December Ahimsa (Self-Compassion)

Posted on December 10, 2019 by of-the-essence blog

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Almost-winter sun sinking behind the trees at Saratoga Spa State Park.

I woke way before dawn today, hips aching from a wondrous snow walk the other day.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Move.

A few days ago I had tromped along under the tall pines at Saratoga Spa State Park. The crunch of our steps muffled by hats and jacket hoods, I thought about snow and holiday lights, about ice and clouded days and the sun that came out just in time for a 4:30 sunset. Also about the color we so desire in winter—winter which has not officially arrived yet, just two feet of early December snow. The two feet of snow we were stomping through and sliding in and laughing over, as we searched our way back to the warming hut.

IMG_2060 copyright Of-The-Essence Blog 2019

Snow on a paper wasp nest, high in the trees at Saratoga Spa State Park.

I woke way before dawn today to practice yoga, to pay attention to my body that so often in the day job gets ignored, put aside, pushed to physical limits with repetitive keyboarding and staying too still. I wanted to move with eyes closed, minimizing outside stimulation. I wanted to listen to the craving for movement and beauty. I wanted to hear the tiny voice that guides me day to day, when I listen.

The yoga concept of ahimsa–a nonviolence that includes self-compassion, gentleness with self–is part of what drew me to Kripalu yoga years ago. I want to live ahimsa with simple concepts: Breathe in. Breathe out. Move. Stretch. Feel. No self-judgment or chiding voice. Breathe in. Breathe out.

IMG_2069 copyright Of-The-Essence Blog 2019

Sun, trees, snow, shadows: simple joy for me.

Today I will continue self-compassion into the dawn, into the daylight and through this misty foggy forty-degree Tuesday, looking out the office windows at the far view, standing at my work station and taking breaks for my body’s sake, through the dusk and commute and into the dark of night, when holiday lights sparkle.

Move. Stretch. Feel. Breathe in. Breathe out.

Breathe in. Breathe out. Feel.

Gentle self-compassion.

Part the Eleventh: Wherein winter continues, but Color intervenes—Endings and Beginnings

Posted on June 25, 2015 by of-the-essence blog

Winter sky rainbow, The Crossings of Colonie (Albany NY)

Friday, March 6. Winter and weeping are wearing me down, along with the monochrome light, and dirt-infused precipitation on everything. I used to say Chicago street snow looked like the bottom of an ashtray. After this long winter in upstate New York, innumerable cigarette pellets of gunmetal ice and ashy road salt line our avenues–and spirits.

Even where the snow is still blank white, it has grown dull to my eyes. It’s been months since the amaryllis bloomed, and a week since my pale yellow butterfly faded away.

I travel in search of color, to the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (Mass MOCA). Once again I am surprised by serendipity.

Sol Lewitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective, Mass MOCA Winter 2015

Swirling, spraying, wiggling: wall after wall after wall of gorgeous and intense paint by Sol Lewitt swims around me.

More Sol Lewitt: A Wall Drawing Retrospective, Mass MOCA Winter 2015

Liquid looking gold and black (Teresita Fernandez) flow over me.

Teresita Fernandez: As Above So Below, Mass MOCA Winter 2015: window reflections in her black and gold sculpture.

On the way to Massachusetts, a friend and I crunch through snow to meditate in the icy stillness of a small temple at the Grafton Peace Pagoda.

Golden peace cranes at the Grafton Pagoda temple.

We are surprised by a Japanese Buddhist nun wearing a headlamp, who pops out from behind the altar where she’d been organizing items. She is startled by us. So cold! So cold! Come and have tea when you are done.

After sitting zazen in the frigid air as long as we can stand it, we find our way to the kitchen, where we nibble a cookie, sip hot brown Kuchika Twig tea and get to know her—Jun-San. We speak of peace walks and meditation and the essence of the Lotus Sutra.

My companion says, Ever since I first heard Na-Mu-Myo-Ho-Ren-Ge-Kyo, I have wondered what the words meant.

She answers that it comes from the Buddha’s last teaching, where he moved from the internal, concentration on just the self, to concentration on the other, the community (something about the Golden Rule). She added: But really, you should not look to others’ translations because then the meaning does not come from within.

The acts of chanting, breathing, sitting with its sounds reveal the sutra’s message for each individual.

We laugh over it later: Here you spent forty-some years pondering, in search of what you thought was a mysterious, erudite, complex and distant definition, and she tells you you’ve had it inside all along!

My acts of weeping, seeking color, meditating on life, breathing, walking and sitting with moments regardless of their pain or joy—reveal the meaning of those acts and moments for me. Wisdom inside of me all along. Color inside of me all along.

Now my stomach and heart don’t go sour when I see the gray light over the gray hills and gray snow. Spring will come.

Buddha statue at Kripalu, October 2013. The answer is inside of you.

****

Accidents happen. Living long doesn’t always happen.

I think of the children who come into our lives, how we are often trying to save them, sometimes not able to: horribly, sadly, naturally. We have saved them so many times to start with, watched over them, cared for them, taught them. And if they live, if it all goes as it often does—they can grow into gorgeous young people we adore, full of creativity and angst and love.

We are called to pay attention to each day and moment, and to love: love and care for our individual selves as best we can, love the people we love, deeply, honestly; and not search way-out-there for meaning but find it right here next to us, in us, shining through us with unexpected color.

Spring comes. But sometimes it is bittersweet.

****

In memory of one Dainty Sulphur, who appeared unbidden in my apartment on February 11 and exited on Feb 28.

In memory of a creative soul I never met except through his mother: photographer, student, beloved son, brother, and more, Max Maisel, who went missing Feb 22, whose memorial service was March 27 and whose body was finally recovered April 17.

Winter bittersweet.

Part the Ninth, wherein hope waivers on multiple fronts

Posted on June 12, 2015 by of-the-essence blog

Winter sun, and winter sun, and winter sun.

The bowl of winter sky and winter sun and winter trees and winter snow, when it was at least warm enough to get outside.

Thursday February 27. Oh my god I am so tired, and everything feels a mess. I stomp around my apartment because it’s too cold to hike; I’ve pulled out papers to sort and they are scattered all over the floor and dining table and front room and I am so mad and sad. My logical mind knows that Max probably drowned, falling off the pier into the lake. He might have accidentally slipped; it could have been on purpose. Regardless, he has not been found, and I feel worn out by the weight of all of it.

I want to get ready for another friend’s upcoming visit, but I can’t cook anything, even with that new equipment I bought the other day. Instead, I cry.

What do you do, as a parent, thinking of another parent’s pain? I Google-chat with my son across the country and he is ok and I’ve texted my daughter and she’s fine, and now I sit with my dying butterfly.

Fallen sideways, scraggly like the window paint and the snow outside.

Struggling against the cold, scraggly like the window paint and the aged snow outside.

Dainty was at the window, fallen sideways and I offered her sugar water on a Q-tip but she wasn’t interested. I noticed she was missing an antenna, maybe one of her mid-legs too, and she could still flap around but is clearly leaving this life.

So I brought her into the yoga room, a sacred space and a warmer one too. She is resting in the rocks of my newly blush-tipped holiday cactus. Dainty still wiggles her remaining antenna around and holds onto some pebbles while propped up slightly by others, facing the window where there is only gray clouded light, as there has been all day.

I hate the metaphorical consonance, of the butterfly fading away and this young man and where he might be. The thousand thoughts of what might have happened to Max bombard me, shred my breathing. He wasn’t meant to be like a butterfly, and he wasn’t meant to die before his parents.

I feel trembly with fear and uncertainty, on so many levels—for his mom and dad and siblings, even for myself and my own future. I have to wander my living space or just watch the world out the window, and in this moment, not worry about getting work done.

Yes, the sun rises over the hill. Every morning.

The blizzard of papers has blasted my household white inside to match the outside world: a bin or two of memorabilia, trips taken and ticket stubs from movies, but also official forms for insurance, old records from my divorce attorney and previous illnesses and surgeries, a health care proxy yet to be filled out. Wondering about choices, mistakes, missteps, amid the things that just happen.

My mis-steps, Max’s mis-step. Things-that-just-happen.

Concentrating on seeing the beauty in the dark and white: Chance blows snow this way, melts it that way, hardens it into curves and blops.

When I first brought the butterfly in the yoga room and then left, she must have fluttered and fallen to the floor. I brought her back up to the light. I hope that wasn’t too meddling; just didn’t want her in the dust and dirt, in the dark. Can a butterfly sense such a thing in the same way we do? Does it yearn for light, instead of seek the shadows to die?

I smile that she has her single antenna up strong and even moving a bit, feeling the air, moving her fore-legs slightly. She is alert, in the world, yet. BE-ing. Even as she is dying.

Aren’t we all, as we age and change and become “less able,” still very much here?

Aren’t we all, as we develop into elders, crones, and Wise Ones through our aging, becoming masterful and more able in other ways– and still very much here?

Even if we aren’t “very much” presently, we HAVE BEEN, and ARE here; we create ripples in the world, into the time when we are not here.

My candles are lit, and I continue to sit with aching muscles and aching heart.

The blur of butterfly in the dark, and a fallen cactus flower.

Part the Sixth, Wherein the Butterfly Weakens, and Demonstrates How to Live

Posted on April 16, 2015 by of-the-essence blog

Winter flight of female cardinals at the feeder.

In-snow flight of female cardinals at the feeder.

February 18, 2015. The butterfly this morning maneuvered back up to the windowsill; yesterday I had to clean some stuck fuzz from her hind leg. Seems like a foreleg is not working properly; when she starts to fly she flops around but apparently she can eventually navigate just fine. Last night when I turned on the wall lights in the bedroom she flew up and starting bashing against them. Today she’s head against wood under the bedroom window, following instinct toward light.

The butterfly continues to hang out motionless unless I blow gently at her to see if she is ok. Last night she flew off the bedroom sill toward the light, then down under my jewelry case, and on the floor down there. Then back up in the sun this morning, after I left the bedroom.

I worry about hurting her, the sugar-water freezing her to the sill or sticking to her as the water evaporates, so I spilled some out for her then wiped it up after an hour. Like my kids living on their own, I don’t worry so much about her. Now if I am away for a night or two, I figure she’ll just be living her lepidopteran life.

What will the end be? Will I accidentally step on her? Will she just fade away or disappear one night and not come back up to the windowsill? I can only be as careful as I can be; this morning I turned on lights to find my clogs and carefully shook out the sheets and blankets in case she was hiding below them—that’s how I found her the other morning, when she flew up and delighted me with her energy.

It could have been a short lived drama: the butterfly hatches, flies around, gets smushed, or starves or falls down and dries out. Humans, too. Or it goes on and we don’t know the ending.

I do think she is weakening, and I think that left foreleg is damaged. I hope I didn’t do anything to cause it or injure it further. You could look at us humans as we age, oh look we know where THEY are headed! Getting decrepit, limbs not working. Well, yeah. But we keep living, keep going, and I think as time goes on, don’t judge me on my infirmity, don’t figure I’m “down for the count” at any particular point.

Hell, look what all of us humans have been through, look what I’ve been through, and who knows what is to come, but I am here, now, in this moment.

Against the window the butterfly sits and rests while the winter sun glows through her wings.

Limbs buried in deep snow at a creek, Partridge Run.

Limbs buried in deep shadowed snow at a creek visited only by small critters, Partridge Run, in January.

This February’s extreme cold has been hard on us all. I’m feeling a bit stir crazy and grumpy, can’t go snowshoe or hike—wind chills below zero. Cooking inside, I get all sweaty but then when I sit down to write in the front room my legs become marble-cold in spite of three layers of long underwear, leggings, and pants.

Of course the butterfly has issues too, with a breeze from the old windows knocking her over. Just went in to check and she seems off-kilter, like a boat with all the weight on one side, threatening to keel over. But she keeps getting up, moving around, and then head first, back to the window. I want her in the warmer kitchen, but I don’t want to risk hurting her by luring her onto a piece of paper—anyway she can fly off that easily enough. She has made her decision. I know enough not to touch the delicate wings with my human hands covered in any number of skin oils, soaps, lotions, depending on the time of day.

Morning with sunshine and shadow, when the butterfly was in the kitchen before.

February 19 morning. She perches on the edge of the bedroom window casing, almost to the light but away from the breeze. In flight she is still delicate and precise but resting, is off-balance—like I sit on my yoga mat sometimes with a blanket under my rump, not so steady.

At first I was drawn to the very human reaction, oh no! she can’t DO what she is supposed to DO: fly outside and interact with other Dainty Sulphurs and so on.

But she looks like she is in meditation. Who’s to say what awareness is? Do they go into a suspended animation kind of thing, a decreasing of the input, to conserve energy until it might be needed? Or is she acutely aware of surroundings and constantly testing air and movement and light? Is she slowed by the chill air by the window?

She indicates by going over again and again, that by the light is where she wants to be. A lesson to me: move to where you are drawn. Sit in meditation. Stop trying to go go go.

Perhaps what you think you need to be doing, you don’t. Perhaps you need to sit in meditation, breathe, take in your surroundings. Perhaps this is all there is—well, that’s true. This existence IS all that you know and will experience, at least in this incorporation, this time around, not knowing if there are others, what existence might be after this life, not heaven or hell, but how we will experience it.

Stop being in such a hurry to get to the next part! She’s still. Why can’t you be?

Chickadee zooming in for a nibble.

I had an intense couple days of brilliant work, satisfying performance, beautiful interactions with people and nature and my artistic practices. But I didn’t take good enough or close enough care of my body, and it let me know (thank you!). I woke at 1 am, thinking it was almost dawn, tossed and turned, then headed to the yoga room, the body dissatisfied with its crunched up, stuck feel. I lit the candle inherited from a spiritual community I was part of for fifteen years, and a recently gifted oil lamp.

It was dark, dark. I was so achy. I rolled around, my shoulders and hands and feet crinkling, asking to be realigned; the fibers of muscles and connective tissue yearning to be warmed and stretched into supple dough. And so I did, just moved, turned quiet quiet yoga music on my phone to keep me company, as the street light outside my yoga window glowed yellow over snow covered cars, garbage cans and cement steps.

The butterfly seems to have found her spot, for now. I offered sugar water yesterday and she stumbled around but then just stood in it, two forelimbs. They can taste through their feet.

Perhaps she liked the idea of just having food available, and she’d drink when she wanted to. Kind of like keeping a full fridge. I decided that if in an hour she wasn’t out of it, I’d gently blow to make sure she didn’t get stuck in it. She moved on her own, to her almost-window view. I think about when I go out of town in a day or so; should I leave some sugar water like you would leave food and water for a cat?

She will do—or not—whatever she needs and wants to do. Just like my body and the yoga room that called me.

A paschal candle from my spiritual community far away.

Essay Tangles and Snarls

Posted on February 2, 2015 by of-the-essence blog

How I felt, essays all gnarled and ugly, on my way into the retreat.

Feeling defeated, essays all gnarled and ugly, on my way into the retreat.

Even with a short piece of writing, sometimes the initial story gets entwined in another.

The second small bit knots up with a third, maybe even a fourth and fifth, and all of a sudden you the author face thousands of words when you were only looking for a couple hundred. All the threads of connection seem intrinsically linked. Where can you slice so you aren’t left with a chopped up pile of confusion?

On top of it, the perfectionist editor-in-your-head won’t let go: The relationships between these things are amazing! amazing I tell you! She can’t allow the piece be simple and stand on its own.

That’s what happened to a blog-bound essay, then several essays, I planned to finish in October.
November.
December.

I did lots of other writing, for small groups and for the radio. I prepared to curate an evening of local memoir readings. I applied to artist residencies and photo exhibits.

Cut to the last weekend of January. I held one of my quarterly Move with Mindfulness/Write with Ease workshops. In the cozy retreat house, I led yoga and stretches for the writers and sun-on-snow hikes up the hill onto white pine lined trails. I cooked Mexican black bean soup and sweet rhubarb and blueberry coffeecakes.

Mexican Black Bean soup savory with cumin, multi-colored carrots, cheese curds and fresh cilantro.

No internet or TV, no voice phone service, and only minimal housekeeping interrupted us; instead, session followed session, where everyone was writing, including me.

The themes of the weekend were phrases we use often on the yoga mat:
Be grounded. Relax what you can. Be curious.

They apply equally well to writing.

On the mats, in the welcoming morning warmth.

After one hike, I knocked the snow off my boots, made a cup of hot tea, and turned on my laptop. For months I’d averted my eyes, stomach aching, when confronted by the working titles on my computer screen. This time I clicked on the documents one by one to open them all together and finally faced down the matted tangle of five to eight potential blog posts.

I got mad when I saw how close I’d been to finished on several of them.
I got sad at how seasonal the topics “could have been.”
Then I got determined.

Over and over I learn the same lessons. That’s part of why I teach them.
Be grounded. Relax what you can. Be curious.

See the pretty things hidden in the tangles?

See the pretty thing hidden in the tangles?

I can’t yank apart the knots between them, I thought; that will break the teeth of the comb, and accomplish the same thing as sharp scissors snipping haphazardly (remember to be grounded). How were the strands initially woven together? My previous efforts deserve gentleness (relax what you can) and not being in a hurry (be curious).

What do you do to a mental or writing knot?

Same as the visualization in yoga: straighten out, unwind, free, loosen, unclasp, release. Breathe!

Deep sigh after deep sigh followed, with shouts of “D’uh!” (often, embarrassingly, out loud) as I realized places to tease out a conceptual filament and drop it separate. The connections didn’t have to be quite so tight as first imagined; pictured it in medical terms, the conjoining was at the toe, not the chest, and therefore my surgical intervention was simpler, with fewer complications.

Still struggling, I asked: What do you do with a physical knot of tightness in massage therapy? Breathe into the pain, stay with it and it will lessen. Your body (and your writing) will be happy you are paying attention. Be grounded. Relax what you can. Be curious.

I did that with my essay snarls. Over and over again. What a relief.

Thump! Bump-bump! Pine cone rides the wind over snowy ground. Can I fly free, like that?

I’m not finished. But during the next few months, thanks to that weekend of attention to body and attention to writing, I look forward to posting some completely out-of-season, close (if not finished), relatively unsnarled meditations.

The sun setting on my work, at Still Point Retreat Center.

The sun setting on my work, sparkling its light everywhere, at Still Point Retreat Center.

To Be Human

Posted on July 6, 2014 by of-the-essence blog

Pollen frosted close up of roadside chicory flower.

Pollen sparkled stamens of common roadside chicory: delicate and tough together.

I’ve been off the grid for many months, in terms of writing posts, due to some health issues.

It’s been hard to let go of the happy disciplines I crafted over time in favor of other, uninvited ones: from days of writing and hiking and yoga studies and business building, to pain management, miserable medication interactions, diet changes, self-care regimens and (even though it was minor surgery) post surgical rehab.

Unable to sit on the floor and do my yoga in its usual way, I had to figure out what part of my practice “transfers.” Sometimes I couldn’t look ahead into the future, or even the next thirty minutes, so the asana practice simplified into breathing in the moment, then breathing into only-the-very-next moment.

Sometimes I felt like this frog at Partridge Run: barely head out of water, plagued by flies.

Sometimes I felt like this frog at Partridge Run: head barely out of water, plagued by swarms of flies that just wouldn’t leave.

Until I’m consumed by Being-Ill Time, I don’t recognize that my usual experience is Relatively-Healthy (even though I’ve done this being-ill thing before). Since February, I’ve stepped out of ordinary time–like the final months with my friend J. Because it went on for a while, illness became my ordinary time. I had to give up activities I was attached to, like honing essays for this blog.

I stayed with the disappointment, frustration, and unexpected physical weakness. I centered on curiosity, listening to what was actually going on in my body, instead of anticipating procedures with dread or remembering previous ones with trepidation.

I had to bring my self-care tools with me into Being-Ill Time, and develop some new ones. (More on that in later posts.)

Daisy–closed, preparing for bloom.

As humans, we often have to respond to what happens that we don’t choose. To glory in the pain-free moments. To become comfortable in “waiting to see” and not making plans. Here I thought I was moving so much more slowly than in my old perfectionistic, A+ Student self. Now I have been taught to go even slower.

Of course initially my mind went crazy with thoughts: How long will this last? How bad will it get? Am I a wimp?—justifying myself to loads of imaginary detractors.

Then one day on the way to replenish my medical supplies, I ran into an acquaintance who asked about what I was up to.

I’ve been ill lately, but I teach writing and movement workshops—and I’ll be doing yoga with hiking at a local nature area this summer.

But what do you DO?

With my sister, I’m working on a book about meditation and the creative process. Progress continues on the memoir. I’ve been enjoying my nature photography as well.

But what do you DO?

Hearing these persistent questions, I could have become discouraged. No, I’m not working a typical nine-to-five job with a fancy title or perks. I’ve been sick, so certainly my business’s forward movement has been disrupted.

However, for the first time, instead of self-judging, I noticed how her thought patterns and expectations of how I measured my life were upsetting HER. The chosen flexibility and unconventional schedule of my life—which made her uncomfortable—were getting me through some tough times. My response? I didn’t take it personally. I merely wished her well and went on my way.

Daisy, full open in morning dew.

It reminds me of what I used to ask my adult literacy students: Not Where do you work? but rather How do you spend your days? The question delved into who they were as people, and acknowledged that personal value is not based on how much money we make or our job descriptions. Some of us raise children, make a community, rest in retirement, volunteer, enjoy our professions or, alternatively, do meaningless repetitive things in order to pay the bills.

The better questions: How do you feel about how you spend your days? What’s important to you? What have you learned about being a human?

I’ve spent my days lately paying attention to what’s happening in my very human (concurrently fragile and powerful) body, researching, breathing, undergoing, recovering. I am living in my moments, honing skills of survival that I also tuck away for when I might need them next.

Dragonfly at Partridge Run seen on a recent come-back hike: symbol of (among other things) renewal after hardship, transformation, adaptability, joy and lightness.

Chanting? Really? Yes.

Posted on September 22, 2013 by of-the-essence blog

Oscillations of water wash over fall leaves, at Partridge Run, Berne NY.

Oscillation of water, like sound, washes over fall leaves, at Partridge Run, Berne NY.

Most mornings, I chant.

I have always been told I couldn’t sing well; whichever octave sits next to me is where I jump, and I waver when unsure if another note might be closer. I’ll sing snippets with my CD player or part of a hymn I’ve practiced a hundred times, but only when I am fairly confident I will land correctly.

Still, I wibble and wobble.

But at yoga school, chant began our day. I had to open my mouth and make sound come out. On-target or out-of-key, it didn’t matter; first thing, we intoned “the resonance of the universe,” Om, followed by three Sanskrit stanzas of the Student-Teacher Mantra.

Almost sixty of us perched sit-bones on little black cushions while out the window, sunrise pinked the eastern sky. The mantra song felt strange to many and made them itch in discomfort and wiggle like little kids. Mountain fog dissipated into the evergreens while our eyes remained closed, or followed the lines on a large-print poster at the front. Over twelve days the chant became more familiar.

Clouded Kripalu morning over the mountain.

During the break between sessions, I committed to continue, using a grainy digital video I’d recorded at Kripalu.

At that point, I needed to be led.

By the third stanza, usually my throat hurt. I tried again every daybreak to coax energy, with a vocalization some mornings tentative and froggy, other times expansively bouncing off the yoga room walls. Breath slowed and deepened out of necessity, and warmed my throat. Warmed my thoughts toward myself.

This was not just a tune.

Then came even deeper breath and movement, heat, circulation and all the good invited onto my mat with those sensations. Finally, my nauseated frustration flirted with comfort. I recognized unwanted thoughts and let them float away.

When we returned to Kripalu, I heard my morning voice steady and confident.

Tibetan singing bowl with symbol of wisdom eyes.

Now out of school, why do I do it?

One afternoon I sat in a kitchen that reeked of the detritus of cooking, home early because my therapist forgot my appointment–what deep things does THAT say? I asked myself melodramatically. Basil stems and onion ends needed to be taken to the trash, cabbage bits and tea leaves laid sodden in the sink, crumbs sprinkled the table and floor.

Earlier I’d stopped at the used book store and found two 25 cent paperbacks for the lake-vacation planned with my best friend.

But at my table I acknowledged it was a vacation she and I would have to put off–because her brother is sick, so she will instead drive five hours back and forth to him a couple days a week, and then to doctors and hospitals in search of diagnosis, prognosis, the plan, whatever-that-plan-might-be, however long it might take. Because of love.

How can I make my life like a vacation without a trip? Give yourself permission, my therapist might say, like the night before, to stay up and crush the basil into pesto, to cut the watermelon and freeze the grapes for hot afternoon snacking, to wash the lettuce–but also to toss the sprouting sweet potato, feel the sticky floor under my feet, acknowledge I ate maybe one too many pieces of the blueberry buckle baked in the beautiful dark. Feel it all.

Blueberry buckle: crunchy top, tender crumb.

I had given the therapist some blueberry buckle as we laughed over the scheduling error. I thought, I would send some to my best friend if I could fly it there. In the midst of her pain, she’d mailed me a royal blue Pashmina shawl; the card read: Wrap yourself in this hug from me.

I want to take her to the lake we’d planned to visit, to hear the loons and go on long photo safaris in search of wild flowers and angles of light, to huff the thickly oxygenated Canadian forest air. Drape myself like a scarf around her sad, sad shoulders. Feed her blueberry buckle and sip Chambord into the evening, watch the hummingbirds and fog dance in over the beach.

That’s why I chant. I chant to create space, to feel distress and delight. I chant, holding my best friend close, and her gravely ill brother. I chant and remember my friend J who died a year ago this month. I chant love gliding out of me for all of my existence.

I chant into the lakes and ponds and rivers and creeks, up the farmland and mountains, through the cumulous and wispy and mackerel skies. I chant into my cells, lungs, intestines, skin and fat and muscle. Into my toes and fingers. Through my navel: center of gravity, center of balance, center of self. Then out again and out again. Stretch, release. Expand, contract.

Time passes and I am inhaling, vibrating, exhaling, feeling.

Time passes and I am in my breath in my body so time is inconsequential.

Chanting beckons me back to the mat and back to myself.

Chanting opens me with sound.

So most mornings, I chant.

Electric zing of fall color; energy courses through.

The visual zing! of fall; a path of green revealed by seasonal red.

The Ending of Tulips–and the Beginning

Posted on May 26, 2013 by of-the-essence blog

This is where I need to be right now, not perfect and remarked upon- instead of Oh my isn’t SHE marvelous!, but blown open, curled back, the wind on me, the rain on me, feeling it all and not being afraid of it.

This is where I need to be right now, not perfect and remarked upon–not hearing Oh my isn’t SHE marvelously whole!; instead: blown open, curled back, the wind and rain on me, feeling everything full-on, letting the fear go.

I never saw the tulips this year–not in their full form, anyway.

My monthly book club rotates houses, and traditionally in spring one particular member hosts whose home and spectacular gardens overlook the Hudson River. Masses of sunset colored, black, and pink-with-white tulips usually quiver in the water-side breezes along with flowering Japanese plum, bleeding heart, and rhododendrons.

After discussion of racism and The Warmth of Other Suns; after mimosas, white asparagus, quiche, and lemon cake, I wandered outside.

Rain splashed these purple rhododendron flowers to the gravel path. Upside down, they glow pretty on the ground.

Though eyeful after eyeful of azaleas still sparkled in this Mother’s Day-morning rain, the tulips were finished.

Something unexpected revealed itself in the decaying blooms.

From shimmering swaths of bright colors, the tulips had individuated, dying back in distinctive ways: petals twisted here, leaves dropped there, a broken stem over yonder.

They were beautiful. They reminded me of–myself.

Exposed and fragile. Roots deeply set months before, underground, unobserved.

Dying in the present, shifting to new forms of being.

As no-longer-useful parts wither and fall, the hidden bulb is beginning to prepare for next season’s growth spurt.

discolored, browning areas showing inevitable desiccation, but even as they slump ground-ward, the petals flow twisted like a woman’s pashmina wrapping around her in a windstorm, sections resting in a different balance from the original.

Discolored, browning areas preview inevitable desiccation, but even as they slump ground-ward, the petals flow, twisted like a woman’s pashmina wrapping around her in a windstorm, petal sections balancing differently from the original cup-shape.

collapsing lopsided like a blimp or balloon, taking up more width, deflating and yet expanding, a large fabric sheet caught by the wind on one side, taking a bow. free to curl and twist now, as moisture escapes. is the color more or less intense?

Collapsing lopsided like a blimp or balloon, taking up more width, deflating and yet expanding. Free to curl and twirl now, as moisture escapes. Is the color more or less intense?

Like a child hiding under a floppy hat, peek a boo with three anthers a-tumble.

the petals wilted into a swirling skirt, rolled frills made of the edges, the ANTHERS ON THEIR FILAMENTS resting on top of the skirt, if the bottom of the green stalk-shaped style were a waist. Dance, movement, now rest.

The petals have wilted into a swirling skirt with rolled frilly edges. If the bottom of the green stalk-shaped style were a waist, the yellow anthers on their filaments are multiple arms in repose, between dances. Movement, now rest.

After five weeks recovering from and growing into the immensity of Part One, quietly studying and practice-teaching and building my skills, very soon I return for Yoga Teacher Training Part Two.

Exposed and fragile. Roots deeply set months before now, unobserved by most.

Dying in the present, shifting to new forms of being.

As no-longer-useful parts shrivel and fall away, my inner self begins to prepare for this next period of growth.

Yes.

the fully exposed center style with a yellow stigma topping it, with two perfectly formed black anthers hanging: the anthers resemble two useless paddle-hands, or two clown feet hanging. Perfectly formed above the anthers, the pistil (the stigma and the style together) that now is bravely unprotected in the garden. /vulnerable/ uncovered/ exposed

The center style is topped by a pale yellow stigma, and two perfectly formed black anthers hang from withered filaments below. Vulnerable, and yet confidently humorous–if I may anthropomorphize a bit more–they resemble two paddle-hands, or clown feet hanging. What sly comment does this former-flower want to share about the next round of colored tulip-cups?

To Be A Student Again: Falling into the Pond, Repeatedly

Posted on May 11, 2013 by of-the-essence blog

Monk’s Pond, Kripalu Center. Two possible paths in learning, and life: I could worry about stepping perfectly from one broken-down, submerged plank to another, or choose to play, expecting to fall in, enjoying the exploration of balance. Especially taking in the part I’m most scared of initially: getting wet.

April’s training at Kripalu once more flung me deep into non-ordinary time, like the months of grief around my friend J’s death*; with much to say afterwards, and yet so much unprocessed and unwritten-about. I’m stymied in the richness of my adventures, and exhausted again, still.

Information, information, poured in for twelve days. From the senses: exotic dishes on the buffet, hiking to jade-green ponds and a blue mountain lake, new faces to learn, voices, expressions, chanting, body movements and stretches and muscles micro-damaged then self-repairing; loosening of muscles and expectations.

From the emotions: old frustrations hidden in the back and neck, released!, even-older habits of perfectionism popping up and rejected repeatedly.

From the intellect: how to memorize? how to rework language? philosophy to examine and reject or accept, examples to wonder at and incorporate.

We fifty-some students were fed and watered on a regular schedule: yoga now, eat now, learn now, more yoga now, eat now, learn more, sleep now. Sometimes I opted to sleep instead of eat, as the fifteen hour days wore on. We studied (or not), absorbed information, wept, breathed in new ways, chattered, practiced asanas, laughed, walked the labyrinth, mused, closed our eyes a lot, danced, practiced teaching, meditated, listened to each other’s life stories.

More to come about the food--but here are the staples of broccoli and kale. I ate kale at every meal some days. Yum.

More to come about the food–but here are the staples of broccoli and kale. I ate kale at every meal some days. Including breakfast. Yum.

I’m groggy coming out of school, as evidenced by my writing: incomplete phrases dangle, run-on sentences jackrabbit ahead. Regular life assaults me while I self-challenge not to leap recklessly into the old hurry-hurry. Yet requirements push impatiently through the door as I bring my luggage in: lists, schedules, topics internal and external: what for dinner? hmm, those piles of unfinished projects, cleaning; oh, and here come other people, can I handle interaction?

Another fact reverberates in this bumpy integration: I return to Kripalu in June for a second round, and preparation is required in the form of teaching practice, absorbing a three inch binder full of materials, memorizing Yamas and Niyamas (Character Building Inquiries of Restraints and Observances), becoming familiar with even more poses (seventeen asanas down, twenty-six more to cover in June).

And most important for me: the internal dialog shift. Teaching is not giving a performance, it’s having an experience. Breathe and meditate first. Breathe and don’t take yourself so seriously. What do I experience in the moment of teaching? How can I flow with self-awareness along with students’ needs to understand? What about timing the various sections of the class, and whoops! I need to use a new kind of language–not the language of anatomical teaching from my former days in massage therapy but rather directive, guiding phrases to move the participants to internal sensations and lack-of-self-judgment–yes, language cleaner yet more poetic.

Months ago, coming back from Kripalu, I didn’t realize how painful it could be to re-enter regular life.** So this time I moved back into the world deliberately and slowly.

I let other people take care of me a bit with:

–A zen motorcycle ride to Saratoga Spa State Park; moving meditation different from the yogic variety, world going by but not attached to it: smells of cut grass, newly manured fields, flowering crabapples and Japanese plum, all cascading inside the helmet, forced up my nostrils; the call to give as little input as possible to the bike’s movement, merely shift with the driver’s body to stay upright or angle to make turns. Then crunching along gravel, smelling the sulfur-y carbonic acid water when we pulled up to the springs, hearing toddlers in shorts giggle along the paths to the spouters.

Saratoga Spa State Park, Saratoga Springs, NY. Mineral rich waters bubble out and down the rocks.

–An hour’s amble to Jumpin Jack’s hamburger shack on the first hot day of the season, for a cheeseburger topped by coleslaw, finding a long but quick-moving line of post-baseball league families and tattooed Harley Davidson riders, everyone patient but happy-bouncy like little kids because of the warmth. A measured amble afterwards to settle dinner on the way to Stewart’s for dark chocolate ice cream.

–Another day: the sun was golden at John Boyd Thacher Park where a bald eagle rode troughs of air over the escarpment, along with turkey vultures, red-tailed hawks, ravens circling–and then three rare Blue Karner butterflies indigo’d the path in front of my hiking companions and I.

Rare scarlet trillium, imperfectly framed AND glowing deliciously.

Rare scarlet trillium at Thacher Park, imperfectly framed and yet glowing deliciously from the sun behind.

–Talks on the phone caught me up with family and colleagues as I put in window screens to catch the cooler night air, then re-stocked the fridge.

Finally I could bring myself to clean out the email queue, a hundred messages at a time (a task not yet complete), unpack the suitcases and put down the new green yoga mat.

And to the garden: Planting has begun in the actual garden plot, in addition to my life plan.*** An entire row of three varieties of carrots!, stringless pole beans, lacinato kale, peas, radishes, and this year sweet pansy-faces smile on the row ends, with bachelor button and cosmos seeds strewn in. The little girl and boy who live in the house next to my community garden begged for seeds when they saw the activity; we tossed a packet of zinnias over the fence.

Dug and double-dug, compost and mulch added in, planted, marked and covered with sphagnum peat, watered. Growing underground where we can't see it. growth occurring that we can't see yet.

Dug and double-dug, compost and mulch added in, planted, marked, rows covered with peat moss, thoroughly watered. Growth, that we can’t see yet, already occurring.

These May mornings I rise at 5:30 just like at school, loop mala meditation beads around my wrist to remember my sangha (study community) and chant along with the grainy video I took of my instructors singing the Student-Teacher Mantra. I listen to my own body’s needs on the yoga mat, and study how to teach others, giving myself hours a day to learn.

Of course I overextend in studying, and other parts of my returned-to life. Then I remember the Niyama I am practicing of Ishvar-Pranidhana: softening and opening to the play of the universe. I kindly, gently and compassionately, rein myself back in.

April's full moon, called the Awakening Moon in some traditions, certainly appropriate for this period of learning for me.

April’s full moon, called The Awakening Moon in some traditions, over the lake at Kripalu. Awakening, indeed.

*See posts Sep 14 & 28, Oct 8 & 19, 2012; found in the category “Death and Grief”

**See “Confidence that I Know Nothing: The Labyrinth” posted November 2, 2012

***See “To Plant a Garden–And a Life” posted February 1, 2013

Sighing into spring, and school

Posted on April 4, 2013 by of-the-essence blog

Golden now, not grainy-gray, the quality and angle of morning light has definitely shifted in the kitchen. Come 5:30 a.m., I hear returning songbirds chipping and chirping outside my urban bedroom. It is spring again–and still–despite the almost-blinding gusts of snow that assaulted my windshield after dark the other night.

Winter sunrise over the hill

I think about going back to school and sigh, just a little. This will be a challenge. Normally spring is the time students think about freedom! if not the short burst of spring break, then the long open opportunities of summer. Instead, I am picking up books, “screwing on my thinking cap,” as some obnoxious teacher once pantomimed. Ouch.

I am also intrigued, excited, curious. It’s like sleep-away camp–not that I ever attended, just read descriptions in books and heard about it from friends. Supposed to be new kids to meet, a whole lake to swim in, lanyards to twist and knit. In my case, other interesting grownups, a lake to walk around (still too cold for swimming), forest paths and a labyrinth too and a healthy cafeteria: physical and mental growth to be had everywhere.

My problem is that very persistent A+ student who hangs on the edge of my mind, like a bully taunting from the field beyond the playground, Yeah, just try stepping over here. You’ll see what happens! Loser!

She/he interjects comments as I read my Kripalu Yoga textbook. Sometimes I am pulled in by the resonating philosophy, so I forget that voice; sometimes I sigh yet again, frustrated by my more recent midlife difficulties with memorization. Perhaps because I am creating new neural pathways along with the information, undoing old patterns of self-deprecating reaction, my mind has rebelled: This is too hard! I’m not cooperating!

I go into the yoga room and look at the book, the diagrams. Deep breath. I speak the pose names as I stretch out and position myself–

–on the belly, pelvis firmly anchored into the earth, arms and legs lifting up and behind me: I whisper “Nav-asana,” and think Naval, like a boat on the water, floating with waves of breath….

Kneeling, then flowing back over knees-wide-apart, arms reaching forward on the floor, Garbh-asana, Child’s Pose–I am garbed in the freedom and openness of the child-mind and child-body, I take what rest I need, when I need it.

Bala-kik-asana, Crane: a one-legged pose of balance, arms hovering, the staccato Ks remind me of the stick-legs of a bird in water.

Like a boat, or a dock: water softly lapping, the feel of Navasana

Ah, there, that’s a reason you do yoga. Space for creativity, not pushing and grunting along, not cramming yourself into a place that doesn’t fit. By its very definition, yoga is about expansiveness, room for yourself, who you are, at that moment.

Unwinding my body in Spinal Twist (Matsyendr-asana—how to remember THAT one?) I exhale and think: Snow flies yet spring comes. I can’t remember things, I can remember things. Just because I suffered last time I learned, doesn’t mean I have to again. In fact, the intention is to do it differently now.

Welcoming carving on the Emma Willard School "Alumnae Chapel"

Welcoming carved face on the Emma Willard School “Alumnae Chapel”

I enjoyed a marvelous Easter/post-Spring Equinox holiday with a colleague of mine. We tromped through cemeteries overlooking the Poestenkill and around the Emma Willard School campus, deserted on a Sunday; snacked on huge pink slices of watermelon radish with cups of hot tea and maple sugar; worked on individual writing projects while the local whole chicken stuffed with crumbled sausage, butternut squash and kale baked in her oven.

We took a first-course interlude of salad: more radish, avocado, walnut, mesclun and vinaigrette.

Spring salad to tease the appetite

I sliced sweet potatoes into fries. Her least favorite chore for the day, the knife-work was a job that didn’t feel like drudgery to me at all; I hummed as I chopped along. That’s something I am watching for in my future earning-a-living, ways of spending my hours that I so enjoy they don’t feel like “work.”

My companion rubbed coconut oil, cinnamon and a little rosemary on the wedges before oven-roasting them. As we tapped our keyboards in the living room, the smells of dinner intermittently tickled our noses and then slammed us lusciously when we re-entered the kitchen in search of more tea.

When all was ready, we ate until satisfied and no more, heaving happy groans nonetheless, and deliberately leaving some food on the plate to wrap up for later. Sips of tart cherry juice with seltzer served as dessert, accompanied by more writing time.

Paleo stuffing and sweet potato fries

Ahhh, we sighed, a holiday that wasn’t (as is typical) about overstuffing our stomachs or our schedule. As the day meandered, so did we; we took seriously our choices but made them only as we went along–Want to walk more? Turn this way or that? Whoops, the chicken isn’t done; oh, I see why it needs more time, ok, we’ll write for twenty more minutes.

She’s a future yoga teacher too, and we’re both applying the lessons on the mat to daily life: sometimes grappling, sometimes serene, knowing serene-plus-grappling is actually desirable.

Yes, I told her, I joke a lot about breaking into a sweat learning to love my life.

But ease is what I aspire to: ease within challenges, like strength and lightness in a yoga pose, grounded in the earth and yet buoyant, willing to move and respond to the wind, and not let go of connection to who I am in my core.

False starts, shifts in weather, don’t indicate that spring won’t come. How days-off were acknowledged in the past doesn’t define how I celebrate them now. I will allow myself to be not-so-good in school and not worry.

All of it will be delicious. Especially the more I stand in each moment, Right Now, swaying and trembling perhaps, but over and over returning to curiosity, determination tempered with compassion, and gentleness toward myself.

Warm spring sunrise behind budding tree

Of-the-Essence

Building a life, moment by moment. Including yummy food.

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