I'm on my way to the Carl Sandburg house, and wondering if I learned anything at all yesterday.
It was Saturday, I'd been cutting into my work time entertaining relatives, and I really just wanted to stay home and get some work done. Still, there's a difference between deciding to get some work done and deciding to let Mike and his mother take Jake off for the afternoon without me.
I'm not suggesting anything dramatic here, just a depressing inertia when it came to choosing between staying at home or joining the rest of the family on their outing to the Cradle of Forestry.
I haven't exactly been wanting to visit the Cradle of Forestry since moving to Asheville eight months ago. In fact, I haven't a particularly clear idea of what it is. Mike has this special gift for finding strange little things to do on the weekends that generally involve driving long distances while twisted around in the passenger seat trying to entertain Jake, who is no fan of the long car ride himself.
No, the crux of my indecision had nothing to do with the particular destination. It was the fact that the rest of the family had a destination and I didn't.
For some reason, it's always been difficult for me to reject a planned activity, no matter how uninteresting, for time spent alone. Analyze it if you will, but bear in mind that now Jake has been introduced into the equation. At this point, it has as much to do with giving up time with my boy as with my own issues about being left alone.
So, hoping to have learned from the yoga lessons I've offered here, I carefully considered my options and waited to hear what my heart had to say about it.
And here is where I imagined someone reading this blog, taking my advice, and throwing up her hands in disgust.
What I realized as I meandered about the house watching Mike pack Jake's diaper bag and mumbling something incoherent when he asked if I was coming was that the choices we make are sometimes of little consequence to our hearts. My heart, apparently, was busy with bigger questions than whether to leave my house for a few hours or stay home. It simply had no answer for me.
It's Not Always a Question of Heart Versus Head
The lesson here, I think, is that yoga, like anything that seems to make life easier, can become a bit of a crutch. I spend my days grabbing at bits of yogic philosophy -- like learning to follow your heart instead of your head -- and somewhere along the line I become convinced that there is a simple solution to every neurotic hiccough of my mind.
So yesterday, as the adrenaline started to buzz up from my ankles toward my brain at the prospect of choosing between a Saturday afternoon alone or on an outing, I grasped for something to ward off the panic.
"Do what your heart tells you," I reminded myself. The adrenaline buzz tapered off to a slight humming in my fingertips. "Don't get caught up in what you think you should do."
Ah, relief was on its way. I didn't have to be beholden to what I thought I was supposed to do as a good daughter-in-law. One trip to the Cradle of Forestry simply wasn't going to appreciably affect my mother-in-law's estimation of me. Nor did I have to stay home because I had set some artificial deadlines about getting work done. So few people read this blog to begin with that I sincerely doubt anyone will really notice if I go a day or two without posting anything.
"Well," my mind said, giving up with nary a struggle as it turned to my heart. "What do you say?"
My heart responded quite clearly. It really wanted to spend time with my baby boy and the husband I see so little of during the week and the mother-in-law I don't see for months at a time. But it also really, really wanted some uninterrupted writing time, some time to be alone and quiet after all the noise of family gatherings.
In other words, my heart wasn't going to give me an easy answer.
What a beautiful gift. Of course I wanted yoga to make all of my life easier, especially the bits spent trying to figure out how to be a good mother and a happy person. But part of figuring these things out -- part of anything important, really -- is engaging in a struggle. Life just isn't always easy, answers rarely are when you're a grow-up, and having several equally good options is, when you think about it, a blessing.
Put another way, do I want my asana practice to be a challenge or do I prefer to drift through it without testing my limits?
Discomfort Versus Pain
It still kind of bugs me when I mention doing yoga to someone who doesn't and they smile kindly and say, "Oh, yoga," in a way that conjures up images of a bunch of people lying around on the floor being mellow. The point of a yoga practice isn't merely to relax, though it's a lovely benefit. It's also important that we challenge ourselves.
One of the essential elements of an asana practice is learning to face discomfort with calm. And the whole reason we challenge ourselves to experience discomfort is to help us face the discomforts that are a part of life.
It's kind of uncomfortable just acknowledging that life isn't always comfortable, isn't it? I think about the stories I hear of women who schedule Caesarean births without a medical reason. I don't mean to judge them, because they may have perfectly legitimate reasons for doing so. But they are also recognizing that the miracle of birth (and, cheesy as it sounds, it is a miracle) comes from the supreme discomfort (for both parties) of a vaginal birth.
[Wow, just re-read this a few hours after posting and realized it sounds like I'm saying the miracle of birth somehow doesn't come from a Caesarean section, and boy would I be offended if I had had one and read that. Thank goodness for the Caesarean -- and thank goodness for the vacuum-delivery I had. But most of us do -- again, unless we have medical reasons -- get to experience just a little bit of the discomfort that was, until modern medicine starting saving many a woman's life, the precursor to a vaginal birth. And really all I meant was to point out that the Universe often demands we move through discomfort to find joy.]
Pretty much everything does, when you think about it. (I mean, pretty much everything good comes from discomfort, not, specifically, the discomfort of a vaginal birth.) No one floats through life in a cheery bubble of ease. And all the efforts of those who think it's possible are just giving them a false sense of control. After all, what is it that people most often turn to to avoid discomfort? Money? Possessions? Drugs? We all know by now that they don't make you happy; they just distract you enough from real life to make you think you are.
So I was pretty off-base yesterday when I was hoping I could avoid the discomfort of deciding to spend some time all for myself by using a bit of yogic philosophy. Because why would yoga help me avoid discomfort when it's all about helping me face it?
Then there's the other piece of discomfort that reminds me I should feel gratitude for experiencing it.
In every asana practice, we have a chance to experience discomfort. But we also have the power to experience pain. Take any pose, push yourself too hard, and pain can result. Pulled muscles, a broken toe or two, a sore neck. So not only do we get to learn to face discomfort, but we have to learn to face it without causing ourselves pain.
Of course, the difference between an asana practice and real life is that on a yoga mat, in the safety of a yoga class, we get to choose between discomfort and pain. In life, we don't.
So, in the end, wasn't I lucky all I had to deal with on Saturday was a little bit of discomfort? In the big scheme, the decision I had to make was beyond minor. Having it be difficult let me practice experiencing discomfort with grace. And, if I chose to take the lesson to heart, it was also an opportunity to feel grateful that there was nothing painful involved.
Aren't we all lucky if we're living in a moment without pain? And, if so, what's a little bit of discomfort but a reminder of how lucky we are?
Experiencing the Joys of Discomfort
I ended up having a perfectly lovely Saturday afternoon -- so lovely that I had intended for it to be the centerpiece of this essay. Instead, I have wandered off to discover more important things to discuss and, in the process, have inadvertently deleted the paragraph I wrote about just how lovely it was.
My afternoon went something like this: A ringing loneliness in the house as I found myself alone with the dogs, who rarely accompany me to my office as cozy hounds should, but sulk in the living room all day waiting for someone to rub their bellies or take them for a walk.
This feeling was something akin to that first moment you start to stretch a tight muscle. Not so great.
But rather than dwell on the loneliness, I sat down at my computer to do the writing that was the point of my staying home -- much as stretching a muscle is the point of undertaking the asana that starts out making us so uncomfortable.
As I wrote, I forgot all about the loneliness. I was absorbed, satisfied, following my heart. I had found my edge -- that point of discomfort in a pose -- and stayed with it until the discomfort melted away.
As I continued to stretch, I finished my writing and felt so much energy that I installed the long overdue gate at the top of the stairs. For the past eight months, I have merely cautioned Jack to stay away from the stairs, often with a worried yell from the bedroom when he wanders out as I'm getting dressed. Naturally, the reason he has not fallen down the stairs is because he was listening to me, not because I am really lucky.
And then I was done working and got to experience the joy of sitting outside reading a book on a Saturday afternoon. I'd like to repeat that because it's not something I ever thought I'd be writing about for the next ten years or so. I got to sit and read a book, and it wasn't the ten minutes in bed at the end of the day before my eyes clunk closed with the utter exhaustion of entertaining a toddler.
The point is, I experienced joy in a way I just don't think I would have if I hadn't come to it through discomfort. And, believe it or not, I have experienced joy in stretching asanas as well, even if they start out mighty uncomfortable indeed.
Pascimottansana (seated forward fold)
Pascimottanasana is so simple and yet so often not fun. It involves stretching hamstrings, which we rarely do and therefore allow to get really tight. It also requires an open lower back and strong abdominals -- both sabotaged by years of sitting in chairs. And it just isn't a very sexy pose, so it's hard to get excited about embracing it in search of joy.
It is also, however, a wonderful way to meditate on discomfort and to find how quickly the discomfort dissolves if we just stay with it.
1) Sit on the floor with your legs out in front of you. Place your hands next to your hips for support. If you can not sit this way without bending your knees, try sitting on the very edge of a blanket -- just your sitting bones should be on the blanket, not the backs of your thighs.
2) Flex your feet so your toes point toward the ceiling. At the same time, let your inner thighs roll toward the floor.
3) Very gently pressing your hands into the floor, let your shoulder blades slide down your back while your heart lifts. Pull your navel in toward your spine and up toward your heart. Your lower back should lengthen.
4) Sit here for five deep, long breaths as you gaze at your toes. Observe where you are tight. Don't back away from it. Instead, breathe into it, seeing if it releases on the exhale.
5) Inhale again, consciously lifting your heart and drawing your navel in. As you exhale, let your heart lengthen toward your feet as you lean forward. Let your hands move down the sides of your legs to support you.
6) Stop when you start to feel discomfort/tightness. Place your hands on your thighs or shins (or, if your are very open, your big toes or the outsides of your feet).
7) Check in to make sure you haven't backed off by flexing your feet, straightening your knees, and letting your sitting bones subtly move toward the back of the room.
8) Inhale and lift your heart again as you lengthen your spine.
9) Keeping this length, exhale and fold forward until you find your edge -- the place where you feel discomfort but not pain.
10) Be here, breathing, observing. Try not to let your mind wander -- instead, let it check in with the integrity of the pose. Feel each inhale travel from the soles of your feet out your sitting bones. Let each exhale move from the base of your spine out the crown of your head.
11) Notice when the discomfort dissolves and decide if you want to move a little deeper into the pose.
12) Hold for anywhere from 10 long, slow breaths to several minutes.
13) Release slowly, letting your heart lift your torso. Bounce your legs around in any way that feels good to release them
A simple pose for a simple choice. Who can believe I'd write so much about not going to the Cradle of Forestry?
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