Subtle Unrest

Last night I took class with the lovely and amazing Gina Zimmerman, who does this, and also this, and with whom I now have a nearly Pavlovian response when I attend her class--as soon as I step foot in the studio when she's teaching my nervous system automatically lets out a great big siiiiiiiiigh.

She is groovy and grounded and glorious and all kinds of other things that start with "G". Graceful! Girlish! Goober-y? No...sorry. That's me.

Anyhooo...last night Gina started out class asking us to "let this moment be enough"--meaning, you know, Get Here. Be Here. Actually and truly...HERE.

ME: Yes, yes, that sounds like a good idea...as soon as I get this one little problem I'm working on in my head solved, I will completely get on board with that.

And then she said something that caught my attention, she said--"if you're reaching for anything right now, grasping at something, can you just, put that down? Can you just let right now be enough?"

This caught my attention in such a way you would have thought my arms were actually raised in front of me, grabbing at the air--my entire body responded to it.  And I thought about how I've been re-reading and re-listening to some spiritual texts lately and all these new things have been popping up for me...one of them most recently while listening (for the umpteenth time) to a recorded lecture by Pema Chodron in which I heard her say that all spiritual practices are about relaxing.

All spiritual practices are about relaxing...I'm sorry, wait, all spiritual practices are about RELAXING?! I'm pretty sure that I thought at least some of them were about finally becoming perfect.... I really wish someone had told me this a long time ago, it would have made things a lot easier...

And as I went through class with Gina last night, as I felt myself over the course of the hour and a half, slowly begin to put my arms down, and felt my consciousness start to return to the place it most desperetely wants to live--my heart and my body and my big MIND (not my little brain) it kept occurring to me, over and over again, that whatever it is that softens you...is the right thing.

Whatever I can do...whatever I can focus on or contemplate or do or open to that SOFTENS me is the right thing. The path is all laid out--it is in fact this perfectly choreographed series of steps all plotted out and whispered to me via this feeling. Follow the softness! Follow the open-hearted gooeyness! The truth is that-a-way!!

And when we got to Savasana, I thought about how difficult a pose it can be for me sometimes, how even though all I'm doing is lying on the ground, still I can feel how much I pull away, how and where exactly it is I do not want, nor do I trust, the softening. And just as I was thinking about this (bemoaning it!) I heard Gina's lovely graceful grounded voice call out and ask us, "Can you let go of even the subtle unrest that most of us are usually hovering in?"

I could not have asked it more perfectly myself...

Just When I Thought it Couldn't Get Any Better...

I'm having a love fest with my lady teachers out here, and before I say anything else, I need to give each of them a brief plug...because if any of you are in LA and want to take class with an amazing woman, I would recommend any and all of these loverly ladies...

Maria Cristina Jimenez, who is gorgeous and warm and calls us all "my chickens" and who, for some reason, makes me get all welled up as soon as I sit down and close my eyes at the beginning of class. This woman is just all heart and makes one feel, you know...loved. Which, as cheesy as it sounds, is important. She's also a kick-ass teacher with a really graceful hold on alignment and the deeper philosophical truths about the practice.


Hagar Harpak, oh, Hagar...how I love thee, let me count the ways: 1, 2, 7, 100,000,000,000. Hagar, Hagar, dresses like a rock-star. Hagar, Hagar, takes my practice so far. Hagar, I adore...lovely Israely kinda crazy Hagar. She blows my mind and my body wide open. And I know she is going to kick my ass and turn me upside-down, every single bless-ed time.

Gina Zimmerman,  Gina has become a more recent important lady teacher in my LA yoga life, and she is amazing. I told her the other day that I now have a Pavlovian response to her class, and as soon as I walk in the door my energy just shifts and calms and opens wide up. Gina is like...a rock. A beautiful, mossy, wet and womanly rock. Gina is like how I wanna be when I grow up. She is grounded like nobody's business and a philosopher for sure and classes with her are D-E-E-P, deep.

These are my girls, and I have been going from one to the next...a morning class with Maria Cristina, an afternoon with Hagar, an evening with Gina...and something is happening. I don't know if it's the combination of their alchemy or just the next stepping stone in this constantly expanding practice, but my heart is breaking open, and I feel like the three of them might just hold the rocks. Lately I am overwhelmed with emotion in their classes...places where things have been held are cracking enough to let the light in. I don't even know how to tell them, individually or collectively...but they are peeling away the layers.

Find them, people. Take class from them. Let the glass be broken!!

Rest In Your Heart...

I want to talk a little bit about...Resting

This is new territory for me here, people, so just go with me on this one...

Resting is not something I'm very good at. Oh, I don't mean laying on the couch watching tv kind of resting. That kind of resting I am VERY good at. And I don't mean cuddling with my mister and spending too long in bed kind of resting...also, very good at. I'm talking about the kind of resting that can happen at any moment any time and can (and should) last all day kind of resting. I'm talking about the kind of resting that prompts a totally spontaneous and giant sigh of relief. I'm talking about the kind of resting that makes the space of your chest all melty--the kind that makes your mind s - l - o - o - o - o - w d - o - w - n and communicates this slowed-down-ness to the rest of your body in waves of pleasure.

That kind of resting, I am not very good at. Or so I have discovered.

I came to this revelation during a recent class in which the teacher (the excellent and supremely talented Gina Zimmerman--look her up at Still Yoga, people!) started the class by talking about how there are people in the world who are seeking, endlessly thinking that they have to go to this class, or this lecture, or this book, or this healer to find their answers, and that maybe this isn't the most efficient way to live one's life. As soon as she started talking my little ears started to blush. (And when I say little ears, I mean it...my ears are weirdly too small for my head...but that's another post altogether).

Though I'm not yet going to "healers" (or, at least...not very often. heh.) I immediately recognized myself in her description of the endlessly seeking. I thought about how often when I am in a pickle of some kind I immediately think, "well, I have to call s0-and-so" or "I have to do such-and-such" or "if only I could do that thing that that book told me to do...what was that again?" And while I know the act of seeking in and of itself is not BAD, I could feel, in that instant, as I was listening to her, that the energy of seeking is very out and very forward and very fast-moving. I picture myself with my eyebrows raised, and my chin jutted forward and my hands a-flapping the air when I'm in that state. The "I need help from ______" state of mind.

And then she said something that has stayed with me, looping around my head and body, every day since. She asked us if we could just "rest in the heart."

That's it. So simple. Rest in the Heart.

But as she said it I knew, viscerally...CELLULARY, exactly what she meant. I could feel all of that forward eyebrow-raised energy sinking down down down into the center of my chest. I felt my butt plant more firmly to the ground. I felt my breath change. I felt myself--backing off. And I felt that spontaneous and giant sigh of relief. I think I might have even heard some tiny voice inside me utter a long-held and breathless, "finally!" And I thought, my god, do I really NEVER do this?

I have been in a phase for...don't ask me how long, actually...a phase of gathering information and amending behavior, asking advice and refining amendments...gathering, amending, asking, refining, gathering, amending, asking, refining, and feeling at times unbearably frustrated at the dearth of questions and tiny trickle of answers I felt I was getting. And then, in an instant, with that one little instruction: Rest In Your Heart, I felt it all start to change ("finally!"). Not because I was flooded with answers or because some great mystery was revealed to me but because, for the first time in I don't know how long, I was RESTING. And I could listen to instructions and move my body and participate and laugh and fall down and worry and fantasize and all of it from this place of rest.

I don't know how to describe what it feels like, to rest there. Or at least...not what it might feel like to you. To me it feels like sitting in a little hut with soft walls. I think it might be pink in there. It is definitely quiet...and for a little hut, it's spacious...like the sky is in there with me. Try it if you want...take a second, stop what you're doing, look away from this screen or don't, and ask yourself, whisper it, demand it, whatever...just try to feel what it feels like to Rest all that activity inside. You might find, like I did, that you are moving a lot more and a lot faster than you thought you were, and the rest might just do you some good...

That's all for now...

I love you, Shanti-towners!!


xo
YogaLia