Author Archives: MaryAnn Reynolds

About MaryAnn Reynolds

I practice advanced bodywork in Austin, TX, specializing in Craniosacral Biodynamics and TMJ Relief.

Back

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I sat for 20 minutes before work. Will sit again later to finish my 30 minutes, but I wanted to blog while it’s fresh.

Sat in sukhasana, left foot on top. It’s good practice to notice your habit (right foot on top) and reverse it sometimes.

Felt ease in my spine. Scanned body and brought attention back to my back.

My back is large among body parts, and it itself  has many parts. Spine with all the vertebrae and disks. Shoulder blades–my wings! Many, many muscles, from tiny between-vertebrae muscles to large flat sheets like the quadratus lumborum, the famous QL.  

The star of the back is the spinal cord–which is only a cord about halfway down the spine, and then it becomes a horse’s tail of nerves fanning out. Or so the anatomy pictures show and the Latin words say.

The back is a workhorse of the human body, yet it’s not something we see . It’s not a body part we attend to like we do our faces (or genitals). Until something goes wrong, that is. Then we feel it.

I notice backs. I can often spot yogis by their backs and have noticed the same back qualities in long-time meditators. Both have a strength and suppleness to their spines. There is presence in their backs. These disciplines complement each other so well.

Today I notice my back. Besides musing as I’ve just written, I let my attention rest on the width of my lower back, across L4 and L5 and the top part of my sacrum. I just listen.

It is silent, no grouchiness today. It appreciates this attention.

Poem: Shoveling Snow with Buddha, by Billy Collins

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Just because it’s a great Buddhist winter poem, I’m posting this poem by Billy Collins, from his book Picnic, Lightning.

You can also click the title link to read it on Panhala.net, which will send you a poem a day if you subscribe. Each poem comes in an email with a really good nature photo and music.

 

Shoveling Snow with Buddha

In the usual iconography of the temple or the local Wok
you would never see him doing such a thing,
tossing the dry snow over a mountain
of his bare, round shoulder,
his hair tied in a knot,
a model of concentration.

Sitting is more his speed, if that is the word
for what he does, or does not do.

Even the season is wrong for him.
In all his manifestations, is it not warm or slightly humid?
Is this not implied by his serene expression,
that smile so wide it wraps itself around the waist of the universe?
But here we are, working our way down the driveway,
one shovelful at a time.

We toss the light powder into the clear air.
We feel the cold mist on our faces.
And with every heave we disappear
and become lost to each other
in these sudden clouds of our own making,
these fountain-bursts of snow.

This is so much better than a sermon in church,
I say out loud, but Buddha keeps on shoveling.
This is the true religion, the religion of snow,
and sunlight and winter geese barking in the sky,
I say, but he is too busy to hear me.

He has thrown himself into shoveling snow
as if it were the purpose of existence,
as if the sign of a perfect life were a clear driveway
you could back the car down easily
and drive off into the vanities of the world
with a broken heater fan and a song on the radio.

All morning long we work side by side,
me with my commentary
and he inside his generous pocket of silence,
until the hour is nearly noon
and the snow is piled high all around us;
then, I hear him speak.

After this, he asks,
can we go inside and play cards?

Certainly, I reply, and I will heat some milk
and bring cups of hot chocolate to the table
while you shuffle the deck.
and our boots stand dripping by the door.

Aaah, says the Buddha, lifting his eyes
and leaning for a moment on his shovel
before he drives the thin blade again
deep into the glittering white snow.

 

I like how Billy Collins yammers on with metaphors about this experience, while Buddha just keeps shoveling. Don’t you know it would be like that?

I can feel the companionship, the satisfaction of working muscles, the way they appear and disappear to each other amid shovelfuls of snow, and the promise of completing the work and going inside to play cards and drink hot chocolate together.

And Buddha sweats. I like that.

The x between instances of attending

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Today I waited until evening to sit. Waited for the band next door to end its rehearsal. Worked in my kitchen while waiting. Finally they finished. Same song as last time.

Started sitting in virasana (hero’s pose) supported by the zafu, then about halfway through switched to baddha konasana (bound angle) so that feeling could return to my feet and ankles.

My lumbar area did feel better at the end of the 30 minutes than it does when I sit in sukhasana (easy pose). In Sanskrit, sukha means ease, and dukha means suffering. I have also heard these words translated as expansion and contraction.

So when I sit, I can just switch to a different sitting posture to transform dukha into sukha!

“Whole body awareness” has morphed into awareness centered in my living, changing body-mind system. My attention wanders from the narrow (that ringing in my ears) to broad (all the sounds coming into my ears), narrow (the tingling in my ear canals), broad (darkness), narrow (the point between my eyebrows), broad (feeling vibrant), narrow (traffic noise), and so on.

Internal, external, narrow, broad, sight, sound, feeling–awareness slides through the twelve states of attention without much stickiness. These are patterns in a background of awareness.

Awareness is like the x between instances of attending. When I become conscious of it, x shifts to being an object of attention.

This is very, very sad to me. I really enjoy the x between instances of attending when I can just be in it. I feel so alive and vibrant and full of love when I’m in this state.

I miss it when it’s gone. I don’t know how to make it happen, which is probably a good thing or I might be doing it all the time!

I wonder if this is maybe a little bit what heroin addiction is like.

Reorganizing

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This morning I went to a new chiropractor. This one is trained in Applied Kinesiology, which attracted me–I have no experience with it and was curious.

I heard about Chandler Collins via word-of-mouth from a fellow traveler, Marco (also a yogi, dancer, with alignment and pain issues). Marco got me to Appamada for a Hakomi workshop, and I came back for Zen. He is discerning.

The story I had made up to explain my issues changed while I was there. I went wanting to speed up my recovery from scoliosis, since nearly a year after NUCCA adjusted my atlas, I still wake up in pain some days. But my weight is balanced evenly on my feet, and my spine is still aligned. NUCCA was good work. Just not enough.

The new story is that my spine is okay, but my pelvis is torqued and my occiput needed adjusting. Which he did–a shock for a minute and then I sensed some furious energetic reorganizing going on in my body.

I look forward to truly healing. I told Dr. Collins that I want to become enlightened in this lifetime, and I consider healing my body integral to that.

Later I meditated. My attention was drawn to my aches and pains. Most of them are familiar. Every once in a while, something different comes through–a surge of pleasure down the outside of my left leg, for instance.

I notice the space between the pains. I notice where it is. I notice the quality of it.

About 25 minutes in, I can tell by the pain across my lower back that soon the timer will go off and the session will end.

Tonight I don’t want to finish this post without saying how much the suffering in Haiti has been on my mind for the past week. I read about how people are out in the streets beseeching God in their despair.

I feel their extreme vulnerability. I beseech God to help them too.

Breathing lesson

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I did three surya namaskar A sun salutations before I sat this morning, but I didn’t get to the blog until much later. Now it seems a bit hazy.

All I remember now is that my awareness included a sweet experience where thoughts arose and drifted away without much ado, and my heart chakra felt pretty open, which is pleasant. Today’s sitting was basically good, nothing special.

Before I found a teacher and embarked on this year of sitting, if I was struggling on the cushion, I would focus on my breath, on sensation in specific places (nostrils, belly), or on the sounds of breathing.

Even now, if I was having mental agitation, that’s what I would do. I don’t know what my teacher would recommend because so far it hasn’t come up.

Yoga works with the breath quite a bit, and so I’ve learned some breathing skills that have helped on the cushion. Such as this one: longer exhalations are relaxing. To calm oneself, breath in 2 3 4, out 2 3 4 5 6 7. Repeat. Do the opposite if you need to energize yourself.

When I have done my best conscious breathing during meditation, the inhalations arise naturally. I  notice a slight pause at the top of the breath, and I exhale evenly.

Then I pause until the next inhalation arises. Allowing this pause to happen and las until the inhalation naturally arises is key. Somehow this kind of breathing polishes and buffs my energy to a sparkle.

But if you’re seeking pointers, don’t just take my word for it–do it and discover what happens for you! If it feels weird, immediately return to normal breathing. That’s it. Go forth and prosper.

Sometimes I feel like such a stoner

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The good news: I wasn’t coming down with anything. That thought crossed my mind when I went to bed last night achy with a sore throat. Today I woke with no aches and pains and no sore throat.

I sat this morning before going to assist at NLP training. No guitar sounds, no sound machine. Just me and the white noise of the heater fan, which I turned off part way through my session when I felt too warm.

Awareness is the backdrop to everything. Thoughts may take up all my awareness. Then my awareness shrinks, becomes small, is limited to the thought.

Sometimes thoughts are barely discernible against the vast backdrop of awareness. Like, yeah, monkey mind is doing its thing, thinking thoughts, but these thoughts are happening to someone else far away, in slow motion in a foreign language.

Expansion, contraction, association, dissociation, attention, awareness, me, not me, being, doing, not doing… this is some vocabulary of meditation. Some may seem like opposites. They’re not. Only a continuum of experiences exists.

Maybe awareness is not just the backdrop to everything. Maybe it is everything.

Everything I know and experience, everything I have ever known or experienced, and everything I can ever know or experience, comes through awareness.

If awareness consists of the conscious and nonconscious minds, then my awareness is simply whatever I’m consciously aware of in any given moment, plus everything I’m not consciously aware of (i.e., everything else). Conscious mind is the island of the tonal, the nonconscious mind is the sea of the nagual, in Carlos Casteneda’s terminology.

The word awareness is a nominalization, a way to make a thing out of a process. The process is being aware.

Right now I feel like a stoner. Today a stoner, Friday a drunk. All welcome in this guesthouse. What’s in the fridge?

Headache, sore throat

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This morning I was busy preparing food for the day. I assisted at NLP practitioner training all day. I didn’t sit until about 6:30 pm.

Today meditation was difficult.

The guy next door was rehearsing with his band. (You know, Austin, Texas, live music capital of the world, where everybody’s neighbor is in a band.) Electric guitar sounds were coming in through the window panes next to my sitting corner. Turned on the sound machine hoping ocean waves would mask or soften the guitar sound, but couldn’t find a comfortable volume. Both waves and guitar were jarring.

I did not make it past the body scan. My attention kept coming back to pain–right above my left eye, left brow bone, left temple, left cheekbone. Not excruciating but definitely demanding.

Ignoring the pain brought only momentary relief. I went into the pain and invited it to show itself to me. Counterintuitive, you know. That disrupted the pattern better than ignoring it did.

Still, it slowly came back.

Noticed other areas–neck, hip, knee–that were sore. All on the left side.

I breathed into the hurting places, finally just breathing space into the pain. Noticing that when I’m in pain, my resources are diminished. ‘Spect that holds true in general. I feel great respect for people who manage living with chronic pain.

Then time was up. Took my granddaughter ice-skating at the temporary rink at Whole Foods. She’s fearless–knees, elbows, lots of risk and fast reflexes. Me–too many years of pain and chiropractic to feel brave enough to even put skates on.

Now back home, with a sore throat. Took acetaminophen. It’s been probably a year or two since I’ve used it. Made tea for comforting throat.

Feeling glad I made an appointment yesterday to see a chiropractor on Tuesday. Wondering if meanwhile I’m coming down with something.

Will know in the morning. Sweet dreams.

Supta baddha konasana

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When I woke, my left piriformis muscle was feeling really tight. (If you don’t know anatomy, it is a pain in the ass.) I think of this piriformis tightness as the last bit of healing from scoliosis and that 1996 car wreck that sent me on this path.

Looked it up in my yoga anatomy book and decided to do a long, supported supta baddha konasana (reclining cobbler’s pose) before sitting today. Then went about my nonlinear swooping-through-time-on-an-unstructured-day-off-work. Made breakfast, washed some dishes, started a list of things to do, which feels so virtuous even when I don’t do them. Made tea. Checked email. Checked Facebook. Made lunch.

To do baddha konasana, I sit with spine erect and soles of feet together, letting knees drop to the side. Supta means lying down. Supported means I place pillows under my knees and a bolster under my spine, keeping my seat on the ground. I prop one end of the bolster up so I’ll be reclining about 20 degrees.

I set the timer for 15 minutes, put a David Whyte CD on, recline, and cover my eyes with an eye mask, letting my arms and hands drop.

Ahhhhhhhhh. Melting. Turn David Whyte off. This calls for silence.

When that timer goes off, I decide to do my 30 minutes of sitting in just this position.

Body scan: whoa, gravity is different like this! I feel so open along my midline, like a dog exposing its belly.

Like I did the other day, I feel tipsy, loopy, happy. I vaguely notice, “Hey, when I think, I feel like this, and when I don’t think, I feel like this.” I feel excited to notice this distinction, but I don’t really want to elaborate. Too much work.

When the timer goes off, I move the pillows and bolster and take a nap.

Now my sober self says this distinction is very, very important.

Ha ha ha ha ha!

Maybe I won’t do my daily meditation in supta baddha konasana. It’s yoga. It’s not sitting.

Now I’m going to do one thing on my to-do list.

This being human is a guest house

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Today my sitting was like Rumi’s poem, full text below. My granddaughter, Hannah, had spent the night and was still asleep when I got up to pee, feed the cats, and do my sitting.

No sooner had I done my body scan than I heard a key in the door. My daughter, Lela, had come to wake Hannah up and get her ready for school.

I greeted Lela verbally with a buoyant “good morning”. I surmise she saw me sitting. I didn’t open my eyes.

I notice how Lela behaves differently when she knows I’m sitting. She behaves like she’s in church, all quiet and tip-toe-y.  She takes care not to disturb me. She’s very respectful.

I hear them speak in hushed voices. There is no yelling or galloping or anguish. The morning rituals are peaceful for them too.

Somehow this reverent attitude strikes me as hilarious! This church may look quiet and still, but it includes bursting forth!

When they leave, I yell, “Goodbye, you two fabulous beings! I love you!!”

And then I sat some more, welcoming other guests.

Guest House

This being human is a guest house
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house
empty of its furniture,
still treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
Be grateful for whoever comes,
because each has been sent
as a guide from beyond.

Sitting is the most subversive thing you can do

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A lot of stuff gets laid on us in life about how to be and who we are. And we adopt those ways of thinking and believing and viewing the world and ourselves and other people. It just happens. It’s not good or bad. Conditioned experience, interpreted experience. It’s the way it is.

Sometimes it serves us well. I don’t have to remember how to stand, walk, use the toilet, brush my teeth, dress myself, and so on every single day when I wake up. That sure frees up a lot of time!

Sometimes it doesn’t, when we stay stuck in suffering. Last night I heard the phrase “unfaithful to my sorrows” for the first time. I like it.

Do you really believe what people and life and yourself have told you about who you are? Could you be bigger than you think you are? Like maybe even a LOT bigger? Or maybe you’re smaller than you ever thought, so small that maybe you don’t even exist, and yet something of you is still there.

So who are you without all that? What is your original experience?

To find out, you can sit in silent stillness and pay attention to your experience between thoughts.

It’s not as easy as it sounds if you haven’t done it before, but let curiosity keep motivating you to sit. Just notice what you notice. And then notice what you didn’t notice before.

My experience inside that silent stillness this morning sometimes reminded me of being drunk.

Sometimes it reminded me of being in love.

Sometimes it reminded me of swimming, of being completely submerged and yet breathing with ease.

My heart chakra felt so open, early in my session.

I felt immersed in something big and loving. Big doesn’t do it justice. Humongous! Gargantuan! “All I could perceive” was holding me with love.

I did yin yoga in bed before I sat. Seal, quarter dog, child pose, 10 breaths in each, passive stretches that open meridians. Just feeling my way through this new-to-me branch of the yoga family, being my own human guinea pig.