The View From The Top {Sutra 1.20 Virya}

Painting by K. Sing

According to the Yoga Sutras, the second facet of your practice is effort, virya in Sanskrit. (Remember last week? The first one is faith.) It is variously defined as strength of will, diligence, enthusiasm, and inner strength. Suffice it to say, this is the hard work of the yoga practice, and the hard work of life. Virya is “committing the energy to go there.” Virya is pushing to get to the top of the hill on your bike.

Of course, in New Orleans, we don’t have any real hills to ride, but if you ever need to bike from Mid-City to Uptown, the Jeff Davis overpass is the way to go. (((Small aside--Can we just quit already with letting everything be named after historical white supremacist dudes? It’s not just the monuments! Seriously. If you’re interested in mobilizing around this issue, connect with Take Em Down NOLA. bell hooks overpass, anyone? Allen Toussaint Circle? Anyway, moving on.))) So if you have ever biked over the aforenamed overpass, you will know that it is a big hill to climb.

Because of the way the intersection is set up, it’s often hard to even get a good fast start from the bottom. Instead you’ve just got to power your way up. And up. And up. And up. As the Red Queen in Alice in Wonderland says,

“Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that!”

Or bike, as it were.  It’s a loooooong climb to the top in a city with no hills. BUT! When you get to the top, it’s AWESOME! You are like, eye-level with the Superdome. And you can look the sun square in the face. And you’re above all the cars stuck in traffic on the interstate because you are awesome and you are on a bike and the sun is setting and it’s glorious!

AND THEN! You get to coast all the way down the other side. And it’s funny, because when you’re on the downslope, it’s actually counter-productive to keep pushing. Have you ever tried it, to just keep pedaling as you go downhill? It feels crazy and out of control and weird on your knees. The best way down is to just hold on loosely and enjoy the ride.

But the only way to get there is to slog on up. Up the hill. All the way up. Such is yoga, and such is life. The work it takes to get to the top isn’t always fun. Your thighs burn, and your mind says “This sucks” over and over again.

But you want to be eye-level with the Superdome. 

I know you do. Virya gets you there.

Much love,

Bear

Tales of An Accidental Life Coach

When I sat down this summer to do my quarterly intention setting, I took stock of the first half of 2015, and there was something new and exciting on my list--life coaching. In some ways, it was an accident that I became a life coach, and in others, it seems meticulously planned. Everything in my life up til now feels like it’s been pointing me in this direction. For years I kidded that I wanted to be a life coach--because that’s what it seemed like, a joke, because who needs to be coached about life?? Shouldn’t we just know how to do that inherently? But the truth is, most of us need some support. Wouldn’t you do so much better with a weekly pep talk, with accountability to someone besides your cat? And the other truth is, I was already coaching many people, from my yoga students, to my friends, to my mom. I just wasn’t calling it that. I was calling it “being a good listener”, or “ giving good advice”, or “helping people to see what they already know.”

So now I’ve gone pro, so to speak. The work I’ve done with my coaching clients over the past six months has been some of the most fulfilling work I’ve ever done. Last week on a Skype call with a client we were worked on a self-limiting belief exercise. The exercise (aka how to stop listening to your invisible inner terrible someone) asks you to list out all the shit you tell yourself that keeps you from being the brilliant, spectacular, shining being you actually are, and then turn all those terrible lies into something wonderful and TRUE. (For example: “I believe that an okay life is good enough” turns into “I believe I’m worthy of the best life possible, and that that life is within reach.”) It feels really gross to say the terrible things out loud to someone, but it feels amazing to speak the true ones. As I read back to my client her truth, technology refused to cooperate and the video kept going out, so I couldn’t tell how she was reacting. She reassured me, “I’m smiling so big right now!” And I was too.

I know you have that tiny fire inside that burns for a larger life. You crave real-life tools for undoing the lies you tell yourself, and accountability around your own self- sabotaging behaviors. I know because I do too. Heartspark is a way to experience coaching work on a small scale, in a concentrated dose, to help you get out of your own way and live the best life possible. That life is within reach.

Much love,

Bear

On Pragmatism and Possibility {Sutra 1.20 Sraddha}

Sraddha: Developing the faith that you are going in the right direction

(sraddha virya smriti samadhi prajna purvaka itaresham)

The Yoga Sutras describe two types of people. There are those who are pretty close to reaching samadhi, or ultimate realization, and are on their last incarnation on this physical plane. And then there are the rest of us mortals, folks like me and maybe you, who are on the nose-to-the-grindstone path to yogic bliss. For us, the Sutras describe five qualities needed in our practice. The first is sraddha, faith.

Our faith is waning. When I started thinking about sraddha, I googled “faith,” just to see what Daniel Webster had to say about it (“complete confidence or trust in someone or something,” for the record). Google also gives a little line graph of the use of the word over time, and faith was at an all-time high in about 1850, and has been declining slowly but steadily ever since. This doesn’t really surprise me.

I didn’t grow up religious, but I had a God phase when I was a teenager. In the stretch of years from about thirteen to seventeen, I took myself to church multiple times a week. I was seeking connection to something larger, some way to make sense of the madness of this world, and the church filled that need. And I truly, deeply believed. But at some point, the incongruencies and hypocrisies of the church started to add up to something I didn’t want to be a part of, and my faith began to splinter. I remember laying on my bed in my boarding school dorm room, weeping with uncertainty. Faith seemed like leaping into the abyss, and I was no longer convinced I’d survive the fall.

Fast forward fifteen years, and I am still not religious, but faith is present in my life. This year I have been surprised by the pull to actively cultivate faith--in my yoga practice, and mostly in my relationship. I’ve been with my partner for three years this week. This is my longest relationship thus far. When we hit about a year and a half, the stage at which I have always ended previous relationships, I totally panicked. In the past, this was about the point when all the reasons this relationship wouldn’t work in the long run started to show themselves, and I’ve prided myself on having the objectivity to see these red flags clearly. But at a certain point, my pragmatism became a liability.

I talked with an old friend, married with a baby, about her relationship. I asked her if she ever thought about what would happen if she and her husband ever divorced. No, she said, surprised. That doesn’t really occur to me. I think about what would happen if he died, though. I was flabbergasted. How, I asked, could it not occur to her that their relationship might end? And she said, I don’t know, I just trust that it won’t. I have faith in us.

Faith is the net we must string from our own hearts to the heart of the world in order to get out of bed in the morning. 

So I’ve been cultivating faith. Faith no longer seems like stupidity or denial, but instead seems like the net we must string from ourselves to each other, and from our own hearts to the heart of the world,  in order to keep loving each other, in order to keep getting out of bed in the morning. I have faith that my partnership could last into some distant point in the future neither one of us can see yet. Faith that we’ll both keep trying our hardest, and learning, and growing. Faith that our efforts are taking us in the right direction.

Much love, 

Bear

P.S. If you want real-life tools for cultivating both pragmatism and possibility, consider my New Year's workshop, HEARTSPARK: Embodied Visions for 2016. I'd love to see you there!

Does This Pose Make My Shoulders Look Weak? {Sutra 1.15 Vairagya}

A Story And A  Sutra

A few months ago I was practicing with several friends and fellow yoga teachers during the studio’s open practice hours, and we were working independently but also fielding questions and suggestions from one another, trying to make use of the collective wisdom in the room. I was at the wall practicing Pincha Mayurasana {link} aka Forearm Balance, a pose I have long struggled with. I was resting between attempts and muttering to myself.

“This stinkin pose. I feel like I’ll never actually get into it. Gahhhrr, my stupid shoulders are just so tight. I can’t even get my shoulders into the right position because they’re so tight.”

A nearby friend nodded in assent. Her problem in the pose was lumbar flexibility, she said, while my limiting factor was shoulder tightness. Then one of the other practitioners piped up from across the room, “Your main issue isn’t tightness, Bear, it’s weakness. Your trapezius aren’t strong enough to lift your shoulder blades up your back to get into this shape.” (See {here} for an anatomical explanation of what all that means.) Whaaaaaa?!?! My internal monologue went wild.

“I am plenty strong enough to get into this pose I’m strong but not flexible and that’s my issue. I’m such a control freak; that’s of course what it is. Who does this person think they are, anyway? What do they know?!?!?!”

We went back and forth for a couple of minutes but I felt my emotions rising up, and so I exited the conversation as gracefully as I could (not very!) and continued on with my practice. But it gnawed at me for days, and I kept replaying the conversation in my head. Was I WEAK? Was I not as inflexible as I thought? Why did that conversation make me feel so many feelings?

Yoga Sutra 1.15 Drishta-anushravika vishaya vitirshnasya vashikara sanjnya vairagyam. Giving up your attachments consists of the decision to gain control over your craving for experiences, seen or only heard of.

This Sutra examines Vairagya, translated as non-attachment. Swamij.com explains it this way: “Vairagya involves learning to actively and systematically encounter, explore, and let go of the many attachments, aversions, fears and false identities that are clouding to the true self.” Part of being human is having attachments, and the flip side of attachment is aversion. Basically, we have stuff that we like, want, believe, etc, and stuff that we avoid, dislike, reject, etc.

It became clear to me that I was/am VERY attached to the idea that I am strong. And I am extremely averse to the idea that I’m weak. So I began to examine that. What does it mean to me to be strong? What do I lose if I consider that I might also be weak? Can I hold those two possibilities inside? What would it look like to choose to not be attached to the ideas of strength and weakness?

One thing that has changed since I opened myself to the idea that my shoulders might be simultaneously tight and weak (it’s a complex joint, this isn’t that hard to imagine, actually, once I got over myself/my attachments/my aversions), is that my Forearm Balance has drastically improved! I now work on shoulder opening for a while (what I’ve always done because I just knew that the problem was my tight shoulders), and then focus my attention in the pose on really working on lifting my shoulder blades up (new action inspired by the idea that my shoulders might also be weak). And lo and behold, the pose is much, much easier than it once was.

Letting go of attachments and aversions requires an openness of mind, and a softness of heart. Look around for those moments that push your buttons, and ask yourself, What am I attached to? What am I avoiding? The pull between attachments and aversions is where most people live most of the time. The point here is not to never like anything or always avoid everything always ever. The point is that most of our attachments and aversions make us suffer. And yoga offers us a way out of suffering: we can choose non-attachment. It’s an active process to get there--detaching--but once you’re there, non-attachment becomes a state of being.

Entitlement Ruins Gratitude

Every year around my birthday I like to take stock of the past twelve months--what was awesome (seeing Stevie Wonder in concert), what changed (I moved in with my boo),  what challenged me (balancing work and art), what just sucked (my grandmother's house burned down). It’s like a personal New Year. Gratitude for all of those things, even the sucky ones, is something I’m working to cultivate, and it doesn’t happen just by thinking, “Oh, I’d like to feel more gratitude in my life.” It’s a choice, and it’s a practice. And life promises ample opportunities to do the practice.

Recently I was biking with a friend. We passed through an intersection in which the other street had a stop sign and we did not. The driver at the stop sign waved us through, and my friend mouthed “Thank you!” and waved backed. I was incensed.

“Why are you telling him thank you? We have the right of way!! He had a stop sign!! He had to stop!!!”

She was surprised at my fury, to say the least. I argued that to say thank you was encouraging drivers to think of giving bikers the right of way as a courtesy rather than a necessity, something they might just as easily choose to ignore. My friend countered that when a driver was friendly, being friendly back might help them to have a more positive view of cyclists. And besides, she felt better inside when she was friendly rather than self-righteous. Oh, I said.

Entitlement is the killer of gratitude.

When we feel entitled to something (a possession, a job, a roadway, a societal position), it squelches in us the ability to feel grateful for having it. Now, don’t get me wrong, there are some things that are basic human rights that we all should feel entitled to, and be angry about when we don’t have them (or when others don’t have them, for that matter), and fight to get them. But there are many other smaller things that we think we deserve that maybe we don’t, things that we think belong to us, that actually belong to no one, or to everyone.

There’s an Ani Difranco lyric that I’ve carried around in my heart since high school (yes, don’t laugh, I was once a devoted Ani Difranco fan) that sums up my position here:

 

The world owes me nothing, and we owe each other the world.

I’ve started thanking drivers on my bike more often than not. Being grouchy to drivers certainly isn’t helping anyone. I don’t get it right every time, but I’m practicing. When entitlement creeps up, I try to find gratitude instead. Because ultimately, I feel better inside when I’m grateful instead of entitled. And I think those drivers on the road do too.

uch love,

Bear

The Bounds of Compassion

I have felt immense compassion in the past couple of month for my friends, loved ones, and acquaintances who have been the victims of violence around the city. This is easy--they are my friends, I care about them, I don’t want them to hurt.

But quickly my mind goes to all the people in the city who suffer and have suffered violence--people who I don’t know, who don’t look like me. Can I extend compassion towards them, these people who are the victims of crimes that might never even be reported?

And then I think of the perpetrators of this violence. What kind of suffering must a person go through to put them in a position to be able to commit violence? Can I feel the same compassion for a person who attacked someone I care about? Can I imagine them as a person with wants and needs, hopes and dreams? With friends and family who love them? Can I imagine this person laughing?

What happens to us when feel compassion towards others is that we open ourselves to their suffering, and ultimately, to their humanity. We see through the illusion that we are separate. Our hearts open and soften. We grow wider, more expansive.

I’ve been thinking about all of these things as I watched the horrendous events unfold in Paris last weekend. Quickly my newsfeed was filled with Eiffel Tower peace signs and French flags. And then started appearing the images of Beirut from days earlier, which had been absent until then. If we feel compassion towards Paris and the people there who are frightened and grieving, can we also extend that compassion towards the people of Beirut, whose trauma fails to make the news? Can we extend compassion towards Syrian refugees, who are fleeing from their drought-ridden war-torn homeland? How many of us can remember when we once also wore the moniker of 'refugee', fleeing our city ten years ago because of a terrible combination of mother nature and governmental failure?

The poet Rumi says “Your task is not to seek for love, but to seek and find all the barriers within yourself that you have built against it.” This week in class we’ve done a Buddhist Metta (lovingkindness) meditation--this is a practice to help us break down the barriers we’ve built against love and compassion. Below are the words we’ve recited all week, and here is a free Tara Brach guided Metta meditation.

May you be at peace. 

May your heart remain open.

May you awaken to the Light of your own true nature.

May you be healed.

May you be a source of healing for all beings everywhere.

Much love, 

Bear

Hopelessly Devoted

I’ve been practicing yoga now for nearly ten years--a relatively short time compared to some, but a lifetime for me. The only other constants in my life for that long are my mama, my best friend, and New Orleans. My relationship with yoga has been a deep, wild affair from the start. I started practicing yoga in 2006, shortly after “The Katrina,” (as my Gretna friend calls it).

I was falling in love, but I wasn’t ready to commit. I went to classes fairly regularly, but I didn’t understand how to practice on my own, and I wasn’t really interested in that, to be honest. I liked going to class, having someone guide me, and being in the company of other sweaty, struggling bodies. I needed that external voice, and those external bodies, to encourage me to keep going.

I didn’t get serious about yoga until 2008. I had finally graduated from college (I was on the 7 year plan), moved back to New Orleans, and was trying to figure out what to do next. I was flailing, waiting tables full time at two restaurants, going out too often, drinking too much, sleeping too little. I had an inkling that I might want to teach yoga. And I figured if I was going to teach yoga, I should probably do a whole lot more of it.

So I started going to classes all the time, three or four times a week, and I finally, finally, started practicing at home. At first it was just a few Sun Salutations (and let’s be real, that’s often all I squeeze in even now.) And slowly, over time, I developed the capacity for a longer practice on my own. I learned to listen to myself, to hear the instructions of my teachers, to trust my own intuition. I found this thing called devotion. I still like to have a fancy cocktail every now and then, but my priorities have shifted.

My practice continues to evolve, and I don’t believe we’re ever finished, but for the most part, yoga is what brings me back to myself over and over. It’s the thing that holds up all the other parts of my life: my art-making, my relationships, the big picture, the minutia. It’s firmly rooted, stable, and solid. It has become my foundation. It’s not easy (as described in last week’s post), but it is truly transformative. I’m glad I’ve settled down.

Much love, 

Bear

Working Hard? Or Hardly Working? {Sutra 1.13}

by Paul Green via Unsplash

Sutra 1.13: Tatra Sthitau Yatnah Abhayasa

Practice means striving to be there.

Quieting the mind comes in many forms, but it doesn’t come free for any of us. This is the real work of the yoga practice. The dedicated effort of moving towards stillness is called abhyasa in Sanskrit. In the Sutras, it’s paired with vairagya or non-attachment. Both of these, practice and detachment, must be held in tandem, in balance, in order to move towards quieting the mind.

But we must start with effort. Donna Farhi, in her great book which I often quote, Bringing Yoga To Life, describes this as the running start we all must take. It’s standing to pump the pedals before you bike up a hill. This effortful effort is necessary to give us momentum. Without it, we’re forever inert, stalled out and stagnant at the bottom of the hill.

And it likely won’t be easy. One translation describes abhyasa as a “continuous struggle.” There are many obstacles to overcome--fear of failure, as in, ‘I might screw this up, so why bother trying?’; perfectionism, as in, ‘I already screwed this up so I’ll just quit now, thank you’; pain, as in ‘This is uncomfortable in my body or heart, and thus, I’ll be done now never to return’; and laziness, ie, ‘It would be so much nicer to just keep eating Halloween candy and watching Fleetwood Mac videos on Youtube,’ (or maybe that’s just me?)

But this steady discipline, this persistent effort, this persevering practice known as abhyasa, is what paves the path for our transformation. It’s a straight shot back to your own essence, a direct line to who you really are. And it’s so worth it.

Much love, 

Bear

You think you're your thoughts...{Sutra 1.4}

via www.oilae.com

But you’re not!

Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras are super clear on this one. When the mind is still and quiet, ie, in a state of YOGA, then we have the capacity to see ourselves for all our luminous wholeness. But, say the sutras (specifically 1.4), most of the time, we misidentify with the stream of thoughts passing through the mind.

Referencing the post from a couple of weeks ago, we think we are the glitter shaking in the snow globe, when really we’re the unicorn in the center. And it’s not that there’s anything wrong with glitter, aka your thoughts, it’s just that that’s not who you are. But it’s hard to tell when the glitter is just everywhere, and you know it’s always everywhere. Glitter, like your mind, is hard to control.

A more traditional metaphor is this: You are the ocean. Waves happen on the surface of the ocean. They roll and roil, splash and crash, but ultimately, they settle back into the broad expanse of ocean. They are part of the ocean. But they are not the ocean. In the same way, when thoughts and feelings arise, we often get confused and think we are those thoughts. We think, I AM sad, I AM angry, I AM blissful, I AM anxious, when we really only FEEL sad, angry, blissful, anxious.

And this misidentification makes us suffer. The waves of our thoughts toss us around and we go under, flailing. Eventually we emerge, sputtering and breathless. But we’re really much more vast and spacious than any one particular wave. The waves settle, and we can see clearly again.

So this then, is why we practice, to find moments in which the waves subside, or in which we can dive beneath them, to be held in that vast, calm, spaciousness that underpins our existence.

Much love,

Bear

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Do Whatcha Wanna {Sutra 1.39}

via Storyville

Last week we focused on all the various methods the Yoga Sutras offer us to quiet the mind, but the last one on the list is definitely worth mentioning. After listing all the different things you can concentrate your mind upon in order to make it stable, Sutra 1.39 says,

“...OR CONCENTRATE ON ANYTHING AT ALL THAT YOU LIKE!” (emphasis mine.)

In essence, try all these different techniques, and if none of those work, fine, okay, concentrate on any old thing that pleases you and the mind will chill out. I love this because it reminds me that it’s not what you do, it’s how you do it.

The techniques and formal practices are so useful, don’t get me wrong here, but if they’re not working, feel free to quiet the mind in some other way. When I’m drawing, or sewing, or chopping vegetables, or working in the dirt, or even washing dishes, often my mind goes quiet, in the same way that my mind goes quiet when I’m in Savasana at the end of a yoga class. Psychologists sometimes call this being in a “flow state,” where you are completely immersed in what you are doing.

Just like in a formal meditation practice, the state brought on by these mind-quieting activities can also make clear to us who we really are. And that’s the point, at least according to Patanjali, of all this effort anyway, to “abide in your own true nature” (Sutra 1.3).

Have you experienced that kind of “flow state”? What quiets your mind outside of formal meditation practices? And are you able to see yourself more clearly afterwards? How does that change the way you walk through the world?

I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Much love,

Bea