sunday grace

these last few weeks i'm feeling seriously out of my groove:  slow, annoyed, achy, reclusive, uncertain.  when i experience funks like this, i tend to (conveniently) blame karma.  i'm just paying a karmic debt and it will cycle through, back to normal, right?

pema chödrön urges us to look at karma differently, from a less passive position, one that requires us to pay attention, listen, learn, open and grow:

"the idea of karma is that you continually get the teachings you need to open your heart.  to the degree that you didn't understand in the past how to stop protecting your soft spot, how to stop armoring your heart, you're given this gift of teachings in the form of your life, to give you everything you need to open further."

that damn soft spot.  it's going to be the death life of me.

it is so good in there

"yoga is ninety-nine percent practice and one percent theory."  

k. pattabhi jois

yesterday i enjoyed enlightening and inspiring conversation with cyndi lee.  our discussions often take place over cappuccinos and chocolates and integrate our experiences of yoga, spirituality, art and our west coast upbringings with our individual journeys through this lovely life.  cyndi's unique alchemy of intelligence, humor, support and tell-it-like-it-is wisdom is such a gift as i explore my weird reluctance to get my ass on my yoga mat.

i confessed that i prefer to be inside my head most of the time.  i love taking in information through observations and learning from many sources and tucking each bit away in the jewel box of my mind (which in my world is synonymous with my soul).  i spend hours in there tending to each precious piece, admiring the unique qualities of each and experimenting with them in pairs and groups.  how do they metamorphose as the light travels through the day and illuminates a different facet of each? how does each new addition change the color or value of the previous inhabitants?  as an introverted intuitive, i love it in there.  the (endless) process of contemplation and understanding is my comfort zone.  real world experiences, including yoga class, often fall short of how rich and glorious they were in my head.

driving home, i had this sudden realization that i prefer theory (the stuff that takes place in my head) over practice (the stuff that takes place on the mat).  and when i write "sudden", i mean that i intuitively knew this already and i have said the words a million times, but it finally made perfect and simple sense.  you know those experiences where you can intellectually know something for years and then one day, usually following the warm reflection and attention of another, you just get it?  yes, that.

is there a way i can make the physical practice of yoga as beautiful as the mental contemplation of yoga?

practice.  attention.  practice.  attention:  the navigation of the crowd as we organize our shoes and stuffs.  the hard give of the wood floor under my bare feet.  the snap of the mat as it unrolls. the light warm pressure of palms coming together.  the voice of my teacher.  the structure of bone. the soft pull and resistance of muscle and tendon.  that shaft of sunlight tempting my gaze from the line of my warrior's arrow.  the fear of falling.  the accomplishment of not.  these are the real experiences of my yoga. they deserve my focus and i need to honor them.  what are the unique qualities of each moment?  how does each moment work with the previous moment to become a practice? how does each new moment of courage, each tiny increment of skill, each failure alter the entirety of the experience? how does my practice metamorphose as the light of each new posture, each new class illuminates it?

i'm on my way down the hall to explore.

the art of attention

i experience a lot of resistance.  it's that complex but often oversimplified phenomena that looks something like this: i want/need to ______; but i'm going to do everything else that is possible to do on this good green earth of ours and in this good green head of mine to avoid ______.  resistance pops up for me on a pretty regular basis.  i have resistance to doing my work.  i have resistance to exercising and eating nourishing food.  i have resistance to personal accounting and records-keeping. i have resistance to housekeeping.  sometimes i have resistance to taking a shower.

i even experience resistance with activities i love:  yoga, creating, writing, walking with my dogs, cooking, gardening, spending time with friends.  some days it feels like i am resistant to life.  

i have done a good deal of work in the past year becoming more aware of when i am experiencing resistance.  more work is needed to increase my understanding and to start breaking through it in meaningful ways.  this year my friend and master yoga teacher cyndi lee will be helping me address my resistance to yoga through discussions that we will publish in a collaborative series of blog posts.  

i wanted my word for 2015 to reflect my movement through resistance, to be a little anchor for me during this year. what is the opposite of resistance?  how would the antidote to resistance be described in one word?  i went through discipline (too rigid), practice (all i could hear was my mom nagging me to sit down at the piano and do my scales), action (made me want to take a nap), focus (feels like a work word), many renditions of "go with the flow" like fluidity, water, river (these began feeling way too loose than what i'm looking for).  by the way, if you are interested in a peek into my own special brand of resistance, the one i employ hundreds of time throughout the day, reread this paragraph.  it just happens to be overthinking.

sunday at 2:30am, i lay awake with an unusual touch of insomnia.  i wanted to read but didn't want to turn the light on and really didn't want to leave the warm bed.  so i grabbed my kindle. you guys, i even have resistance to my kindle.  good books that are stored on there have been neglected.  i've since abandoned my trial period of electronic reading and returned to the paper book, but i admit that it comes in handy at times like this.  

i turned on my device and navigated my way to the last bookmark i placed back in april:  chapter sixteen of karen maezen miller's hand wash cold.  chapter sixteen is about consistently showing up every day to do the work of our lives, attending to the details and maintenance of our ordinary lives.  

it is about attention.

hello word.

hello 2015.

"attention is the most concrete expression of love.

what we pay attention to thrives.

what we do not pay attention to withers and dies.

what will you pay attention to today?"

-karen maezen miller, hand wash cold: care instructions for an ordinary life