Vacation Bound...

Oh, Shanti-towners, I know I know.  I've been such a slowed down blogger the last several days.  Blame wedding planning!  Blame the opening of Yogala (which was a HUGE success, by the way)...but now, alas, I'm off to paradise.  It's a tough life, but I'm heading to Hawaii tomorrow morning with my mister and I'll be back at the end of the week.   We're off to celebrate the nuptials of my future sister and brother-in-law.

Until then...lots of love!


-YogaLia

Shanti-Town Ruins St. Patrick's Day!

 

 Okay, I have some questions.

This afternoon, after returning from an excellent yoga class taught by the inimitable Steven Espinosa (who will be next in the hotseat for the Shanti-Town podcast in just a couple short weeks from now.  Oh yeeees.) I--because I have a million things to do and therefore have taken a long detour into the oddest kind of procrastination--decided to research the history of St. Patrick's Day.  Because, I'm for sure not going to be the kind of yogi who knows all about Diwali (okay, I don't know all about it...but I KNOW about it, and that's already saying a lot) and not have any idea what St. Patrick's Day is about.  I mean, seriously, I'm 30 years old, I have had my fair share of ridiculously celebratory St. Patrick's Days...I ought to know at least the BASICS, right?

So, okay, I'm going to be really honest...I was HORRIFIED by what St. Patrick's Day is about. 

Here's what I pieced together in my small dalliance into St. Paddy's Day research.  St. Patrick was a dude, not even an Irish dude...but a dude living in Roman-occupied Britain, who was kidnapped as a teenager and brought to Ireland, during which time he had a dream in which God told him to go to the coast and spread His word.  Which he did.  For a while.  And then went back home to Britain, and didn't return to Ireland until later in his life in order to (ahem) "save" the Irish.  The paganistic, polytheistic Celtic-story-telling Irish.  He, and the rest of the Roman-Catholic Church, helped those poor Celts to become good Catholics.

Now, okay side-bar--if you're noticing my deeply sarcastic tone--the truth is that I don't know a lot about Ancient Celtic beliefs and practices (probably because they got DESTROYED)...no, wait...I don't know much about them, and I'm sure there was a lot of beauty and grace and loveliness brought to the Irish people via the Catholic Church.  (Maybe.)  But, I'm just confused as to why, first of all, WHY are we celebrating the life of a famous missionary by getting drunk on green beer?!  St. Patrick's day, historically, has been the sort of "hall pass" day that Catholics get to "take off" from Lent.  Lent.  You know, Lent?  The Catholic holiday where you have to give something up for 40 days? Yes, for years and years and years, the one day where all Lent-isms fly out the window and Catholics the world over are allowed to live it up...is St. Patrick's Day. 

I know, I know, it's not any worse than Jesus' birthday being celebrated with Santa Suits and figgy pudding, but at least I KNOW what the intent behind the holiday is.  Honestly, I feel a little swindled.  I'm not a big fan of the missionary impulse--I think that the idea that there is a singular path to god, and that anyone who has found an alternate path is somehow in need of salvation--is, um...small-minded.  I think it's an expression of a fixation on getting-it-right-ness that leads to so much suffering, as is witnessed all throughout history.  And I am deeply involved in a practice (though not a religion itself) that has its religious underpinnings in a polytheistic belief system, so I am a bit biased.  Because I know the kind of beauty and symbolism and mythology born from systems in which there is not ONE right and wrong way...but many.

If I were a Celt (um, a former Celt? Of Celtic descent?  Are there even still practicing Celts?  I don't know anything about the Celts!  Except that they have cool cross artwork.) I would demand that St. Patrick's Day, if it's going to be a day off from Lent, for god's sake (pun intended)...if it's already turned into a giant pagan drink/eat/love fest anyhow, why not make it about the celebration of the Celtic traditions that have been lost, instead of a day of paying homage to their lead destroyer?

(My apologies to St. Patrick...I'm sure you were a lovely fellow.  Maybe.)

Anyhow...this is one of those BIG opinion based on SMALL information moments for me, so any thoughts/corrections/how-dare-you-insult-my-favorite-holiday notes are welcome.  In the meantime...

HAPPY ST. PATRICK'S WE'RE SORRY, CELTS, DAY!!

Ch-ch-cha-changes...

Okay, I have a bit of a confession to make...

My practice, as of late, has been a bit, um...oh my god, I can't even say it...my practice these days has been very...quiet.

Now, let me just say this, in my own defense...I have been teaching A LOT, I have been studying a BIT (not as much as I should), and I have been meditating A LOT...but the moving and the stretching and upside-down-ing...not so much.  I just haven't really been able to get it up (pun intended) for my physical practice the last couple weeks.

Now if you are very wise you might be thinking something like, "well, Lia...asana is only one of the eight limbs of ha-tha yo-ga" (and in this scenario you would be pronouncing "hatha" like "hot-ta", because you are fancy and you have learned your Sanskrit pronunciation properly).  But eight limbs ain't going to get me any awesomeness points on the handstand meter, okay my little blogosphere swamis! 

Part of this slowed-down-ness is due to being in the midst of wedding planning, which is at once stressful and amazingly sweet, but which requires large swaths of energy.  So most often these days when I have carved out time to practice, all I want to do is close my eyes and sit in the center of my own chest.

Which brings me to the other culprit, this...this love-affair I'm having lately with meditation.  Talking endlessly about yoga is obnoxious enough, so I'm really going to hold myself back from talking about meditation, but I swear I seemed to have cracked some kind of code--the how the hell do I do this code of meditation.  And it's nice.  And I want to do it more.  (For now.  Please, god knows, don't hold me to this). 

And lastly...and this is the thing that is maybe hardest to admit...my practice is (gulp) changing.

Right now that means it feels like it's not as "cool" as it used to be.

Right now I feel like a practitioner without a home team...not quite doing it like them, and not quite doing it like them, either.

Right now I feel like my initial ancient impulse to just move, move, move, express, express, express, achieve, achieve, achieve...has, without my say-so, been replaced.  And it's been replaced by this pesky desire to get quiet.  To feel every little microscopic nanosecondish flutter of my insides.  (though the desire currently stands solo on one side, while the ABILITY still lags pretty far a-field).  But, still.

And I have to admit, I'm a little confused by it.

I'm confused that I am so resistant to letting my practice change.  I'm confused that I still apparently have "cool kid" and "not cool kid" divisions in my head when it comes to what people are doing and why.  And I'm confused to find myself in this place, where my physical goals seem to be taking a back seat to some other things.

So I try to remember that change is important.  I try to remember, in some kind of larger way, how easy it is, even with the things that by their very nature encourage change and fluidity--how easy it is to get stuck in a certain WAY of doing things.  And to decide, just by the very fact that you have done it this way 1,000 times before, that it is the best way.  And to remember that that might not be correct.

And then I think...may I BE so lucky.  May I be so blessed to have my practice change like this, again and again, as I continue down this road.  May it bend with my life, and be quiet when there is too much noise, and be exuberant when there has been too much dullness...because this, I have to remember, is one of the great gifts of yoga.  It will take you as you are, no exceptions.  And no matter how bumpy or smooth your heart, or your mind, or the shell of your body, it will fold around you...and fill in all your empty spots.

Self Diagnose This!

Do not ever Google "adult loose tooth". Even if you've reached into your mouth to check out an achy molar and discovered that it's a little, um, jiggly and want to know what that means about the general health of your mouth.

Don't. Do. It.

Actually, don't--no matter what is bothering you, in what area of your mind or body--don't google it. And never, never ever ever, go to WebMD.

Once, a few years ago, I was having weird heartburn (which I never get) and at the same moment in time I just happened to be having squeezey tingly pain in my arm, and I decided to WebMD my symptoms:

Heart Attack.

Over and over again...WebMD told me I was having a heart attack. And though I KNEW with every fiber of my being that I was not, in no way shape or form having a heart attack...it still gave me the willies all day long.

Likewise, having googled "adult loose teeth", I found out, much to my horror, that I apparently have late-stage serious gum disease, and or some kind of major infection in my jaw that I could just feel was, at that moment, spreading to my brain, just waiting to kill me in my sleep.

And so, realizing that I had a full-fledged actual toothache on my hands, complete with loose and therefore life-threatening molar, I went into the following downward spiral:

1. This is going to cost me a lot of money, whatever it is.

2. Of course this would happen to me just as I'm getting a hold on all my finances and trying to squirrel away money for my upcoming wedding. Of course.

3. Why is this happening? What have I done to deserve this?

4. Oh my god, what if it's something really awful? What if I have to have a tooth removed and walk around looking like a homeless person?

5. I should have known this was coming. I've just been ignoring this...I should have gone to the dentist months ago.

6. Well, THAT'S obviously WHY this is happening. The universe is trying to show me that I can't ignore things without them blowing up in my face.

7. Oh my god, what else have I been ignoring?!

8.  I'm a bad person.

(Okay, I know that jump from #7 to #8 seems like a big one, but somehow in my mind this all seemed like a perfectly logical and obviously TRUE train of thought.) And this is when the D-R-E-A-D set in. For reals.

Luckily, I was not alone (or this could have escalated into full-scale Lia vs. Lia fight to the death) and my very wise (and very understanding) fiance advised me to, um, chill. And likewise advised me to just take logical adult action like, I don't know...finding a dentist?

But you see, Shanti-towners, I had a moment, even while he was telling me these very reasonable, logical things...I had a moment where I just felt like, "no, you don't GET it. I knooooow how these things work. I know how the body and the mind are linked. I know that illness and physical wack-a-doo-ness has a symbolic meaning! So, you just don't get it, man who loves me...something is WRONG not with my tooth, but with ME!"

And then I took a moment. And, I paused. And I asked myself, very simply: is this a helpful way of thinking about this?

I thought about my future children, the ones I hope to have someday, and I asked myself, are these the kinds of lessons I want to pass on? Do I want my poor hapless children to get an ear infection and, taking after their mommy, assume that it's some kind of blemish on their character?!

Um, noooo.

Do I actually believe that the connection between my emotional and mental life and my physical one should be wielded as a weapon? Just one more reason for me to feel BADLY about myself? No, no, and no.

So, okay. So I dropped it. I dropped it, I popped some advil, and I sat down in front of my computer to figure out how to get myself into a dentist's chair that very day. (As I still wasn't totally convinced that I didn't have a deadly brain infection). I called on some friends for recommendations, I called on Yelp for some recommendations, I called on 1-800-DENTIST for some recommendations and by 2pm I was in a chair, being shown x-rays of my throbbing tooth by a very sweet and lovely dentist who informed me that my tooth wasn't loose...the crown on my tooth was loose, and that yes, I had an infection, but no, it wasn't in my brain.

And the dentist was so NICE, and the receptionist was so NICE, and the guy at the pharmacy when I went to pick up my kill-the-infection drugs was so NICE and everyone, all day, was so helpful and encouraging that by the end of the day, not only did I not feel like my toothache was a curse, I was totally convinced it was a BLESSING.

My tooth will get fixed, which obviously needed to be done. I've found a dentist who I really like (whose dad, the senior dentist in the office, has been doing yoga all his life, fun fact). I'm finally going to get some low-cost dental insurance for me and my man, which is definitely something that needed to be done but which in no way would I have gotten it together to do had it NOT been for my achy face.

All good things.

And so it turns out, that if my sudden toothache had any message at all, it may not have been: you're a bad person who is ignoring things and this is your punishment, but instead: here is a gift, what will you do with it?

Here is a gift of a throbby tooth...how will you handle it? Will you freak out and decide that rotten tooth = rotten you, or will you cup it in your hands, thank the forces that be for this unexpected present, and squeeze from it all the goodness it can possibly yield?

From here on out, I will try to remember to take option #2, thank you very much.



Yours, the responsible and newly-dentist-ed,
YogaLia

A Guest Blog! On Awesomeness!!

It is my pleasure, ladies and gentlemen of the academy, to present for your consideration...oh, wait.  Sorry.  It is my pleasure to present to you, Shanti-towners, for your daily dose of thoughtful awesomeness consumption...Mr. Peter Fernando.  Guest Blogger.  Thass right folks, this is Shanti Town's first-ever foray into the world of "guest blogging".  First podcasting, now this...it's like a regular ol' Huffington Post over here in Shanti Town!  Peter was introduced to me via my friends over at The Yoga Lunchbox.  He is a super-star meditation teacher and I am so excited to have him contributing a piece for Shanti Town!  So, read on, and enjoy!!

Opening the Heart
by Peter Fernando

As is the case with most things in life and practice, my first real taste of the open heart came in a very unexpected way. When I had initially caught the spiritual bug, in my late teens, I had visions of open-heartedness as some kind of far off, lofty plane of existence, where I'd walk around being sublimely compassionate and detached from all the mortals around me. It was a two-dimensional image I'd picked up somewhere of what it means to be 'spiritual'. Oh dear! Luckily for me it didn't take long to see through that narcissistic fantasy, as when I came to commiting to a sitting practice my experience was far from lofty.

My formal practice began in the contained setting of a Buddhist monastery, where there are set times to sit, eat and work, and there's very little opportunity to escape from oneself. After a few weeks of getting high on the intesified energy of this container, some cracks began to show. Well, initially I saw them as cracks, but in hindsight it was the artificial self image I was fixated upon that was cracking, and in fact reality was beginning to shine through. It wasn't the grandiose idea of reality I conceived of from my naive adolescent mind, rather it was the reality of being fully human. For years I had succesfully (so I thought) avoided feeling what was waiting for me in the depths of my being – sadness from childhood, residues of the pain of rejection, and subterranean feelings of worthlessness and not being liked. It was these locked away areas of the heart that were beginning to peek through.

In the container of a regular sitting practice, and the safe space of a supportive community, I began to notice an underlying sense of tightness in my chest. It wasn't the tightness of say, a medical emergency, but a subtler feeling that became clearer when I stopped and sat in silence. After holding the physical sensations for a week or so, this feeling began to break open, and for the first time in my life I found was feeling my emotions, my 'heart' as a full bodied experience. What was experienced wasn't pleasant - it began with a sadness that I kind of knew was there, but had never allowed into consciousness – but curiously enough the very experience of holding it gently and feeling it fully in a space free from deflection and judgment, was... blissful. It wasn't the bliss of floating above the clouds on a giant lotus, rather it was the bliss of allowing myself to be just as I was. This, as I see it, was the real beginning of the path of awakening.

Interestingly, at this time, I also noticed that with the willingness to be totally vulnerable to my own heart-pain, free of judgment, a sense of compassion began to emerge. It was a quiet, empathetic trembling with the fact of being human. This sense began to suffuse my inner experience, and opened a center of presence in my being that could stay with it, feel it, and deepen into the feeling. One evening as the community sat having tea together, a few visitors who were being greeted by the Abbott began to share their own experiences of suffering and distress. Quite spontaneously this feeling of compassion began to resonate with their experience as if it was my own and a space of - 'love' you could call it - emerged in this attention. It wasn't an experience of overwhelm, nor was it my previous, 'normal' mode of feeling like I didn't wan't to hear about suffering and 'why couldn't they just get over it?'. No it was a cool, but tender place where I felt, for the first time in a long long time, a sense of real connection with another as if they were myself. I was both stunned and delighted by this shift.

The compassion that I thought would come through being in some elevated realm had actually arrived in a more humble form, out of the new way I was beginning to relate to myself. It was a wonderful discovery. Much later I realized that this is what the Buddha meant when he emphasized that genuine love for others can only blossom when it comes 'as to myself'.

After this initial opening, I gradually discovered another kind of closed-ness in the heart and mind. In keeping with the initial revelation of full feeling in the body, the discovery of this other kind of contraction also came in an unexpected way. Having regained some of my life force, a sense of connection to others, and a new sense of being fully human, the old habits of closing the heart found new terrain in which to perform their devious work. After a few years had gone by, I began to notice a similar kind of pain manifesting in the center of my chest, and a sense of getting more and more tight, to the point where it became quite physical. Initially this was confusing, and I thought, 'Hey, I've been here before, haven't I?'. But alas, no I hadn't.

What I began to see, murkily at first, was that my entire practice had unconsciously been taken over by a sense of self-judgment. Although I was now more familiar with the kind of non-judgmental awareness that could hold a feeling as a feeling, and connect to it in the body, this other kind of judgment was operating in the realm of self-identity, and configuring the overall view of who I took myself to be, particularly in relation to others. I noticed that underlying most of my interactions with the others in the community was a sense of comparison, measuring, and 'being-seen-as', which had a flavour of wrongness, not good-enough-ness, or being downright bad. When I began to unhook from the trance of this particular story, something I hadn't seen became clear: this is not the open heart!

Like many others on a spiritual path, I had subtly co-opted my wish to be better, to manifest beautiful qualities, to deepen into being, with it's very opposite energy - with the energy of harmfulness. But it wasn't an overt harmfulness; rather it was an insidious quiet harmfulness towards my very self-sense that came disguised as the wish to do better, to be better, because... YOU'RE NO GOOD!

In a way it was relief to begin to see it as it actually was. Self-harm, pure and simple. But the seeing of it was only the beginning, as this flavour of closed-heartedness has deep roots, and many tricky ways of weaseling itself into existence. However, the way into its transformation has been, as with the initial feelings of sadness in the heart, to see it directly and feel it in the body as it actually is. As pain. As violence towards oneself. And to resonate with that phenomenon in a tender, compassionate way.

As I began to commit to this new way of holding my inner selves, and the particular energies that drive them, the sense of intimate connection with others also increased. There began to be less of a sense that others have to change, to work on themselves (to be who I want them to be), or to fit into some spiritual ideal. My teachers and my friends began to seem perfect, just as they were. And a new sense of gratitude for what was already here began to emerge. It was kind of a sense of, 'If I no longer have to measure up to some ideal of perfection, then hey, they don't either!'. And the releasing from that sense was felt as love. It wasn't a 'whoo-hoo' kind of love, but rather the love that is the result of a freedom from measuring, from projection, and from the endless comparisons and ideals the mind can come up with. The release from those is a sense of spaciousness and openness. It is the natural loving of the open heart itself.

This didn't mean that there was no more exploration and cultivation to be done – far from it! But it was a shift in terms of where that very cultivation was coming from in the heart. If my practices and efforts are coming from a place of subtly beating myself up, or being divided from myself in pursuit of a 'perfect me', I have found that the results are never peaceful. There is always a sense of 'more to do', 'can't rest now', 'get to work' etc... Interestingly the Buddha said that there are four qualities or attributes of the open heart that need to compliment each other to ensure our spiritual health – kindness, compassion, joy and equanimity. The last quality refers to the ability to not react, to rest, and to let go. It is that which prevents the longing for love from being taken over by the energy of compulsion and ideals of 'who I should be'. It is also that in the heart which can be still enough to recognize the subtle kind of closing and harming that can be going on behind the scenes. And that stillness can allow them to bubble up, say what they want to say, and then gently be released.

The result of that release is openness itself.


* * *

Peter trained as a Buddhist monk in the Theravada tradition for 7 years. Upon returning to lay life he was invited to teach in Wellington by New Zealand meditation teacher Stephen Archer, and was one of the founders of Original Nature Meditation Centre in 2009. He finds a lot of joy in exploring ways of translating the Buddha’s early teachings in an urban, lay context, and supporting others in the practice of awakening.

He is currently running a monthly online course, A Month of Mindfulness (www.monthofmindfulness.info). The intention of this course is to create an environment of committed daily practice, supported by personal guidance, audio and written resources, and a community of like-hearted individuals.

My Contagious Angel...

 You New Yorkers have an excuse to have a cold in March, but what kind of sympathy can a girl expect when she's spending her days in a city built on sunshine? Well, I don't need your sympathy, dangit. Because even though I'm now on day 4 of a cold that literally had me so laid up all I could do was watch multiple episodes of "Say Yes to the Dress" (don't ask) and suck down theraflu, I have been mining it for all it's possible goodness. And goodness I have found:

And so I present to you:  7 Reasons Why It's Good to be (temporarily) Sick...

1.   If you're going to get a cold, what better reason is there to get it than going into the mountains with your fiance to look at wedding venues and getting such a thrill from a snow-covered meadow that you just have to plop down on the ground and make a snow angel? That's right people, you CAN get colds from angels.

2.   If you are the type who has trouble giving oneself a break, either physical or mental, then a big fat nasty cold might be just the thing for you. You see, your body is a generous soul, it will go and go and go, as fast as you can push it, but all the while it will drop little "hey, pssst...maybe you could slow down for a minute?" hints, starting at a whisper and growing gradually until--like a patient teacher who finally realizes that the only way this kid is going to Knock It Off is to send them to detention--your loving body will present you with the appropriate method of stoppage. In this case, a nice whopping case of head congestion.  Thus providing you with the perfect and impossible to ignore opportunity to sloooooooooow down.

3.   Voila!  A cross all your to-dos off the calendar day of rest!  A day when you are so foggy and groggy and achy and snotty that all you can do is lay on your couch and let the day pass over you like the orange furry blanket you've got pulled up around your ears.  Sa-weet.

4.   DayQuil makes it hard to think.  For the last several days I have found myself switching operative words in sentences all over the place, "I haven't gone to cold class because of this stupid yoga!"  I can't tell you what a blessing a foggy mind can be, just for a day or two.  I couldn't obsess about anything if I tried.

5.   Okay, I would LOVE to say that having a cold makes you take better care of yourself with food.  It should, right?  It really should.  I would like to say that I kept myself sustained on a diet of chicken broth and orange juice and shots of fresh ginger and cayenne.  That, unfortunately, is not the case.

On the first really bad day, when I realized that I needed food and we didn't have anything in the house that didn't require major preparation, I took myself to the store and promptly stocked up on bread and cheese and tomato soup, so that I could replicate the open-faced grilled cheese sandwiches and soup that my mom used to prepare for me on sick days.  That's right, CHEESE.  Did I mention I had a cold?  With, um, congestion?  Ah well.  It made my heart feel better.

6.   I still had to teach a few classes, while I was sick (but no longer contagious!), and I found myself teaching about...wellness.  We did a lot of immune-system strengthening and some chest and sinus opening, but the thing that I found myself focusing on and the most interested in, was the resting of the attention on the FEELING of wellness in the body.  I would ask students to just notice the aliveness, the prana, the vibratory energy in the body, beneath the layers of skin and muscle and bone, and I asked them to remember that this feeling--the movement of the energy in the body--IS wellness.  The force of our life, is the force of wellness.

And our body, this amazing, resilient, fluid machine, manages to keep most of us well, most of the time.  And though I am blessed with good health, I would imagine that even for those of us who bear the burden of more than the average share of illness, that this access point into the simple radical feeling of life moving through the body is there, it must be there, and could be contacted at any time.  Even if just for a moment.  Even at our very worst moments.  And that is just...that takes my breath away.

7.   Which leads me to the final reason why it can be good to be ill--and that is, the increased and focused desire for, and gratitude in the face of, wellness.  Walking around with a clear mind and a pain-free body, it is such a gift, and a gift that is so often overlooked, until the moment or moments come when the mind is NOT so clear and the body is NOT so pain-free.  And then we see it all--what a blessing we have in our health, what a beautiful thing it is to be able to live our lives not even noticing the state of our health.

It is so vital to be reminded that health is not something that should be taken for granted.  Especially when there are so many in the world who live with pain and with illness, on a day to day basis.  It really does seem that those of us who wake and go to sleep without pills and doctors and instruments and prescriptions crowding our days, should be kissing the ground in gratitude each morning for this enormous and ephemeral blessing.

So, Shanti-towners, if you're out there and you're feeling low...I'm sending you fellow-sick-one love, and inviting you to close your eyes and go on a little treasure hunt, for that sparkly feeling inside, the one that says, yes, this sucks, but YES, I am alive.  And for my Shanti-towners out there tearing it up, feeling perky and clear, if you haven't taken a moment today to say a silent thank you for all the health in your life...I invite you to take that moment now, and give thanks.

Do Not Try This At Home