Meditation

Practice, contemplation, and insights

  • | |

    Should I Be In Alignment or Should I Relax Completely? (and Namah Shivayah)

    ByElizabeth

    For the first few years I was teaching, one season a year, I would have as my overall session theme the Anusara invocation (for the words written out, click on “invocation” in the menu bar above).  In so doing, I invited myself and others to contemplate at the heart level the meaning of each word, of why we were making the invocation, of how the invocation might inform not only our practice, but how we bring our practice off the mat and into our daily lives.  Each time I chant the invocation–and it has been hundreds of times now over the years I have been studying, practicing, and teaching Anusara yoga–I seek to invoke into my practice the deepest qualities of the heart that it represents.

    Over the winter break, when I was preparing for this session, the invocation called to me.  I decided it was time to make it as a specific offering again.  Last week and this week, including in the restorative workshop offered at Willow Street Yoga last Saturday, I have been exploring namah shivayah from the first line.  Namah–which has the same verbal origins at the English word “name”–means to bow, to honor, to name.  It forms the basis of the greeting namaste–with the light in me, I bow to the light in you.  Sivayah here is our siva nature.  It is variously the light within, auspiciousness, spirit, divine nature, elemental goodness.

    When I was practicing in preparation for teaching the week’s classes and the restorative workshop and contemplating (practicing bhavana on) namah shivayah, I thought about a question I often get when I teach restoratives:  “should I be maintaining the alignment principles or should I be relaxing completely?”  When I get the question phrased this way, I look the student straight in the eye and respond, “yes.”  I get a quizzical look; how could the answer be “yes” to an “either or” question?  The answer is “yes” because in each pose, we are seeking to embody the fullest expression of namah shivayah. Taking the time to make sure to be in alignment when setting up for a pose, moving into a pose, reaching the pinnacle of a pose, and then moving out of or dissolving a pose, is out of loving respect for your body and the energy that courses through your body.  We seek to be fully in alignment in all stages of each pose, not only to minimize the likelihood of being in pain or getting or aggravating an injury and to increase the likelihood of healing any existing injuries and expanding our capacity to feel free in our bodies, but also out of a profound respect and honor for the self, the teachings, and the practice.

    Sometimes people think that focusing on getting the alignment just right is fussy or rigid and the antithesis of relaxation.  In the case of restoratives especially, everyone coming to the practice wants to be at peace and feel free of effort.  In the hunger to get to a place of relaxation, some hurry into the pose without honoring the alignment.  Oftentimes, it is the hurry to relax and the loss of attention to the details of alignment (of both the mind-body and the props) that leads to pain or discomfort in a pose that is meant to be held for a long time, as are restoratives.  When a student tells me that they are in pain in a particular posture, I invite the student to back off, set up the pose again, and far more often than not, all discomfort disappears, and the student is able to move into a blissful place.  The student then experiences for herself how much the alignment enables the surrender to the exquisite opening to siva and the blissful attributes of siva (satcitananda).

    One of the reasons I find restoratives to be such a powerful practice is because they require such focused attention on alignment to enable full relaxation.  As such, they are a great way to understand the need for the perfect and simultaneous balance of effort (tapas) and surrender (ishvara pranadhana).  So the answer is “yes;” the answer is “nama shivayah.”  In everything we do, in every aspect of our practice on and off the mat, we want to be consciously in alignment.  We want to use all the knowledge that has been imparted by our teachers and experienced in our own practice as a way of honoring and naming and helping to enable an unceasing, simultaneous, and full surrender to our own siva nature.

  • | | | |

    February News–Bring on the Light (Web Version of E-Newsletter)

    ByElizabeth

    Dear Friends,

    Brrr.  It’s cold out there.  And if it is seeming colder than usual, you are right.  There have only been five winters on record with fewer days above 50F in Washington, DC.  Perhaps, like me, you have noticed that you are feeling just a tad sensitive or edgy or maybe a little blue.  I recognize the symptoms; in my distant past, a therapist suggested that I might have “seasonal affective disorder.”  My prescription for myself when winter has me feeling down?  Do more yoga, keeping a focused intention on cultivating the light of inner awareness.

    The form of meditation I practice is intended to allow the practitioner to rest in the light of inner awareness.  One of the aspects of the Anusara principle of “opening to grace” for me is to open to the light in myself and others.  On a more physical level, backbends will open up your heart and make room for the light; core work will warm you up by stoking the agni, the inner fire; forward bends will help you go deep inside to find your own light.  There is a light-filled practice for every day of the week, every time of day, and every mood you are in.

    Avoid the temptation to huddle inside, eating too many carbs and hiding away.  When the sidewalks are passable, bundle up and take a long walk.  When you come back inside, do a good therapeutic and restorative practice–it’s as good as hot chocolate (and no one said you couldn’t have the hot chocolate, too).  Invite friends over for a potluck.  Cook bean soups.  Have hot cereal for breakfast and perhaps for dinner.  Balance the warm food with the freshest of fresh food by growing sprouts on the kitchen counter.

    Want to light up your yoga fire, sun, inner light with company?  Join me and your friends and neighbors at William Penn House classes on Tuesdays at 6:30.  Need a little R&R or found you have tweaked something shoveling or walking on the ice and snow?  Drop ins are always welcome at the gentle and therapeutics class at Willow Street, Takoma Park, Saturdays at noon.  Give yourself something to look forward to by signing up in advance for the second “Relaxing Into Optimal Alignment with Anusara Restoratives” workshop at Willow Street on Saturday, February 26th.

    And plan for Spring with “Yoga for Gardeners,” the weekend of the Spring Equinox–yes, it is only weeks away.  As has been my practice in previous years, my profits will go to support the Youth Garden at the National Arboretum.

    Looking forward to sharing, expanding, and delighting in the light with you soon.
    Peace and light,

    Elizabeth

  • |

    Awake in the Middle of the Night (Recollection of an Invitation to Remember)

    ByElizabeth

    Last night at around 2:30, I found myself very aware and wide awake for no apparent reason. I got myself readjusted for going back to bed and then sat in my bed in the dark, wrapped in my favorite shawl for meditation. I got myself sweetly settled into a practice intended to invite in the sweet support of the satguru (see my previous post on variations of what that might mean for you), which serves well to help a return to sleep on a wakeful night.

    After I had been practicing for about five minutes, a slew of emergency vehicles wailed down the street. The emergency was not on my block, but based on the timing of the sirens, it sounded like it was not far away.

    I marveled that I was already awake and meditating in a delicious place when the sirens sounded rather than having been jolted awake out of some dreaming. There were enough vehicles that I am sure many if not most people other than the soundest of sleepers for blocks around were woken by them.

    In thinking about the auspiciousness of my state, a memory came to mind. Friends Meeting of Washington. Where I often attend Quaker unprogrammed worship, is just west of Connecticut and Florida Aves., NW. Being on such a busy street, even on Sunday morning there can be a lot of traffic noise and having an emergency vehicle drive past with its siren blasting during meeting for worship happens from time to time.

    It is, of course, somewhat jarring to be deep in meditation and silence and have a siren start wailing and not pleasant to be woken from deep sleep. One time several years ago when a series of siren-sounding vehicles sped down the street outside the meeting house, a friend stood in meeting after the sirens were gone and said that for him, whenever a siren interrupted his worship, he used it as a reminder to hold those in need in the light. In sharing this reminder, he took us all back from however we reacted to having been loudly interrupted to a grace-full place. I remember having moved back into the depths of silence, offering its healing light-filled energy to whomever had needed the emergency vehicle, those driving the vehicle and attending it, devoting their lives to serving those in need, and to others in my life who were struggling or in pain.

    In recalling that beautiful teaching last night, as I also wondered whether at some level I had woken and started practicing to be ready for the event, I thought that what had been so special about the message was that the reminder was not a criticism of whatever reaction might have spontaneously arisen to such a disturbance, but rather an invitation to respond in the best light. The speaker clearly had been reminding himself of his own teaching and sharing with the rest of us how much it helped him.

  • | |

    Mysterious Workings of Kali (Goddess of Sequencing)

    ByElizabeth

    The other morning, in the middle of meditation, the thought arose of how different my life would have been if my older sister and my birth orders (keeping our congenital make up the same) had been reversed.

    Imagine, too, if it had not been for the Russian Revolution, we might not have all grown up having read Nabokov’s Lolita.

  • |

    Some Interesting Internet Reading (because I am all about the “big picture”)

    ByElizabeth

    I spend a lot of words on this blog extolling the benefits I have perceived in myself and in my students from the various yoga practices. I also candidly admit (when asked) that not all practices are for every one and certainly not all of the time.

    It probably seems obvious that challenging asana would not be right in the presence of certain injuries or illnesses, even if asana practice, which is good for our strength, balance, and flexibility, among other things, is generally beneficial overall. Being an advanced practitioner entails in good measure being sufficiently sensitive and aware of our edge day by day and even moment by moment in our practice so that we expand our capacity to live life to the fullest without blowing past our edge out of ignorance, carelessness, or ego and needlessly injure ourselves.

    What is more subtle is finding the same edge in meditation. I am not talking about physical discomfort sitting for meditation. That can be easily remedied with appropriate props, for example a cushion or chair. There can be such a thing as too much meditation or not the right type of meditative practice for certain practitioners or under certain circumstances. Going deeply into the self beyond the surface level of thought can release things that had been buried. We may not be surprised if we have nightmares or anxiety dreams when life is presenting us with lots of challenges and difficulties. It may be more shocking, though, if negative thoughts or emotions come up when we sit for meditation. Meditation is supposed to be benign and health-optimizing.

    One way to deal with the shock is to stop, but then we lose the wonderful benefits of meditation. What is more optimal is to learn where is our edge in meditation, just as we do for asana. As we get more proficient and experienced with meditation, if things are coming up that are difficult to handle, we learn when to shorten our time sitting, when to add in more physically comforting and boundary-enhancing asana, and how to release the negative stuff that is arising without it impacting our lives or relationships.

    The challenge is that it is precisely the steady, intense practice over time that gives us the insight to know when the practice is too much at a particular time. For me, finding the edge where I can expand perfectly can be a challenge, but is ultimately and completely worth my while.

    For some of the alleged dark sides of practice, try entering into your favorite search engine “meditation side effects.” Then read with appropriate skepticism; it is the internet after all, and you should be as skeptical about the claims of the negative aspects as you might be or once have been of the potential benefits of the practices.

  • | | | |

    Satgurus and Upagurus, Teachers and Teachings

    ByElizabeth

    In Paths to God, Ram Dass speaks of satgurus and upagurus.  A satguru is the true teacher.  The upaguru is anyone who teaches us something, which, when we are truly open to recognizing the good in all, is literally every one.

    The satguru may refer to that within us that is the power, or the essential pulsation, or the light, or the illuminative wisdom, or the heart unbound by space and time that leads us to know the true Self.  As such, the satguru unfolds the means to experience the love that the satguru is/experiences.  The very rarest of individuals do not have to make any effort either through the various yoga practices (yama, niyama, asana, pranayama, pratyahara, etc.) or practices in another spiritual tradition to experience the fullness of consciousness unbound by self, or time, or space.  The rest of us must engage in shifting our lives to align better with nature to experience the highest bliss of being.  For this, we need teachers and we receive, if we are paying attention, teachings.

    Sometimes a person will will recognize the satguru embodied in a particular human form, as Ram Dass has with Neem Karoli Baba.  Sometimes, the teachers illuminating our journey are acharyas, great spiritual teachers who illuminate pathways and practices for finding the satguru within ourselves and in others.  They are important teachers for many and a profound influence, but except to the extent that we are all the satguru, they are not “gurus,” nor do they hold themselves out as such.   I think of my primary teachers–those I have studied with personally and a couple, like Ram Dass and J. Krishnamurti, whose writings have deeply shifted me–as acharyas.  That they may have human foibles does not diminish the power of what I have learned from them and the joy I have experienced and shared from studying with them.

    Other people we meet — all of them — are upagurus; we can learn from everyone and anyone.  That is what Quakers are taught and seek to practice; that is what Ram Dass is offering for us to consider in both Paths to God and in more detail in Be Love Now. Sometimes we meet a stranger just for a moment, but the stranger in that moment exhibits such grace, that the stranger is one of our teachers for life.  It is by being open and spacious that we get the opportunity to recognize those who have just one perfect teaching for us.  When we are closed off, we can miss both teachers and teachings.

    If we are open enough to seeing the light in everyone, we will also find that even those that trouble us can help us better respond in the highest.  Those are the ones Ram Dass calls “teachings” instead of “teachers.”   And those who will trouble us will come.  We will meet someone and that person will push our buttons.  Perhaps the person demonstrates too strongly some behavior or trait we don’t like in ourselves.  What a great teaching that can be.  When I see such a reflection of myself, I know that when I respond or act in similar ways, I am out of alignment, and it is a great motivator to release the behavior or trait.

    Perhaps someone shows up to help us reenact an old emotional pattern that has not served.  That someone is the laboratory upaguru who has arrived to give us the opportunity to discover whether this time around we are able better able to embody the principles that we are studying.  In being faced with our old stuff, we are given an opportunity, by changing how we respond, to dissolve the old patterns (samskaras) that, if not dissolved by practice, commit us to perpetuate the suffering resulting from our past actions (karma).

    Sometimes the upagurus come from the past.  They are seeing you through the filter of their own past and have reappeared for something on their own journey.   In such people, we perhaps get a teaching that reminds us why we are seeking to better align, why we have sought to shift and change old patterns.  We might also meet in an upaguru who has been part of our past someone who has shifted and grown and inspires us to go further on the path, sharing it for a while.  Those who are parts of our life for a long time, I think generally serve as both teachers and teachings, and we are the same for them.

    With regard to everyone we meet, from an embodied satguru to the most troublesome, the more we are open, the more we hold all that we encounter in what John Friend calls “luminous spaciousness,” the more able we will be both to recognize the true teachers and to learn from the teachings.

  • | | |

    Daniel Webster Statue (and Siva tattva)

    ByElizabeth

    On the column that supports this bas-relief and a larger than life standing portrait of Daniel Webster, is engraved: “liberty and union now and forever one and inseparable.” Kind of sounds like a description of the absolute consciousness, the one self, though that was probably, mostly not the intent.

  • | | | |

    Bare Bones of the Trees (and Pratyahara)

    ByElizabeth

    One of the things that I appreciate most about winter is being able to see the bare articulation of the shape of the tree in the absence of its leaves. A dormant tree looks very different from a leafless, lifeless tree. The dormant tree still has a vibrancy to it.

    As I enjoyed the beauty of the trees in Stanton Park this morning on my walk to work, I thought about pratyahara (withdrawal of or from the senses), which is the fifth step of Patanjali”s eight-limbed path of yoga and the bridge between life and physical practice (the first four limbs consist of ethical observances and restraints, asana, and breathing practices) and meditation. I have been led to contemplate the practice and meaning of pratyahara since the last meditation retreat I attended.

    From a renunciate perspective, pratyahara entails withdrawing from that which stimulates our senses. A renunciate would simplify and restrict what he or she takes into his or her system to free the mind from stimulation and make it easier to go into a space of meditation.

    Being careful to eat lightly, avoiding the stimulation of electronic entertainment, finding a quiet place to sit, and shutting our eyes before we begin meditating is part of the practice of pratyahara that all of us who practice meditation do as a matter of course.

    From a tantric perspective, I think pratyahara fits into our practice a little differently than for someone seeking to be on a reunciate path. We may definitely choose to minimize undue or excessive stimulation because certain types or amounts of stimulation feel out of alignment with our practices. For me, more than a certain amount of sense stimulation and certain types of stimulation can numb my celebration of and experience the spirit. Refining what I take into my system so I feel better able to live fully and celebrate and see the play of consciousness is different than renouncing objects that stimulate the senses or sense impressions themselves, as being less real than spirit. It is not renouncing things as unreal; it is picking and refining what to experience to better recognize and remember spirit. For the great siddhas, withdrawal from stimulation would not be necessary because they do not lose sight of spirit by either the cravings of the senses or being overwhelmed by reactions to stimulation of the senses.

    The trees seemed to me this morning to help elucidate this principle. The trees aren’t acting out of ego or greed or yearning to find happiness from the outside because of an emptiness on the inside. They are always open to the light and the rain. In winter, when they are dormant, they are not reaching for the light and rain or hungering for spring. They are there in all of their beauty open to receive nourishment when it comes. In spring, when the leaves start to bud and open, it is because of the light and the rain, but the essence of being a tree does not change or get distorted by going inward and resting or by opening to burgeoning growth.

    When we can simply open to all that is around us as spirit (beyond my capacities except at the rarest of times), then we can be open to the fullness of what stimulates the senses and still be practicing pratyahara. As long as we are swayed from the recognition and delight of spirit by stimulation of the senses, then we need to practice withdrawing on a grosser level to help us find the space of still being where we can be in the world of the senses without being tangled up and bound by it as such.

  • |

    45-Minute Savasana

    ByElizabeth

    Yesterday morning, when I came out of savasana following my regular a.m. practice, one of my cats was happily stretched the length of my side with his chin resting on my upper arm. He had not been there when I first moved into savasana. I looked at the clock and realized that I had been in savasana for 45 minutes, which was ample time for the cat to get comfortable. It would be, perhaps, more accurate to say I had been in savasana for several minutes (exact number of minutes unknown) and many more minutes blissfully asleep.

    I very rarely fall asleep in savasana. Falling asleep in savasana regularly is a pretty good indicator of sleep deprivation, which is something I make an effort to avoid for my overall health and happiness.

    On Saturday night I had stayed out fairly late, enjoying a meal, followed by dessert and book-browsing with a friend. When I got home at around 11:30 I felt a strong need to write in my journal about my initial reaction to the tragic shooting in Arizona. The cats were excited that I was awake at that hour, so I also spent some extra time petting them. This meant I was awake about two hours later than is usual for me.

    The morning wake up sound (currently a recording of the Sri Rudrum) went off at its usual 5:57 a.m. Oof. The temptation was high just to turn off the sound and go back to sleep.

    I know from long experience that the next several days will be better if I get up and do my regular hour to an hour and a half morning practice, which consists of a little asana, some pranayama, meditation and meditation-related practices, and savasana, and then trust that I will find an opportunity for a quick nap later in the day. My practice is my center, my delight, my exploration, my grounding; at this point, I come close to saying it is an essential part of who I am. When I have a busy day scheduled–as I did yesterday–it is still almost unthinkable to miss the practice, though on rare occasions out of necessity I will shorten it to just 30 minutes of meditation.

    It turned out that the end of my practice turned into the nap I needed. The practice followed by the blissfully long rest was, though, far more what I needed than staying in bed for longer and wondering when and whether I could fit in a practice later.

  • | | |

    A Secret Garden

    ByElizabeth

    I was at a meeting at another agency that was built in the years when civil service was a respected nd honored activity. The garden is clearly maintained, but I have never seen anyone in it, and wonder whether entrance by anyone other than maintenance is permitted. Does the solitary air of the garden make it feel more personal and sweet? Or does it seem isolated and less intriguing because of the absence of people?

    I wonder whether people who are naturally drawn to meditate would be the ones who would answer yes to the first question and no to the second.