Yin and the Art of Enthusiasm Maintenance

Painting by William Bouguerau

The first time I ever went to see an Ayurvedic doctor, he told me two important things. One, he looked at me when I first walked in and said, "You know what you are, don't you? I don't even need to take your pulse."

I did know. In the Ayurvedic constitutional matrix, I am made of two things. Fire and Air. Pitta and Vata. Either burning up or drifting off into the cosmos. Surprised?

He took one look at me, and he knew.

The other thing he told me was that I should be avoiding caffeine (what?!) and that--and here's the part that, at the time, I just couldn't swallow, even more than the no caffeine--that I should mellow out my yoga practice. "You should not be doing a bunch of handstands and backbends," he said (my two favorite things).  "You should be meditating. You should be getting close to the ground. You should be spending a long time in savasana."

At the time I smiled and nodded, yes of course, with absolutely NO intention of following this advice.  Was this guy joking? He wants me to lay on the ground and call that a yoga practice? Maybe after I bunny-hop like a mad-woman up and down into handstand a dozen times and do something ridiculous on one leg and heat up my breath to within an inch of my life...maybe then I'll lay on the ground.

I suppose I knew, empirically, that he was right. Of course, it wouldn't hurt for me to spend a little more time rooting and a little less time...expanding.  But I really felt, at the time, that there was no way something that felt so good, could ever be bad for me.

Have you ever heard it said that people tend to go in the direction of their imbalances? In the same way that someone with a sweet-tooth craves sugar, I have discovered that a yogi who is revved up will want more rev, and a yogi who is slowed down, even if nearly to stuck-ness...will yearn for more slow.

Such is the way with me.

Until recently.  It has been years since that Ayurvedic prescription was handed to me and summarily torn up and thrown in the trash (by me), but recently, I have found myself digging it out and pasting it back together.  Maybe my body has hit some kind of tipping point.  Maybe I've just been practicing yoga long enough now that I can finally feel the signals coming from a subtler layer of the ol' body/machine.

For a long time, a yoga practice is just about the poses. And the breath. And the philosophy. It's just about the style you love and the teacher you love and the time of day you love to practice. It's about struggling with something new and mastering it (or not).  And it can be just that, for a long time. Which is plenty. And plenty deep.

But, then...then something starts to happen.

Because maybe you want to start reaping the larger benefits of yoga. Maybe you want to learn how to find the state of yoga in other areas of your life. Maybe you start to realize that you are different than every other body that has ever practiced or ever will practice, and therefore you have to bend the yoga to fit YOU. Maybe you realize that even though handstands seem more productive, that for you to really begin to touch the center of YOU...that you need to just lay on the ground.

The impulse I used to label as "laziness," this little call from my body to just hang out and open, I have finally begun to let express itself.  And, yeesh, okay doctor...maybe you were right.  Because, I have to say, for my body, which begins to rev up and pump and think and desire and long and all sorts of other various and wild and electrical things, from the moment I wake up in the morning, for this often over-taxed body of mine, in order for this body to get to the real yoga, that blissed-out oneness-with-the-world state...it needs to slow down. And ground. And relax.

Your prescription may be entirely different. Your prescription might be more fluidity. Or more fire. Or maybe more lightness and air.  For you to find the yoga in your life it might mean more time to yourself, or less. It might mean more investigation, or less. Whatever it is, though, most likely the answer is already right in front of you. And if that's the case, then all I have to say to you this morning is...

"You know what you are, don't you?"

A fire is a ragin'...

For the last two days I have regretted the fact that every shirt I own is scoop or v-necked, because I have had no reasonable way to cover the terrific heat rash that has appeared all over my chest.

If my Ayurvedic doctor read this, he would be very disappointed. ("My" being a bit of a stretch, as I've only been to see him once, and haven't really done a very good job of following his edicts...hence the disappointment). He told me! He told me that Los Angeles was aggravatting my Pitta self ("You have to remember, you're living in a desert..") and that I needed to do my best to cool down all that excess heat. He told me. He told me it wouldn't require all that much...cut back on the spicy foods, cut out the ice-cold drinks (this seems like a contradiction, but apparently ice-cold stuff heats a body up), cut out the coffee, do some coconut oil massage, take it a little easy in yoga class (not too much of the crazy stuff)...meditate, meditate, meditate. Basically...chill the f*&! out.

Yes, sir, doctor, sir!

Cut to: yours truly starting every morning with an iced latte and a cliff bar, rounding out the day with a bowl of piping hot spicy tom kah soup, kicking my own ass in yoga class, sticking the coconut oil in the way back of the bathroom shelf and, oh yeah, did I mention cutting WAY down on my daily water intake?

Um, wait. What?

So, yes, two days ago my chest exploded in a heat rash. And even though at the moment the heat rash appeared I was also dealing with a leaking bedroom, a broken kitchen sink, failing brakes, an absentee sublettor and an ant infestation, somehow the idea that my skin is no longer as perfect as it once was is what dissolved me into a wet sobbing mess.

What do they call that, again? Oh right...vanity.

I think what really sent me over the edge was asking myself "what is the lesson in all of this?" every time each new minor crises appeared. I don't think there is anything more aggravatting than feeling completely screwed by ones day and then asking oneself in a fake-y detached voice what the lesson is in all of this? The only readily available lesson at that moment is that if that voice doesn't stop asking what the lesson is there is going to be some serious trouble.

What's the lesson?! This apartment sucks and I should no longer go out in public! That's the lesson, you a-hole!

Ahem.

Now that I've had a few days, I have a slightly (note it, "slightly") larger view on the whole situation. Or at least, these are the things that strike me:

That all of my immediate problems seem to be due to an excess of heat, and that the advice I have been given has been to try and "chill", and that learning how to chill is the lesson I perhaps need to learn more than any other. That I have moved to this desert city to enact some large push towards an even larger goal and that the seat of the will (necessary for accomplishing said goal) is also the seat of fire in the body. And lastly, that the parts of my body affected by my heat-related skin eruptions are my forehead and my chest, which are also the places of the intuition and of the heart...whether that means I am paying too much attention or not enough attention to those places is anyone's guess.

All I can say for sure is that there is fire in me and it is trying to get out, and it may be time to actually commit to dousing some of those flames. And I will try to begin by being grateful to my body for attempting this vivid, complicated, mysterious communication with me. A speaker I really love often says, "if you ignore it, don't worry, it will get bigger!"

I am happy that there is fire in me...I want fire. I just don't want it to burn the entire house down. I'm going to go apologize to my Ayurvedic doctor now, and have a glass of water...no ice.