Errors are Desirable

       "If you could give me advice about how to live my life, what would it be?"  The question arrived by email from my son last year and. in some ways, took over my life.  Here is the next page of my answer.
        Error is the first word in the quote from Ulysses and ironically (or, should I say, truthfully) the quote is in error.  I copied it from a secondary source without checking.  So my quote welcoming in errors is itself an error.  Life is so much fun if you pay attention!
        Now, I don't have a copy of Ulysses (and don't want to read it right now anyway) but from several sources on the web, I found this 'A man of genius makes no mistakes. His errors are volitional and are the portals of discovery.'
       Interestingly enough, for my purposes, the misquote works better.  I don't think my son sees himself as a 'man of genius' so might just dismiss the idea as inapplicable.
       I just love the idea that errors are desirable.  In the TV show The Dog Whisperer each time the dog does an undesirable behavior, the host, Ceasar Millan, would say good.  He saw each moment as a teaching moment.  If the dog only behaved well around him, the visit would be completely wasted.  It's just like I tell my yoga students, pain can be a good thing because it tells you when to stop.
          The other errors on this page are legion.  It is the second thing I have drawn since what feels like kindergarten (remember how I talked about imbalance last week?).  Freeing up the hand and wrist, so comfortable in the structure a yoga arm balance, to move fluidly on the page was just not gonna happen.  I also had this idea that the walls had to be straight and the barrel vault circular so I traced something round (can't remember what) and used a ruler.  The result is fairly rigid, but I figure I have years of ugly drawings waiting to be released from me.  It should be interesting.
          I haven't looked at the page since I drew it mid June, so about a month and a half.  In opening the book today I found I really liked it.  Errors really are the portals to discovery after all.

When Life Catches Up to You

     There I was.... a good idea, a blank page and a (really) bad mood.
(Editor's note: if this ever gets published you know it is an act of Divine Providence.  Look what's sitting on my keyboard. Don't believe the guilty look on her face, she loves messing with me.  Meet Joy, the cat who owns the house we live in.  Hopefully with a bit of attention and appeasement I'll get the keyboard back.  Back to our originally scheduled programming.)
     I just wasn't willing to wait for the inner sunshine to break out, so I prayed for things to go well (the prayer on the inner cover) and dove into the Bible.  Where better to get life advice?
        In browsing through the psalms, number 99 struck me.  It just seemed right.  As I was copying it, I kept second guessing myself.  I made enough errors that I had to rip out the first page of my project.  Who came up with this psalm anyway?  I persevered, copied the darn thing, and put the book away for a week.
      When I came back to it later it seemed to fit my son perfectly.  It feels right again.

       Filling the blank space at the bottom was quite a task.   I knew what I wanted but have absolutely no drawing skills.  That is one of the purposes of this book. After all how do you get to Carnegie Hall?   Practice!
       The idea came from a blank day.  How often does that happen? The calendar was completely blank.  No husband, no kids, only the cat.  I had no idea what to do with myself.
As I meditated on this feeling of rootlessness I realized that the feeling was based on imbalance, both in my past and my present.
        I always used how I was serving others to order my day.  Running the boys to and from school, going to speech meets, making dinner, shopping, errands- these things do not a life make.  They are clutter.  Important clutter if you like to eat dinner and have a family, but they distracted me from the inner balance needed to set order to a day completely alone.
        If imbalance in life hurts, what does that look like?  I drew up several scientific balances, three chain configurations (and three types of chains).  The break in the word was obvious (im-balance, I mean, how imbalanced is that, right?)  The little crushed guy was my favorite part.  He just looks so surprised that life caught up with him.
       What did I do with my blank day?  Spent some time in Kindergarten, taking my crayons back.  It was great fun.  Go get some of your own and restore a bit of balance.

(Editors final note (I promise!)  Now we know God is real. Joy moved to her bed and is continuing to sleep even as I write this.  And there was great rejoicing...)

Begin All Things with Thought and Grace

   So, after a long hiatus, I'm back. It wasn't a case of writer's block.  In the blogger archives I have 19 unpublished posts and my journals are full, but somehow the material felt more personal, less something to share.  Also, my life has really changed in the past year.  My younger son is in college year round and my older one graduated and has a job in another city.
      I look at this time as a great exhale.  In yoga I teach to exhale first, making room for the air you want to inhale. Relax first, then engage the muscles you'd like to use. It has been strange watching this in my life.  The old  things are slowly moving out, revealing lots of interior work to be done, but also making room for the new.  It gives me the time to do some things I have always wanted to do like going on retreat.
      Retreats are like meditation, they make your life so much better, but it is so easy to put it off to some later time, some time when I have nothing to do...  In May I went on an art retreat at St. Meinrad's Archabbey. It was wonderful and is bearing interesting fruit. The first fruit is the journal you see in the picture.  It is a compendium of quotes, poems, psalms and life lessons.
      Last fall I received an email from my younger son forwarding a reddit post about the 25 things I wish my parents had told me.  He asked if we had anything to add.  I thoroughly enjoyed the post, but didn't feel like I had anything to contribute.  When I saw the notebook in the gift shop at St. Meinrad's in May, I realized my contribution just needed a different format, a journal not just an email.
      A few weeks ago I showed the beginnings to him and he recommended that I add the creation of the pages and notes to my blog, so here it is:

        The fox on the cover captured my imagination.  On Memorial Day, my son and I were walking through Cave Hill Cemetery in Louisville, Kentucky.  Spending time together on Memorial Day got us both thinking about who we are and how we move in the world.  My son said the animal that best expressed his energy was a fox.  He is friendly, playful, and a bit tricksy.  As his friends would say, he's a "terrible person." In their parlance, someone that is fun to hang out with.

    On the inside cover is the best piece of advice anyone can receive.  "Every time you begin a good work, you must pray to Him most earnestly to bring it to perfection." Rule of St. Benedict prologue.
      Written over 1500 years ago, the Rule outlines how to live in community and it is still followed by monasteries around the world.  With this kind of testing for my first bit of advice, how could I go wrong?  Begin all things with thought and grace, allowing God to work through you to bring the work to its fullness. May this work be blessed and provide guidance.

Finding Your Why

         How is it that so often what we want to do, what we 'should' do is so hard?  Why is it that something we love uses up all of our willpower to just begin, much less finish?  For me the root motivation is always my "why?"  Why to get up in the morning, why to eat well, why to be kind to the telemarketer, why do anything at all?
        I wrote about the power of meaning in these three posts about ikigai (the Okinawan word for life purpose).  Somehow or another I just keep finding areas in my life that I have forgotten to apply this to.  Last week I discovered another neglected region.
       In January 2013, I became mostly vegan (here are my influences).  It was very intellectually satisfying and there is so much scientific evidence, but the buzz didn't last.  Another big factor is my commitment to the environment.  We have relatives living in New Jersey, and with each trip east there are more factory farms on the Pennsylvania turnpike.  Each time we travel, it reminds me of how detrimental this concentrated waste stream is to the local ecosystem (not to mention the animal suffering).  More about this here.  Again, day to day commitment was challenging.

     I had a major "Ahah!" moment last week when I was out running.  How do I see myself?  How do I make my life easier?  I'm not an environmentalist and my heart always beats my head in big decisions, so who am I?   I have always seen myself as an athlete and never heard the words "you can't" without saying "yes I can!"  I realized in the past I had read 3 books that provide my motivation.   Four days later, I purchased them and found my purpose again.
    Eat and Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness by Scott Jurek is a voyage.  He takes us through is life (as quirky as our own) that leads to health and purpose without discounting the struggles to get there.  There is a recipe at the end of each chapter, but the most important part, for me, is the reality of his journey.  He lets us in on the physical, emotional and spiritual pitfalls he has encountered.  It is so approachable.

      My next book is Thrive: The Vegan Nutrition Guide to Optimal Performance in Sports and Life by Brendan Brazier.  He has an emphasis on live, easy to digest foods the are portable and flexible.  Even better, the healing foods are interesting, piquant and right up my alley.  All of the recipes that I have tried have worked well and are to my taste.  Once I read that if you get three recipes from a book, it is money well spent.  In this book I have tried many more and have liked them all.
    Running with the Mind of Meditation: Lessons for Training Body and Mind is the final book.  I love to move and I love to meditate.  Over the years I have learned that often I need one to do the other.  This book gives easy and practical motivations for creating the peaceful mind inside the moving body.  What I love the most about this particular book is that  Sakyong Mipham, the author, approaches running as the secondary condition, and meditation as the primary, a completely opposite approach from mine.  It is great to see the world from eyes that are different, but a mind that agrees with your own.

     I leave you with one last motivation for my going mostly vegan.  It is Dr Greger's 2012 presentation about the leading causes of death.  All of the YouTube videos are fairly poor, but I love the talk.  He makes me laugh and what more could you want on a talk about the causes of death?
     So, here are my reasons for this one decision.  What are yours?

A Different Awakening

     This morning I was out running (bless spring and merely freezing weather), I had a thought and had the strongest reaction.  It really took me aback.  I thought about teaching yoga in my favorite shorts that I wear in my home practice.  It made me so happy.  I mean, seriously, joyous about looking so different? I already don't look like the ladies in Yoga Journal.  Weirder, seriously?  It was a wake up call that I needed.
      After I got home I spent some time thinking about this strange revelation.  With no clarity arising, I moved on with my day.  Later I picked up  50/50: Secrets I Learned Running 50 Marathons in 50 Days -- and How You Too Can Achieve Super Endurance! by, Dean Karnazes.  At this point in the book, he is running the Marine Corps Marathon on day 43 of  50 straight marathons

 (yes, crazy, but fun to live vicariously...) As he runs by the sculpture the Awakening, by J. Seward Johnson, Jr, he observes... "This giant figure seems at war with his greatest adversary, himself.  He appears to be struggling with the decision to follow what is in his heart, to buck convention and pursue an alternative course, a road less traveled.  The grimace on his face comes from knowing that his past may have been a numb existence, and that he will require great courage and conviction in the future if he is to avoid sinking back into the tomb of conformity.  There will be untold battles waged within himself..."

     Then I finally had my moment of clarity.  It was how I used to see life (and still often revert to).  Life is a struggle to be won, fought against the odds.  How this contrasts to what I believe in the front of my mind and what I teach to students of all ages!  At church I say 'no one gets out of heaven without gifts,' in classes and meetings I work to show others how they are so good for the world.  Doesn't this mean I am also good for the world, just the way I am?  Or, better yet, if I really let loose...
      Each time I write a new class (which is what I was thinking about right before the thought of the short round woman teaching yoga in shorts), I start creating the class that my favorite teachers would teach me.  Slowly, through many practices, I discard the parts that are not me and end with a class that I can teach very authentically.
    Let's just say a bit crazy and out of the box is so my style, but I love calm, quiet teachers.  My students like the humor and creativity, more like the Chihuly at left, than the sculpture above.  Maybe the uplift in spirit is exactly what I needed to finish my class...Meditation for Movers, anyone?
   

A Love Story

      What is love?  On Valentine's Day, it seems like an excellent question.  I have had a life surrounded by love (many thanks to all).  I have had the love of my family and friends and, of course, the wonderful love of my husband and children.  I have so many love stories.
       Last weekend's yoga class with Sianna Sherman is also a love story, though perhaps not it the way you would imagine.  For almost all of these classes with traveling teachers, I come alone.  It feels like everyone else is there with friends, except me.
       Now, I know this is not true, but our perception (not our intellect) is our reality.  So here I was, in this full weekend of classes that were going to be so hard, all alone.  As the class began to fill, a woman and her friend put down mats beside mine.  Sianna's classes are popular, so the room is very full.  There was about six inches between my mat and her's.
         So I introduced myself, she said "Hi, I'm....." and turned back to her friend.  Putting myself in her shoes, totally appropriate, but from my perspective I was now not one of the 'cool kids.'  I knew I was wrong, but there it was.  I spent some time feeling a bit hurt as they chatted their way through the opening moves.
         Then it was time to become childlike without being childish.  Children are open to all of the options, always letting life develop rather than freezing into one sad moment.  I decided that I would love her.  Just spend my practice time in love rather than in loneliness.  Through two and a half hours of serious sweat and heart-opening poses, I stayed in the feeling of love.  Nothing specific, but just the idea that we are all one and everyone is lovable.  It was a bit selfish.  If I am feeling love, I definitely am not feeling lonely.
         We broke for lunch and then it was back to two and a half hours of hip openers.  This means moving into one another's physical space, not more six inches separation and still no small talk.  I just kept loving her.  By the end of the class the barriers had slowly fallen, I had become a person. Now, when we fell it was funny and being so close was comfortable. When we laid down for savasana, as she relaxed her hand gently rolled out to brush mine and she did not move it away.
        I had this unbelievable experience of we are all one.   Everyone in the room was lifting me up and I was in turn lifting them.  Love didn't need to change everyone, all it needed to do was change me.  Happy Valentine's Day.

My Own Hero's Journey

Bhima from
http://openlibrary.org/books
/OL23365037M/Mahabharata

       I had the good fortune to attend 4 workshops with Sianna Sherman over the past weekend. I always look so forward to attending, but it's usually mixed with a bit of fear. People travel from all around just to attend, so usually I am among the least capable yogis in the room.  Add to this a fairly major fall when running two weeks ago (bringing with it a lot of stiffness and loss of strength), and let's just say showing up was a bit of a challenge.
      Our Friday night class was called Mythic Flow.  Sianna tells the class a story from one of the Indian mythic cycles then creates a flow around the lesson learned.  Last Friday it was part of the story of Bhima, son of Vayu, god of the wind.  The picture at left is very fierce, but our story was of a much gentler nature.  When Bhima was courting, he asked his love if there was anything in the world she wanted because he wanted to give her a gift.  She pointed across the field and asked him to bring her the white butterfly floating on the breeze.
        Bhima set off across the field as the butterfly slowly wafted into the forest.  He continued to pursue it ever deeper into the forest, never noticing in his single mindedness that he had completely left his world behind.  Unaware, Bhima began his hero's journey.
      As we began the flow of asana (poses), Sianna continued to remind us that we were on our own hero's journey.  Each move and each breath of the extremely difficult and very fun practice was playing our own edge, following our own white butterfly.  It was very freeing.  That voice of self-judgement is completely silent when life is journey not a destination.  It's time to lay the known aside and run off after the white butterfly.