Author Archives: MaryAnn Reynolds

About MaryAnn Reynolds

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

The Buddhist precepts

Posted on by
Reply

I’m taking a class at Appamada Zen Center on the Buddhist precepts. Yes, I know I’m overextended — full time job, yoga teacher training, NLP activity, this blog — but it meets only once a month on a Sunday evening.

A precept is a commandment, instruction, or order. The Buddhist precepts come from the monastic tradition and have been adapted for laypeople. We use the book Waking Up to What You Do, by Diane Esshin Rizzetto. Here’s a link to it on Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Waking-What-You-Intelligence-Compassion/dp/1590301811

Rizzetto presents the precepts as aspirations: “I take up the way of speaking truthfully,” for example.

I view the precepts as an invitation to increased mindfulness. A teacher, a book, and classmates make it a connecting, learning, growing experience.

In class, we’ll be covering one precept from the book per month. We journal at least weekly and assess ourselves periodically. I will be including my journaling here on this blog.

New image

Posted on by
Reply

The new title image on this blog is a sunrise over the dragon’s tail, taken from the black sand beach at Wai’anapanapa State Park, Hana, Maui, October 16, 2008.

The boilerplate image that came with this WordPress theme began to remind me of a dirty aquarium. I hope you don’t mind me changing the photo!

Article: Seven Things I Want to Tell My Beginner Yoga Students

Posted on by
Reply

Click here to read this article, originally posted in elephantjournal.com. Boulder yoga teacher Tiffany Hutchings lists what she’s like her beginner students to know.

I agree.

http://www.elephantjournal.com/2010/06/seven-things-i-want-to-tell-my-beginner-yoga-students/

My spiritual awakening story

Posted on by
1

This is as good a time as any to tell you the story of how I first came to experience myself as more than just this body and personality.

Although I was raised as a church-going child, I would not have described my parents as particularly spiritual. My dad was an Episcopal minister, and that was his primary livelihood until I was 11. There was no question but that we would attend church, and I did it with gusto. I liked the feeling of being in the church, especially when it was silent. The high ceilings, stained glass, smell of beeswax candles, pipe organ, rich fabrics, hard pews, dark wood…

I sang the hymns and memorized the prayers. My brothers and I snuck over and rang the bell one Saturday, which was fun. We took turns swinging from the bell rope. Later we got spanked. My mother often seemed tense about our behavior around church members.

I liked Jesus from what I’d heard, although he seemed remote, and I pondered on the Holy Ghost. Sacraments – the outward and visible signs of an inward and spiritual grace – held fascination for me, but grace seemed elusive, something that adults were smug about and didn’t let kids in on.

Church-going tapered off in adolescence. In my 20s, I became a “Chreaster,” attending church only at Christmas-Easter .

Fast forward to August 20, 1984.  I was on my first ever solitary vacation – five days/4 nights in Santa Fe – at age 31. I left my 3-year-old with her dad and took off from Norman, Oklahoma, where I was working on a degree. It was a budget trip – I drove and stayed at a hostel-type place.

During the days I walked a lot, marveling at the quality of the light and clarity in the air there, and visited museums, art galleries, did the usual touristy stuff in SF.

In the late summers then, and maybe still, the Santa Fe Opera held performances of  the most well-known arias performed by opera students from around the country.  It was truly only about the singing – none of the dialogue, no sets, no costumes. I’m thinking now that it was a massive audition by opera students for jobs with opera companies, and the public was invited to listen.

The performance was at 9 pm on a Monday night, and I had driven to the opera house earlier that day to get my $5 ticket. I got to explore the marvelous architecture of the Santa Fe opera. It’s an open-air facility. A roof overhangs the stage and cantilevers out over the audience, from what I recall, leaving the sides of the stage open to the beautiful mountain scenery.

I returned at 9 pm, wearing jeans, carrying my backpack. The performances had started. Not many people were there. I stood at the back, just taking it all in. I let my backpack slide to the ground.

A soprano was singing. I have no idea which aria it was, but the sound was beautiful, unearthly.

The skies to the north were storming.  From the back, I looked down at the singer and noticed lightning bolts flashing to the sides and behind of the stage. I could almost smell the ozone. I began to feel chills, and then…

… it was as if a bolt of lightning pierced my crown chakra and went down through my body into the earth and stayed there for several long moments.

I didn’t know what hit me, but I definitely felt hit by something. There was no pain, and it didn’t feel like an assault. I was hit by light coming from some unknown source, a light I couldn’t see but could sense.

The experience gradually faded. I could hardly listen to the rest of the performances, I was so puzzled about it. Why me? Why then and there?

I was familiar with the concept of chakras and had been practicing yoga for a couple of years, but I didn’t have anyone to talk about this with who could tell me anything I didn’t already know.

It was an expansive moment in a small life that had no context for it. It shook me. The invisible hand of God threw a different kind of lightning bolt into my head, and it pierced me through and through.

After that, I definitely noticed when my crown chakra was open, and later my third-eye chakra, and so on. I  have since come to understand that the crown doesn’t open for many people, and yet all I have to do is put my attention there, and it opens.

My perspective now is that it was an initiation into my energy body.  Was I chosen? If so, for what? Who can know the truth of this?

I do know this. It was grace.  And I am attracted to energy consciousness, energy movement, energy healing.

Six month blog stats

Posted on by
Reply

As of today, this blog has received 1,233 views, excluding my own, which averages out to about 7 per day. I’m pleased that you stop by and read!

There are 52 comments, including my responses to readers’ comments. I appreciate hearing from you!

Outside of my home page, the most popular post has been a poem, The Journey, by David Whyte. Next were these posts:

  • Feedback sought on new blog look
  • Trance dance trance
  • Trauma releasing exercises
  • Book influences meditation

What this tells me is that people respond when I invite feedback (thank you!), that readers like it when I connect my sitting practice to other practices like trance dance and trauma releasing exercises, and that you’re curious about books influencing my meditation practice.

Eleven posts have only had one view. (I’ve learned that titles are important. “Awareness and attention” was not a good title.)

By far the most popular referring sites have been Facebook and Twitter. Viewers also find me through Google Reader, from my friend’s blog It Starts TODAY at http://frontporchstory.blogspot.com/, and a few other places.

The most popular search term that brought viewers to this blog has been “shoveling snow with buddha,” a Billy Collins poem I posted. Glad the poetry fans are finding me. I take care choosing the poems I post. They have to really resonate with me. They are not just filler – it’s just that sometimes, a poet has said something so well that I experience and yet cannot articulate, or that I would like to experience, that I want to share. The poems posted here are actually shortcuts to an expanded, present state of mind.

Thanks for reading!

Open mind, no expectation

Posted on by
Reply

In the practice of meditation, concentrating too heavily on the technique brings all kinds of mental activities, frustrations, and sexual and aggressive fantasies. So you keep just on the verge of your technique, with 25 percent of your attention. Another 25 percent is relaxing, a further 25 percent relates to making friends with oneself, and the last 25 percent connects with expectation — your mind is open to the possibility of something happening during this practice session.These four aspects of mindfulness have been referred to as the four wheels of a chariot.The ideal number of wheels we should have on our chariot is four, the four techniques of meditation: concentration, openness, awareness, and expectation. That leaves a lot of room for play. That is the approach in the buddhadharma, the Buddhist teachings. A lot of people in the lineage have practiced that way and have actually achieved a perfect state of enlightenment in one lifetime.

The fourth wheel of meditative attention, according to Chogyam Trungpa, is expectation. I’ve done a halfway-through-the-year assessment of the first three wheels, and now it’s time to address this one.

It is very difficult to have no expectation. I mean, don’t we all expect that the sun will set tonight and rise in the morning, that we will experience that next day, that next meal, that next greeting of a friend or loved one? Intellectually we may know that this isn’t always true, but it usually takes a great act of chaos for us to really get it, a deep awakening.

I just do the best I can with this one, and the best I know how to be open is to be as completely in the present as possible.

When thoughts of the past and the future are not arising, what’s left is the present, and in this six months of sitting, I have been surprised to discover that the present is vast. I notice more of what I didn’t notice before. Refinements of breathing, hearing, feeling, much more awareness of my own inner experience.

I’ve had what I call a breakthrough, and it didn’t happen how I thought it might. A radical thought crossed my mind, and I quickly suppressed it, fearing its consequences. It kept coming back, and it was a process for me to clearly understand and accept that it was true.

That thought was that everything is awareness and awareness is everything. Nothing exists outside of awareness. And it’s my awareness that knows this.

Having accepted its truth, I know that this radical thought has been at work and at play in my everyday life. Ironically, it seems to have made me more selfish, in the sense that I do not want to sacrifice myself any more to being less than I am, to fearing my own light, as Nelson Mandela/Marianne Williamson said. I want to be all that I am, to live the life that I’m best suited for – not someone else’s idea of a good life, but my idea of my good life.

That, my friends, is not too much to ask. Truly, it is the only thing to ask.

Making friends with myself

Posted on by
2

The third wheel of attention in meditation, according to Chogyam Trungpa, is making friends with yourself.

After six months of daily sitting using the technique of whole body awareness,  I have gotten views of my whole life that have deepened my compassion for myself and for other human beings.

When I was a child, under the surface of civility and compliance, all sorts of disturbing awarenesses arose. Confusion, doubt, helplessness, inarticulateness.

For instance, at times I concluded that something was wrong with me, that I wasn’t good enough, that I was being judged and didn’t meet the standard, that no one understood me, that it was not enough just to be myself, that what I felt didn’t count.

These are painful thoughts to think and feel about oneself. Yet show me the person who has never experienced this.

These thoughts occasionally arise even now, on and off the cushion, and I now am quite aware of the emotional pain that accompanies them.

Maybe the most worthy response to awareness of suffering is compassion. I don’t believe there is really a purpose for suffering. It just happens as part of the human experience.  And, it is often a catalyst for growth.

So for all children, and for all those who have survived childhood, I feel compassion. It is hard to grow up. If you’re reading this, congratulations on making it.

I notice fluctuation in how I feel about myself. Some days, full of confidence and vigor, other days, full of doubt and sorrow. Many days, both. Whatever it is now will change.

Part of making friends with myself is beginning to see how I create my own suffering. How I have punished myself, how I have viewed myself as being much smaller than I really am.

I have sold myself out by not dreaming big enough and believing in my dreams.

I can now stop doing that each time I become aware of it. It feels great each time I stretch into my Large Self!

I love this quote from Mark Twain:

I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.

The task now is to know which ones never happened, and to respect the ones that did happen and note their lessons, and all let these past troubles go.

Taking yoga teacher training

Posted on by
2

Yoga is a category for posts on this blog, and most posts with that category are also about meditation, such as experimenting with seated poses for meditation and doing Sun Salutations before sitting in the early morning to wake myself up more. (Isn’t it all about waking up?)

I thought I would post about taking yoga teacher training.

I’ve wanted to do this for a long time, having practiced yoga regularly for 12 years (plus the time I taught myself yoga from a book 28 years ago – notice how honesty adds complexity).

I researched yoga teacher training programs here in Austin and elsewhere. I was serious about getting the money together and saving up time off from work  for studying elsewhere if that’s what I decided on. I figured it would cost about $3 grand and take about three or four solid weeks.

And then something happened I hadn’t dreamed of. My primary yoga teacher for the past 5 years, Eleanor Harris, offered to train me as a yoga teacher.  I’ve taken Iyengar-based yoga classes with her at lunch a couple of times a week. I’ve substituted for her without training, just by virtue of planning to take the training and having more years of experience than the other students.

I know Eleanor is good. Besides teaching yoga, she also does shiatsu, massage, reiki, Pilates, and has had some training in acupuncture and cranio-sacral therapy. She knows the body and its energies really well, knows how to move energy from dis-ease into ease and health, and she knows yoga really well from studying with many senior teachers.

She also has qualities that don’t come across on paper very well, like kindness and patience, that are desirable in a yoga teacher.

She got it all squared away with Yoga Alliance, and we began in early June. Besides myself, there are two other students.

It’s a joy for me to learn yoga this way, from someone I’ve already studied with for a considerable length of time. I like the flexibility (no yoga pun intended) of learning this way. If something comes up for any of us (because we all have lives outside of yoga), we work around it. No big deal. We track our hours and activities.

I’m not sure a studio training a dozen or so students at a time could offer this.

I’m learning to teach from observing, helping students gradually transform into yogis with strong and flexible bodies, deeper awareness of self, and a healthier flow of energy. Learning adjustments, how to teach beginners and mixed-level classes, diagnostic poses, linking, sequencing – there’s more to it than I knew.

I’ll be substituting for Eleanor three times in July and am  looking forward to doing that with new skills. Later I’ll be teaching a four-week beginner series. I’ll post more about this when the time comes.

Mostly I want you to know I’m fulfilling a dream. You can too.

Technique and relaxing

Posted on by
Reply

More assessing, in terms of Chogyam Trungpa’s four wheels of meditation, which I’ve written about several times as being handy guidelines for placing your attention during meditation. I’ll cover technique and relaxation today.

Technique. My technique, given to me by my teacher, Peg Syverson, is whole body awareness. I didn’t know how to do this at first, so I’ve experimented. My most recent experiments have been (after I’ve scanned my body and relaxed) to see myself sitting there as if I’m outside looking in.

I start viewing myself from the back. My point of view has to be at a certain distance to be able to see my whole body from the back. Then I shift to viewing myself in 3/4 profile from the front left, then directly in front, then in 3/4 profile from the front right.

Seeing my whole body in my imagination at the same time that I’m feeling myself sitting is a stretch. In NLP, when you’re experiencing being in your body, we call that first position. Third position is viewing yourself from outside your body, like a movie camera.

So in essence I’m practicing being in first and third positions simultaneously and moving fluidly between them.

Whole body, whole life. Since I started doing this a few weeks ago, my internal maps about my whole life seem to be changing. New finding: I am much less static and much more dynamic than I’ve previously believed.

I am in awe of transformation. From the meeting of a sperm and an ovum, changing moment by moment, with physical growth, developmental stages, experiences,  memories, imagination, awareness,  to being this 57-year-old broad who blogs and is a grandmother, wow, what a trip!

And not just for me. For you too. Your life is bigger than you think. Honor your whole life, even the parts that sucked. It’s your unique gift to all-that-is.

Relaxing. I have become much more aware of tension in my body, of places where I’m holding, where I feel stiffness, or even just a lack of flow. When I sit down to meditate, that is often the first thing that comes into my awareness. I slow my breath. I scan my body. I breath into the holding places.

One of the most awesome skills I’ve learned in the last few years is that there is no end to refining one’s sensory acuity or one’s awareness.

Thus, perhaps the greatest benefit of meditation is that it’s a skill that when practiced daily just brings deeper and deeper levels of self-awareness.

One thing that’s amazing is how difficult it is to stay relaxed. I get up off the mat, and I have people to connect with, places to go, chores to do, money to earn, fun to have, et cetera. And before I know it, I’m holding somewhere – or several somewheres – and I’ve completely lost the experience of being relaxed.

Some stress is good stress. Learning that, and how not to hold, is a skill I intend to refine.

I’ll post about making friends with myself and being open soon.

Photo added, two more blogging tasks

Posted on by
1

Yay, I added an image widget with my photo to this blog!

Friend Katie suggested that I post one because people like to see what bloggers look like. Here I am!

Actually, Katie took this photo, in a restaurant after a day of NLP master practitioner  training sometime in 2009, I think.

It’s a snapshot, capturing a moment, rather than anything I prepared for, yet I liked this moment. The photo captures a moment of joy and presence. Of all the photos I have of myself, this one best represents meditating.

Hmm. I could ask someone to take a photo of my face when I’m actually meditating and post that. Stay tuned.

I have two more blog chores to accomplish: first, learning how to make the type a little larger (haven’t found a text-sizer widget for WordPress yet, am inexperienced with behind-the-scenes tinkering), and secondly, recording the “Waiting for the love of your life” post – it is actually a guided meditation, at the request of friend Jazz – and posting the mp3 file.

If you have any experience or advice for accomplishing these tasks, please give me a holler.