Kindness, by Naomi Shihab Nye

Kindness



Before you know what kindness really is

you must lose things,

feel the future dissolve in a moment

like salt in a weakened broth.

What you held in your hand,

what you counted and carefully saved,

all this must go so you know

how desolate the landscape can be

between the regions of kindness.

How you ride and ride

thinking the bus will never stop,

the passengers eating maize and chicken

will stare out the window forever.



Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,

you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho

lies dead by the side of the road.

You must see how this could be you,

how he too was someone

who journeyed through the night with plans

and the simple breath that kept him alive.



Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,

you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.

You must wake up with sorrow.

You must speak to it till your voice

catches the thread of all sorrows

and you see the size of the cloth.



Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore,

only kindness that ties your shoes

and sends you out into the day to mail letters and

purchase bread,

only kindness that raises its head

from the crowd of the world to say

it is I you have been looking for,

and then goes with you every where

like a shadow or a friend.

Some Tips for the Inversion Shy

A couple days ago, I recieved a letter from a reader requesting some yoga advice about a subject that I think is really relevant.  So, with said reader's permission, I am going to reprint some of my response here, in the hopes that it might be helpful to anyone else out there who may be suffering from...(drum-roll please)...

Inversion Aversion!!!

(Otherwise known as good old fashioned fear of going upside-down.)

The reader in question had a very real and serious concern, as she had an experience where she was dropped (by a teacher no less, argh!) when attempting one of her first handstands, and it really left a mark (emotionally).  I don't know if any of you have ever been dropped by anyone in a yoga class, but it is a truly upsetting (not to mention dangerous and painful) experience.  Also, the teacher/culprit of this dropping didn't do or say much to remedy the situation (she was probably freaked out about having dropped a student, but still!) and the impact on my dear reader was so profound that she stopped going to classes and relegated her yoga practice from that moment on to DVDs in her living room at home.

In the studio where I'm practicing currently the teachers are super serious about spotting in inversions--they tell students to opt out of spotting if they don't feel 100% comfortable and they really get on people if they aren't being attentive. The spotter, in those few minutes when a pose is being partnered, becomes an extension of the body of the person they are spotting--they should be breathing with you, anticipating where you are and what you need and being so, so sensitive to your comfort level, especially in inversions. If that's not happening, it can just be bad news for all involved.

Happily, however, the aforementioned reader has recently been bitten by the "I want to go back to class" bug--hence the re-appearance of her inversion fear--hence her letter to me.  Which, in a nutshell asked--how do you handle fear of inversions, and what can I do in class so that I don't feel pressured or freaked out when it comes time for headstand or handstand?

She is not alone in this question, I am CERTAIN.  So, in the hopes that it might also be helpful to someone else with a similar bug-a-boo, here follows my tips on how to deal with fear and the upside-down world:

1. You. Have. To. Keep. Breathing.

That's it. When you are ready to start to go upside-down again, do not leave your breathe, not even if your life depended on it...which it's going to feel like it does. Stay with your breath. Breath can overpower fear, it really can...or at least it can drown out the voice that's saying, no, you can't do this.

2. Tell the teacher that you're scared. Tell her (or him) that you were dropped before and that you are frightened. Tell her (or him) to reassure you that they are there, and to keep their hands on you at all times when you're going upside-down. This is no joke. Even if you're embarrassed...do this. It will help you immensely.

3. Be a spotter for someone else. And vow to be the very best spotter you could possibly be. Pay minute deliberate attention to their body, communicate with them, keep them safe, take care of them like they were you. This will help you feel a part of the process of inversions, and it will help you to learn what you need from a spotter when you're going up.

4. (this is an esoteric one, but what the hell)...Let the symbolism of the pose touch you. Ask yourself (your big self) what is in this pose for you, why it is so hot, what does it mean to turn your world upside-down, and let the poetry of that, the metaphor of that, keep you interested...let it be a balm for your fear.

and lastly,

5. Even if you never ever go upside-down again, your practice can be as full and as miraculous as ever. As long as you are present and breathing and bringing all of your beautiful self to the mat, it doesn't matter if you spend the entire first class in childs pose. And anyone who gives you any guff about what poses you are or are not doing...well, they have their own shit to work out.

xo
YogaLia

***

I would love to hear from anyone and everyone about their inversion experiences...good and bad.  Have you ever been dropped? Have you ever dropped someone?  Do you invert? Or do you just happen to run off to the bathroom when it comes time to get all legs-in-the-air-y? Tell me your tales of the upside-down world!

Why Sometimes I Just Can't Get It Up....

I've heard it's totally normal...

It happens to a lot of girls...

It really doesn't matter...

But, still, it's humiliating. 

Yesterday, in class...I could not get up into forearm stand.

That's right.  Please keep your gasping to yourself.  I hear there are drugs for this kind of thing, but I'm going to keep on trying the all-natural way.

(okay. that's it, I promise.  I'm done with the erectile dysfunction jokes.)

However, it IS true, I couldn't get up and it WAS, yes, humiliating and galling and all kinds of things.  I'm not sure what happened...I was taking a great class in the middle of the day, with the lovely Gina Zimmerman...(oh man, that just made me realize, I should have started this post with something like..."so, I was doing it with Gina in the middle of the day...).  Sorry, that's it, I promise.  So, I'm taking a great class...a tough class, a very sweaty class...(so, I'm doing it with Gina in the middle of the day, I'm sweating really hard...).  Argh! Now I'm done! Now I'm really done! It's a very sweaty class, as I was saying, and we had just done some pretty intense dolphin poses (for which I was congratulating myself mightily), and we then moved on to forearm stand.  Does everyone know what that looks like? That looks like this:

And this is not, let me just say, a pose I usually have trouble with.  I'm not a MASTER or anything, but I'm on the adept end of the spectrum, for sure.  I can't usually get up on my own (no, I won't do it! I won't it!) without a spot, or a wall, but, I never have problems getting, shall we say...erect.

So, Gina encourages those of us who are up for it to attempt the pose solo (no spot), and as I'm trying to do this with all my inversions lately, I decide I'm going to give it a go...on me own.  After a few pathetic attempts, I realize that today is not actually the day to attempt without a spot, so I ask my neighbor (a beautiful yogini I know from classes--one of those girls seems like she's made of liquid...or silk...or honey. Sigh.), I ask her if she'll spot me, to which she readily agrees, and she comes over, and I start...

And I kick...

And...

Nothing. 

Sad pathetic little half-lift-off.

(So, I'm doing it with Gina in the middle of the afternoon, I'm all sweaty and I just can't get up...so I ask this other girl to come and help me out...but I still can't get up, so I exclaim, "Oh my god, this has NEVER happened to me before!")

Sorry! Sorry, sorry! It's too good!

Anyhow, I think a combination of my sweaty mat and my aching arms (near jello-like at that point in class) just added up to a big collosal fizzle on my part.  My spotter had to help my hips up into the air, and I felt so...lame.

Afterward I had to bite my tongue to not start explaining it to her: "I can normally get up in that pose...I don't know what's wrong with me...my arms are all slippery", because I knew that 1. she could probably care less, and 2. it would make me sound like a whiney goober, and that is my least favorite thing to sound like.

So, I held back, thanked her for her lovely spotting, and moved on.

Sort of.

Because for the next 10 minutes I was completely caught up--why did that happen? What is wrong with me? With my practice? Oh my god, I'm so embarrassed.  Oh my god...what if...what if I can NEVER get up into that pose again? What if I can never do another inversion? What if I am going to be one of those stories where it's like..."it all started one day in yoga when I couldn't get into forearm stand" and the next thing you know I'm suffering from some wierd form of muscle atrophy or something?! ARRGHHHH!!!

And then I stopped for a moment and I thought, well...what IF?

What IF I could never do another inversion?

What IF something happened to me and I could no longer practice with the same strength and aptitude.

What IF?

Would I quit? Would I be less of a person? Would I just deem my life and my practice a miserable waste, or would I perhaps be forced to DEEPEN my practice? To make my practice not about headstands and backbends but about gentleness and delicacy? Would that be terrible? Wouldn't I still practice even if, like the astounding Matthew Sanford, I was paralyzed from the chest down? Wouldn't I find a way to practice because yoga is NOT about the asana but about union? And wouldn't any challenge only be a challenge to my sense of what unity IS, and wouldn't that ultimately be a good thing?

And as I thought about this I felt such great relief...I think sometimes I have a quiet fear that this thing I love so so dearly is going to be taken away from me, and to realize, in that moment, that THAT is not actually possible.  It was so...freeing.  Nothing could take my yoga away from me.  Because my practice lives within the boundaries of my life, no matter what it looks like, and I am not going to let anything stand in the way of that.  Certainly not one day where I happen to be feeling a little...um....

limp.

Hello, Pelvis...

So, as my practice deepens I have been trying to pay more and more attention (in my off the mat life) to where and how I am holding unnecessary tension.  For awhile I was obsessed with my head and I was doing this thing that I could only characterize as, "relaxing my skull" where I'd sort of do pull my attention into the way-back of my head, make what I'm sure was a very unattractive face, and try to relax all the muscles surrounding my skull. (Note: I don't even know if there ARE muscles surrounding my skull, but the process of doing this little exercise made my ears pop and little waves of pleasure run down my neck, so whatever...it worked).

But lately my attention has shifted...downwards.

Um...

It all started with my butt.  Yes, my butt.  It was this thing I started to notice, in totally mundane moments of the day--when getting a glass of water from the sink or waiting for my tea to brew or just, kind of, standing around, I would notice that my butt was kind of, um--gripping.  The muscles around my outer hips and the big ol' glut muscles themselves were unnecessarily engaged.

Please, if you don't know me, try not to make any overarching judgment calls about what this says about me as a person...I am hopeful that I do not project a personality that screams "butt clencher"...so, if we could all just keep our minds on this purely anatomically, that would be great.

Anyhoo.  I found this kind of curious, and began to pay closer attention, and sure enough, in all kinds of situations, especially tense ones, I could feel all the muscles around my hips and butt and groin start to, almost imperceptibly, tighten.  As if my body was stepping in and cutting off sensation from that point down.

And I thought about how often I feel like my breath and my emotional center is located high up in my chest, and I thought about how I've often felt that it was difficult to kind of lock-in to sensation in my lower belly, and about how f-ing tight my groins are (sorry, TMI) in wide-legged straddles, etc.  And I put it together that I might actually be tightening muscles in that area to cut myself off from a certain variety of feeling...or to at least keep conscious feeling localized in my chest and head regions only.

So, over the last week or so, I have been consciously trying to release tension in and around my pelvis, hips, butt and thighs, both in and out of class, and have been urging this process along by doing a lot of hanuman (the splits), frog pose (I can't even...this pose is like torture to me...I can't even describe it), and deep thigh stretches.  And the results have been...pretty amazing actually.

1. I am feeling WAY more grounded.   I feel much more aware of my feet and legs and just the presence of the ground underneath me  (In certain moments I am suddenly "aware" of my height...which is a weird kind of fun-house sensation in which the whole length of my body is sort of lit-up in my consciousness, all at once).

2. I am FEELING a lot more stuff.  I won't go into the details, but basically it feels that I've covered up a fox-hole that certain emotions used to hide away in, and now they've got nowhere to run to, baby...

3.  Things are opening up, physically.  Those poses that I mentioned I've been doing...those are all poses in which I struggle, mightily, and they are all (minutely) beginning to become more accessible.  And much more powerful, as I am now feeling fully present inside of them, instead of stuck way up in my chest and head, trying to pull away.

The more I conduct these little yoga-laboratory experiments, the more I am amazed by the capacity of the body to hold on and to communicate that which it is holding on too.

And it all began with a little butt clenching...

Um, gripping.  Butt-gripping.

Nevermind...

It's Official.

That's right, this devoted, near-obsessed student and blogger is finally (FINALLY) going to get her teacher training!

Better watch out, yo, 'cause I'm gonna be CERTIFIED.

This summer I will be winging my way back to NYC to get my 200-hour Yoga Teacher Training at the lovely and love-filled Laughing Lotus Yoga Center in Manhattan.  And I can not wait!!

It will be a month-long intensive training and if I can still hold my head up in the evenings when I get home, I will be sure to blog all about it.

WHOOOOOOHOOOOOOOO!

xo
YogaLia

To Invert...or Not to Invert (for the laaaaadays)

So, okay, if you've ever been to even a single yoga class, most likely you've heard the teacher, when prepping everyone for inversions, say something along the lines of...

"If you're not inverting today, you can ________".

Which, if I may do a quick yogi-to-english translation, means: if you're on your period, don't go upside-down.

This is one of the first pieces of yogic lore that gets imprinted on you, if you're a woman, when you start practicing. Don't invert on your period! Your uterus might EXPLoooooooooode! (Not actually, your uterus won't actually explode.) And normally one is not given a lot of information about WHY this is the case. Just. Don't. Do. It.

I, for one, have never paid a lot of attention to this, for 2 reasons: 1. I f-ing LOVE inversions! They are my favorite favoritest thing. If I get 10 minutes in the day to do yoga, you can bet that I will manage to fit a headstand and some handstands into that brief little window. I looooove them, they are the part of class I look forward to the most (that and backbends), and I am not going to let some sticky little hormonal monster stop me from doing them! And, 2. I suffer from the sin of pride and I am going to be hard-pressed to sit out something that I am good at.

Heh.

But, yesterday, I was in class...I'm (ahem) having my monthly visitor (please reread that sentence but make my writerly voice sound like an elderly british woman) and we were about to do headstand...a 5-minute headstand...and before I could even begin to get myself set up, this little voice inside me said a very teensy tinsy quiet little, NO.  And I just knew, for whatever reason, I am not going to invert.

So I had to sit there, waiting for Hagar (check her out people! She's AMAZING) to finish setting up headstand for everyone...waiting until she noticed my expectant little face so that she could tell me what I was supposed to do...instead.  (Horrors!)  She knew instantly what was up and she looked right at me (the ONLY one not getting ready for headstand) and said:

"If you're not inverting today, you can do..." (looking at me, searching my face for inspiration) "...Hanuman." (That's the splits, for those of you who haven't gotten to "h" yet in your sanskrit primer.)

Great, Hanuman.  The pose that lately makes me feel like I need to run screaming from the room, that, if held for too long, makes my whole body start shaking uncontrollably and me have to put my head down so as not to cry.  That sounds like a great pose to do.  For 5 minutes. On my period.

(That last paragraph makes it sound like this post is going to be about some revelation I had in hanuman...but it's not.  Sorry...if any of you were waiting for that.)

No, the point of this whole little story is that I had a very clear very intutive message from my body that I was not supposed to go upside down during my special lady time this month.  (And it was pretty awesome, by the way, and my pride was not bothered one bit...because I got to do lots of juicy hip and groin openers while everyone else sweated it out on the top of their head, yo. Word.)  But, after class I was suddenly really curious...why AREN'T we supposed to invert when we're men-stroo-ating. (Oh my god, I'm just going to see how many weirdly embarrasing ways I can reference my Aunty Flo in one blog post.)

So I did a little research, people, for my own benefit and for the benefit of my loyal readers, and here's what I found out:

There is no good reason you're not supposed to invert during your monthly visitor.

Okay, so I guess people used to think it contributed to endometriosis (that to me sounds like it has about as much a medical basis as masturbation induced blindness, but you know...).  Apparently there also is some tiny tiny tiny risk for vascular constriction in the uterus, but that also has been pretty debunked.

There is some yoga science behind it, which is that the energetic properties of your goddess time (eesh, that one made me cringe!) are "apana" or downward flowing, and it is disruptive to the system to reverse such a strong downward movement by turning it upside-down.  This makes some sense to me, and when I pinpoint the feeling I had about not inverting it was definitely related to not jarring my system--so to me, this little gem makes the most sense.  The flow is down and out for those 3-5 days, so don't screw with it.

HOWEVER, I read an article in Yoga Journal that said even THAT is a little bit unfounded, because some ancient wise-type yogis say that doing inversions can be a remedy for too much downward flow (all the ladies in the house say yeeeeeeeah.) and that if you have an irregular or over-zealous period inversions can actually be a cure, not a hindrance.  AND, the uterus is inverted in many many poses, including downdog and standing forward bends, and no one ever warns against doing those during your laday-time.

So...grand conclusion....(drum-roll, please)...

It. Is. Totally. Your. Call.

It's totally totally up to you.  You can be like me who, if I practiced with the same teacher everyday, would appear to get my period once every 5 years, or you can consider your special time a free pass to do restoratives while everyone else's face is turning red from exertion...it's your perogative.  What I discovered, which is always heartening, is that my body will tell me when it's okay and when it isn't.

So, listen close, and let those other non-hormonal SUCKAS do the inversions for you!

Or don't.

xo,
YogaLia

A Cookie for Your Patriotism...

Two women came into the studio when I was working today who were selling cookies as part of a bake sale for soldiers stationed overseas.  I said sure, as the cookies were only $2, and as they were getting me my change I said, "Anything for a cookie!".  They gave me sort of a weird look, and after they left I realized I should have said something along the lines of, "Anything for our troops!"

Oops.

Written Post-Walk Pre-Yoga...

To sit and to be still
to have walked
to have watched trees shake
from shade and birds' wings
alighting and then departing
pushing off from branches
set too high for hands
to let the world settle into focus
sound to finally greet the ears
of dogs and birds
of two feet on gravel--mine.
To watch the face of an infant
pushed past, stroller-bound
his mother's two hips
still recovering from his entrance
walking it off now,
right, left
right, left
her gaze up and out
and not on him (little buddha)
as the cavern of his mouth stretches
out and open
a yawn overtaking his round, round face.
To have walked
and let manic thought
turn to quiet thought
and then to no thought
at all.

Slow, Slowly and Sloooooooower

Substitute teacher this morning, the lovely Allison Linamen, whom I have taken from before and, whoo boy is she lovely. She's a dancer turned yogi (my favorite! They're always just so lean and long and lovely to look at), and she is an alignment nerd (which I am quickly becoming myself), so I was happy to see her.

She had apparently taken a Feldenkrais-y workshop yesterday and was all revved up about the four hours they had spent lying on the floor performing barely visible adjustments. ("Don't worry," she said, "that's not what we're doing!"). Feldenkrais for those of you who don't know is...um...something. That. Dancers doooo. It's like a...um...movement. A, um...mind/body...sensory sort of...pilates-esque...um.

No, seriously, I have no idea.

It has something to do with movement. Efficient movement, maybe? I don't know.

Here's a quote from the Feldenkrais website:

The Feldenkrais Method is for anyone who wants to reconnect with their natural abilities to move, think and feel. Whether you want to be more comfortable sitting at your computer, playing with your children and grandchildren, or performing a favorite pastime, these gentle lessons can improve your overall well being.

Learning to move with less effort makes daily life easier. Because the Feldenkrais Method focuses on the relationship between movement and thought, increased mental awareness and creativity accompany physical improvements. Everyone, from athletes and artists to administrators and attorneys, can benefit from the Feldenkrais Method.

Okay, got it now?

Anyhoo...we were NOT going to lay on the floor for hours, but lovely Allison did inform us that we would be moving slowly and with a lot of attention. I was both excited and frustrated by this prospect.  Well, no...I was mostly excited. It would mean geeking out on the subtler alignment and hopefully it would help me to stay centered and "on the dot". Which I needed. Badly.

The last class I went to, on Friday, was a total disaster--and that was no one's fault other than M-I-N-E, mine. Have you EVER heard me call a class "a disaster"?! Well, it was. Or at least...it felt that way on the inside.  I haven't been in a class and been that preoccupied in...I don't know how long...but my mind was acting like a crazed hyena, and for the life of me, no matter how many times I told myself to settle or calm down or soften, I could not get it under control.  I nearly wrote an email to Gina (friday's teach) after class, apologizing to her for my being in the front row and being just totally and utterly distracted. But I didn't because, really...my problem, not hers.  So, I was determined this morning to stay engaged in my body and the work of it, even if it meant bringing myself back a hundred million times over the course of an hour and a half.

It's amazing how difficult it can be to just STAY focused, especially when the mood is a little, ehm...fragile. Over and over throughout class, I would feel myself deeply IN the pose and then suddenly I would catch my mind running off, making sure the fire was still lit under my big pot of worry (thank you, monkey mind, for that) and I would have to yank on it's little chain: Stay Here. That was my mantra: STAY. HERE.

STAY.

HERE.

Sta---no! Staaaaaaay heeeeeeere.

And the slow pace of the class ended up being a total blessing--I could watch my feet as they settled, toe by toe, into the mat, and I could send all of my attention to the C-curve of my ribs or the extension of all the musculature from toe tip to fingertip--it gave me time to run away and return, run away and return and then finally just...return. And return. And return.

And as it happens, every time...every time I am with myself and practicing, at some point during the class there is a very quiet ping! of my heart breaking open just a little bit more and I am FILLED with gratitude. Thank you. Thank you for this practice.

Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you...