My Child Broke My Japa Mala

What does it mean when your child breaks your japa mala?



A japa mala is a set of prayer beads some people use when chanting to Hindu or Buddhist deities. I got mine during my month of is-this-me?, Indian-print-skirt-wearing, chanting-at-five-in-the-morning, living-on-an-ashram yoga teacher training. I can't say I've used it a whole lot since returning to my world of blue jeans and computers; I'm not good about meditating, and I don't remember any of the chants anyhow. Plus, my japa mala was kind of defective, sporting something less than the 108 beads necessary to help you keep track of your chants.

So the answer to my question may very well be: nothing at all. There is no reason to attach gloomy symbolism to Jake's pull at the beads he rather adorably draped around his neck, nor to the way they tumbled onto his diaper table. This common child act did not illustrate the break with inner peace having a baby has wrought; it did not suggest that in becoming a mother I have broken with my life's path.

Although I did suggest to Mike that it would be be sort of disrespectful to throw the beads away in the diaper pail.

So did it really mean nothing? Or is the issue not what happened but how I choose to view it?


YogaMamaMe

The whole point of YogaMamaMe, of course, is to share the ways I find to stay centered when I'm tipping over as frequently as my toddler running after the dogs.

I no longer have the luxury of taking off for a month to live on an ashram outside Boulder, Colorado, where my responsibilities are no more onerous than memorizing the sanskrit names of poses, helping in the kitchen once a week or so, and showing up for the aforementioned chanting. (A friend who had been through the program before offered the helpful suggestion that I join in the dancing around with symbolic items like an umbrella during the evening chanting because it was preferable to spending yet another hour sitting cross-legged on the floor. You have no idea how much it can hurt to sit cross-legged on the floor for six or seven hours a day. And until you've done it, you can't truly appreciate just how much fun it can be to twirl around with an umbrella in a sacred dance.)

Nor is there any way to guarantee myself daily, focused, intense asana practices. Even if I could find the plethora of classes available to me in the distant past of our home in West Hollywood, I have neither the mental focus nor the physical energy to practice the way I used to. Rather than my classes providing me with a sure, clear path to mindfulness, they now are mostly a chance for me to feel not quite so old and like I can have fun without a laughing little boy in the room.

With my mind necessarily on my child, I also can't eat as purely as I once did, sleep as regularly as I need, or spend the oh-so-precious time being quiet that I found I needed once I embraced my years of living alone.

A deeply dedicated life of yoga, to put it bluntly, is a deeply selfish life indeed. Easily shared with a sweet, patient basset hound, but less so with a child who rightly demands as much attention as you can possibly muster for him.

So there's the choice I've made. My life is about my child and my husband and my nice enough but far from replacement dogs. It's about moving to Asheville, where the air is clean and the neighbors are friendly and our porch is an excellent place for playing. My child is my center, right there in my heart, and he leads me in directions that have more to do with his inner peace than mine.

Mine, I am realizing, must be found in the jumble of a life filled with wooden blocks, colorful board books, and lots of time spent at the dining room table with a boy in my lap eating sweet potatoes or corkscrew pasta or the ubiquitous yogurt.


That Connection to Everything

It's funny, how when I think about those days when yoga more or less defined who I was -- or at least was the means for me to search for and express that person -- I see myself alone. Not alone in a bad way. Just free and easy and unhassled. Able to create my own rhythm, to find my spaces of silence, to create my own type of meditation somewhere in every day. Powerful and centered without a shifting phalanx of baby chores to throw me out of that center.

I wasn't lonely in this alone place because I maintained my awareness that -- as we believe when we practice yoga -- we are all connected. I wasn't on this journey alone because I drew energy from outside of myself. It's like when you practice asanas in a room full of good will and camaraderie; your practice is easier, more soaring, stronger than when trying the same poses alone in a room at home. We all have known times when the people around us created a certain energy that affected us. At the very least we have all felt that electrifying surge of happiness created by our child's beaming smile.

So maybe, once you have a child, the challenge is to step out into that world to which you're connected. It's one thing to carefully receive and offer energy, to do so within the safely constructed confines of your independent days. It's quite another to have your energy, your heart, demanded, and then, when you think you have no more to give, to have love thrust at you so eagerly you can barely breathe for joy. It's proof, isn't it, that we're not in control?

For me, those first years of yoga were about freeing myself, opening my eyes and my heart. Maybe I needed to be alone to find it, able to step out of the comfortable patterns of reasonable, regular job, lovely home I could just barely afford, and mornings at the gym doing all my motion and sweating before showering and donning the clothes of respectability. (That last bit might be disputed by the students in my very first law school class, a few of whom suggested on teacher evaluations that a real lawyer doesn't wear short skirts and tights. So you see how far I was headed off my path when I succumbed to tailored pants and safely long skirts.)

But you don't progress -- in yoga or in life -- if you don't challenge yourself. And what better way to truly understand the challenge of our connection to all things than to become a parent? Never mind biology; I'm talking about that intense, shapeless bond that comes from being a mother, no matter who gave birth to your child. If ever there were proof that we are not strictly autonomous, independent beings, this must be it. That this intense bond carries with it some mighty difficult struggles -- sleepless nights and loss of your quiet time and reading Good Dog Carl twenty or thirty times a day -- only proves that it's real. Because, after all, no one said life is without struggle.

In the end, I suppose, Jake breaking my japa mala did mean something. It meant that I haven't had the time and patience to sit and meditate in the six years since I lived on the ashram so I ought to find another means of meditation. It meant that I'm no longer the woman dancing with an umbrella in my swinging Indian print skirt. It meant that Jake has something to say about what yoga means to me now, how to find my way to mindfulness, and what it means to to be Yoga. Mama. Me.


Meditation in Motion: Surya Namaskar B (Sun Salute B)

I toyed with a few versions of sun salutes to offer here. The beauty of any sun salute lies in the repetition, in bringing consciousness to poses you've practiced many, many times before. It's a reminder of the cyclical nature of life, and also of how complacent we can become. "Been there, done that," or something like it, lets us become bored, restless, certain we need something more from life. So in repeating the motions, we learn to move beyond the fallacy that we have, in fact, done them before, because we haven't done them exactly the same way. And, of course, practicing the same cycle over and over frees you to not think about what you're doing so much as to observe it, to quiet your mind, to, yes, meditate.

I chose Surya Namaskar B in particular for a few reasons. First of all, it's pretty strenuous, and I'm in need of a kick in the pants right now. Since it's strenuous it's also heating, and heat brings energy. It offers opportunities for pronounced heart opening. And, fittingly, it incorporates Virabhadrasana I -- Warrior I, and, well, need I say more than "warrior"?

Surya Namaskar B Instructions

1) Stand at the top of your mat in tadasana (mountain pose): feet either together or hip distance apart, inner thighs rotating toward the back of the room, tail bone tucked, navel moving toward the spine and up toward the heart, shoulder blades down the back, heart lifting, crown of the head open to the sky.

2) Inhale and sweep your arms to the sides and overhead, hands meeting at the top. Let your arms be energetic and at the same time think about the energy all around you that you are gathering to begin your sequence.

3) Exhale and sweep your arms to the sides as you swan dive into uttanasana (forward fold). Be sure to lead with your heart, keeping your spine long by strongly pulling your navel toward your spine and rotating your inner thighs toward the back of the room.

4) Inhale as you place your hands beneath your knees (or, if you are more flexible and experienced, on your ankles or the floor) and let your heart lift you half-way up. Your torso is parallel to the floor, your shoulder blades are moving strongly down your back, and you are gazing at the floor to keep your neck, and your entire spine, long. Think of offering your heart in this position.

5) Exhale back into a deep, surrendering uttanasana. Let your thoughts and tensions fall out the crown of your head with your breath.

6) Inhale and step back to plank pose -- or upper push-up position, arms shoulder distance apart, fingers spread wide, palms pressing into the mat. The key to this pose is to create energy in your legs and core so your arms aren't doing all the work. Rotate your inner thighs toward the ceiling, draw your navel in toward your spine and up toward your heart, and -- here's a really helpful hint -- pull your shoulder blades so far down your back that your heart moves toward the front of the mat. This places more of the work in your back, rather than your arms.


7) Exhale and slowly lower to the floor (or, if you are more experienced, cadaranga, hovering a couple of inches from the floor). It is really important here to keep your inner thighs and abdominals working, and to pull your elbows so close to your sides they brush against your ribs. Your whole body should lower to the ground in one piece.

8) Inhale into bhujangasana (cobra pose) -- elbows hugging in to your sides, shoulder blades down the back, inner thighs rotating toward the ceiling, and your heart literally lifting away from the floor. Keep your arms bent and your pelvis on the floor so the back bend happens behind your heart, not in your lumbar spine. (If you are experienced and lowered into cadaranga instead of all the way to the floor, you may inhale into urdhva mukha svanasana (upward facng dog) rather than bhujangasana.)

9) Exhale, tuck your toes, and lift your hips into adho mukha svanasana (downward facing dog). Be sure not to dump your weight into your hands; keep it moving back toward your feet as you continue to pull your navel in and rotate your inner thighs back.

10) Inhale and step your right foot between your hands, drop your left foot to the floor (at about a 45 degree angle so your toes point toward ten o'clock) and, keeping your right knee bent toward a right angle, sweep your arms up overhead, bringing your torso with them (perpendicular to the floor). You are in Virabhadrana I (Warrior I). Keep your shoulder blades moving strongly down your back.

11) Exhale and, with a long spine, bring your body back down so your hands are on the floor on either side of your right foot. You may either inhale into plank and exhale as you lower to the floor or skip the inhale and come from Virabhadrasana I all the way to the floor (or cadaranga) on one exhale.

12) Inhale into bhujangasana (or urdhva mukha svansana).

13) Exhale into adho muka svansana (downward facing dog).

14) Inhale stepping your left foot forward into Virabhadrasana I.

15) Exhale your way to the floor (or cadranga).

16) Inhale into bhujangasana (or urdhva mukha svansana).

17) Exhale into adho mukha svansana.

18) Remain here for five long, slow, deep inhales and exhales.

19) After your last exhale, either walk or hop to the front of your mat.

20) Inhale, lifting your spine parallel to the floor, hands on shins, ankles, or floor, offering your heart.

21) Exhale into a deep uttansansa (forward fold). Surrender completely.

22) Inhale and let your heart lead you, with long spine and arms reaching out to the sides, to standing. Your hands will meet overhead.

23) Exhale and draw your hands in front of your heart.

Your intention should be to eventually repeat this four or five more times. But, as we all know, it's best to be kind to yourself when you're a parent (and, by the way, when you're not). If you don't have the time or the stamina to do this sequence more than once, then embrace that fact, and the energy you are still bringing yourself and, yes, the little being who is responsible.