A Quiet Mind {Sutra 1.20 Samadhi}

Samadhi, the fourth quality of practice (according to Yoga Sutra 1.20), is variously translated as contemplation, stillness of mind, all-consuming focus, and absorption. The first three qualities of practice are related to Samadhi. You must have faith that getting quiet takes you somewhere you want to go (sraddha). You must exert the necessary effort to find it (virya). And you must remember that quietness is always there (smriti), that in fact, it is your essence.

Samadhi is also the eighth limb in the eight-limbed path of yoga. So we can think of Samadhi as both the result we are seeking and the means to the end. We end up with a quiet mind by regularly quieting the mind.

And so we strive to cultivate this stillness of mind not just in formal mediation but all the time, in the midst of the quick pace of daily life. Find those moments of stillness in the day to day, drinking tea in the morning, on your commute, while washing the dishes after dinner.

I hopscotched around South Louisiana last week, visiting various members of my family over the holidays. Along with being a whole lot of fun, it was hectic, and chaotic, and noisy, and tiring. But on the drives between each stop, I spent at least five minutes just breathing, being present, looking at the sky out the windshield, letting go of thoughts. Donna Farhi describes the quiet mind as the blank background on a strip of film. We see the images going by at warp speed, but if we slow down, we can see that each frame lays on a background that is neutral, spacious, and open. 

Connecting to that space is Samadhi.

Much love,

Bear

Presence In The Presents

The holidays are, for me, complicated. I love my family, but we drive each other crazy. I hate consumerism, but--Ooooh, look how cute that is! I’m grateful to live close enough to visit family, but it means I spend a lot of my holiday driving from place to place and cutting one visit short to see someone else.

Maybe you can relate. There’s a cultural norm about how the holidays are supposed to be, and if yours don’t look like the shiny, happy, snowy(???), Currier and Ives version, you might end up feeling confused, frustrated, and inadequate. And if yours do look like that, you might still feel pressure to perform, or live up to some standard you don’t actually ascribe to.

The work of the yoga practice is to be present, in each moment, with whatever is happening. Whether you like the Care Bear jammies your grandma bought you, or wish you’d stayed at home in your snuggie, you can always come back to the breath.

As you move through this week, remind yourself that the breath is always there. Focus inward, even if only for a moment, even in the chaos or the loneliness. Let go of the story. Let go of the expectations. Take a breath. And another one. And one more, just for good measure.

Repeat as often as needed.

Wishing you peace and presence.

Much love,

Bear

Forgetting To Remember {Sutra 1.20 Smriti}

My very first yoga teacher (shout out to Laura Jarrait) described yoga as a practice of remembering who we really are. I had one of those a-ha kind of moments the first time she said that in a class I was in. I had that moment of familiarity with what she was saying, even though I’d never explicitly thought that myself. She put words to something I intuitively knew.

Smriti is variously translated as memory, recollection, remembering. It’s the power to tap back into our true nature, even when we’re distracted and forgetting.

We are radiant beings, reflections of the glory of the divinity of the Universe. Does this sound too woo for you?  This might sound lofty, but it’s supported by yogic texts, not to mention the texts of many other faiths. If that doesn’t mean anything to you, know that I too sometimes struggle to reconcile the analytical-academic-critical-thinking side of my brain, with the wide-open-sunlight-pouring-through-the-trees side of my brain. That might not even be a part of my brain. Maybe that’s someplace else entirely. Heart, soul, spirit, who knows, etc? But for the purposes of this post, let’s just roll with the idea: We are burning orbs of light, shining bright the power of the capital-U Universe.

Somehow, we forget this fact. We get so crusted over with the mud of thoughts, ideas, attachments, aversions, tasks, and desires that we completely lose sight of the truth of who we are. We stumble through our days thinking WE ARE all of those thoughts and ideas. Sometimes we grapple through weeks or months without ever looking up to see ourselves clearly. Some of us spend years, lifetimes even, without remembering the truth of our wholeness and connectedness.

Think about how lonely that sounds, spending every day believing that you are alone, separate from, incomplete, not enough. Think about the suffering that might cause you. Think about all the destructive things you might do to yourself or others to cope with that pain. Think about the act of forgetting.

Now imagine seeing yourself clearly. Imagine that sense of separation dissolving. Imagine the muck dissolving. Imagine the light of your own true nature piercing through. This is what yoga offers us, a glimpse of who we truly are, a look at our own radiance.

My current teacher (mad love to Heide Grace) describes it this way: When we first practice yoga,  the path isn’t clear. We’re walking through a field of tall grass, and we don’t know where the path is. We must look down and step carefully in order to find our way. But over time, with repeated practice, the path becomes well-trodden. The way becomes easy to find. We have been here before, and we remember the way.

So when we step off the mat or leave the meditation cushion, we can recall that we are not our exterior. We are not the thoughts and feelings gurgling inside. We are wider, deeper, and brighter. We forget, and smriti helps us remember.

Much love,

Bear

P.S. Want more practices to banish your amnesia in daily life? Heartspark shows you how! Register here: http://bearteachesyoga.org/new-events/heartspark.

Crying In Public

Photo by Tom Pumford on Unsplash

My mom cries at the drop of a hat. Really, she cries at everything. Commercials, songs on the radio, a sweet story about my five-year-old niece, looking at old photographs, you name it. Her nickname in the family is “The Old Waterworks.” It used to drive me bonkers. Like, Mom, seriously?

When I was younger, I was perpetually disengaged and unaffected. I wore callousness like a badge. Talk about my feelings? Scoff. (Can you see my teenage eyes rolling?)

But really, this was a coping strategy.

There were many big, difficult feelings clanging around inside me that I didn’t know how to deal with, and avoidance was a way of not feeling. There wasn’t a magical day in which I decided, okay, now I’m going to let myself feel my feelings. But somehow, slowly and over time, my heart started to soften.

I blame all the yoga.

It opened me, melted me, unfurled all those tightly wound parts. It’s still working on me, and my hardened, closed-off parts are slowly letting go. My feelings live a little closer to the surface these days, and my edges are more permeable, so while I’m not as weepy as my mama, I am much more prone to tears.

If it’s making you squirm a little to read about all this, I feel you. Some part inside me too still resists this, still wants to keep the walls up, still sees how weird and vulnerable it is to be open in this way. But some other part of me (and of you, I bet)  knows that this life, the sharing life, the open life, and yes, the crying life, is my life, and yours.

IT IS LIFE. And the rest is just hiding out and hoping that life won’t find us.

So if you’ve been thinking about signing up for coaching with me, but hesitate because you’re scared that you might cry, well, you might. And if you’re worried because you’re “not a sharer” and you think I’ll ask you to talk about your feelings, I definitely will. I’ll bring tissues.

Don’t get the wrong idea, though, the point of this work isn’t to make you deal with all your past trauma and wallow in your sadness and shame. (I’m not qualified to deal with that, but I can recommend a great therapist!)

Coaching asks you to look closely yourself and your life, your dreams and desires. You’ll address the ways your thoughts and habits get in the way of you living your best life. This is difficult work; I can’t pretend that it’s not. But it’s vitally important work, and I know you’re up for the task.

Much love, 

Bear

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