OK, Rumi, let's dance.

Photo Credit: Jean-Pierre Dalbera/ Flickr Creative Commons

We're fools whether we dance or not, so we might as well dance.
~Japanese proverb

Let the beauty you love be what you do. There are a thousand ways to kneel and kiss the earth.
~ Rumi

Nathan over at Dangerous Harvests just made his second anniversary post. Happy blogiversary, Nathan! To celebrate, he posted his first post from the blog. It isn't my anniversary, but I thought I'd go back and look at my first post anyway. Here's a piece of it (from November 2, 2008):

If yogis discovered the secret of happiness thousands of years ago, why do we now still live in a culture of so much suffering?! And to put it more personally, since this is to be my personal journey, why do I still suffer so much? Why do I forget to practice in my daily life, when I know that it will not only make me happier and healthier, but also decrease suffering in the lives of those around me?

In June, I started a Masters in International Education at the SIT Graduate Institute in Vermont. I chose the school because I believe the SIT philosophy is highly compatible with my attempts to increase the practice of yoga in my daily life. In formulating my learning plan, I stated as my second learning objective "Explore ways to bring my career into harmony with my yoga practice." In fact, this is one of the key reasons why I am doing this degree - to give myself the training and the tools to adjust my working life to facilitate my practice - and yes, cheesy cheesy, to do more good in the world.

It's interesting to look back on because I don't feel that way any more. It's not that I don't suffer, but that the quality of my suffering has changed. Back then, I was suffering in the dark. Now, I feel like I can at least suffer with the light on. I have a consistent daily practice, not only of yoga and meditation on the mat or cushion, but also taking these practices into my life and applying them to running, eating, working, and personal relationships. Through this, I've not only physically transformed but I've begun to shine the flashlight of mindfulness into all sorts of dark corners.

In the beginning, this blog was about bringing my career into alignment with my yoga practice. I had forgotten that. Back then, I was working a challenging administrative job and struggling to practice yoga in the workplace. I was reluctant to admit that I was struggling so much because it wasn't the right place for me to be. It was a job that worked with my strengths and which brought out all the worst in me, too. I suffered in many ways at that time: emotionally, physically, mentally, spiritually. The suffering had to get really bad before I was really willing to look at the forces that were holding me there and ask myself: Why? Why fight? Why not just let go?


I was clearly looking for the light switch, even then. I'd started my Masters program because I was already seeking. I wrote those things in my learning plan and started this blog for a good reason. I've even had a Rumi quote up on my computer sidebar, probably since before I started this blog: Let the beauty you love be what you do. It took me all this time to really see it, to look Rumi in the eyes and reply, Yes. OK. I know why you are here. Let's dance.

When I started shining that flashlight around, mostly what I saw was fear. When I looked more closely, I realized that fear is always worse than the thing I fear.  I know this is not a new concept, but the more I sit on my cushion in silence with my eyes closed, the more I have to make friends with it. I began to wonder if I ever had any other motivation for action in my life besides avoiding fear. I began to wonder what would happen if I did something for love. Would the world end? Would the boogieman in the corner come out and get me? Did it matter?

There's never any map for these journeys we take, or rather, I'd say there are many maps - the experiences of others who have taken their own journeys and lived to tell the tale - but they're cryptic and incomplete, and sometimes we flat out refuse to believe that they could really be telling us to leap off that cliff into the darkness. Over the past three years, I've been evolving. I feel like the same person, but when I look back to that first post, I know I am not. I'm teaching at Community College now, and it's scary and difficult and fulfilling. I just started Yoga Teacher Training this past weekend. I'm finally ready to take the necessary risks in order to make sure all the pieces of my life really fit. I've learned to feel gratitude for the fear and suffering, because I've realized that they were the map and directions. They were the flashlight. I'm ready, finally, to really love what I do.

The best time to practice is right now

Yoga is the perfect opportunity to be curious about who you are. ~ Jason Crandell

For those wounded by civilization, yoga is the most healing salve. ~ Terri Guillemets

The deeper I go into practice, the more I become aware of how complicated I make life sometimes. There are all these layers of the mind that peel away. It reminds me of the way the experience of the asanas changes on a physical level. For the first few dozen or even hundred downward facing dogs, the experience is pretty much holding your breath and looking forward to coming down. And then suddenly, one day you actually feel what it means to inwardly rotate the thighs and spread the hip bones and all this space opens up in the pose. And it will change your world, that feeling. See if it doesn't.

Like this, too, in the mind. At first, learning to breathe through and experience difficult emotions without acting, I thought I was learning to deal with the present. (Side note: when I say that it sounds as if I have already learned to breathe through and experience difficult emotions without acting. I can assure you, I haven't. That's why they call it "practice.") Anyhow, I'm starting to realize that a strong emotional reaction is almost never about the present. It's a sure sign that I'm holding a past wound up as evidence in a present situation - probably holding it against someone who had nothing to do with the original pain in the first place. Take a close look and see if this isn't true. And it will change your world, that understanding.

I started this post out thinking that I was going to write about breathing through reactions in the present and then boom! Insight. Look out - you never know when it's coming. Originally, I was going to explore my reaction to a harassing comment left here, but now I see I don't have to. That comment, in the present, means nothing. Who knows why people do these things? His problem is not my problem. The pain and uncertainty and anger it triggered - that's old stuff, really old stuff. And the illusion of ego. Right now, in the present, there's just clarity and a sense of compassion.

The content of this post may have evolved, but I can keep the title because the time is now. Peel away all those layers of history, and inside is the jewel. It is all these illusions that are complicated. The present is incredibly simple. I wonder what is behind the next layer?

Taking root

Among the many definitions of the noun root at dictionary.com:

• The usually underground portion of a plant that lacks buds, leaves, or nodes and serves as support, draws minerals and water from the surrounding soil, and sometimes stores food
• A base or support
• The condition of being settled and of belonging to a particular place or society (often used in the plural)
• An essential part or element; the basic core
• A primary source; an origin

In discussions of physical asana practice, you will often hear the phrase "root to rise." The basic idea is to create a firm foundation for the pose (usually by grounding your feet) and send energy down into the earth through that foundation. By aligning your body correctly above this foundation, you allow a counter-flow of energy to move upwards and lift your body lightly, without effort. This allows you to practice asana with what Patanjali described in the yoga sutras as "steadiness and ease."

This sense of rooting to rise is important in balancing postures. In vrksasana, or tree pose, it is easy to visualize this principle of rooting down and growing upwards through the image of the tree. One way to challenge the balance in this pose is to close the eyes, relying on instinct and the internal senses rather than the visual representation of the external environment in order to achieve balance. This requires a little bit of trust also. Of course, poses of all kinds can allow you to practice achieving a sense of lightness through the use of this principle.

Because of the multiple definitions of root(s), the idea of rooting to rise lends itself as a metaphor for off-the-mat practices. For example, root can refer to one's source or origin, so grounding yourself firmly in the past can allow you to move easily into the future. Learning to trust the instincts rather than visual feedback in poses such as vrksasana can also have lessons for how we achieve balance in our lives off the mat.

We use the phrase "returning to one's roots" to describe the process of going back to where you came from, both physically and ideologically. In many ways, I feel like I've gone back to my roots in the last year and a half. Returning to your roots does not necessarily mean regressing. Rather it is a process of integrating elements of your history and experience into who you are now. It can mean simply honoring parts of yourself that you've cast aside and re-evaluating what role they can play in the present moment. Maybe they no longer serve you, in which case they need only an acknowledgment, some gratitude for the role they played in your journey. Or maybe, looking back you will find that your past still holds you up. If we deny our pasts, we will always lack a solid foundation and when we are required to operate on intuition, we will lack the stability needed to stand firm. Only by building on the past can we truly find balance. It is your history that gives you the energy and anchor you need to grow above the canopy and wave your leaves in the sunlight.

Letting go of the past

"Do not seek to have everything that happens as you wish, but wish for everything to happen as it actually does happen, and your life will be serene."
-- Epictetus



"Our deepest fears are like dragons guarding our deepest treasure."
--Rainier Maria Rilke

This morning in class, we worked on Utthita Hasta Padangustasana (Extended Hang-to-Big-Toe Pose). I know the lovely lady on the Yoga Journal site has a big smile on her face, but this is one of those poses that pushes all my buttons and makes me lose my cool. Between sides, Nikole asked us to let go of our struggles on the first side and start the pose on the second side with a fresh and open mind. She said, "We spend so much time living in the past, don't we? Even the things we worry about happening in the future are just things that happened to us in the past. Just let it go."

Fear is a useful thing when you're being chased by a bear. It's much less so when you're trying to balance on one leg with your foot in the air or considering changing your job or moving to a new city. And there's a fine line between learning from past experience (arguably good) and assuming that because things did not go the best way possible last time you tried something that it will be so again in the future (arguably bad). The question is how to know when fear serves to protect us, and when it holds us back from reaching great treasures.

"Tonight we are going to work on balancing our past and our future"

Tonight's yoga class was with Joshua Graner; he studies Taoist Yoga among other traditions, and has a really unique teaching style. He focuses on the connection between asana and life, philosophy, and fine details of alignment that help to find what is sometimes translated as "steadiness and ease" (from Patanjali's Yoga Sutra 2.46). I have only studied with Joshua three times so far, but each time I felt that I broke through somewhere new in poses I have been doing for years. Each class has a theme, usually metaphorical, bringing together what happens on and off the mat (echoes of what I wrote about yesterday!). Today Joshua walked in and said, "Tonight we are going to work on balancing our past and our future." I almost giggled. It's quite the ambitious project for an hour-long class! :-) But I feel incredibly alive, aware and present at the moment, so maybe it worked.