Don't Carry the World in Your Shoulder

     I had the most interesting experience attending yoga class Friday.  It was a great class, but as is usually the case, the student (yes, me) didn't just learn the lesson that the teacher taught, but rather what she was ready to hear (finally).
     Today was a rainy foggy day.  It took a full hour to drive the 22 miles to class.  On the way there I kept thinking how nice it would be to do a class full of heart opening poses and meditations.  November has been a full month with both highs and lows, and my heart could use some help.
     I was late, so had to wait outside until the chanting and meditation were over.  Fortunately, I go to class with my Mom, so she had saved a space for me.  I unrolled my mat and began class.  One of the students who had been on time must have asked for heart openers, because she began the class I desired.
     Our instructor, Wendy, is a great teacher.  She carefully sequences classes and adds thoughtful observations.  I began to notice that as my heart grew more open, my chest and shoulders expanded and my neck began to complain.  Not only did it hurt, but it said 'if you don't stop now I am going to have my revenge soon.'  Let's just say my neck has quite a personality.

    Fallen caryatid carrying an urn

             Auguste Rodin

     I felt like Rodin's Caryatid, crushed under the weight of the building she was trying to hold up. I finally gave up on class and laid down on the floor for seriously early savasana.  Now I always tell my students to stop when they need to, but in my heart I was wishing to finally get to do all things. Here I am, however in the body I have it it just can't, yet.  So everyone else around me continued with the class and I lay down.
     Laying down in savasana, as a teacher, I always talk about how it puts together the class, settles it in the body.  In moving, I had felt this deep resistance inside my shoulder to letting go.  I've done a lot of traveling to and from my in laws and seeing my father in law who has dementia.  I have lots of issues inside that shoulder and it didn't seem to want to let go.
      I just laid down on the floor in a receptive posture.  It took a long time for everything to relax down into the floor.  When it did, I intellectually poked around into this resistance in my shoulder and in my heart.  Usually I feel that resistance because there are things that I haven't really admitted that I am thinking.   As I spent time with it feelings arose.
      Part of it was this deep sorrow for my father in law, who is in no way living the life he wanted for himself, although now he's actually pretty content.  Dementia seems to be a pretty happy place for him because he has let go of his worries.  My inner concern is a bit selfish, but I couldn't help feeling that if he were my age (which he was at one time) this is not where he would want to be.
       When I looked deeper into my heart I realized that I also felt lost, like a child running around a huge department store who cannot find her parents.  This is his path and it is not my job to fix it, though I do so love fixing things.
        In this case the 'a ha!' moment did not lead to resolution, just awareness.  Now, what to do?  I imagined that I was a child and sat on God's lap and leaned my head in and let myself feel sad and lost. When I felt His love come towards me, that good feeling was too big a leap. I wasn't ready to feel good. I thought maybe I'll just rest, rather than receive all that love.  When you are down, the step up to content is leap enough.
      Then I just... rested.

       What's funny is my shoulder hurts more now, because it has more mobility and the muscles have been so tightly clenched they don't want to deal with the freedom.  In the last two days I have spent time meditating and relaxing to solidify the gains.  Nothing makes the situation better, but at least now I am not making it worse.
     It was a very, very interesting savasana.

Fallen caryatid carrying an urn
Auguste Rodin

Gut Instinct

Go on your gut feeling when setting goals - because more often than not it'll be right, researchers have revealed.- Mail Online, 30 August 2011

     From our first days in school we are taught to think and reason.  It seems the older I am, the less in touch with my gut instincts I become and I don't like it.  Over-analyzing leads to inaction and long term frustration.  But how to change this?  I've decided my yoga practice is a good place to begin.

       Over the past several weeks, I've been playing around with the idea of center of
gravity in yoga poses.  I've begun visualizing my center of gravity like a lightning bug, just a spark of light in the body ( please forgive the drawing, but just try finding a lovely picture of a body with a lightning bug in it on the internet.... more strange pictures to follow, no doubt. I'm sitting in a coffee shop* and only have my computer and the back of an envelope).  What has been interesting is that, as my awareness develops, that darn little lightning bug is often not where I wish it were.  Even as I sit here writing, I find myself leaning forward, hunching over the computer.  The center of gravity is forward, out of my body and has slowly migrated up to my head.  So I move back, sit upright, relax the shoulders and arms, and feel much better.  The lightning bug of my center of gravity moves back into my body and down into my gut.
        Our yoga class today played around with these ideas.  How to move from the center, rather than the extremities.  How to both be heavy and buoyant at the same time.  How to use gravity and centeredness to expand the heart.  Here is a short practice to begin to play with moving from the gut.

Begin with a few moments of seated meditation.

•  As you take a comfortable seat, give your legs a bit of an inner spiral by grabbing the right thigh with both hands.  Rotate the leg by pressing down with the left hand and lifting with the right.  Do the same with the left thigh.  Rotate by pressing down with the right hand and lifting with the left.  Notice how both sitting bones are more firmly connected to the floor and it feels like more area of the back of the thigh touches the floor.
• Let your awareness come to rest on your breath.  Allow the flow of the breath to bring you into the present time and place.
• Notice if you are leaning forward (into your future) or back (into your past).  Try to bring the body to upright (ish).
• Now, imagine that your center of gravity is in the low belly.  The hips move down into the earth and the body floats upward from it.

This seated practice can be done in the car, while you watch t.v. (in an upright, not reclined position), or while you work on the computer.  If you'd like to continue with the yoga practice...
Come to standing at the front part of your mat (or stand in the middle of your space.  Look down at your feet.

• Most of our feet are initially positioned like this.  Notice how the center line is straight, but the feet fan out away.  This is usually due to overly tight hip rotators.  Notice which one is out further from center.

• Begin to find balance by moving the toes in.  Ideally the feet  are parallel through the second toe.   This begins the inner spiral, just like we did in our seated breath awareness.

• To complete the alignment, move the heels out ever so slightly. As the heels move out, the muscles of the bottom are free to relax, the tailbone moves toward the floor and the lower back assumes it's natural curve.  Notice how the balls of both feet are now touching the floor. (amazing what a small thing can do!)

• Find the center of gravity in the low belly, just like we did while seated.  Allow the hips to be heavy and connected to the legs, feet and the earth.  Really pay attention to your heels, making them heavy, bearing more weight that the toes.  You may feel about to fall down.  This is work in the right direction.  Usually we carry our weight well in front of the body, taking it out of alignment.

Inhale, stretching the arms overhead. Exhale, release the arms back to your sides. Repeat, this time noticing where your center of gravity is.  Does it rise along with your arms? Do you go back to leaning forward?

This time, as you inhale and raise your arms, keep the mind focused on the low belly, keeping the center of gravity down as the arms rise.  Play around with this idea for several repetitions.

Now continue with your regular practice, several sun salutations, standing poses and twists, (whatever you are working at the moment) but just keep bringing your awareness back to your gut. Finish with a few minutes of savasana.  Set your intentions to make decisions from the gut and rest.


*If you are ever in need of coffee in Florence, KY, check out Velocity Bike and Bean on Burlington Pike.  It is right next to Healthy Alternatives and Rettay Chiropractic.

Reflections on Creating

               Here it is!  My website nkyreiki.com has launched.  It is so much like giving birth to a child (though thankfully the gestation was much shorter).  Just like adding that first child to a family, you create the structure to support it (high chair, car seat, bassinet, tiny dishes and cups), decorate the nursery, then go to the hospital to give birth.  The last few weeks I have been nesting, like right before the baby is born (I'll never forget my sister recovering the couch when she was 9 months pregnant, it was a sight).
                Like a new mother, I have not slept for the past two weeks.  I kept waking up at 3 am with visions of website design or ideas for how to fix the things that were bugging me.  This gave me quite a headache when I went to the airport to pick up my mom yesterday.  She was returning from a mission trip to Vietnam.
                At the Naval Academy I studied the Vietnam war extensively.   We had many instructors who had served and I was fascinated with the region.  Maybe I wasn't sleeping also because I was worried about her.  I arrived at the airport when the flight was scheduled to land, so I had time to wait while the bags were unloaded from the plane.
              The temperature was 102 degrees. In the shade.  What's a poor girl with a headache to do?  Lie down of course.  I have learned from Joy the perfect corpse pose or savasana.  I parked in the shade, rolled down all the windows in the car and laid down in the grass.  It was brown and crunchy already, but the world was perfect.  When I got the call to leave the cell phone lot 15 minutes later, my headache was gone.  Completely.

              Mom brought home a picture that expresses the wonderful rooted, grounded feeling we all search for.  This is a tree growing in a Buddhist temple in Vietnam.  Once can see the permanence.  In Poser: My Life in Twenty-three Yoga Poses, Claire Dederer spends a chapter on corpse pose.  She asks "What if the opposite of good wasn't bad? What if the opposite of good was real?"  In my quest for the good (if not perfect) website to express my business, I had let go of the real.  Really there are usually dishes in my sink; really there are usually things on my to do list; really I like it that way.
              For a while I kept a perfect house, it was not comfortable or welcoming. I'm hoping my website is both comfortable and welcoming, please pardon the dirty dishes.

Ah... Savasana

  

              Meet Joy. My cat, playmate and the world’s best yogi.  Her savasana (corpse pose) is so perfect we have been calling her a resident of the boneless chicken ranch for years.  Gary Larson’s cartoon showing chickens with no bones draped around the barnyard like Dali’s melting clocks has always defined what I look for in corpse pose. When I lay down or talk my students into corpse pose, that look shows the feeling we are all looking for.

                How hard can it be? Even my cat can do it. Turns out savasana can be very hard indeed.  When we stop moving the body, it frees the mind to roam. 

                Five minutes of savasana for every 30 minutes of practice is the accepted minimum.  It allows your practice of asana (poses) to penetrate the body and all levels of consciousness.  In the quiet you learn what you have learned.  A few tips to improve this practice.

               Relax the body- Find a quiet position on your back with your palms facing towards the ceiling.  Cover up if it is cold.  Beginners (or say, me, after 8 years of teaching!) find it easier to settle with two 10 lb sandbags positioned in the creases of each groin to settle the heads of the femur bones.

               Relax the mind- If you want a mind like water, you have to remove the dams.  Give your problems over to something or someone else.  Problems tend to cluster in two areas- stuff to do and stuff to worry over.  I have found David Allen’s GTD system takes care of helping release the stuff to do pile.  Give your concerns over to an angel and let the angel hold onto it for the time of savasana.  If you can, leave your worries with the angel because fretting just wastes your energy.

             Get outside help-  One of the biggest helps to relaxing the body and mind is to put weight on your forehead, covering the third eye.  When I can’t go to sleep at night, I use my hand, but for savasana a sandbag can be your best friend.  Place a heavy eye bag on your forehead or a full size sandbag half on the forehead and half on a block.  Then let the hot brain cool under the weight.

          Give these a try.  I’d love your feedback on what works for you. Click on the Ask Me Anything button to share. With practice you, too, can be a resident of the boneless chicken ranch.