Author Archives: MaryAnn Reynolds

About MaryAnn Reynolds

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

The unperversion of time

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If stress is the perversion of time, as the late poet John O’Donohue said, how do we unpervert time? This is how I do it: I love downtime and require it in my life in order to function at my best.

By downtime, I mean free time, unplanned time alone, or in silence if others are around. Sundays are very good for downtime. So are early mornings.

I’ve experienced periods in my life with little or no downtime. I’m particularly recalling several crazy years when I was working full-time, going to graduate school part-time, and raising a child as a single mother.

What was I thinking?

I’ve filled my life up with so much busy-ness (often wonderful busy-ness) that I had no time left for myself. I mean, life does have a lot to offer. There’s so much to learn and do, so many ways to be useful and helpful and engaged.

I don’t mean to put down living a disciplined life. I do live a disciplined life, structured by commitments such as yoga, meditation, my job, my family and friends, my other interests.

Yet I have learned that I function best when I have at least an hour of unstructured alone time every day. I’ve heard that that was also one of the Buddha’s requirements. Love that man! I feel I’m in good company on this.

My daily hour of downtime hasn’t always been workable, but it is workable now, and I’m enjoying the heck out of it.

Most of my days start off with downtime. I set the alarm for early, and then take my sweet time waking up. I’m talking 45 minutes or an hour here. If I need a little more sleep, I hit the snooze alarm and doze back off, repeating as needed.

Often I let my mind wander and see what’s up with that. What is my mind drawn toward? I tell you, often it’s goofy! That early, sometimes I imagine morphing dreamlike combinations of images that are completely unrealistic in “the real world”. The oddest random things — memories, questions, images, words — come to mind. It’s fascinating and amusing.

I check in with my body. I notice where I feel tight, when the energy isn’t flowing well, and I move to open myself up. Sometimes I do some tapping, a simple version of EFT without words just to get my energy flowing well. I roll my eyes and blink. I notice my breathing. I stretch. Oh, do I stretch!

And then at some point without much thought I’m ready to roll out of bed and onto my feet, and move on to what’s next: pee, feed cat, do yoga, sit.

This is so much more enjoyable than the grind of slamming the alarm off and hitting the ground running, which I have done more than enough of.

This feels like an utter luxury, yet it’s something money can’t buy. You have to arrange your life to be able to do this. You go to bed early enough to have an hour to yourself in the morning. You make this a priority and let other things drop.

You know, I wonder if I’m overcompensating for being out of balance for years. Oh well, that’s for someone else to say. This just feels so right. This is part of living my right life.

I hope you can join us, the Buddha and me, and begin to revel in each awakening to a new day.

“Dear God, I’m in trouble” moments

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I’m remembering this scene from the movie Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. Spoiler alert: If you haven’t seen/read it yet and want to preserve your innocence, stop reading now.

It came at a point when the main character — Julia Roberts playing Elizabeth Gilbert, who wrote the book the film was based on — was recognizing that she wasn’t happy in her marriage and in her life. She looked around and felt like she had no reason to be unhappy — she had it made by certain standards. A nice cushy life, a good man for a husband, friends, professional success, a nice home.

The fact remained — she was unhappy. Unlike her friends blissing out about the arrival of their long-desired baby, she didn’t dream of having a family. She kept a folder of travel destinations.

Then Liz/Julia has her “dear God, I’m in trouble” scene. It is the middle of the night. Her husband is asleep in another room. She’s as alone as she has ever been. She may have been crying.

She kneels, tentatively places her hands in prayer position, and whispers that line to a God she has neglected and disregarded. “Dear God, I’m in big trouble.”

At least that’s how I remember the scene. I thought it was well-played. How often do we get to witness these moments in others’ lives?

Dear God, I’m in big trouble. That thought surfaced into my conscious mind during a time of too-much-busyness several years ago. An inkling that I wasn’t happy managed to get through during a brief pause. Something was wrong, or maybe not wrong, just not right.

I had no idea what to do with that piece of information. I also became aware that I was exhausted.

I had what I believed was a good relationship with a good man. I had a good steady job, volunteered with a nonprofit helping women in prison, and was also was editing an anthology of women’s writing. I owned a charming vintage house close to downtown in an up-and-coming creative Austin neighborhood. I had spent a couple of years processing my major childhood trauma and felt most of it was behind me.

In some ways, I thought I had (finally) arrived.

Yet here was news of difference, an inner voice (was it me?) whispering to God: I’m in trouble. This isn’t my right life.

Did I have any idea what my right life was? No! It was just not the life I was living. Did I do anything about it? No. I had no clue what to do.

And shortly after that, the shit hit the fan in my relationship, I resigned from my volunteer work, and I hunkered down, feeling like a mess.

The Universe did for me what I couldn’t do for myself.

I withdrew more and more from the world and started meditating. I discovered that although I was in emotional pain, I was bigger than that. Much bigger.

That was my India.

It became clear that I needed to focus on taking care of my health. I got tested for food sensitivities and learned not only that I had too much candida, but also that I was sensitive to wheat, among a dozen other things.

I cleared the excess candida by rigorously following the prescribed diet. I learned to avoid wheat, and I felt so damn much better getting it out of my diet. (In hindsight, it was probably from glyphosate that had been sprayed on non-organic wheat. I was not sensitive to gluten.)

That was my Rome. Instead of stuffing my face and having to buy bigger jeans, I lost weight, but I felt so much better.

I have spent time on Maui twice since then, so maybe Maui is my Bali. II have plenty of shamans available, thank you very much. I’m still waiting for my Javier Bardem to appear.

All of that started several years ago, in 2007.

In hindsight, I recognize that overworking, overdoing, is one of the ways I have distracted myself from talking to God, higher power, Spirit, Source.

I recognize that that voice that talks to God is full of innocence and beauty and should never be ignored.

I recognize that when I am stuck, the Universe shifts to unstick me…and I don’t always have to wait for the Universe — I can create shifts myself, or at least the shifts I think I need…and find out later if they took me closer to God and “my right life.”

in a way, it’s like sailing, which is constant course-correcting.

I recognize that one of the ways to hear that voice more often, to get more familiar with it, to converse with it, is to make a habit of sitting in silence every day so I can hear it. Even if it’s just 10 minutes, that is time well spent, because it could be all that helps me be more centered in my authentic life.

Update: It’s 2023. I went through another big shift in late 2010, which led to me selling my house and starting career change from technical writer to bodyworker, and although there have been a few bumps in the road since then, I’m doing my right livelihood.

I’m aware that another shift is underway. It’s not exactly clear yet, but daily sitting in silence as well as asking for help from my higher self and feeling gratitude for all that is right in my life are walking me through this part of my journey.

Hey, ma’am, this yoga feels good!

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I taught yoga yesterday morning and yesterday evening. Two classes in a day! I feel lucky to be able to do this.

The morning class was to 5th graders at my granddaughter’s school. At back to school night a couple of weeks, the 5th grade teachers said this year they would focus on fitness. They have arranged for the kids to get outside for 15 minutes a day, and they were seeking volunteers to help with healthy snacks and fitness activities.

When I was in grade school so many years ago, we got about 30 minutes outside every day. If it was rainy or snowy, we went to the gym. Sometimes our physical activity was organized into team sports, track and field, or games (remember Red Rover?), and sometimes it was just plain old free play on the playground — jungle gym, merry-go-round, slide, swings. It was active. It was fun. I loved it.

Last year my granddaughter’s class did not get to go outside except on rare occasions. They have PE (often in the gym) every third day, rotating with art and music.

Spending time outside every day is important, in my opinion. We need the sunshine, fresh air, and trees and sky to look at. Even if we’re not consciously aware of it, exposure to nature suffuses us with more well-being. Fifteen minutes a day is a big deal.

With so many kids being obese these days, with the decline in school lunches and physical activity, I wanted to support their focus on fitness and volunteered to teach Hannah’s class some yoga. I won’t be able to sustain it all year, but I can spare 30 minutes one morning a week for a couple of months to teach them some yoga.

In fact, it just occurred to me that I can teach a few of them to lead the class after I stop teaching!

(And of course, it’s asana practice, not really yoga. We don’t get into philosophy — but yesterday I did include breath awareness and coordinating it with asanas, and I taught them that namaste means “I honor you”.)

About half the kids had done yoga or were at least familiar with it, and half were new to it. I cherish one little boy saying, when I had them do a seated side bend, “Hey, ma’am! This feels good!”

They were full of giggles and chatter, and I didn’t make any corrections. Let it be fun for them. Let them moo and meow in cat-cow.

I completely improvised. We were crowded onto a rug, limited to seated and standing poses that didn’t take up much room, and tabletop/dog. The first thing I taught was belly breathing. I crammed a lot of asanas into 30 minutes.

At the end we sat cross-legged with our backs straight and closed our eyes and paid attention to our breathing for one minute. During that minute, I heard a few whispers and giggles, and then … about 10 seconds of pure silence.

That silence was so powerful to me! I don’t think they get much of that.

I’ll return next week to teach yoga again. I will also teach them an NLP technique, Circle of Excellence, that they and their teacher will find useful this year, and for the rest of their lives.

In the evening, my Beginner’s Yoga, Beginner’s Mind class picked up again. We did four weeks together, had a week off, and are continuing for eight more weeks. These are adults, most of whom are really new to yoga. We meet in a home, moving the furniture aside.

What a joy it is to hear about them having more body awareness, noticing new strength, having more stamina!

I don’t improvise much in this class. Because of various students’ health issues, we take it slowly. We use props. I want them to feel safe and be safe. No yoga injuries! Taking yoga teacher training from a highly experienced Iyengar-certified teacher has given me the confidence I can do this. We are gradually building strength and flexibility.

We did a nice long savasana, and I got to use some NLP trancework, addressing the healing part within, asking it to communicate clearly to the conscious mind any new information about healing it would like to share.

Article: 10 Things I Learned at Yoga Teacher Training

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I’m posting this article by Valerie Reiss, published in the Huffington Post, so I can find it again when I need it!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/valerie-reiss/10-things-i-learned-at-yo_b_716619.html?igoogle=1

Good article on samadhi

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Judith Hanson Lasater wrote this for Yoga Journal, and I think she did a great job of demystifying the last three limbs of Patanjali’s yoga.

I particularly like her contrast of the filter or grid that we ordinarily perceive reality through and the direct experience of reality — which no matter how it happens, through lovemaking or being alone in the woods or sitting on a zafu — always wakes us up to being more alive.

http://www.yogajournal.com/wisdom/461

Sun Salutation: wakening the bliss body

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I’m falling in love with the pure genius of Surya Namaskar, part of my early morning practice. I love how it really awakens me, how it holds an infinite capacity for creative variations, how it opens me up for meditation, how it opens up my day.

For a long time, I did Ashtanga’s Surya Namaskar A, the same three sun salutations every day.

Then at yoga teacher training, we started improvising. I’m hooked!

I start with hands in namaskarasana, with gratitude. Here I am, standing on this mat, facing east, greeting another day. What mysteries will it hold? May I meet them well.

I’m bringing standing poses into my sun salutation. Triangle, parsvo, vir 2, triangle, ardha chandrasana, triangle. HOLD down dog and BREATHE, then glide into plank, chaturanga, salambasana HOLDING BREATHING, back into three-legged dog, OPEN…

Getting a sweet mix of vinyasa fluidity and the strength and solidity of Iyengar. It opens my koshas (sheaths) from the physical level all the way to the bliss body. Rasa!

Sitting and yoga, oh yeah, and breakthroughs

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Today I want to report on my sitting practice. I haven’t written much about it lately. If you’ve been keeping up, you’ll recall that I finally got serious about following my teacher’s instructions, to practice “whole body awareness”.

Today I crossed a threshold. Rather than being aware of my whole body, body awareness dropped more into the background, and whole awareness moved more into the foreground. And somehow they merged.

Maybe a better description for my experience is that for a few moments, “my body” was not me. There wasn’t really a me, an I, except for experiencing awareness. Sounds, body sensations, thoughts — all aspects of awareness, all one.

Okay, I know some of you may stumble upon this post and think this is crazy talk, that it doesn’t make any sense — unless you yourself have explored these realms of being.

You know what? It doesn’t make sense to me either! Making sense is where the trouble started! I am curious, so I will keep exploring.

I’m doing the best I can to describe in words something that is essentially a nonverbal experience.

Before sitting, I did yoga. We worked on Sun Salutations in yoga teacher training last night, each of us leading and innovating. It was very fun and a real workout! They’re like jazz — infinite variations are possible. Amazingly, I can lead a long improvised series of poses for the right side of the body– and remember the same sequence on the left! It just comes back to me.

So before yoga this morning, I did one l-o-n-g sun salutation, making each movement between the individual poses into a little vinyasa to repeat over and over, then HOLDING down dog, chaturanga, bhujangasana to build strength. I made a lovely stew of Iyengar and vinyasa today.

I’m working on a longer post about something the film Eat, Pray, Love triggered. When I work it through a bit more, I’ll post. It feels big!

What is your water? A fish story

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This is one of my favorite teaching stories.

Once upon a time, a fish wandered outside his school. He was near the shore, and he heard voices talking. They kept mentioning the word “water”.

The fish had never heard this word before. Wah-ter. Water. He didn’t know what it meant.

He returned to his school and began asking the other fish, “Do you know what ‘water’ is?” No one knew.

The fish just couldn’t let it go. Surely someone must know. When his school encountered other schools, he asked the other school’s fish if they knew what ‘water’ is.

No one knew.

The fish grew up and realized his mission in life was to find out about ‘water’. He left home and swam far and wide, asking the many creatures he encountered what they knew about ‘water’.

In old age, with a long fishy beard and glasses, the fish returned to the school of his origin. A couple of other old fish noticed him and asked, “Say, aren’t you the fish who left in search of something called ‘water’?”

“Yes, I am,” the old fish replied.

“Well, tell us! Did you ever find out what ‘water’ is?” they asked.

“Yes, I did,” the old fish responded.

“Well, what is it? What is this ‘water’?” the fish eagerly asked.

The old fish looked at them and answered, “If I told you what water is, you simply wouldn’t believe it.”

Water. Love. Abundance. Presence. Peace. Wholeness. Flow.

What is your water? What have you been searching for that is there all along?

The interesting thing is, we need news of difference to notice anything. News of difference can come as something “new” that we haven’t encountered before, or it can come from refining our ability to notice — notice what’s already there that you didn’t notice before. Notice what’s always been there that you never noticed before.

Meditation — seeking the silence and space and presence within — is a path to noticing what you didn’t notice before. Shedding light on darkness. Enlightening.

Back sliding

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Last Wednesday I had a chiropractic adjustment that felt like “the one I’ve been waiting for.” I reported to Dr. Collins on how the exercises from last month went. He had asked me to place shoes — like wedges — under specific parts of my lower back and pelvis so my body could experience what it feels like to be untwisted, doing this 15 minutes 2x a week.

After the second time, my body went through a “crisis day” where it felt like all the adhesions in my left leg were screaming, and then the pain faded. I got a sense memory of two different ways of my muscul0-skeletal-nervous system being organized — the habitual dysfunctional way and the aligned new way. 

Last week, he did some muscle testing, then he positioned me and made an adjustment. I felt a quick pain in my left sacro-iliac (SI) joint.

And then nothing. Like being suspended in mid-air.

And then my body autonomically took a really deep, relaxing breath that told me this adjustment released a long-held pattern of tension.Sweet, blessed relief! This felt like the sweet spot I’ve been working so hard toward since February.

I noticed a need for silence and stillness and stayed home from work on Thursday. So far so good.

Friday night as part of yoga teacher training, we went to the Our Body exhibit — a display of human anatomy using real bodies that have been preserved, positioned, or cut open to reveal the structures inside.

And ironically, after being on my feet for over an hour filling up on anatomy, I began to feel the familiar old discomfort in my left SI joint.

By Saturday morning, my sacral ligament was inflamed. I attended yoga teacher training all day and took sublingual arnica, which helped some. Blood flow is good, but ligaments aren’t very vascular. When I got home, I reached for prescription anti-inflammatories.

Sunday was another crisis day. I took anti-inflammatories, sublingual arnica, arnica gel, and laid low, reading and resting and being still most of the day.

Today, less inflammation and pain, still have some stiffness.

I guess I wasn’t quite ready for the adjustment. I feel disappointed.

I noticed when my SI joints were aligned that the area between L5 and my sacrum felt tight. Also, after an adjustment, some walking is good, but standing is not. Valuable information.

Am I resisting change? Is there a part of me that doesn’t want to heal? I ask myself those questions and don’t get any clear answer. I imagine what it would feel like to be healed, and I realize I’ve held an expectation that once I get my lower back/sacrum/pelvis aligned, I will not only be pain free, but I will have rushes and beaucoups of energy.

Getting aligned (given my history of birth injury, PTSD, scoliosis, and car accident) is a two steps forward, one step back process.

At least I had a taste of it! That is so motivating. I can get aligned. I can learn how to hold the adjustment, just like I held the atlas adjustment that unwound scoliosis.

So, what do you blame your good fortune on?

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My friend Katie has been playing with the concept, “What’s your excuse?” using her big mind. She asks:

What’s your “excuse” for making real the compassionate/wildly loving/identity changing/unrealistically abundant goals and dreams you have?

It seems we can all easily access lots of excuses for why we are the way we are (poor me), why others are the way they are (poor them), why we failed at something, why we’re not living at our full potential and capacity. Bad parents, childhood trauma, family history, DNA, born that way, hard-wired, didn’t know any better, lacking something.

Not that those experiences have no consequence, but how far is that bad parents excuse going to take you? How long will it last? What will it take for you to stop making it?

What if those bad parents provided exactly the life experience you needed to discern parenting skill levels in others and perhaps even become an awesome parent yourself?

What if your childhood trauma provided you with the exact amount of suffering you needed to develop a highly compassionate heart?

What if that trauma prompted you later to try to find out who you would have been had that trauma not occurred?

What if you realized the trauma had moved you in a direction you would not otherwise have taken, and the full glory of your existence included trauma and recovery?

What are your excuses for your misfortunes and for your good fortunes?

Katie responded to her own question thusly:

 Here are some of my excuses for greatness/expansion: Having the three best parents imaginable, seeing the green flash on the ocean as a teenager, my best friends, standing on top of Haleakala at sunrise and sunset 3 days in a row, the existence of the book The Structure of Delight, Spider Joe’s celestial spider pictures, the fact that I could go on and on 🙂

We have a mutual friend who “blames” her wonderfulness on the fact that she was energetically zapped by 12 Peruvian shamans! I like that one a lot.

I enjoy believing that all of you wonderful friends (and friends I haven’t met yet) have created a wonderful world just for me to live in and appreciate.

In fact, there’s so much to appreciate, I currently narrow it down to just the miraculous blue sky of this planet, and all the wonders it holds — stars, constellations, meteor showers, the Milky Way, cloudscapes, thunderstorms, lightning, sunrises and sunsets, moonrises and moonsets, rainbows, green flashes, oh yeah. And space, spaciousness, the spaces between things.

Thank you, my friends, for showing this to me, for creating it, for letting me play.

Here’s an experiment. Every time you notice yourself blaming something or someone and feel the contractiveness associated with that activity, pause. Take a moment. Breathe. Tell yourself:

This is a story I made up.

Then find a more creative story, a funnier story, a fresher story.

No one owns “the truth,” but you own your truth. Life is more delicious with really good stories.