To do

Traveling- I brought things to do. But I am enjoying doing nothing instead.

Warp

What is "warp speed?" If it refers to time, isn't that always happening, depending on where you are and what you're doing?

Sometimes

Sometimes words get in the way. I know that's in a song somewhere. Sometimes songs get in my head. And songs are full of words getting in the way. Sometimes.

sap

my dog stepped in tree sap today. within minutes, the glob of stickiness between his paws that glued his front toenails together, spread into globs around his collar, other legs, face, and other places i don't feel comfortable mentioning. It just goes to show how a moment of unconsciousness can go viral in the blink of an eye. This is not to invoke the god of Fear, but to show how easily we can get off of our path, distracted by the goo that we step in, when the goo becomes our Universe and the sole focus of our attention.

why can't we do that with the opposite of goo?

Another point for crisis management. Not that we're keeping score.

For me, I'm just trying to even the playing field so I can make a conscious choice. Where I can ask myself "to goo or not to goo."

Cravings

Crave crisis? Dig drama? We ask ourselves, why? isn't it because the deeper doodoo that we are in, the more we push our selves to that point of surrender. The worse it is,  the easier it is for us to let go of whatever aspect of our self, our attachments, our tendencies that got us to that point of perceiving crisis.

Perhaps it's not the crisis we crave or the drama we dig. Perhaps it's the feeling of letting go - the rush of freedom that we experience in the dropping of all the B.S.

So the question is, if it's the letting go, the surrender of old samskaras (impressions from the past that play out in our future) that makes us feel good, why not start there? This practice can start on the yoga mat or at the grocery store. Take a breath and choose to act differently - see what happens. If you like the result, if you feel the freedom of letting go, then you just saved yourself a big freakout moment in the future.

Timing

Timing... she is a weird-a-beast.

Get your Sri on

Not many of us like to watch struggle, unless it's a movie, but even then, we are counting on the right 2 people living happily ever after, the meek inherit the earth, good prevails over evil, the long-shot has his day.

So why do we continue to put on the facade of working so hard, when most of us know that we've had it figured out for a long time, but in order to fit in, we dumb ourselves down, play the work ethic/struggle/complain gang, just to fit it and not draw attention to ourselves. Well, it's time to stop worrying about that and let the attention go where it will. It's time to light the light of a new paradigm - life isn't hard, it's glorious, resplendent, Sri (shree).

Can we let go of our attachment to pleasing others in order to be the person that has the guts to speak your truth?  Do we have the courage to be the person that is having a good day, who enjoys life and isn't afraid to own it?  It's funny how this person starts to attract more and more of what they deem "good," most likely because that's where the thoughts are going.

Dare to be the person who chooses to see the other side of the "bad," aka the "good," because if bad is present, so is good, and vice versa. And it's not amoral or lazy to look at the other side of the "bad." That's perhaps what was meant by the saying "turn the other cheek." Maybe it wasn't a slap in the face, but just turning your head to look at something from a different angle/perspective/point of view.

In or Out

Maybe standing out is the new fitting in.

Believe

"A belief is a thought you keep thinking." -- Abraham, Abraham-Hicks Publications


and thinking and thinking and thinking. So as long as we stay on the pathways of all the thoughts we've always thought, we will most likely keep creating the life we've always had. Which means if we want to change our belief systems, we need to start thinking different thoughts, and we need to think them more than all the other thoughts we have spent our entire life building, cultivating, proving, re-inforcing.

Think about it.

Hope

Hope leaves room for the possibility of it not happening. It's like Plan B - if you think you need a plan b, there is some aspect of you that doubts your conviction or the possibility of plan A. If we hope, we are still not 100% sure of the outcome.

Hope shines a light on the parts of ourselves that doubt. And the knowing of those doubts provide us with inspiration as we strengthen our conviction, bringing us closer to believing in the reality of that which we formerly hoped for.

I hope this was clear...

Still today

I was still today
Because there's no tomorrow
All we have is now

Gremlins

Around 4pm today, I got gremlins in my email and everything went into bulk mail. Why? No one knows. Not even tech support. And "gremlins" was their word, so yes, it actually is a technical term...

Effort and Effortlessness - Pt 4

Habitual Efforting

Letting of the need to effort in order to feel like we are doing something productive, to justify our right to exist, to make us more lovable, to appease our guilt, may be the hardest part for many of us. Are we willing to let go of working so hard? This is why in YS 2:47, Patanjali says to "let go of effort and focus on the infinite."  Contemplating the infinite while practicing effortlessness. It takes our dualistic, efforting brain, the thing in our Self that is designed to find problems and solve them, and gives it somewhere else to go – a place where time is not the issue, where duality is not a constant state of struggle, but where we can feel the space between the 2 sides and through that space, find the balance and effortlessness that we seek. By focusing on the space, the infinite, we start to grow our awareness of the infinite space within each of us. The big S self. The divinity within.

Again, the habits of logical thinking, measuring, comparing and judging may be a few of the obstacles we face in achieving a state of effortlessness. From there we can look at our willingness, or lack thereof, to accept the fact that it’s OK to not feel effort in a pose – especially if it’s a pose we’ve done a million times – like down dog. At some point, we master it and it’s effortless. So why make it harder than it needs to be? That’s where the physical pose is easy, but the need to make it harder – that is where efforting may show up, not as a tool to help grow ourselves, but as a habit. A habit that is just as unconscious  as eating that second piece of cake, procrastinating, snapping at a loved one, feeling victimized. When we take a look at the "work" we are doing, what is at the root of doing that work? Is it to bring yourself more in alignment with your big S self or your little s self? Observing our addiction to “working it out” may shed some light on why we aren’t getting what we want out of life.

This is one reason we want to achieve a state of Sthira, steadiness in our physical poses, which translate into our physical life. When the physical part is steady and effortless, when we become "good" at something, then we can start to refine. In the case of asana practice, when the body is steady, we start to refine the mine. Watching the mind's attachment or habits, including the voice inside you that keeps saying "you're not perfect enough. work harder. you can do better. you're not enough. you suck." Then we do what it says. We overactive our hands in down dog, we add in unnecessary tension in poses or aspects of our life that have become easy. Part of the reward of getting good at something is that it becomes more effortless. That's why we want to get good at something in the first place. The promise of effortlessness is the payoff for our hard work - the effort needed when we are learning something new. Ironic isn't it?

So when we achieve that state of physical effortlessness, celebrate and enjoy! This is where if you are focusing on the infinite, you can enjoy the state of being guilt free. If a state of effortlessness sends you into a tailspin, then the "work" becomes on examining the mind. If it's telling you that you need to work harder because you're not good enough, it's trying to get you to go back and examine the physical. It's creating a distraction to keep you from looking at it, so that aspect of your mind doesn't have to change. For that aspect of your mind, it's achieved a state of effortlessness and it wants to stay there. It's learned how to beat you up, it's good at it's job, and it wants to keep on cruisin'. It feels threatened when you shine a light in there.

I digress here - the cool part of all that is that the aspect of your mind that beat you up, got good at it's job, etc... is the part of you that helped get you to where you are now. The part of you that got you to the place where you are even contemplating things like "effortlessness." That's so rad.

Are we attached to efforting? Are we willing to let go of "trying" so hard, working so hard, beating ourselves up for "not doing enough?" Until we can embrace the concept that life doesn't have to be hard, painful, miserable, fruitless, etc... letting go of effort will probably be extremely challenging, but hey, then it's legal right? If i'm working hard to be effortless, then it must be ok...

Haiku #4

i fell off a chair
trying to reach something high
and then it folded

Effort and Effortlessness - Pt 3

Relaxing effort does not necessarily mean “become a rag doll,” whether it be in your yoga poses or in your life, even though for some, it may take an image that extreme to induce any relaxation at all, and believe me, even though they may feel like a rag doll, most people I see don’t look anything like said doll.

Relaxing effort might be in the form of not trying so hard, not worrying about getting the pose “right,” or trying to impress oneself, classmates, or teacher with how hard you are working, lest we should walk by and “catch” them daydreaming at their desk. Oh yeah, that was school. But don’t many of us have those same fears and habits as adults?

Patanjali tells us to relax effort. While doing a pose, there is usually one side that is working – contracting – while the other side is relaxing – stretching.  Let’s look at Parsvakonasana – side angle pose:

    The Mind of the Second Side

In side angle, pose, we are stretching on of the sides of the body. We are instructed to breathe into that side,  to open the ribs, lengthen the waist, rotate the chest to the ceiling. That would be the side of focus, the “working” side. But what about the other side? What if instead of fighting our way into increasing the twist and stretch from the top, we softened the bottom half of the back to may room for the top side to float into it’s place. What if instead of stabilizing by trying to keep the second side just as long as the first, we soften that side, creating a space for the top side to go without having to push something out of the way?

By focusing on the second side, we can increase a feeling of effortlessness by releasing tension on the second side, allowing the action of the first side to be more effortless, instead of adding unnecessary muscular tone/tension/activity to the second side, thus creating the need for more force by the first side in order to go deeper in the pose.

What gets me is that there is so much talk about bringing tone, and in my opinion unnecessary tension, to the “relaxing” side. Do we really need more tension on one side in order to relax on the other side? In some schools, they say yes, in fact you do. That if one side is contracting, the other must be stretching. While this may be in fact what is happening, I'm not sure that information is being used effectively in most cases. 

Is it fruitful to pull the body forward in a forward bend? On one hand, we are supposedly getting more stretch on the hamstrings. But what is happening in the neck, shoulders, back? In order to get more hamstring stretch, do we need to create upper body tension? Can't we have stretched hamstrings with a relaxed upper body as well? And if every time we do a forward bend with a tense upper body, aren't we in fact telling our body that in order to have bendy hamstrings we need  to work the upper body?

And the big question is, is having bendier hamstrings worth the extra cost in tighter shoulders? Hmmm.

The idea is to get these sides to be balanced in their effort, to be the same, so there is no difference between working and relaxing.  It is in gradually bring these 2 sides together in a balanced manner that YS 2:48 comes into play. When we achieve effortlessness on both sides and there is no longer the pull of the duality between working and stretching sides, “pairs of opposites cease to have impact” and from where I sit, in that Infinite non-dual moment, the pairs of opposites cease to exist. In that moment, we feel like we could stay there forever – it is that steady, comfortable, effortless, infinite, Whole. Yummy. It feels good to have it all. To be it all.

Next topic: Attachment to Effort

Haiku #4

Yoga is one way
Many paths make many roads
First we learn to drive

Haiku #3

Haikus work for me
Short and sweet and to the point
Even if they're round

Haiku #2

Once you've tasted it
You will want it every day
Inner voice of truth

Haiku #1

Finger talks to brain
Tiny cactus startles me
Drop of blood appears

Effort and Effortlessness - Pt 2

So how do we practice Sthiram Sukham Asanam?

YS 2:47 and the Mind of the Second Side

Thanks to Patanjali, he tells us in Yoga Sutra 2:47 – “Through relaxation of effort and meditation on the infinite.” Now that’s what I’m talking about, and what inspired me to do a few part series on Effort and Effortlessness.

“Relaxation in the midst of effort is a means, but it is also an end, that of dissolving all tensions.” 

---From Yoga: The First Steps, translated by Dr. Albert Franklin (my first yoga teacher. Thank you Bert, for this book and for teaching me what yoga asana practice is all about.)

So we get steady and comfortable by relaxing effort. How do we do that, “relax effort” and still do a physical practice, or even get the bills paid for that  matter?  We begin by approaching our practice consciously and eliminating extraneous effort and tension. In other words “work smarter, not harder.” Professional athletes use the least amount of effort possible to get the job done. That doesn’t mean they aren’t getting the job done. It means that they have refined their technique, focused their mind and cut out what doesn’t support the job at hand. Their choices are such that they do what it takes to get around the obstacle without taking a few extraneous laps around the field.

In yoga asana class, how many “laps around the field” are we taking in each pose? Just yesterday, I was breaking down bhujangasana (cobra pose) for the class. “Pull the chest forward, activate the triceps…” I said “if you’re not feeling you’re triceps (upper arm muscles) that’s not what we’re doing right now.” Some said that they were feeling it in the forearm. I thought to myself, “interesting.” I asked them to relax their hands. Voila! Triceps in, forearms out. And the hands were just fine during the finished product. The students had been instructed so many time to “activate the hands” that their hands were over-activated, aka tense. They had fixated on an instruction that had at one point been useful to them, and that same instruction, once mastered, was now an obstruction since now when they activated their already active hands, they were adding tension to an area that no longer needed extra a-tension (attention).

This is what I would call a mild case of “habitual efforting” in that by running the “activate the hands” instruction, they were subconsciously looking for the same feeling they had the first time they got that “aha” moment with active hands. Over time, the instruction was assimilated, and now the hands are naturally active, alive, aware. Looking for that same feeling adds tension. We see the same thing in downward facing dog. Over time the poses ceases to be a hamstring stretch and becomes a spinal extension. I see students try to get that deep hamstring opening satisfaction from a pose that will no longer give it to them without adding tension or other distortions. I say let yourself master the pose, have a moment of physical effortlessness and apply the “effort” to watching your mind during the duration of the pose.

But if I relax my effort, how will I get anything done?

Stay tuned…

Wow!

Now I can blog on the go with this new mobile blog app. No more excuses. It's time to seize those momentary quips of genius and post them for the world to see. Well, they'll be there, world seeing or not.

Peace on earth starts at home.

Effort and Effortlessness

YS 2:46

As a yoga teacher, I have over-arching themes and concepts for my students to explore. This year “effortlessness” has been the theme. So let’s begin the beguine again, and if we are starting from a yoga point of view, where better to turn than to the master of Yoga himself – Patanjali.

From Patanjali’s  yoga sutras, three of them talk about asana – the poses – the meat (or should I say “veet” for the vegetarians) of what comprises modern day yoga in the West. YS 2:46, 2:47, and 2:48.

2:46 – Sthiram Sukham Asanam.  Steady, comfortable poses.  Many have written about this sutra, myself included. But this sutra is so rich, we can (and do) keep coming back for more. 

Sthiram Sukham Asanam.  Steady, comfortable poses.  According to Patanjali – that is what we strive for in our asana practice. Seems simple enough. Hold the pose, don’t move, be comfortable. Right... Most of us who have tried this have found that it is not as easy as it seems. Something has got to go in that equation whether it be the steadiness, the ease/comfort of the pose, or the pose itself. My dog, Winston, is a master of this sutra. He can stay in one position for a loooooooooong time without effort and without moving. The ultimate "down dog" pose is my dog stretched out in a half-sleep state. His eyes are open, yet his body is totally relaxed. It’s as if he could stay there forever. And he does. Until the next thing comes along or I think he is so cute I have to pet him, pick him up and hold him. Is there a position or state that we can hold and feel so comfortable and steady that we find no reason to get up? I mean, even watching TV – at some point aren’t we moved to get up off the couch if only to walk to the kitchen to make a snack?

So how do we practice Sthiram Sukham Asanam? Tune in tomorrow. It will be interesting to see what comes next. If anything...

steady?

comfortable?

hungry?

Accounting

Accountability. We may resist it. We may love it. But it can give us the incentive to continue, to do better, to do our best, or at least to do when inertia sets in and that spark that got us going doesn't burn as hot.

I'm goal oriented. Yes I am. I write songs to be sung in public. I like to start and complete projects. I like a clean start and a clean finish. So when I'm doing "art for art's sake" in the form of a blog which maybe nobody is reading, or to write a song that nobody will hear because I don't have any gigs lined up, then those things that I love to do get put on the bottom of the pile. I may love to do them, but maybe I like the feeling of completion, of performance, of sharing the journey better than typing away at my computer, digging on my ruminations. Ruminating solo is fine, but I'm much more into conversations, even though they may be silent. Can a standup comedian be a standup comedian in one's bedroom with the door closed? (don't go there...) If I joke is told but no one hears it, is it a joke?

Accountability. I think it has to do with doing things that count. Or counting the things we do. And having someone outside of ourselves care whether we do it or not. Unless we are happy to count alone. Who can we count on? Who do we count in?

I'm happy when I'm "held accountable." I feel like I'm not all alone out there, counting grains of sand in a spoon and that there is more to it all other than the little "s" me. (self vs Self).

So this is another picking my blog up and dusting it off moment this year. But who's counting?