I was at a meditation
retreat last week. Do you know what they're like? Grainy, leafy food in
portions your pet fish couldn't survive on, no
talking, no reading, no car keys, no wallet, no calling home. It isn't
Club Med.
Just meditating, dawn 'till after dusk. It
can be lonely. But some fantastic things happen.
Here
is one very cool thing. Picture this: 5am, maybe. (No
watches.) Still dark out, anyway. I come out of my room each
morning, slowly and silently, and head toward the meditation hall,
dressed in pajamas.
As I walk down the hall, every third or fourth door opens, and
another person in pajamas comes out, quietly closing a door behind her.
We look like something from a zombie movie, except that some
of the zombies have mats under their arms.
We walk in bare feet to the hall where we each pick a spot on the
floor. We begin our practice. All you can hear
is breathing and the soft thuds of feet jumping forward and back. It's
impromptu Mysore. No one organized or announced it.
It goes on for perhaps forty minutes, people drifting in and out of
the hall. All of this happens before we begin meditating for the day.
And,
holy mackerel, even though we don't speak, don't even look at each
other for the most part, even though we're about to begin another
grueling day of seated meditation, I am deliriously happy.
I don't want to leave the impression that meditating
is awful from start to finish. Other very cool things that
happen on these retreats are an empty, quiet head and a sense of peace
that will knock you over if you let it. I love it. Days later I can
still feel it.
I feel a need to express some thanks to these
zombie yogis. They were my family away from home. We showed up for each
other first thing in the morning on days when it
mattered.
So to these men and women I don't know, and to the ones I do know
but didn't say a word to: thank you, thank you, thank you.You
made meditating a little easier, and you made me fall in love with yoga
all over again.
Thanks to yoga zombies for making me fall in love
with yoga, and thanks to you for the conversation.
Following Delicious: Build Your Home Practice One Bite at a Time
I'd love
to thank a couple of Yoga Journal readers who commented on a
blog I
posted about morning practice. Both Ty and Kelly said things about
wishing they could summon the
discipline or the inspiration to do morning practice.
I found
myself shouting back to them when I read their lovely comments. Turns
out they can't hear me when I'm shouting. So I'll say this in writing.
First,
there
are experts to listen to. So don't listen to me unless it inspires you.
I'm
a yoga weenie. So new I squeak. But here's
one weenie's thought on the subject of building a home practice.
I started my home practice in three minutes one
night on my living room carpet. I did it because I found
Friday tough. I loved my Tuesday class but I was doing drive-bys on
Fridays. Do you know about those? You drive to class and your car goes
right
by. You drive by again and you end up at home, eating S&V chips
and wishing you had some willpower. I was up to it on Tuesday but not at
the end of the week.
So
I did two Sun Salutations one night. I liked it. It
grew slowly, slowly from there. Three Sun Salutations. Four Sun
Salutations and a quickie Warrior II. Five Sun Salutations, Warrior II,
and Savasana. And so it went.
One
of the huge reasons I'm so into yoga is that it is DELICIOUS. In my
home practice, I follow delicious as it gets bigger and
longer. It's like following a trail of chocolate brownies, but better.
To
Ty and Kelly, I hope this is helpful in some way. If not, keep looking
and you'll find the answer that inspires you.
In the meantime:
thanks to all who comment for your thoughts, and thanks to you for
continuing the conversation.
If you're new to yoga, I'd like to give you some great advice: never believe this. It's not going to be 5 breaths. It's going to be about 27 breaths.
It'll go like this: The teacher starts out well enough: that's one breath (then an adjustment to someone's left hip and some encouraging advice), that's two (if you just hold your shoulder back a little...ahhhh, that's good), and that's three already (I'm at twelve!), that's four (and if you'd like a challenge, now, if you'd like to go a little deeper, try this) that's four and a half--and now with a slight smile the teacher somehow manages to count: that's five.
It's twenty-seven breaths for me.
At first, I laughed at this. Then I resented it. Once I said out loud, "That isn't three, it's seventeen!"
Today I see it a bit differently. Today I understand that it'll take years, maybe five years for my shoulders to open. Maybe it'll take seventeen years for my hips to open enough to do a full lotus. It's more than that. Maybe it'll take 27,000 breaths for me to relax into a pose without pushing and straining and achieving the whole time.
Maybe it'll take 270,000 breaths to enjoy the time I've been given in each pose and beyond: in each relationship, in each mouthful of food, in each hour at work, in whatever I'm learning today.
You get the picture. It's the new math.
I wonder what you're learning in your 27 breaths. I'd love to hear.
Thanks to Rob and Cristina for yoga math (Bring it on!), and thanks to you for the conversation.
It's 7:30 in the morning, and my phone rings. It's my sister sounding like an undercover cop on surveillance: whispery voice, hand cupped over the phone, shifty eyes.
"I really love yoga," she says. "You have no idea how much I love yoga right now."
She's a new yoga junkie. It happens. We arrive here from other sports, other pastimes, other loves, and we fall into yoga like matter into black holes.
I'll bet you've had these hushed conversations.
"What about running?" I asked a yoga friend when he first fell. "I dunno," he said. "I don't want to run as much. It doesn't help my yoga." This, from marathon runner to marathon runner.
"I'm supposed to ride tomorrow, and all I want to do is go to yoga," my sister continues. "I know," I say. "I know the feeling."
"I can jump through to a seated position," she says. "Learned that last night."
"Oh yeah," I say, knowingly. "That's good."
"And I'm starting to get that thing about lifting my heart without sticking my front ribs out. You have no idea how good that is."
"Oh yeah?" I say.
"Oh yeah," she confirms. "And another thing: did I mention that my knees don't hurt when I'm walking to work, now? Did I mention that?"
Yeah, you did, but that's okay.
"You have no idea how good that is," she persists.
I don't want to scare anybody, but this is the way you begin to talk to the people you love. You can go on running, cycling, and all the rest of it. No one's going to stop you, but you might love this yoga thing more than you thought.
Don't say I didn't warn you.
Thanks to yoga for the inspiration, and thanks to you for the conversation.
I mentioned I was visiting Toronto on the weekend, going to a new yoga studio for the first time, and doing a class with my sister (and my nephew, it turns out). I was nervous about venturing away from my home studio, and I wanted to share a few things I learned from toeing my comfort line:
1. Sun Salutations are not so different from place to place. This makes me very happy. No matter where I travel--now--I can find a home. Makes me feel warm all over, thinking that.
2. Speaking of warm all over, the studio I visited was a few degrees warmer than my home base. It only mattered when I stood up from one of those hanging my head poses (just a second, I'll look it up - aha!) when I stood up from Prasarita Padottanasana (Wide-Legged Forward Bend), and came the closest I've ever come to fainting. Maybe that's peri-menopause. Maybe it's a surge of some fantastic yogi energy. I don't know; it's a new yoga mystery.
3. The chanting was completely different in this class. And it was fast. It was like trying to sing the Italian national anthem.
4. Bandas. What are they? I think I understand the idea of Bandas, but I do not have any control over them yet. Foolishly, I asked our teacher Oliver to pick a pose for our photograph (see above). This pose (I'm not looking this one up. I'll look it up when I'm 76, when I might be able to do it!) requires some Banda control. It's his favorite pose. It's my least favorite pose. I just sit on the floor and make faces.
5. Speaking of faces, my head was recently shaved for a theatre production. I look like a 13-year-old boy at the moment. It's not my favorite look. It occurs to me that I may never end up on the cover of Yoga Journal.
6. I love my sister Tory and my nephew Stefano. There's nothing like doing a yoga class with people you love.
7. I learned again that I adore yoga. Thanks to everyone and everything that brought me here, including Tory, Stef, and Oliver.
I'd like to know who would you love to do yoga with, if you could do it with anyone?
Thanks to yoga for helping me grow, and thanks to you for the conversation.
I go to two yoga classes a week, but I do my own practice at home every single day. I adore it, and I wouldn't miss it for much.
It's still dark when I get out of bed, I shuffle to the kitchen and make a coffee (perhaps when I am a real yogi I'll drink something healthier), drink half of it, set the timer on the microwave, and begin.
The first three Sun Salutations feel a bit tight, a bit creaky. Even my mind is tight and creaky. I'm thinking about getting my hands positioned correctly, thinking about rotating my thighs inward and pulling that lower belly in (something I have no idea how to do, still). Heels closer to the floor, shoulder blades down, etc. You know all of this.
Then something or someone--some larger part of me, perhaps--begins to well up. The rabid thinking slows down. Something warm and delicious takes its place. I begin to feel more generous with my positioning. I feel happy all of a sudden, and light.
Some days, about ten Sun Salutations in, this thing takes over and I go crazy, like a whirling dervish. My breath pours in and squeezes out, I'm warm from the inside out, I am strong, I am beautiful, and I am huge, somehow. Unconstrained. You should see my Warrior II pose. I fill the living room. I fill the house.
I love those days.
This morning was one of those days. I'd set the timer for 70 minutes and was so enormous by the end of it that I didn't hear it go off. Best Savasana ever.
Does this ever happen to you?
Thanks to yoga for making us huge, and thanks to you for the conversation.
I stare at my feet at the beginning of each class. We hang for a bit before we chant ohmm and get peaceful. It's while we're hanging that I look at them.
I love my body.
After ohmm, we spend a few minutes contemplating how we're standing on our feet. Our teacher tells us to put our first toe down, then our fifth toe, and then try to lift the middle toes. I can't do this. My middle toes head off toward the big toe--gripping the floor like drowning swimmers hanging to the side of a lifeboat for their lives.
So far, I am unable to convince them that we're on dry land. Relax, I say to them. Ohmm, for God's sake.
I love my body.
My right foot is in a brace. It's a long story, but I'll be in that brace for a while longer. It means I don't hop anywhere on my mat. I shuffle. Underneath the brace my right lateral malleolus (the outside ankle bump) looks like Mr. Potato Head. I'll paint eyes on it for Halloween.
I love my body.
The truth is that there are perhaps ten things about my feet that aren't gorgeous and that don't behave in the manner in which I'd prefer. And here's the thing. I could easily say the same about my hips (What do you mean, open? Open my hips?), my arms (My elbows won't turn that way unless I break them.), my hamstrings, which are shorter than short, even my face, which has completely relaxed about four times in my life. And on and on.
Today, hanging over my feet, it occurred to me that love is a decision. Things are beautiful or not, loose or not, strong or not, potato-heady or not. So what. Love is a decision.
I love my body.
Thanks to yoga for helping me love me, and thanks to you for the conversation.
I'm getting ready to go to Toronto to see my kids. My sister has lightly suggested we go to one of her yoga classes while I'm there.
I'm nervous. I've been at my home studio for about seven months. It's all I know. What if Sun Salutations are different in Toronto? What if I'm dying half way through the class, and I have to spend 45 minutes in Child's Pose? What if my pants won't stay up and my shirt won't stay down? (Granted, this happens in every one of my own classes, but it's different in a room I know.) Argh, it's like starting all over.
Holy Mackerel, the phone rings. It's my sister: she says she just finished the toughest yoga class of her life. Her hair gel poured into her eyes, she was sweating so hard. A little ominous, perhaps?
Ok, slow down, maybe try some yoga. I walk into my home studio and a woman puts her mat down beside me and says, "I'm new, and I'm nervous--is there anything I should know?"
I almost cry. In this second I realize I've been at this yoga business for a few months, and that feels good. I am absurdly happy to welcome her and to assure her that she'll be fine. I am a welcome-wagon maniac.
I spent the first two months of yoga avoiding eye contact, too worried about my pants, my shirt, and my uncooperative body to let myself relax into things. I am shocked to see it can be done differently. So, this weekend I'll try to go in this foreign studio as an aspiring yogi: breathing, present, willing to play with others. And I will humbly do Child's Pose the entire time if I have to.
I'll let you know how it goes.
Thanks to yoga for the lesson, and thanks to you for the conversation.
Kristin Shepherd
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