't want it hanging over me. Then, finally . . .
Oh, wait. Huge legal project waiting in my email in box. And, oh yeah, I've got to order those contact lenses. And change the secondary beneficiary on my life insurance. And do a couple of loads of laundry. And. And. And.
Waiting Is a Gift
I like to believe there is a reason all these tasks are conspiring to slow me down just as I reach the cusp of finally, finally, maybe making some money for writing something. (Okay, I got that one check for humiliating myself in Newsweek a year and a half ago, but it was a bitter triumph, especially when they refused to print a follow-up piece about how I did in fact get pregnant at 39 and their letter-writing readers who made fun of me were just plain mean and wrong.)
I am being slowed down, I believe, because getting published is becoming a goal, rather than part of my journey as a writer.
What's the difference?
Setting goals is nothing more than a way of fooling ourselves into thinking we are in control. "If I can just achieve that goal, my life will be much better," we tell ourselves. "If I can lose 15 pounds. If I can make six figures a year. If I can be published already."
What happens if we meet these goals? Life is pretty much the same, or modified but still really hard. And we create more goals and spend so much time looking forward to the day we achieve them that we forget to notice all the things happening in our lives while we get there. Chances are, the things we're missing are even more fulfilling than achieving some goal that is probably pretty meaningless in the end.
Even worse, what if you don't achieve that goal? You feel pretty crappy, right? So, let me ask you, why would you set yourself a goal you might not achieve and thus end up feeling crappy with no one to blame but yourself?
This is not to say we should lack ambition. Rather, we need to put our ambitions in perspective. As a yoga teacher, I talk about intentions rather than goals.
For example, if my intention is to touch my toes in uttanasana -- forward fold -- my body will move in that direction, find the proper alignment, and open up in the beneficial ways uttanasana is intended to promote.
If, on the other hand, I set out with touching my toes as my goal, I will likely bend my knees or hunch up my shoulders, noticing nothing but the shortening distance between my fingers and my toes. I will not notice that my hamstrings are untouched, my shoulders are getting bunched up and tense, and my spine is being denied a lovely chance to align itself. I'm missing the yoga journey -- the purpose -- because I have eyes only for the goal.
Living with Intentions
Now, I'm not saying I'm pleased to be giving up my goal of getting published already. Who wants to spend her life plodding along hoping to have someone who isn't a family member or very kind friend read her work? "This is my journey," I am supposed to hum sunnily, like a placid, lobotomized Randle Patrick McMurphy at the end of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
Sorry, can't do it.
The thing is, I don't know that this is my fate. I have no idea what work of mine will be published. I can't predict whether something even more meaningful is going to come my way. And I surely shouldn't discount the joy that is being Jake's mother, published author or not.
Intentions (as opposed to goals) are lovely ways of giving our lives some personal meaning. They are, I feel certain, absolutely crucial for mothers, especially ones like me just emerging from the haze of infant care. You just have to be something more than your child's mother. You don't have to define yourself by a career, just by something that sits in your heart next to your beautiful child.
It's sort of like taking a vacation in Paris. Some of us can wander aimlessly without a destination in mind and be perfectly content to return home a week later without catching sight of the Eiffel Tower, the Arch de Triomphe, a single painting by Matisse, a single water lily by Monet, or the Mona Lisa. (Actually, it's not too tragic to skip the last, hidden behind plastic as I recall her being.)
Most of us, however, would like to see some of the great things we can see nowhere but Paris. So we sit down every morning and map out the places we'd like to go.
Even here we face a choice -- and this is the part of the analogy you should pay attention to if you already feel your mind wandering fuzzily toward a picture of you seated at a sidewalk cafe along the Champs Elysees eating a croissant as a handsome, courtly man inquires whether this seat is taken.
One choice is to make certain we see every point we have mapped out and pay attention to nothing in between so as to not be distracted as you just were by your fantasy of an affair with a French man. How much of Paris will you really have seen if you make this choice?
Or you can set out with the intention of seeing the places marked on your map but remain open the joy of discovering what comes along the way. Pick your head up from your map, and Paris surrounds you, full of treasures you couldn't have planned if you tried.
So I guess that leaves me with Asheville as my Paris. It may or may not be the place I am living when I am published. I may live here the rest of my life without ever selling another piece.
But one thing I do know. Every time I stand up from the computer after finishing a blog entry I feel calm, peaceful, centered. Because I am doing what I love. And if life occasionally has to intervene to distract me from my goals, I should be very, very grateful that it bothers to do so.
Practicing Intention in Uttanasana (Standing Forward Fold)
You knew I'd suggest uttanasana, the forward fold I used as an analogy. And you're probably pretty bored at the idea, since nearly all of us have done a forward fold at some point in our lives and don't exactly need to read a blog to be introduced to this less than novel idea.
But it's not the pose that matters in yoga. It's how you approach it. I've performed uttanasana a million and one times. I've done it when my hamstrings were still massed with scar tissue from years of distance running. (Talk about goal oriented.) I've done it in heated rooms where I was noodly and lean and could place my palms flat on the floor. I've even done it with a belly full of Jack and my legs straddled wide to accommodate him. And it's been different every single time.
So try it mindfully, with an intention to let go of goals.
1) Stand in tadasana, mountain pose, either with your feet hip distance apart or your big toes together, whichever is more comfortable for you. As you engage your quadriceps and draw your navel into toward your spine and up toward your heart, you should feel rooted and steady. Inhale and feel your heart lift. Let your shoulders slide down your back and your tail bone release.
2) Note whether you are tense or relaxed. Are you trying to be a mountain? Or are you letting the idea of a steady, strong mountain inform your intention while you honor where your body is at the moment?
3) When you're ready, place your hands on your hips and, leading with your heart, fold halfway so that your torso is parallel to the floor. Slide your hands down to your thighs or shins for support. Take a moment here to notice if you have already begun to bend your knees, if your shoulders have begun to creep up tensely toward your ears. Relax.
4) Inhale again and let your heart reach forward, lengthening your spine. As you exhale, keep this length and let your head move toward the floor as you fold forward. Place your hands wherever they can rest comfortably -- shin, ankle, the floor, you know it makes no difference.
5) On your next inhale, feel as if you are drawing energy up from your heels to your buttocks. As you exhale, release your navel in and let your upper body drape forward.
6) Be here and be present with your intention.
Sunday, March 23, 2008
Practicing Not Yoga with a Glass of Wine and 2 a.m. TiVo
There are days when you don't have time for a yoga practice but can still practice yoga.
On these days I still eat in a way that nourishes my body (mostly -- we went to Trader Joe's in Charlotte last weekend and walked out with three packages of Droste dark chocolate pastilles that aren't very good for my otherwise caffeine-free body but that taste oh so good). I can be in the present moment, undistracted by tomorrow and yesterday. I can pay attention to what I am doing and fill even a task like unloading the dishwasher into a mindful yoga practice. (Actually, I quite enjoy the yoga of unloading the dishwasher. It is a close second to the yoga of washing the dishes.)
On these days, the tasks of everyday living -- the rhythm of an orderly-ish life -- seem as important as spreading out my mat and heading for Reverse Warrior. Because sometimes they are.
Then there are the days when you consciously take a break from your yoga practice. On these days, I practice ahimsa, or nonharming, and allow my body to rest and my mind to remain mindful without the assistance of a vinyasa flow. Even hardcore mysore practitioners take full moon days off, after all. It's part of the practice.
There are the days like today when you have foolishly injured yourself in a yoga practice and must take a day off in the hopes that your injury will magically heal itself in time for you to go to class on Tuesday pretending it is a perfectly wise choice to make.
Yep, there I was yesterday morning, three quarters of the way through a lovely, free, not-too-intense astanga primary series, and feeling pretty good about how far my body has come since I really made an effort to recover my post-pregnancy practice in December. I was feeling so good, I decided I was well up to chakrasana, a sort of backwards somersault performed from one's back. With great enthusiasm, I threw my legs and hips over my head, only to realize too late that this move requires the careful placement of the hands next to one's neck. So as to, um, help lift all those pounds contained in one's legs and hips over the far less weighty and delicate cervical spine. Belatedly, I noticed my hands placed carefully at my sides. Hmm, I thought. That's not right. I do not recommend practicing chakrasana in this manner. Unless you too want a day off like this one.
Then there are the days when you need to practice a little bit of Not Yoga.
Practicing Not Yoga
I practiced Not Yoga between midnight and two a.m. last night.
The first clue that I was practicing Not Yoga lies in the fact that it was between midnight and two a.m. Getting enough sleep, you see, is one of the loveliest of all daily yoga practices. Getting it during roughly the same hours every night gets easier as you age and don't have any qualms about turning out the light at 10 on a Saturday night (to sleep, I mean). It gets even easier when you know your toddler is going to wake up at 6:30 regardless of whether it's Easter Sunday or not.
Had you been in the living room with me, you would have spotted the other big clue that I was practicing Not Yoga sitting on the table behind the couch. The big, open bottle of wine had not been left there from a quiet dinner with Mike. It was nothing so cozy and adult and vaguely romantic. It was there so I could coax the maximum quantity out of glass sitting next to it and into my stomach.
Drinking is a mighty rare activity for me, as Mike will be the first to tell you. So plainly something was up. In fact, I had gone through a lot of trouble to open this bottle. You try wrassling a recalcitrant cork out of a cheap bottle of Pinot Noir in your pajamas while holding a 25-pound child in one arm.
Finally, shoved somewhere in the safe depths of the trashcan under the kitchen sink, there are the wrappers from the chocolate chip cookies I scarfed after getting Jake back to sleep. These, coupled with the fact that I actually had to get out of bed and creep downstairs a second time on a quest for the cookies, prove I was on an extended Not Yoga warpath.
No doubt every one of you who has ever experienced life with a 15-month-old knows just why I was sitting on the couch at 2 a.m. watching TiVo'd episdoes of Eli Stone through a growing haze of alcohol and going to bed with the residue of lemon ginger chocolate chip cookies clinging to my unbrushed teeth. Jake was feeling fussy.
Actually, he was feeling fussy at 10:30 when I was in fact brushing my teeth and looking forward to diving into the copy of Look Homeward, Angel on my bedside stand. (I did not throw that detail in to suggest I am studying the masters in the earnest belief that I have a Great American Novel tucked inside me. I'm 41 years old, after all, and grown up in some minor respects. The truth is, Mike bought it in deference to living in Asheville, and I decided one of us ought to read it.)
Jake's 10:30 fussiness seemed pretty honest: real howling and those active back arches that suggest gastrointestinal distress or new teeth or one of the other maladies we can't figure out but like to dose with baby Tylenol anyhow. Like clockwork, we assumed the positions. Mike headed for the daybed in the office. I spread pillows around the edges of the bed. And Jake settled onto my chest for as long as my sore neck could stand it.
His crying ceased after a while, but by then I had made two crucial mistakes. First, I had removed his sleep sac, the better to allow him under the covers in snuggle mode with me. This act communicated quite clearly to him that it was time for breakfast, not bed. Second, I began to reflect on the sad state of my life when I can't even read ten pages of Thomas Wolfe before bedtime and how deeply, deeply tired I was feeling and how my life otherwise is pretty pointless and Jake would be far better off without me.
An hour later, Jake was tossing and turning, sticking his thumb in his mouth as if to say, "I'm trying to sleep, really," while gazing at me out of wide-open clear blue eyes. I was sniffling and moaning, certain that the last thing I deserved was proper sleep or a beautiful little boy or even the husband who got to sleep through this whole sorry scene.
Plainly, the only thing that would make me feel better was television and wine and chocolate chip cookies -- the closest things at hand that were guaranteed to make me feel worse.
The Importance of a Little Vehement Not Yoga
Normally, I wouldn't tell many people (ie., anyone, even Mike) that I sat up in the middle of the night letting my son entertain himself in pajamas and bare feet while I drank wine until it made me queasy and cried the tears of someone who needs to see her therapist more frequently. But the sane corner of my mind knew what I was doing was perfectly fine. Good for me, even.
Sometimes the steady quest for mindfulness leads us to forget that calm and quiet are not normal states for our minds. The mind wanders. It kibbitzes. It fantasizes about the future and obsesses over the past. It tells us quite foolishly that our child would be better off without us.
It hurts when this happens. A lot. And so we try even harder to find the serenity we see in the Dalai Lama's eyes. If he can remain centered and compassionate after spending 49 years in exile, I tell myself, surely I can forgive the caregivers at Jake's school for making me feel defensive about using disposable diapers. (We did the research, really. It leaves just as much of a footprint using all the water and energy to wash cloth diapers as throwing away tons of disposables. We're not the types to make life harder for no good reason.)
The thing is, even the Dalai Lama says he doesn't feel all that serene seeing the violence playing out in Tibet right now. Even he explains that his first instinct upon considering the Chinese government is not to offer his compassion. It takes work.
So, when I ignore the fact that living calmly and mindfully is a hell of a lot of work, I set myself up. Because taking care of a toddler is a hell of a lot of work too. Being a mother, having a career, making sure there's something better than pasta with olive oil for dinner every night is a hell of a lot of work.
Last night my body, my heart, and my mind united for a rare concert of consensus. They told me in no uncertain terms that they were tired, tired, tired from all this work.
And I practiced indulgent, bad-for-me, slightly reckless Not Yoga. I pretended I was hurting myself. But something inside knew perfectly well that what was bad for me was also, in the end, good for me as well.
How Often to Practice Not Yoga, and Alternatives for When It's Too Often
I'd like to say I awoke parched, in great need of a toothbrush, but otherwise unscathed. I'd be lying.
The effects of a good Not Yoga session don't disappear in the dead sleep of the emotionally exhausted drunk. There are consequences. Alcohol consumption slows down a person unused to it for at least a day. Dehydrated bodies feel sluggish. Nighttime binges of chocolate chip cookies leave one feeling jittery and disgusted and eager for more.
Most importantly, it's pretty sad to feel so down on yourself. To state the obvious: it doesn't feel good to do things you know are bad for you strictly for that purpose. It's a trade-off -- part of who we are as human beings, but not necessarily the human part of us we welcome.
So -- aside from the occasional acknowledgment of last night, when I broke a habit of constant self-purification in a way that reminded me my constant quest for self-purification is a bit of a problem in and of itself -- what should I do next time I bury my face in a pillow wetting it with hot, salty tears?
First option, try to find stillness.
Stillness Breathing
There's a moment of perfect stillness with every breath we take -- between the inhale and exhale and between the exhale and inhale. Imagine a pendulum on an old grandfather clock. As it shifts from its swing to the right and prepares to swing to the left, it hovers for one moment, moving in neither direction. So, too, you can not both inhale and exhale at the same moment. The energy in you -- the prana that enters with every inhale, the old thoughts and emotions you release with each exhale -- is perfectly still in between the breaths. Just watching this space, trying to grasp it without holding your breath, is one of the most calming, beautiful exercises I know.
It might even have broken up my pity party last night if I had been inspired to try it.
Savasana (Corpse Pose)
Another option is savasana, corpse pose.
1) If you have room on the floor where a dog will not lick your face and your partner won't come running to give you mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and your child won't be forever scarred by the sight of you stretched out seemingly dead on your bedroom floor, lie down on your back. Let your legs separate a comfortable distance and flop outwards so your ankles turn toward the ceiling; let your arms move a comfortable distance from your body (about 45 degrees) and flop outwards so your palms face the ceiling as well.
2) Close your eyes and relax. Engage your mind in the process. You can continue to observe the moment of stillness between inhale and exhale and between exhale and inhale. Or you can scan your body, starting at your toes, and observe it relaxing. You can chant a mantra if you have one. You can watch your sweet, beautiful heart slowly feel safe and open like the petals of a lotus flower. You can watch your heart energy cover you like a blanket. Every time your mind wanders, bring it back to whatever you have offered to occupy it.
3) When you are ready, slowly return your attention to your breath, letting it fill the shape of your body. Move slowly, first just wiggling your fingers and toes, as if moving your body for the first time, with a new awareness of its beauty.
4) When you feel your body awake but your mind remaining still, roll onto your right side and stay there. You may find yourself in fetal position. Remind yourself how safe this place is. You may also notice that your left hand falls to the floor in front of your heart, protecting it as you move back into the world.
5) Tell yourself and your heart that you are safe. Then, with your eyes still closed, sit up in a comfortable position. Take a moment to settle, to find your stillness, to reassure your heart. Bring your hands in front of your heart in angeli mudra, prayer position.
Bow your head toward your heart and feel deep gratitude for who you are and what your life is at this moment.
On these days I still eat in a way that nourishes my body (mostly -- we went to Trader Joe's in Charlotte last weekend and walked out with three packages of Droste dark chocolate pastilles that aren't very good for my otherwise caffeine-free body but that taste oh so good). I can be in the present moment, undistracted by tomorrow and yesterday. I can pay attention to what I am doing and fill even a task like unloading the dishwasher into a mindful yoga practice. (Actually, I quite enjoy the yoga of unloading the dishwasher. It is a close second to the yoga of washing the dishes.)
On these days, the tasks of everyday living -- the rhythm of an orderly-ish life -- seem as important as spreading out my mat and heading for Reverse Warrior. Because sometimes they are.
Then there are the days when you consciously take a break from your yoga practice. On these days, I practice ahimsa, or nonharming, and allow my body to rest and my mind to remain mindful without the assistance of a vinyasa flow. Even hardcore mysore practitioners take full moon days off, after all. It's part of the practice.
There are the days like today when you have foolishly injured yourself in a yoga practice and must take a day off in the hopes that your injury will magically heal itself in time for you to go to class on Tuesday pretending it is a perfectly wise choice to make.
Yep, there I was yesterday morning, three quarters of the way through a lovely, free, not-too-intense astanga primary series, and feeling pretty good about how far my body has come since I really made an effort to recover my post-pregnancy practice in December. I was feeling so good, I decided I was well up to chakrasana, a sort of backwards somersault performed from one's back. With great enthusiasm, I threw my legs and hips over my head, only to realize too late that this move requires the careful placement of the hands next to one's neck. So as to, um, help lift all those pounds contained in one's legs and hips over the far less weighty and delicate cervical spine. Belatedly, I noticed my hands placed carefully at my sides. Hmm, I thought. That's not right. I do not recommend practicing chakrasana in this manner. Unless you too want a day off like this one.
Then there are the days when you need to practice a little bit of Not Yoga.
Practicing Not Yoga
I practiced Not Yoga between midnight and two a.m. last night.
The first clue that I was practicing Not Yoga lies in the fact that it was between midnight and two a.m. Getting enough sleep, you see, is one of the loveliest of all daily yoga practices. Getting it during roughly the same hours every night gets easier as you age and don't have any qualms about turning out the light at 10 on a Saturday night (to sleep, I mean). It gets even easier when you know your toddler is going to wake up at 6:30 regardless of whether it's Easter Sunday or not.
Had you been in the living room with me, you would have spotted the other big clue that I was practicing Not Yoga sitting on the table behind the couch. The big, open bottle of wine had not been left there from a quiet dinner with Mike. It was nothing so cozy and adult and vaguely romantic. It was there so I could coax the maximum quantity out of glass sitting next to it and into my stomach.
Drinking is a mighty rare activity for me, as Mike will be the first to tell you. So plainly something was up. In fact, I had gone through a lot of trouble to open this bottle. You try wrassling a recalcitrant cork out of a cheap bottle of Pinot Noir in your pajamas while holding a 25-pound child in one arm.
Finally, shoved somewhere in the safe depths of the trashcan under the kitchen sink, there are the wrappers from the chocolate chip cookies I scarfed after getting Jake back to sleep. These, coupled with the fact that I actually had to get out of bed and creep downstairs a second time on a quest for the cookies, prove I was on an extended Not Yoga warpath.
No doubt every one of you who has ever experienced life with a 15-month-old knows just why I was sitting on the couch at 2 a.m. watching TiVo'd episdoes of Eli Stone through a growing haze of alcohol and going to bed with the residue of lemon ginger chocolate chip cookies clinging to my unbrushed teeth. Jake was feeling fussy.
Actually, he was feeling fussy at 10:30 when I was in fact brushing my teeth and looking forward to diving into the copy of Look Homeward, Angel on my bedside stand. (I did not throw that detail in to suggest I am studying the masters in the earnest belief that I have a Great American Novel tucked inside me. I'm 41 years old, after all, and grown up in some minor respects. The truth is, Mike bought it in deference to living in Asheville, and I decided one of us ought to read it.)
Jake's 10:30 fussiness seemed pretty honest: real howling and those active back arches that suggest gastrointestinal distress or new teeth or one of the other maladies we can't figure out but like to dose with baby Tylenol anyhow. Like clockwork, we assumed the positions. Mike headed for the daybed in the office. I spread pillows around the edges of the bed. And Jake settled onto my chest for as long as my sore neck could stand it.
His crying ceased after a while, but by then I had made two crucial mistakes. First, I had removed his sleep sac, the better to allow him under the covers in snuggle mode with me. This act communicated quite clearly to him that it was time for breakfast, not bed. Second, I began to reflect on the sad state of my life when I can't even read ten pages of Thomas Wolfe before bedtime and how deeply, deeply tired I was feeling and how my life otherwise is pretty pointless and Jake would be far better off without me.
An hour later, Jake was tossing and turning, sticking his thumb in his mouth as if to say, "I'm trying to sleep, really," while gazing at me out of wide-open clear blue eyes. I was sniffling and moaning, certain that the last thing I deserved was proper sleep or a beautiful little boy or even the husband who got to sleep through this whole sorry scene.
Plainly, the only thing that would make me feel better was television and wine and chocolate chip cookies -- the closest things at hand that were guaranteed to make me feel worse.
The Importance of a Little Vehement Not Yoga
Normally, I wouldn't tell many people (ie., anyone, even Mike) that I sat up in the middle of the night letting my son entertain himself in pajamas and bare feet while I drank wine until it made me queasy and cried the tears of someone who needs to see her therapist more frequently. But the sane corner of my mind knew what I was doing was perfectly fine. Good for me, even.
Sometimes the steady quest for mindfulness leads us to forget that calm and quiet are not normal states for our minds. The mind wanders. It kibbitzes. It fantasizes about the future and obsesses over the past. It tells us quite foolishly that our child would be better off without us.
It hurts when this happens. A lot. And so we try even harder to find the serenity we see in the Dalai Lama's eyes. If he can remain centered and compassionate after spending 49 years in exile, I tell myself, surely I can forgive the caregivers at Jake's school for making me feel defensive about using disposable diapers. (We did the research, really. It leaves just as much of a footprint using all the water and energy to wash cloth diapers as throwing away tons of disposables. We're not the types to make life harder for no good reason.)
The thing is, even the Dalai Lama says he doesn't feel all that serene seeing the violence playing out in Tibet right now. Even he explains that his first instinct upon considering the Chinese government is not to offer his compassion. It takes work.
So, when I ignore the fact that living calmly and mindfully is a hell of a lot of work, I set myself up. Because taking care of a toddler is a hell of a lot of work too. Being a mother, having a career, making sure there's something better than pasta with olive oil for dinner every night is a hell of a lot of work.
Last night my body, my heart, and my mind united for a rare concert of consensus. They told me in no uncertain terms that they were tired, tired, tired from all this work.
And I practiced indulgent, bad-for-me, slightly reckless Not Yoga. I pretended I was hurting myself. But something inside knew perfectly well that what was bad for me was also, in the end, good for me as well.
How Often to Practice Not Yoga, and Alternatives for When It's Too Often
I'd like to say I awoke parched, in great need of a toothbrush, but otherwise unscathed. I'd be lying.
The effects of a good Not Yoga session don't disappear in the dead sleep of the emotionally exhausted drunk. There are consequences. Alcohol consumption slows down a person unused to it for at least a day. Dehydrated bodies feel sluggish. Nighttime binges of chocolate chip cookies leave one feeling jittery and disgusted and eager for more.
Most importantly, it's pretty sad to feel so down on yourself. To state the obvious: it doesn't feel good to do things you know are bad for you strictly for that purpose. It's a trade-off -- part of who we are as human beings, but not necessarily the human part of us we welcome.
So -- aside from the occasional acknowledgment of last night, when I broke a habit of constant self-purification in a way that reminded me my constant quest for self-purification is a bit of a problem in and of itself -- what should I do next time I bury my face in a pillow wetting it with hot, salty tears?
First option, try to find stillness.
Stillness Breathing
There's a moment of perfect stillness with every breath we take -- between the inhale and exhale and between the exhale and inhale. Imagine a pendulum on an old grandfather clock. As it shifts from its swing to the right and prepares to swing to the left, it hovers for one moment, moving in neither direction. So, too, you can not both inhale and exhale at the same moment. The energy in you -- the prana that enters with every inhale, the old thoughts and emotions you release with each exhale -- is perfectly still in between the breaths. Just watching this space, trying to grasp it without holding your breath, is one of the most calming, beautiful exercises I know.
It might even have broken up my pity party last night if I had been inspired to try it.
Savasana (Corpse Pose)
Another option is savasana, corpse pose.
1) If you have room on the floor where a dog will not lick your face and your partner won't come running to give you mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and your child won't be forever scarred by the sight of you stretched out seemingly dead on your bedroom floor, lie down on your back. Let your legs separate a comfortable distance and flop outwards so your ankles turn toward the ceiling; let your arms move a comfortable distance from your body (about 45 degrees) and flop outwards so your palms face the ceiling as well.
2) Close your eyes and relax. Engage your mind in the process. You can continue to observe the moment of stillness between inhale and exhale and between exhale and inhale. Or you can scan your body, starting at your toes, and observe it relaxing. You can chant a mantra if you have one. You can watch your sweet, beautiful heart slowly feel safe and open like the petals of a lotus flower. You can watch your heart energy cover you like a blanket. Every time your mind wanders, bring it back to whatever you have offered to occupy it.
3) When you are ready, slowly return your attention to your breath, letting it fill the shape of your body. Move slowly, first just wiggling your fingers and toes, as if moving your body for the first time, with a new awareness of its beauty.
4) When you feel your body awake but your mind remaining still, roll onto your right side and stay there. You may find yourself in fetal position. Remind yourself how safe this place is. You may also notice that your left hand falls to the floor in front of your heart, protecting it as you move back into the world.
5) Tell yourself and your heart that you are safe. Then, with your eyes still closed, sit up in a comfortable position. Take a moment to settle, to find your stillness, to reassure your heart. Bring your hands in front of your heart in angeli mudra, prayer position.
Bow your head toward your heart and feel deep gratitude for who you are and what your life is at this moment.
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Learning to Let Go of the Saturday Morning Baby-Free Panic
Here it is again. It's Saturday morning, I'm gloriously still in my pajamas, and Mike has taken Jake on an expedition. We should both be thrilled: he gets the Jake Time of which he manages only snippets during the work week and I get a morning free to practice yoga.
The problem is, I spend most of the time they're gone wandering the house in a panic.
Why should I have so much trouble being without my baby on a Saturday morning when I'm pleased to leave him at school during the week? Maybe it has something to do with the beauty of family time, when I get to enjoy both my son and my partner simultaneously, when I have an adult to talk to while I cheer Jake's ability to throw a tennis ball with impressive accuracy. Maybe it's a nagging feeling that it's okay to be without my son during the work week, when Mommies everywhere do the same; but come the weekend, all good Mommies spend every spare moment with their child, to make up for abandoning him during the week, right?
The real problem, I suspect, lies with my deep-seated sense that I don't get to have time for myself. If I'm not taking care of work or taking care of the house I should, something primal tells me, be taking care of my baby.
Spending Time with Yourself -- and Figuring Out Who "Yourself" Is
Spending time alone -- time meant to be all for me -- requires my knowing what I've been missing in all the time taking care of other people. Knowing what I've been missing requires knowing what I need. Knowing what I need requires knowing . . . myself.
Sounds simple enough, doesn't it?
Not if you're a new mother.
It takes time to figure out who you are after months of full-time infant-care. Never mind that you're necessarily a different person with a new child in your life. It's not as simple as grabbing that old "ME" hat off the shelf where you've carefully stored it for the past year or so, putting it on, and stepping out into the world. "Hey, I'm back. Have you missed me?"
For one thing, I can't imagine I'd know where I put that hat if I had one. We moved across the country when Jake was 8 months old, and I'm quite certain the "ME" hat would have been lost in the move or ended up in the bottom of one of the boxes we "stored" in the basement and will one day throw out because it has grown a scary green mold. Trying to find it now, when I need it, would only divert me into frustration looking for something that probably doesn't fit anymore anyhow.
Which leads me to the second problem with the idea of simply putting on the "ME" hat now that I'm ready to resume being ME again (just ME with a beautiful little boy). It probably doesn't fit. It could be way too small, like those jeans I last wore right before my wedding, the one time in our lives when extra weight just refuses to stay on our bodies, magically making way for the wedding dress we'll wear only once so it had better fit perfectly. (Mine didn't fit as I had hoped because I was too trusting to stand up to the seamstress at the bridal shop who seemed to think that every bride wants an hour-glass figure so extreme she almost wishes she had opted for petticoats or hoops to hide her bulging hips.) Or the hat might fit just fine but look all wrong, like my favorite beaded black DKNY cardigan that was so awesome on me in 1994 but that I regretfully tossed in the Goodwill pile in 1999 when I moved to St. Louis and had to acknowledge that the '90's were beginning to look as unflattering as the '80's.
So how am I supposed to find this woman who is "ME" without a magical hat to bring together the woman I was before I had Jake and the woman I am now?
I'm not. Because the woman I was before Jake no longer exists. And rather than get all teary and sentimental about it -- she was, after all, in better shape, cooler, younger, hipper -- I can focus on the beauty and importance of the woman I am now.
Being Present in the Moment
When we practice yoga, we practice being in the moment. Think about the future as you hold a yoga pose and the only future you will care about is the one where you no longer have to hold this pose. Think about the past, and you will fool yourself into thinking life was much, much better when you didn't have to be in this pose. But stay in the moment, and you will find the beauty of you in this pose, the subtle openings, the length of your spine, the openness of your heart.
Being present in the moment is also how you quiet your mind so you can listen to your heart. Most of us spend way too much time listening to our minds plan what we have to do later in our day or week and way too little time paying attention to what it is we're doing right now. Just think, what you're doing right now is likely something you were looking forward to as a way of distracting you from what you were doing at some earlier moment. Now that you're actually doing it, though, you waste it on thinking about the next thing you'd like to do that you won't appreciate when you get there because your mind will have raced on to the some other future.
Or you might instead find your mind stuck in the past, so focused on the beauty of something that has already happened that you risk missing the beauty of what's happening right now.
Only by being present in the moment can we live our lives fully, shake off the doubts our minds throw at us, and open our hearts fully to the world and all the good things in it.
And one of those good things is you, at this moment, the woman you are right now. She's even more beautiful than the woman you were before giving birth and even more beautiful than the woman you will be once your child is so independent you can spend a whole day reading a good book on the beach, what you used to think vacation time meant.
Who you are in the present moment is beautiful because, being present in the moment, you can fully appreciate her beauty.
Sirsasana (Headstand): A Yoga Pose for Being in the Present Moment
Ideally, any pranayama, any asana will help you be present in the moment.
Personally, I like to practice the astanga primary series on these anxiety-laced Saturday mornings. There's a rhythm to the practice, a level of difficulty that requires full concentration, and a set sequence I don't have to think about, so my mind can quiet.
But, come on, only crazy people do the astanga primary series on a quiet Saturday morning.
For those less crazy, I recommend sirsasana, or headstand. Whether you practice it against a wall or -- for those who've found their balance and courage -- without a wall, it demands full attention. It offers the added benefit of any inversion -- changing your energy, shaking you up, leaving you refreshed and excited for the rest of your Saturday. (And, since any inversion offers this benefit, if sirsasana is not your thing, you can practice sarvangasana (shoulder stand) or viparita karani (legs up the wall), although I'm not going to describe them here because I do, after all, have my astanga primary series to get to.)
Or, for those more sane than I will ever be, go do something quiet for yourself -- read a book, go for a walk, ride your bike, go for a run. Just make sure it is an activity where you can focus on what you're doing instead of what else you're going to do today.
Sirsasana (Headstand)
1) Kneel on your mat on hands and knees. Make sure your hips are directly above your knees. Lower to your elbows and clasp your hands loosely, fingers interlaced.
2) Take a moment to make sure your elbow creases form a straight line, as do your wrist creases. Press the outer edge of your wrists into the floor and note how your shoulders move away from your ears.
3) Maintaining this position, let your shoulders roll toward your ears, to your back, and down your back away from your ears. Feel your sternum lift. See if you can locate your palate and feel a subtle lift there as well.
4) Place your head on the floor between your hands. Once again, do the shoulder loop, sternum lift, and palate lift described above. I have found this practice helps me find the proper placement for my head.
5) Finally, imagine your forearms and the invisible line between your elbows create a three-sided prism of energy extending up to the ceiling. It is this prism of energy you create that will help keep you supported.
6) With your head on the floor, think through the shoulder loop, sternum lift, and palate lift one more time before lifting your hips so your knees move off the floor and you are on your toes. Walk your feet in and bend your knees. Using the wall if it is there, lift one foot from the ground with the knee bent all the way toward your chest. Feel your weight shift into the prism of energy.
7) Generate a stronger prism of energy by pressing your wrists and forearms into the floor, drawing your shoulder blades strongly down your back, and engaging the fire in your abdominals. As you are ready, draw your other knee into your chest as you lift that foot off the floor.
8) Slowly extend your legs upwards, finding yourself in full sirsasana. Remain here for 10-60 slow, deep breaths.
9) When you come down, try to do so with control. Rest in balasana (child's pose).
Remember how to be present in the moment for the rest of your day and return to that lovely place as often as you'd like.
The problem is, I spend most of the time they're gone wandering the house in a panic.
Why should I have so much trouble being without my baby on a Saturday morning when I'm pleased to leave him at school during the week? Maybe it has something to do with the beauty of family time, when I get to enjoy both my son and my partner simultaneously, when I have an adult to talk to while I cheer Jake's ability to throw a tennis ball with impressive accuracy. Maybe it's a nagging feeling that it's okay to be without my son during the work week, when Mommies everywhere do the same; but come the weekend, all good Mommies spend every spare moment with their child, to make up for abandoning him during the week, right?
The real problem, I suspect, lies with my deep-seated sense that I don't get to have time for myself. If I'm not taking care of work or taking care of the house I should, something primal tells me, be taking care of my baby.
Spending Time with Yourself -- and Figuring Out Who "Yourself" Is
Spending time alone -- time meant to be all for me -- requires my knowing what I've been missing in all the time taking care of other people. Knowing what I've been missing requires knowing what I need. Knowing what I need requires knowing . . . myself.
Sounds simple enough, doesn't it?
Not if you're a new mother.
It takes time to figure out who you are after months of full-time infant-care. Never mind that you're necessarily a different person with a new child in your life. It's not as simple as grabbing that old "ME" hat off the shelf where you've carefully stored it for the past year or so, putting it on, and stepping out into the world. "Hey, I'm back. Have you missed me?"
For one thing, I can't imagine I'd know where I put that hat if I had one. We moved across the country when Jake was 8 months old, and I'm quite certain the "ME" hat would have been lost in the move or ended up in the bottom of one of the boxes we "stored" in the basement and will one day throw out because it has grown a scary green mold. Trying to find it now, when I need it, would only divert me into frustration looking for something that probably doesn't fit anymore anyhow.
Which leads me to the second problem with the idea of simply putting on the "ME" hat now that I'm ready to resume being ME again (just ME with a beautiful little boy). It probably doesn't fit. It could be way too small, like those jeans I last wore right before my wedding, the one time in our lives when extra weight just refuses to stay on our bodies, magically making way for the wedding dress we'll wear only once so it had better fit perfectly. (Mine didn't fit as I had hoped because I was too trusting to stand up to the seamstress at the bridal shop who seemed to think that every bride wants an hour-glass figure so extreme she almost wishes she had opted for petticoats or hoops to hide her bulging hips.) Or the hat might fit just fine but look all wrong, like my favorite beaded black DKNY cardigan that was so awesome on me in 1994 but that I regretfully tossed in the Goodwill pile in 1999 when I moved to St. Louis and had to acknowledge that the '90's were beginning to look as unflattering as the '80's.
So how am I supposed to find this woman who is "ME" without a magical hat to bring together the woman I was before I had Jake and the woman I am now?
I'm not. Because the woman I was before Jake no longer exists. And rather than get all teary and sentimental about it -- she was, after all, in better shape, cooler, younger, hipper -- I can focus on the beauty and importance of the woman I am now.
Being Present in the Moment
When we practice yoga, we practice being in the moment. Think about the future as you hold a yoga pose and the only future you will care about is the one where you no longer have to hold this pose. Think about the past, and you will fool yourself into thinking life was much, much better when you didn't have to be in this pose. But stay in the moment, and you will find the beauty of you in this pose, the subtle openings, the length of your spine, the openness of your heart.
Being present in the moment is also how you quiet your mind so you can listen to your heart. Most of us spend way too much time listening to our minds plan what we have to do later in our day or week and way too little time paying attention to what it is we're doing right now. Just think, what you're doing right now is likely something you were looking forward to as a way of distracting you from what you were doing at some earlier moment. Now that you're actually doing it, though, you waste it on thinking about the next thing you'd like to do that you won't appreciate when you get there because your mind will have raced on to the some other future.
Or you might instead find your mind stuck in the past, so focused on the beauty of something that has already happened that you risk missing the beauty of what's happening right now.
Only by being present in the moment can we live our lives fully, shake off the doubts our minds throw at us, and open our hearts fully to the world and all the good things in it.
And one of those good things is you, at this moment, the woman you are right now. She's even more beautiful than the woman you were before giving birth and even more beautiful than the woman you will be once your child is so independent you can spend a whole day reading a good book on the beach, what you used to think vacation time meant.
Who you are in the present moment is beautiful because, being present in the moment, you can fully appreciate her beauty.
Sirsasana (Headstand): A Yoga Pose for Being in the Present Moment
Ideally, any pranayama, any asana will help you be present in the moment.
Personally, I like to practice the astanga primary series on these anxiety-laced Saturday mornings. There's a rhythm to the practice, a level of difficulty that requires full concentration, and a set sequence I don't have to think about, so my mind can quiet.
But, come on, only crazy people do the astanga primary series on a quiet Saturday morning.
For those less crazy, I recommend sirsasana, or headstand. Whether you practice it against a wall or -- for those who've found their balance and courage -- without a wall, it demands full attention. It offers the added benefit of any inversion -- changing your energy, shaking you up, leaving you refreshed and excited for the rest of your Saturday. (And, since any inversion offers this benefit, if sirsasana is not your thing, you can practice sarvangasana (shoulder stand) or viparita karani (legs up the wall), although I'm not going to describe them here because I do, after all, have my astanga primary series to get to.)
Or, for those more sane than I will ever be, go do something quiet for yourself -- read a book, go for a walk, ride your bike, go for a run. Just make sure it is an activity where you can focus on what you're doing instead of what else you're going to do today.
Sirsasana (Headstand)
1) Kneel on your mat on hands and knees. Make sure your hips are directly above your knees. Lower to your elbows and clasp your hands loosely, fingers interlaced.
2) Take a moment to make sure your elbow creases form a straight line, as do your wrist creases. Press the outer edge of your wrists into the floor and note how your shoulders move away from your ears.
3) Maintaining this position, let your shoulders roll toward your ears, to your back, and down your back away from your ears. Feel your sternum lift. See if you can locate your palate and feel a subtle lift there as well.
4) Place your head on the floor between your hands. Once again, do the shoulder loop, sternum lift, and palate lift described above. I have found this practice helps me find the proper placement for my head.
5) Finally, imagine your forearms and the invisible line between your elbows create a three-sided prism of energy extending up to the ceiling. It is this prism of energy you create that will help keep you supported.
6) With your head on the floor, think through the shoulder loop, sternum lift, and palate lift one more time before lifting your hips so your knees move off the floor and you are on your toes. Walk your feet in and bend your knees. Using the wall if it is there, lift one foot from the ground with the knee bent all the way toward your chest. Feel your weight shift into the prism of energy.
7) Generate a stronger prism of energy by pressing your wrists and forearms into the floor, drawing your shoulder blades strongly down your back, and engaging the fire in your abdominals. As you are ready, draw your other knee into your chest as you lift that foot off the floor.
8) Slowly extend your legs upwards, finding yourself in full sirsasana. Remain here for 10-60 slow, deep breaths.
9) When you come down, try to do so with control. Rest in balasana (child's pose).
Remember how to be present in the moment for the rest of your day and return to that lovely place as often as you'd like.
Friday, March 21, 2008
Silencing Your Mind When Your Mind Is on Your Child
"Keep it short," my husband Mike told me, not for the first time, last night. It's been his advice about both of my blogs. "People don't want to read anything really lengthy."
Usually, I ignore him. It's just not in my power to be brief, I shrug to myself. It's part of my writing style to go off on tangents, to present useless observations that I (and probably no one else) find amusing, to write about things that don't matter a whole lot.
But last night something shifted. I had been to a lovely yoga class celebrating the first day of spring earlier in the day, and something fundamental took root in my mind. It was a notion I once knew and practiced but had somehow lost in the 15 months I've been a mother. Like the opening bud on a tree that has slept through winter, I realized that is really is important to be silent.
Huh?
When a small being is dependent on you for all his needs -- for his very life -- it's awfully hard to quiet the chatter in your mind. Forget something and your child might suffer. It becomes a habit, this chattering mind, and as I indulged it the chatter grew. Wondering if Jake is napping at school right now? Why relax in the knowledge that he will nap at some point when I can think about him needlessly? Think about what to feed him this weekend? Hey, if I don't we might end up -- gasp -- feeding him prepared food. Start two blogs where I can blab on and on about the thoughts jumping like dizzy Tinkerbells between brain synapses? Just feeding it, I know, but it feels so good.
Finally, yesterday in yoga class it became okay to shut it off. To be truly silent. Maybe it was starting class with a standing balance sequence. I have never, ever been a natural at balance. It took me years of practice to feel more like a tree in vrksasana (tree pose) and less like a brittle blade of dead grass, felled by a slight gust of wind. Even now, maintaining balance for me depends on not thinking. Vrksasana may be the only time I ever do it.
So, I offer you a challenge. In the middle of your day, when your child is at school or with a nanny or with your partner or even after he is asleep this evening, stand in vrksasana:
Vrksasana (Tree Pose)
Stand in tadasana (mountain pose) -- both feet flat on the floor, legs engaged, navel pulling in toward your spine and up toward your heart, heart lifting and shoulders sliding down your back. Transfer your intention to your left foot; feel it holding you up. Slowly lift your right foot off the ground, bending at the knee. Turn your right knee out to the side and let the sole of your right foot rest on the inside of your left leg. (If you're advanced, you may reach for your right ankle and lift your right foot higher on your left leg.) You can place your hands in angeli mudra (prayer position) at your heart or lift them overhead, whatever feels best. Balance. Keep balancing. This is silence.
When you're done, meditate for five minutes.
And please let me know if you're successful, because I can tell you right now, five minutes of quiet is still way too challenging for my chattering brain. But at least I don't have to subject you to it any longer.
Usually, I ignore him. It's just not in my power to be brief, I shrug to myself. It's part of my writing style to go off on tangents, to present useless observations that I (and probably no one else) find amusing, to write about things that don't matter a whole lot.
But last night something shifted. I had been to a lovely yoga class celebrating the first day of spring earlier in the day, and something fundamental took root in my mind. It was a notion I once knew and practiced but had somehow lost in the 15 months I've been a mother. Like the opening bud on a tree that has slept through winter, I realized that is really is important to be silent.
Huh?
When a small being is dependent on you for all his needs -- for his very life -- it's awfully hard to quiet the chatter in your mind. Forget something and your child might suffer. It becomes a habit, this chattering mind, and as I indulged it the chatter grew. Wondering if Jake is napping at school right now? Why relax in the knowledge that he will nap at some point when I can think about him needlessly? Think about what to feed him this weekend? Hey, if I don't we might end up -- gasp -- feeding him prepared food. Start two blogs where I can blab on and on about the thoughts jumping like dizzy Tinkerbells between brain synapses? Just feeding it, I know, but it feels so good.
Finally, yesterday in yoga class it became okay to shut it off. To be truly silent. Maybe it was starting class with a standing balance sequence. I have never, ever been a natural at balance. It took me years of practice to feel more like a tree in vrksasana (tree pose) and less like a brittle blade of dead grass, felled by a slight gust of wind. Even now, maintaining balance for me depends on not thinking. Vrksasana may be the only time I ever do it.
So, I offer you a challenge. In the middle of your day, when your child is at school or with a nanny or with your partner or even after he is asleep this evening, stand in vrksasana:
Vrksasana (Tree Pose)
Stand in tadasana (mountain pose) -- both feet flat on the floor, legs engaged, navel pulling in toward your spine and up toward your heart, heart lifting and shoulders sliding down your back. Transfer your intention to your left foot; feel it holding you up. Slowly lift your right foot off the ground, bending at the knee. Turn your right knee out to the side and let the sole of your right foot rest on the inside of your left leg. (If you're advanced, you may reach for your right ankle and lift your right foot higher on your left leg.) You can place your hands in angeli mudra (prayer position) at your heart or lift them overhead, whatever feels best. Balance. Keep balancing. This is silence.
When you're done, meditate for five minutes.
And please let me know if you're successful, because I can tell you right now, five minutes of quiet is still way too challenging for my chattering brain. But at least I don't have to subject you to it any longer.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)