"No Time Like the Present" by Mya-Lisa

Staying present isn’t easy for me.

Sure, I’ve read all the books, I understand the philosophy and, make no mistake, I’m on board. I’ve embraced the concept with no less than Howard-Dean-after-the-Iowa-caucus level zeal. But I’m a daydreamer of such epic proportions that trying to keep me present would give a Zen master an ulcer.

I’ve always been a daydreamer, but it wasn’t until I was a teenager that I realized, through the efforts of one peculiarly persistent English teacher, what an intractable habit it is. This teacher was extraordinary. She was one of my favorites. She was also a little crazy.

Ms. Jenkins (I’ll call her Ms. Jenkins instead of her real name, although I doubt she would mind or take exception to being called crazy) had the ability to see right through me. Most teachers saw only a conscientious student who got her work done on time and did it well, but Ms. Jenkins saw a daydreamer who frequently checked out of her class, leaving behind a body set on autopilot to nod occasionally.

Oh, she saw all right. And she did not find it particularly endearing. Or so I’m guessing because whenever I drifted off into a daydream, she’d hurl a piece of chalk at me.

In her defense, I imagine she was awaiting that venerable day on which I’d actually be paying attention, nimbly catch the chalk in one hand, raise an eyebrow, and toss the chalk back to her along with a witty rejoinder. Life lesson learned. Unfortunately, that didn’t happen. Time and again the chalk would hit me - on the cheek, on the shoulder - or when her aim was slightly off, shatter on the desk in front of me or hit my nearest neighbor (sorry, Ted). Once, apparently not finding any chalk handy, she threw her shoe. Now THAT got my attention.

From time to time, I find myself wishing I still had Ms. Jenkins around to throw chalk at me to keep me present. I don’t want to miss my life like I missed her lessons. Some parts of my life really hurt….and some are frustrating and tiring….and many are beautiful and fulfilling beyond expression. And I want to experience them all.

*****

I have a son who’s now 6 and he has an unidentified neurological disorder. A few years ago my husband and I were told that his disorder was likely degenerative and fatal, and we lived with that likelihood, off and on, for more than two years. It’s impossible to describe how it affected me other than to say it shredded my insides until I was nothing more than dust.

But humans are hardwired to acclimate to even the most abhorrent of circumstances, and I learned to live under the guillotine of that impossible possibility. Don’t get me wrong: I didn’t embrace nor accept that I would lose my son. And I still dissolved into a sobbing, gasping, snotty mess from time to time. But I also eventually got back to living life: reading Magic Tree House books with my daughter, crashing toy monster trucks around the house with my son, watching the loveliness of the clouds moving across a blue sky, enjoying many of these moments more fully, wholly. Coming face–to-face with a future I couldn’t abide propelled me to stay in the present.

And I found freedom there. In the present, tomorrow’s laundry, next week’s meeting, and the mountain of work I need to get done before the end of the month only matter in practical terms – not emotional ones. In the present I don’t relive what I would have done, should have done, differently yesterday. There’s no knot in my stomach over what might be or what was….only absorption in this person, this scent, this activity or this scene in front of me.

In time, we found out through further testing that it was unlikely my son’s disorder was degenerative after all, and during the giddy, euphoric time that followed, I kept close to me the lessons I’d learned during darker days. But only for a while.

I’ve heard the precept that life is like a rotating wheel and one must try to move away from the wildly spinning outer edges to the still center, the present, where there’s no uncertain movement. Ahhh, being in the middle, in the stillness. But why is it so easy to get swept back out into the hubbub? And is it just a wild coincidence that centrifugal force applies not only to actually being in a physically rotating body but also applies equally aptly on the other side of the metaphor to life itself?

For me, it’s during times of difficulty that epiphanies and insights come skating in by the dozens to grab me by the shoulders and shake me until I just get it. But when the anxiety wanes and life becomes more ordinary, my epiphanies tend to get buried in the clutter of the day to day.

I find that I’ve begun letting myself get pulled into the vortex again. Increasingly, stream-of-consciousness thoughts make their autonomous march across my brain while attendant emotions swing merrily through my neurons. “I forgot to get cat food today, I’ve got to remember that on the way home ... if that cat peed on my new Tibetan rug, I swear I’ll skin it … when I dropped off the kids this morning, did I call the school secretary by the wrong name ... oh, no, I think I did … mortifying … I hope the kids’ school year goes well ... what if his seizures pick up again and it was like last year … how would we get through that again ….”

I need to feel the sting of a piece of flying chalk to remind me to get out of my head and back into the world. Fully.

I have no answers. I only know that when I’m in the present, whether that present is difficult, wonderful, or both, life itself fills the entire screen of my mind. The colors of this world are more vivid, the sounds more nuanced, the interactions more genuine.

I’ve started to meditate to practice this art of staying in the moment. I’m practicing taking my seat both physically and metaphorically. I’m practicing attending to my breath instead of all the monkeys in my head. I’m practicing because I don’t want to keep turning around to discover another of life’s beautiful moments passed by with only the merest of notice because I wasn’t really there.

I’m practicing being present because that’s where I want to be. That’s where my life is.

The Walk-In Closet

I have a friend, who meditates inside a walk-in closet. God - I just love the image of her walking in there - rolling up her sleeves - getting down to the business of wrestling her demons and all manner of beasts that have taken hold of the microcosm that is her universe. It's perfect. Made for transformation. After all, isn't the walk-in closet where we do most of our changing?

Which reminds me of a yoga-teacher-friend of mine, who once opened class with a story about a mudroom. He grew up in Connecticut, where all his friends had mudrooms. But not him, and he was so envious. When he came home from a day of play, he was greeted at the front door by white, wall-to-wall carpeting. There was just no anxiety-free way of getting his body-all-covered-in-play inside a house-all-covered-in-white without making a mess. Yet that was the expectation put upon him. What a different story it was, when he visited those friends of his with magical mudrooms. Wow! You could just swing open their doors with dirty life all over you and safely cross the threshold. You could be your dirty little self and just hang up your crap, disarming in a self-paced manner. My friend suggested that we make of our yoga class a mudroom. Your yoga practice could be your personal muddy haven, where it's safe to both wear your world - your work, your play, your burdens, your defenses - and also slowly to remove those layers...till there's just you.

I don't have a walk-in closet or a mudroom. But I do have a garage (last metaphor - I swear). It's a work room. A place, where you can take everything apart, turn it upside down and inside out, and get to know it all in so much detail - with curiosity and appreciation for just what is. The getting to know you - your body and your mind - but not in an effort to fix either - lends itself to transformation. The paying attention all by itself - without a judgement that things need to change or to be better - is so liberating. The undressing of all those defenses with a new found comfort and acceptance for just who we are, even dressed in the grime of life, is freedom. Sometimes, we walk away from our meditation or our yoga practice with new clarity, but the true gift comes, when we come to feel grounded with the uncertainty of everything just as it is.

Pose of the Month: Urdhva Dhanurasana

Oh wheel of my mind,
Be so steady, as my spine
Begins to recline


What is more stimulating than a good cup of coffee, a remedy for all things glum, and anatomically the absolute opposite of what you are doing right now?

Yes. Urdvha dhanurasana. AKA… the wheel pose.

Whether you are brand new to wheel or this is how you yawn yourself awake every morning, you can come to this pose with a beginner mind. This month, we’ll be exploring the wheel’s many anatomical aspects, turning the pose inside out, upside down, and right side round. Whether or not any of us actually find ourselves IN a wheel pose is beside the point actually. Because in yoga, the pose is never the goal - the journey is the goal. We’ll learn to lengthen our psoas muscles, make space for our sacrums, strengthen our triceps, and soften into a suppler spine. When we set our minds on these processes, we are practicing to be present and awake. We are learning to pay attention, thus creating a union of body and mind. We may even begin to feel that there is as much space inside us, as there is outside us, so inviting a sense of spirit to the mix.

Practice in your imagination now - then come to class and practice on the mat. (Remember: it is wise to begin any back bending practice with a warmed up body and an awareness of how to tuck your tail bone)....

Lying down on your back, begin to bend your knees, sliding your heels closer to your sit bones. Soften your feet into the ground. Lengthen your tailbone towards the backs of your knees, and continue this lengthening/tucking action as you raise your pelvis up toward the sky on an in-breath. To prevent your knees from splaying outward, roll your thighs inward toward each other. The action of the lengthening tail bone, together with this inward rotation of the thighs, helps to make room for your sacrum, thus protecting your low back.

Now, you are in bridge pose and already beginning to open up those psoas muscles that cross the fronts of your hips. You could stay there. You could even place a yoga block beneath your sacrum for support and have a seat right there. So much change is already occurring.

But to continue on to full wheel, place your hands alongside your ears, fingers facing the bottom of your mat. What matters here is that your elbows are pointing straight up, not splaying outward. By this time, it is very possible that you may have arrived at your edge. To attempt to rise up from here, if your elbows are splaying outward, could injure your shoulders ~ then I'd have to blog about rotator cuff injuries. ; ) Your practice becomes the work of opening your upper arm bones into more external rotation, as you draw those elbows closer together. Your practice also becomes the cultivation of patience.

If your elbows ARE facing straight up, then imagine that the outer folds of your arm pits are like walls, and so this is when you can urge those walls to fold inward toward your chest, helping to maintain the external rotation of your arms, and begin to press your hands into the ground, straightening your elbows and rising up on an in-breath. Check in on your wrists. Come back down if there is pain. You may be able to attempt coming up again, if you first place a rolled up towel beneath the heels of your hands, removing some of the “over” extension there.

And - Voile! You are in wheel. Be the wheel. : ) Continue to tune the wheel, finding the places you need to work less, the places you need to work more. Continue to tuck your tailbone. Notice if your ribs seem to be jutting out, and knit them back into your body. In fact, be LESS of a wheel by always looking to introduce elements of a forward bend into your backbend. You do this by drawing your hip points toward your rib cage and your rib cage toward your hip points.

See if you can stay up for maybe five luxurious breaths. Then as you descend from your wheel, continue to tuck your tailbone (basically, your brain should inhabit your tailbone for this entire process!) and to draw your elbows toward each other and your inner thighs toward each other. Continue to breathe. Always breathe. In fact, be more mindful of this practice, then anything else I have said thus far. The moment we begin to hold our breath is the moment we are no longer present and have set up the best possible scenario for injuring ourselves. Soooooooo...don’t do that. : )

And that was a very long trip into the dynamics of coming up into urdhva dhanurasana. But afterall, yoga is really all about the details.

Enjoy.

And please feel free to engage in wheel-talk, as well as all things round and beautiful, here at The Karma Garage.

How to Meditate...

Or Instructions for Life.

Or Fifty-Two Ways to Lose It over a Bad Cup of Coffee.

(take your pick)

When you call up images of meditation, perhaps you call up visions of bliss. There is this figure, sitting in a Buddha-like posture, wearing serenity upon her face. And maybe you think - yeah, that’s it. I want to feel like that. Calgon – take me away!!! I need to order up some peace, please – extra tranquility on the side.

So.... You can begin with that. That desire for peace and for a sense of - settling down? Settling down amongst the unthinkable chaos that life somehow has become? How ‘bout just five minutes of quiet.

You begin....

Take a seat. Traditionally, that seat is on the ground, perhaps on a cushion, or on any support that allows you to assume an upright posture. However, you might very well be in your car at the parking lot outside Staples, because you bear a three page list of items without which your child just cannot show up to the first day of school. And guess what – you are not a monk sitting in a beautiful monastery with fancy back-supporting meditation accessories. You take your seat, wherever you can find it. Take your seat. Take it like it is yours. Take it like it is your God-given-right. Take it like a breath of oxygen. Take it .... because you really need it right now. Like this is the first time it ever occurred to you .... that you deserve this. A freaking seat. Some support.

You know what though? You may have made some time for yourself. You may have sat yourself right down in the middle of that period of time. Then you find yourself thinking - THIS is uncomfortable. : ) and Um - where’s the Calgon?

Lesson # 1: meditation is not bliss.

Right, you say - I’m off for a bubble bath then.

Come back. Because if you want to learn instructions for a life without exorbitant suffering, you need to take the hot seat. Come back. Because settling down - within the chaos of your claustrophobic mind - does not come with an infusion of lavender. Come back. Because by now you know the saying - nothing in life worthwhile comes easy.

Take your seat. With inescapable you. Who is worth ALL of this.

Take your seat AWAKE. Awake but relaxed. Paying attention but softening. Focus. Open. Ooopen. Ooooooopen.

Open your eyes, too. Half-way. Let them softly gaze upon a single point about three to six feet in front of you on the ground (or somewhere in the middle of your dashboard?). Let this gaze be soft enough to take in the periphery. Remain open to the room. To its sounds even. To its temperature. Remain open to it all. Open to the space outside of you. Open to the space inside of you.

My Lord, it is Grand Central Station in here! MY mind....is fricking Grand Central Station.

Okay. That is your experience. That is a very fine experience. Because, maybe, for the first time ever, you know that your mind is Grand Central Station. And the key to peace is not Calgon – it is in fact this new awareness. It’s the ability to watch your grand central thoughts without purchasing a ticket and taking a ride to Westport, Connecticut....or wherever Metro North happens to be heading at this hour. Or at least, if you DO find yourself in Westport, you can come all the way back in an instant - to the home that is you - on the wave of one breath.

You sit. You come to your breath. You notice your breath. Breathe in...breathe out...breathe in...breathe out. .... “Well all I wanted was a cup of coffee – regular coffee – two sugars – whole milk – I HATE skim milk – she KNOWS that! – she doesn’t care – she doesn’t care about me – she doesn’t care about ANYthing – not even my kid’s birthday by the way – was it too difficult to pick up a small gift or something? – get a card? – I can’t believe my baby is nine years old now – time is moving so fast – I remember the day she was born – man, that obstetrician was a pain in the ass – all I wanted was a fricking epidural – next time I think I’ll go to the birthing center anyway – but how I HATE to give up coffee when I’m pregnant – it’s like going into a four day coma – and besides, there is nothing as good as a good cup of coffee – keep your Splenda – AND your skim milk - and God damn it, what the hell is so difficult about making a decent cup of coffee!” .... Breath in. Oh! I’m back. Whew. Where’d I go? Okay. Breathe in...breathe out...breathe in...breathe out. .... ”I sure could use a good cup of coffee right now.” : )

And that’s it. Right now, that’s your experience of meditation. You are bearing witness to the chaos of your mind. And maybe it’s like that. A cocktail of some things benign, some things triggered with anger, causes of frustration, worries about the future, perseveration on the past, wonder, anxiety...and yes, PANIC – for a good cup of coffee – an ordinary, bourgeois, modern day complaint. And all of these experiences count. Because when we learn to deal with these, we can maybe move on to the bigger stuff - like...cancer. We practice. We practice small. With cups of coffee. We learn to make space around our discomforts. First, we learn to see them. Then maybe, we learn to laugh at them. Then possibly, we try something different the next time we can’t get a good cup of coffee. Maybe, we experience a curiosity for - dare I say - 1% milk? - or – ehem – soy milk? Okay, slow down there, sailor.

Right, so these are the instructions for meditation in a nut shell:
1. Take your seat with a soft gaze on the ground before you.
2. Become aware of your breath, and stay with your observation of that, but be soft enough to keep open to the feelings of space both inside and outside of you.
3. When you find yourself lost in thought and become aware of this, be thankful to find yourself present again. Let go of those thoughts, and come back to the home that is you. Simply come back to your breath - the one thing that is always present.

But here is the main thing:

Be gentle with you.

Truly, there is only one honest window into your mind....and it is through the window of compassion.

Be gentle with you.

Hardening comes easy and brings with it so much pain. Soften.

Be gentle with you.

If you come to your meditation practice - or to your life - or to the coffee shop - with a judgement of how it is all supposed to go - then that is a self-injurious thing.

Be gentle with you.