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?"

Yantra-fied

Hey, Lia, what did you this weekend?

Well, cyber-self, I'm so glad you asked.

My pleasure.

This weekend, I made a yantra.

A yantra?  What's that?!

Another excellent question.

Thank you.

No, no, thank you.

No, you.

No, thank yoooooooooooooou. Okay, a yantra is a...um.  It's a.  Um.  It's a very pretty painted, uh, yoga picture.

Hmm. That doesn't seem right.

No, no it's not.

(and...scene.)


Okay, so I DID actually make a yantra this weekend (pictured above), and no, it's not a pretty painted yoga picture.  Well, it sort of is, I guess, but in order to give you a more accurate description, let's take it to the experts, or expert, really...Mrs. Sarah (gorgeous goddess) Tomlinson. She defines a yantra on her yantra website like this:

Yantras are sacred geometric designs containing the energy of a particular deity or planet. Each design enhances a specific quality within such as love, forgiveness and strength. The Yantras are ancient forms handed down to use for healing by the Tantrics of Ancient India to uplift the energy both in your internal and external environment.

 Helpful? Yes?  Yes.

I know Sarah from New York and Laughing Lotus.  I hadn't met her prior to my teacher training, but I'd heard her name quite a lot, and if you ever pick up an issue of Yoga Journal or LA Yoga, you can often find a yantra in the back made by Sarah, as she's a renowned one in the field of yantras and yantra-making.  But beyond that she is also AWESOME.  Like super crazy awesome.  She was, by far, one of my favorite guest teachers to come in and work with us during my teacher training (she taught the Ayurveda portion of the training) and I forced her to become my friend by demanding personalized mantras from her.  Mwah ha ha.

(there wasn't actually any force involved, that part's not true, but she did give me my mantra(s), that part is true.)

Anyhoooo, this weekend she was in Los Angeles teaching a yantra painting workshop and I jumped at the chance to get to spend some quality time with her AND to get to make something awesome to boot.

Let me just say, I think I might be in love with yantra-ing.  The process of making one involves all kinds of tools...compass and ruler and pencil and eraser and square paper and paints and PHEW!  It takes a couple of hours just to get the intial yantra pattern drawn in pencil, and then several more hours to get the thing painted.  All the detail work just makes me gooey with bliss, as something about measuring out perfectly plotted circles and dividing lines creates a cool hush in the mind, and I immediately understood why the making of the yantra is a meditation in and of itself.

But one of the best parts of the whole process is the CHOOSING of the yantra to begin with.  Sarah laid laminated images of several yantras on the floor for each of us to look at, and we were to pick the one(s) we were most drawn to, and that was to be our yantra that we would paint.  This kind of "let your intuition choose" game can be a little hard for me, as I immediately start guessing and second-guessing myself.

Which one am I drawn to?  I think I might be drawn to that one?  Or, wait...is that my brain or my intuitiion talking?  Okay, wait let me just take another look...okay, that one.  Or, hold on...shouldn't I go with my very FIRST instinct?  In that case it would have to be that other one.  Wait, okay, let me just quiet my mind.  Alright, no, this one. Definitely, okay, this one.  I'm sure.  I'm pretty sure.  Yes, okay, I'm doing it.

And so on.

Until, after much hemming and hawing and deciding and then re-deciding, I finally ended up with a yantra that seemed very, um, appropriate:

Cinnamasta Yantra, the yantra of INTUITION.

Well, yes.  It seems I could use some help in that arena....  And it doesn't hurt that I find this yantra so stupidly beautiful. 

I finally finished it on Monday morning...the completed yantra is pictured above.  Ain't it lovely? 

If you want to make your own you should definitely check out Sarah's website on the subject where you can peruse beautiful yantras and even order her awesome yantra-making book!