This Is What We've Been Practicing For

Despite much cultural evidence to the contrary, we don’t practice yoga so that we can be good at headstands. Yoga wasn’t created so that you could learn to put your foot behind your head or to have a six-pack or work on your yoga booty. (What even is that?)

Yoga is training for real life. We call it yoga practice because we are practicing for what will happen when we step off the mat. The mat is the rehearsal room for real life. How we respond on the mat is how we’ll respond out in the world.

This last week has been intense for those of us who are working towards justice in the world. That our country fosters racism and misogyny, et. al. shouldn’t surprise you, but that blatant racism and misogyny have been enshrined in the highest office of government really hit me below the belt, and has, at times, completely overwhelmed me.

But this is what we’ve been practicing for.

All the uncomfortable positions you’ve put yourself into and learned to sustain were practice for this. All the poses you’ve held for minutes longer than you thought you could were for this moment.  Every time you have wanted to quit but haven’t. Every moment when your mind wandered but you brought it back to the breath. Every time you spoke to yourself with compassion.

All of it was for this moment.

Because you’ve been practicing, you know what to do. Because of your practice, it gets easier to stay present, to breathe, to remain calm and centered despite the emotional and political apocalyptic shit storm that’s been moving across the landscape.

When it feels like all hell has broken loose outside, you have the skills to find calm from the inside. This is what you’ve been practicing for.

When your mind is spinning 1000 miles an hour, you are able to slow it down. This is what you’ve been practicing for.

When anger and panic rises up overwhelmingly, you know how to find your center. This is what you’ve been practicing for.

When fear squeezes your chest like a vise, your can breathe to loosen its grip. This is what you’ve been practicing for.

We practice to reduce our suffering and to reduce the suffering of others. This work is nothing new. You’ve done this before. You know how already. All the rehearsing gets you ready for this moment, and the moment has arrived.

You can handle what you think you can't. You can stay present just a moment longer. You can breathe one breath, and then another, and another. 

This is what we've been practicing for. 

Much love,

Bear

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You might also like to read about yoga and...EMPATHY,  BEING AN ADULT and SOCIAL JUSTICE. 

A Blessing For Grace In Times Of Chaos

:::The brand of blatant white supremacist misogyny that has risen to power is deplorable, but it is not new. These systems have worked to keep people down for centuries. I am grieving, but I am not surprised. I spent Wednesday cycling through the stages of grief: disbelief, denial, bargaining, guilt, anger, depression, and hope. I ate blueberry pancakes, laid on the floor and cried over Hillary’s utterly graceful concession speech. I biked across town to sit under 800 year old oak trees. I visited friends to commiserate, rage, and ultimately, strategize. And then I wrote this blessing:::

A Blessing for Grace in Times of Chaos

For those who are grieving, may you make space for your feelings. May you cry, rage and despair until your heart is wrung out. May you be fully present without clinging to the stories your feelings might try to tell you. Know that the feelings, like everything, will change.

May you know that there is power in emotion, and channel it towards action. Know that though your feelings have passed, they may still return. May you support your community in the ways you know how and allow yourself likewise to be supported.

For those who rejoiced on Tuesday, may you too be healed. May you find safety enough to breathe. May you look inside yourself and recognize your own humanity, inherently connected to all those around you but so long subsumed in the abyss of our toxic culture. 

May we all see, and continue to build, a world without separation, in which there is no more ‘us’ and ‘them’. May we deeply know that there is only one of us.

Let us then get to work. May we show up for immigrants, for Black people, for indigenous folks, for women, for queer and trans people. Let us get down in the dirt and do the work. Give your time, your skills, your money if you’ve got it, and your heart.

May we all take risks and find ways to take concrete, measurable actions. May we build bridges and ladders. May we never stop looking back, throwing the ropes that just saved us to the ones still drowning.

May we do the work that so many before us have done. May we follow their path. May we trust that "the arc of the moral universe bends towards justice." May we keep bending it thusly.

Much love, 

Bear

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You might also like to read about yoga and...EMPATHY,  BEING AN ADULT and SOCIAL JUSTICE. 

Stability Among The Chaos

This post and discussion came about in the week before the election, before the results started rolling in, before we knew, but it’s as relevant now as ever.

This week is crazy, full of anxiety. There’s a lot looming on the horizon, much of which we can’t control. We can cast our single solitary vote (and I hope you will!), but we can’t control the results of Tuesday’s election. It feels like so much is at stake, and truly, the only thing we have any say in is our own reactions.

Thankfully yoga gives us tools to find groundedness among the chaos. Being “grounded” is kind of a woo-woo buzzword, but what I mean here is simple: stability. The ability to remain present despite the chaos rattling around us.

Yoga is one tool for finding that presence. In class this week we shared with each other more strategies for finding stability in the swirl.

• Be in nature. Find a tree to sit beneath. Lay in the grass next to a body of water. Work in the garden. Look at the vast expanse of sky.

• Cook a meal. Smell the onions browning in the pan. Feel the texture of crusty bread. Taste the sweetness of butternut squash.

• Take a hot bath. Add salt to the water, maybe some fragrant herbs or essential oils if you have them. Light a candle. Listen to the sound of Tibetan singing bowls.

• Go for a walk or run or bike ride. Move your body through space. Go at a pace that feels nourishing rather than punishing. Notice the wind on your face. Notice your breath in your chest.

• Do something creative. Paint with watercolors. Color in a coloring book. Make a collage out of old magazines.  Don't judge the result. 

• Sing or play music. Sing any song you know. When you’re singing, you’re breathing. If you play an instrument, pick it up. Dust it off. Play a tune.

• Spend time with children or pets. Absorb some of their magic. (Not that kids are the same as kittens, but they do sometimes have a similar energy!)

We have many tools to find that sense of groundedness. Use the ones that work for you. I’d love to hear from you! What other strategies do you have for finding peace in times of anxiety?

Much love, 

Bear

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You might also like: 

• How To Feel Big Feelings
• A Blessing for Grace in Times of Chaos
• How Capitalism Ruins Everything (Even Yoga)

Real But Not True

Have you ever witnessed a small child get really truly freaked out by someone else’s Halloween costume? Dad’s wearing a mask or Grandma has her face painted, and the kid is spooked. The kid doesn’t yet have the ability to see the difference between the illusion the adult has created and what the reality actually is.

We’re no longer toddlers, but this happens to us all the time, our seeing a thing as something other than what it is. This is sometimes called “The Great Mistake”, and it often occurs in ways we don’t recognize. We believe our thoughts frequently and blindly, even when there is evidence to the contrary, and because of this, we suffer. We experience things in a way that is real but not true.

Imagine this: It’s dusk, and you’ve walked into your yard to throw the compost into the bin, when suddenly, you see a slithering creature in the grass. You freeze, your heart pounds, and your palms get sweaty. You lean in just a smidge to get a closer look at the snake when you realized, Doh! It’s just the garden hose.

Real but not true: The experience you had of seeing the snake in the grass is real; your sweaty palms and racing pulse actually happened. But it’s not true that there was a snake in the grass. Though your experience of it was real, there was never a snake in the grass.

Everything is not always as it seems.

For another example: You sit at the coffee shop waiting for your friend to arrive. The appointed time arrives and passes, and the friend never materializes. First you feel angry that your friend disrespected you in this way. How could they be so careless with your time? That line of thinking spirals down to all the other times when people in your world have let you down. Before you know it, you’ve spent most of the afternoon feeling shitty and unloveable. Hours later you look at your calendar to realize your coffee date is actually tomorrow.

Your experience of your friend standing you up is real. You felt anger and rejection and sorrow. But your friend didn’t stand you up.

It’s real but not true.

In the same way, yoga teaches us not to mistake our thoughts for reality. We mistake the masked monster for our father, the illusion for reality, and this makes us suffer. Even though the thoughts are convincing, you don’t have to believe them!

Yoga gives us tools to stay present in the moment, so we’re not constantly swayed by the ever persuasive thoughts. Following the breath, focusing on our posture, sitting in meditation, we start to see things clearly. Instead of being caught up in the real but not true, we begin to experience more fully that which is both real and true.

Much love,

Bear

P.S. I first learned about this concept from the teachings of Tara Brach. More here.

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YOU MIGHT ALSO LIKE:  

• FEELING YOUR FEELINGS, PART ONE

• FEELING YOUR FEELINGS, PART TWO

Do's and Don'ts of Yoga, Part Five: Aparigraha {Non-Grasping}

This is the final installment of a five part series on the Yamas, the ethical guidelines for how to live a yogic life. (Parts one, two, three, and four are over here: Non-violence, Truthfulness, Non-stealing, and Celibacy.)

The fifth Yama is Aparigraha, which translates as non-greed, non-hoarding, or (my personal favorite) non-grasping. This is one that comes up pretty regularly for most of us. Whether or not we notice it is something else entirely.

We live in a greedy culture.

Advertising is a gazillion dollar industry, the sole purpose of which is to inspire greed, endlessly stoking the desire for more. More money, a better house, a nicer car, fancier clothes. The list goes on and on. (If those don’t ring true, how about these? A Pinterest-worthy living room, a pastel colored bike with a basket full of flowers on the front, clothes that make you feel like you live in an Anthropologie catalog, etc.) If greedlessness seems inaccessible, you’re not alone, and it’s not your fault. Capitalism runs on the belief that we never have enough. (Does that make Aparigraha an anti-capitalist sentiment???)

It works in non-materialistic ways too. You’re single and you’re constantly pining away for that special someone. You finally find them, and a few months in, you remember how much easier things were when you were single. You’re in Downward Dog and you can’t wait to be doing backbends instead. You’re in Wheel Pose and you wish the teacher would put you back in Down Dog already.

We often want what we don’t have, and this wanting cripples our ability to enjoy what we do have.

Here’s a story to illustrate the point. (Full disclosure: I heard this somewhere a loooong time ago and have no idea if it’s true. Extensive Googling only turns up references to motivational speakers using it with no evidence to back it up. Urban myth or no, the metaphor works and it’s stuck with me all this time so I’m transforming it into a fairy tale here.)

Once upon a time, zookeepers did an experiment on their monkeys. The monkeys were well fed and cared for, happy little creatures. One day, the zookeepers placed coconuts along one side of the cage. Each coconut had a small hole drilled into it and was filled with a sweet treat. The monkey would stick its paw into the coconut and grab the treat, but to its dismay, the hole in the coconut was just the size of the monkeys open paw. When it clenched its fist to grasp the treat, it could no longer remove its paw. For hours, monkeys sat around the cage with coconut fists, unable to remove their paws, and yet, unable to let go of the treat.

This is us. We're all wandering around with coconut fists. We want what we can’t have so badly that we spend days, months, years pining away for it. All the while, our bellies grumble, but our paws are stuck so we can’t eat the food we’ve already got.

Aparigraha is relinquishing the desire to have more than we need, and instead practicing appreciation for what we’ve already got.

There’s no happy ending until we open up our fists and let go.

Much love, 

Bear

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You might also like:  

• Yoga and Capitalism

• How To Quiet Your Mind 

• What Happens When Your Mind Isn't Quiet

Do's and Don'ts of Yoga, Part Four: Brahmacharya

This is part four of a five part series on the Yamas, the ethical guidelines for how to live a yogic life. (Parts one, two, and three are over here: Non-violence, Truthfulness, and Non-stealing.)

The fourth Yama is Brahmacharya, traditionally translated as celibacy. I struggle with how to interpret Brahmacharya. I’m definitely not celibate and probably neither are you, but our behavior doesn’t negate the relevance of this teaching. I have trouble with the idea that I can just pick and choose the teachings I like or find to be interesting. I’ve signed on to this whole system of Yoga, and yet sometimes I’m not sure what to do with this teaching. 

One thing that I’ve found useful is to investigate the spirit of the law, as opposed to trying to follow the letter of the law to a T. We can ask,

“What is the intended effect of this teaching? What are some other ways to get to that intended effect?”

Just like in the asana practice, not every pose is for every body. For a variety of reasons, a student might be better off skipping Wheel Pose (Urdhva Dhanurasana), for example. But rather than just sitting that pose out, we can ask, “What is the intended effect of this pose? How else can I create those effects?” In Wheel Pose, we might practice Bridge Pose (Setu Bhanda Sarvangasana) instead to open the hip flexors, or practice a backbend supported on a chair to find opening through the chest and shoulders.

With Brahmacharya, one intended effect is to better enable us to focus on our spiritual pursuits. If that’s the case, we can then ask, “What is distracting me from my practice? Are there things I can put aside in an effort to have a more intentional focus on the Divine?” Another intended effect might be to allow us to practice self-control. So then we can inquire, “Where are the areas that I feel tempted to engage in activities I’ve committed to stop doing?” Quitting smoking, getting off sugar, fasting from the Internet, etc, are all opportunities to practice self-control.

In this way, we remain true to the spirit of the law even if we’re not able to or interested in following the letter of the law.

Even if we’re not giving up sex altogether, the yoga teachings still offer plenty of insight into how to govern ourselves in romantic interactions. We can look to the other Yamas for guidance.

Are you harming other people in your pursuit of sex or romance or are you practicing Ahimsa (non-violence)? Are you willing to lie or manipulate others to get what you want or do you always practice Satya (truthfulness)? Are you wishy-washy about getting consent or do you take only what’s been freely offered, aligning yourself with Asteya (non-stealing)? By making sure that we’re practicing ahimsa, satya, and asteya in all our romantic and sexual partnerships, we minimize pain and suffering for ourselves and others.

Have thoughts or questions? I'd love to hear from you!

Much love, 

Bear

P.S. If you like what I write, sign up for weekly blog posts direct to your inbox by clicking here or filling in the form below! And if you want even more connection, find me on Facebook and Instagram.

Do's and Don'ts of Yoga, Part Three: Asteya {Yamas and Niyamas}

There’s a running joke in my family that one of my aunts is “chronically late”, as though it were a condition she’s afflicted with. It’s a disease I share. I’m not always late, but more often than I’d like, I find myself leaving the house later than I meant to and then rushing to the next place I have to be. This is stressful for me, no doubt, but it’s also a waste of time for the person on the other end, sitting at the restaurant or outside the yoga studio, waiting for me to arrive.

The third Yama in the list is Asteya, non-stealing. (The Yamas are the ethical guidelines for living a yogic life. We covered the first two, Ahimsa {non-violence} and Satya {truth}, the past few weeks.) Asteya both refers to not stealing the possessions others but also to not stealing the intangibles, time, energy, etc, ie, not taking that which is not freely given. When I’m late for an appointment, I’m stealing the time of whoever is waiting on me.

I once had a sweetie who was even later than I was. Without fail, I’d wait half an hour or more every single time we met. Even though I was also often late, it made me so angry! I felt disrespected, like my boo didn’t think my time was valuable. I’d sit at the coffeeshop or the bar fuming about this time I was wasting. This was ultimately really good for me because it taught me what other people felt like when I stole their time, but I still struggle to consistently be punctual.

Of course life happens, and occasionally things come up (sometimes literally, like the St. Claude Bridge). But if you’re habitually, chronically late like me, we’ve got work to do. Stealing time from other people creates more fluctuations in our mind (Sutra 1.2), and prevents us from abiding in our own True Nature (Sutra 1.3).

This week I’m thinking of timeliness as next to Godliness, so to speak, and trying hard to not steal time that doesn’t belong to me. Will you join me?

Much love,

Bear

Do's and Don'ts of Yoga, Part Two: Satya {Truthfulness}

When I was a teenager, before I’d ever said to anyone that I thought I might be queer, I imagined that “coming out” would be a huge, earth-shattering, and singular event. Then I came out to my best friend at church, and I realized I ought come out to the rest of my friends too. I came out to even more people when I started dating a woman my freshman year of college. I came out to my parents the next year, after we’d been dating in secret for too long. And I came out to more of my extended family the year after that, when my face ended up on the front page of the newspaper at a rally in support of gay marriage. Oops.

It feels like I’ve been coming out ever since.

The second quality in the Yamas, Patanjali’s list of guidelines for living an ethical life, is Satya, which translates as truthfulness. It’s relevant that here Patanjali doesn’t require a non-action in the way he talks about many of the other Yamas. Here it’s a positive action. The call is not for non-lying, but for full-on truthfulness.

Before I was out as queer, I rarely lied outright about who I am, but I often lied by omission, leaving out a crucial detail in a story, neglecting to mention that the friend I was referencing was really my girlfriend. A lie of omission is still a lie. Part of living fully in the truth is not hiding relevant pieces of information about who we are.

Remember that the Yamas are the first part of the path of Yoga. Dealing with our relationships with others is where we must start to have any hope of creating a state of Yoga (a ceasing of the fluctuations of the mind.) If you’re lying about, or even just hiding, the truth about yourself, you set yourself up for strife. Drama keeps your mind full of thoughts, aka fluctuations of the mind, which in turn keeps you from being able to reside in your own True Nature, which is ultimately the point of practicing Yoga (Sutra 1.3).  

I often feel like coming out has never really stopped. When I’ve dated a man for any length of time, I have to come out again to family or to new friends who might simply assume that because I’m with a man that I must be straight. Living in Satya requires that we be “out” about who we are. When we’re “closeted”, we are always living to some degree in untruthfulness.

Maybe for you it’s not about being queer, but all of us have aspects of ourselves that feel uncomfortable to reveal. There are things we’d rather that the whole world not know, that we’d rather no one knew. Where are you hiding? What do you need to come out about? I’d love to hear from you!

Much love, 

Bear

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If you want to think more about Satya, earlier this year I wrote extensively about quitting lying, even in the smallest form, for the forty days of Lent. Read all the reasons I tell lies, and probably why you do too.

• Why I Tell Lies, Part One
• Why I Tell Lies, Part Two
• Why I Tell Lies, Part Three
• Why I Tell Lies, Part Four

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Dos and Don'ts of Yoga, Part One {Yamas and Niyamas: Ahimsa}

The Yamas and Niyamas are often overlooked, but are arguably one of the most useful parts of the practice of yoga. Though in 2016 in the United States, we tend to focus on the asana (posture) practice, Patanjali (in The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, one of the most referenced books about the classical practice of yoga) lays out seven other limbs to the system of yoga. The first one is Yama.

Yama translates literally as restraint. (Think pranayama, restraining of the breath or controlling of the life force.) We often think of the Yamas and Niyamas as the dos and don’ts of yoga, or the ethical guidelines for living a yogic life. This is a pretty straightforward shorthand, but if we reference back to the first section of the Sutras, we’re reminded WHY we practice yoga: in order to see ourselves clearly, in order to reconnect with the truth of who we really are. (Sutra 1:3 Tada Drastuh Svarupe Avasthanam--Then the Self abides in its own true nature.)

The yoga practice, then, is one of clearing away all that is not that essence, that inner light, and the Sutras explain how to do so. The second sutra explains that yoga is a stilling of the fluctuations of the mind (Sutra 1:2 Yogash Citta Vritti Nirodhah--Yoga is the cessation of the fluctuations of the mind-stuff). All the practices of yoga, not just the asanas, are leading us towards a mind that is still and quiet.

The fact that Yama is the first limb of the eight-limb system of yoga is telling. Through this Patanjali says, don’t start with your body, or your breath, or any of the higher realms. If you want your mind to be clear, start with your relationships. Begin with how you interact with others.

The first yama is Ahimsa, non-harming. Recollect an incident in which you harmed someone else. Remember back to that time. Consider the ripple effect that harm might have had on your mind, your heart, your ability to see yourself clearly. Harming another living creature creates a disturbance in the mind that is hard to let go of. Similarly, if you’ve been harmed by another, this effect may be amplified even more. Consider also the effects of negative self-talk and other self-harming behavior.

We practice ahimsa, non-harming, not only because it meets the moral guidelines of the Sutras and of our internal compass. We also practice ahimsa because harming clouds the mind, and a cloudy mind is moving away from a state of yoga. Non-harming brings us closer to a clear and quiet mind, which allows us to see ourselves clearly, to connect to the divine that lives in each of us.

Much love, 

Bear

P.S. P.S. If you like what I write, sign up for weekly blog posts direct to your inbox by clicking here or filling in the form below! And if you want even more connection, find me on Facebook and Instagram.

P.P.S. Want more on the Yoga Sutras? 

• How To Quiet Your Mind 
• What Happens When Your Mind Isn't Quiet 
• On Practice...
• And Detachment

The R.A.I.N. of Self-Compassion

Dealing with someone else’s big feelings is challenging for any of us. (See last week's post for a reminder.) But dealing with our own big feelings can feel downright impossible. Most of us have a variety of coping mechanisms we use to distract ourselves from emotions we find uncomfortable. On the healthy end of the spectrum, we might go for a walk, or call a friend, or eat a nourishing snack. On the other end, we pour a drink, or smoke a bowl, or binge Netflix. (I buy shoes on the Internet. It’s my only true vice.)

If you don’t want to opt out, is there a mechanism for being present with your own unpleasant emotions? How, actually, do you FEEL YOUR FEELINGS?  What can you do when you’re overwhelmed and there’s no way out? Here’s a story to illustrate. Last year during the holidays I brought my partner Nick home with me to meet my father. I’ve had many serious relationships in the past decade, and I’ve brought all of my partners home to meet my mom’s side of the family, but thus far, none had met my dad.

My relationship with my father is complicated at best. He and my mom split up when I was 4, and he was only present intermittently after that. Nowadays I visit him for a few hours on Christmas Day every year, and that is generally the extent of our interaction. Having Nick there was validating in that it affirmed for me how dysfunctional my interactions with my dad really are, and you might think that validation would feel good, but in fact, when we left my dad’s house on Christmas night last year, I felt horrible.

Nothing particularly bad had transpired, but still I cried in the Exxon parking lot as we filled the gas tanks, preparing to drive three hours back to New Orleans. In trying to manage seeing all of our families, we had arrived in two cars, so I was driving back alone. I was still crying as we merged onto the interstate in our separate vehicles, and it was then I realized that the car I was driving didn’t even have a working stereo. There were literally no distractions. Oh shit, I thought.

There’s a practice called RAIN that I used that night that I learned from the teachings of Tara Brach. It’s sometimes called the RAIN of Self-Compassion, and it’s a technique for being present with your big feelings. RAIN is an acronym which stands for Recognize, Allow, Investigate, and Non-Attachment.

So there I am, just me and my feelings, careening down the dark highway at 75 miles an hour. First I RECOGNIZE what is happening. I’m feeling shame. There’s some anger in there, and sadness too. The pain of not having a relationship with someone I'm supposed to have a relationship with. But mostly shame at having someone witness my family’s particular brand of crazy.

Then ALLOW those feelings to be. Don’t fight with them. Don’t try to make them go away. Don’t distract yourself from them. Just let them happen. I cried and shouted for about 50 miles and tried not to drive off the road.

INVESTIGATE what’s really going on. Anchor your emotions in physical sensation. What does shame feel like? Where does anger live? What are the sensations associated with sadness? I found shame sitting like a ton of bricks in my stomach, sadness crashing like waves in my chest, anger clenching hot in my fists. Don’t run away from what you’re feeling. Go towards it. Explore.

The final step is to meet this experience with NON-ATTACHMENT. Can you have big emotions and know that they will pass? I felt shame, sadness, and anger, but I am not those feelings. After an hour or so on the road, the waves got smaller and eventually subsided. I knew they might return, but I also knew they didn’t define who I am. I felt them, let them move through me, and then let them go.

Our lived experiences are vast and not limited to the emotions we find pleasant and desirable. RAIN can be so useful in allowing us to experience the fullness of life. Learning to be present with the discomfort of being human gives us access to a richer, deeper emotional life. To recap: 

R   Recognize what is happening

A   Allow life to be just as it is

I   Investigate inner experience

N   Non-Identification

Want to explore RAIN some more? Head over to Tara Brach's website for a podcast and meditation that explores the topic. {https://www.tarabrach.com/the-rain-of-self-compassion/}

Much love, 

Bear

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P.P.S. Have you missed some recent posts? Read about yoga and: 

• EMPATHY
• BEING AN ADULT
• GETTING SHIT DONE
• SOCIAL JUSTICE
• MONEY