The marvelous yogini-cum-graphic-artist Alison Hinks, who created the yoga lineages flow chart I linked to earlier, has done it again.
This beautiful graphic shows the eight limbs of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras.
What’s extra nice is that she’s identified the actions you do and the experiences that happen to you because you have practiced the actions effectively.
Thank you, Alison Hinks, for adding beauty and inspiration to the world.
Came across something else I wanted to repost tonight, this article from Elephant Journal on why yogis don’t meditate by Philip Goldberg.
Yep, asana is only one of the eight limbs of yoga, which is about quieting and calming the mind, or as some would say distancing from the mind. Patanjali had much to say about the mind, and little about asana.
After all, yoga is a philosophy with beliefs. It’s not just physical fitness.
My formerly daily meditation practice is in a slump right now. I miss it. Having the flu and then moving disrupted my life, although witness awareness has been keen through the many transitions.
I discovered Sunday that my meditation timer, which I was using to time long restorative yoga poses, seems to be broken.
However, I downloaded a timer app for my new iPhone that should serve well.
Now all I need to do is move the yoga blankets off my zafu and zabuton, and I’ll be meditating again.
I read this article, The New Humanism, in today’s New York Times. It’s an op-ed piece by columnist David Brooks about how our culture’s predominant way of thinking and viewing the world, through the lens of reason, has led to major policy errors, such as invading Iraq, the financial collapse, futile efforts to improve the educational system.
Brooks writes:
I’ve come to believe that these failures spring from a single failure: reliance on an overly simplistic view of human nature. We have a prevailing view in our society — not only in the policy world, but in many spheres — that we are divided creatures. Reason, which is trustworthy, is separate from the emotions, which are suspect. Society progresses to the extent that reason can suppress the passions.
Of course, we brain geeks know that it’s the glorification of the left brain at the expense of the right.
He continues:
Yet while we are trapped within this amputated view of human nature, a richer and deeper view is coming back into view. It is being brought to us by researchers across an array of diverse fields: neuroscience, psychology, sociology, behavioral economics and so on.
This growing, dispersed body of research reminds us of a few key insights. First, the unconscious parts of the mind are most of the mind, where many of the most impressive feats of thinking take place. Second, emotion is not opposed to reason; our emotions assign value to things and are the basis of reason. Finally, we are not individuals who form relationships. We are social animals, deeply interpenetrated with one another, who emerge out of relationships.
These points bear repeating:
Got that? Good. That’s thinking with an integrated brain.
Brooks goes on to write about the difference this makes in what we pay attention to:
When you synthesize this research, you get different perspectives on everything from business to family to politics. You pay less attention to how people analyze the world but more to how they perceive and organize it in their minds. You pay a bit less attention to individual traits and more to the quality of relationships between people.
Then he lists the talents this new paradigm requires and develops:
Attunement: the ability to enter other minds and learn what they have to offer.
Equipoise: the ability to serenely monitor the movements of one’s own mind and correct for biases and shortcomings.
Metis: the ability to see patterns in the world and derive a gist from complex situations.
Sympathy: the ability to fall into a rhythm with those around you and thrive in groups.
Limerence: This isn’t a talent as much as a motivation. The conscious mind hungers for money and success, but the unconscious mind hungers for those moments of transcendence when the skull line falls away and we are lost in love for another, the challenge of a task or the love of God. Some people seem to experience this drive more powerfully than others.
Which of these talents have you developed? Which do you want to develop more deeply?
This article is not about Buddhism or NLP or ecstatic dance, by the way, although given my history, I couldn’t help but make those connections.
It’s about how thousands of researchers in multiple displines are coming up with a new view of what it means to be a human being. Brooks concludes:
It’s beginning to show how the emotional and the rational are intertwined.
I suspect their work will have a giant effect on the culture. It’ll change how we see ourselves. Who knows, it may even someday transform the way our policy makers see the world.
Let’s hope so. Let’s do our parts to make it so.
Okay, people. let’s get to work changing the world! One savasana, one trance, one meditation session, one ecstatic dance, one meta-position, one moment of transcendence at a time.
Several people whom I follow on Twitter linked to this post, Does it hurt? Yes. Is that a problem? No.
Read it if you’ve ever wondered about the difference between pain and suffering. They’re not the same.
The title kind of gives it away, but it’s well worth reading anyway. Pain is inevitable because you have a nervous system. Pain is a form of communication. It lets us know to stop doing whatever caused it (if it is in our control — some pain is not), to seek safety, care, rest, healing.
Suffering comes from pain plus resistance. It’s the resistance to pain that causes suffering. If we could just surrender to pain, just let it wash through our awareness without judgment, it would leave more quickly.
But we judge and resist pain. “I don’t like pain.” “I hate pain.” “I fear pain.” “I shouldn’t feel this pain.”
Last year when I was just a couple of months into my practice of meditating for 30 minutes every day, my body hurt every time I sat. I kept expecting it to go away. My suffering was due to my belief that a sitting practice shouldn’t hurt.
When I checked in with my teacher, Peg Syverson, she said that pain is part of sitting. Every meditator faces this issue sooner or later.
Once I understood that pain was part of my body’s adaptation to the posture and that I might always experience some pain each time I sat, an odd thing happened. Or perhaps a natural and normal thing happened.
My body stopped hurting when I sat. The pain and the suffering both just left.
Interestingly, I’ve heard others’ stories about that: that the older you are, the more quickly your body adapts to sitting and the sooner you can sit without pain.
I suspect that in some cases, the opposite may be true. Habituation has a lot to do with it. Any new, prolonged activity that uses muscles differently than how you usually use them results in discomfort or pain.
Now it may be easier to do this with minor pain than major, but next time you feel some pain, get curious about it. Breathe slowly and deeply to relax, and feel it. Exactly where is it? Does it have a sharp boundary, or is it diffuse? What is the quality of the pain: is it dull, piercing, throbbing, steady, deep, shallow? How long does it last?
You may not feel joy, but you can rejoice in the fact that you can feel pain.
It means you’re alive.
From Yoga Journal, an enlightened mother writes a valentine to yoga.
Thank you for teaching me how to be more gracious and generous in my relationships. As my first yoga teacher Ruth told me, “Don’t be stingy!”
~~~
I love the passive backbend, where you roll up a towel or yoga blanket, lie on the floor with knees bent, feet flat, and place it under your lower shoulder blades.
Hang out here for 10 minutes. Adjust the towel up or down if you like. Let your knees fall together and the rest of you melt into the floor.
It’s one of the most refreshing and simple yoga poses I know. You’ll get up feeling good and energized!
You can also use a bolster, stacked blankets, and eye pillow as shown below. If the floor is cold on your hands and arms, put a blanket down first.
Just checking. I’ve taught them to one person so far during this challenge and am curious to learn whether anyone else is doing them or has tried them at least once or intends to do them.
If so, would you please comment? I’d just like to know someone’s there.
Last night my releasing was mild compared to the previous wild session. A little shaking in my left hand, but not my left shoulder this time. Mostly my legs shook. I experienced some mild, gentle pelvic rocking. Lasted about 10 minutes.
~~~
This morning I went to Appamada Zen Center for the Sunday service. I got there just as the clappers signaled time to get seated before the service begins.
Had a nice practice inquiry session with Peg Syverson, my teacher. So much has changed since I saw her last, which was maybe in early January. We had a really good connection. She asked what stays the same while so much of my life is changing — selling my house, moving out, doing temporary work — and advised to notice it all.
During the sitting parts of the service, I noticed tight places in my body. I attribute it to the kettlebell swings I’ve been doing to strengthen my body. I’m working my way up from 10 swings with a 15 lb. kettlebell. Right now I’m at 20, and I feel it slightly afterwards.
Then I had tea afterwards with some sangha members, and we chatted about the revolution in Egypt, Islamic finance, the environment, and people’s difficulty in dealing with long-term incremental change like climate change, among other things. Some of my sangha read a lot.
I haven’t been to Appamada for weeks. I’ve been spending time with my granddaughter while my daughter works at her nursing job on Sundays. She had this weekend off, and I got to sit with my sangha.
I’m grateful to have my daughter and granddaughter in the same city as I and to be able to spend time with them.
I’m grateful for Appamada, Peg, the Buddha, Zen, the sangha, and my zafu.
I’m grateful to be exploring the trauma releasing exercises.
Peg Syverson, Zen priest and my meditation coach at the Appamada zendo, sent out an email with a link to a New York Times article on meditation, saying “We told you!”
The article, How Meditation May Change the Brain, is by a writer whose husband went on a 10-day vipassana meditation retreat. He came back so energized and enthusiastic that he vowed to meditate for two hours a day through the end of March.
She wrote:
He’s running an experiment to determine whether and how meditation actually improves the quality of his life.
Sound familiar, those of you who followed this blog last year???
The writer admits she’s a skeptic — and then cites studies and researchers on how meditation changes the brain. The latest research shows measurable changes in gray matter that affect memory, learning, anxiety, and stress in a group that meditated for 30 minutes a day for eight weeks, compared to a control group not meditating that had no such changes.
Other studies have shown meditation increasing empathy and compassion.
What the writer believes is that through meditation, her husband became empathetic enough that he now takes out the trash and puts gas in the car because he knows she doesn’t like to do those chores.
She can go with that.
Oh, and here’s a link to the abstract of the findings about gray matter.
Today I’m grateful for finding inner bigness — hope, recovery, resiliency, growth — for those energies that move a contraction into expansion, that move a loss into new possibilities.
If you have experienced a recent contraction — a disappointment or loss, say — know that if you give it some space, some energy within you will find a way to expand. To give it some space means to accept that what you planned has been replaced by the unknown. To allow the unknown to come into awareness — and not fight it or run from it with distractions or denial — is to open to possibility.
That moment may be uncomfortable, though. Breathe into it.
Expansion may come in the form of you learning a new and needed skill that gives you more confidence about managing your life.
Or it may come in the form of a new recognition about who you really are and what your life’s purpose is.
Today I recognize this pattern in my life, and I share it with those who need it.
~~~
Today I’m grateful for people who inspire, and I want to call one out in particular. Keith Fail presented last night at the Austin NLP meetup on the topic Living a Meaningful Life in 2011. Keith has studied NLP for 25 years with some of the best masters available. He coaches, teaches, and trains people with NLP. He is the most widely read person in the field that I’ve met, with a very inclusive yet discerning mindset. NLP is his life’s work.
Plus, he’s secretly a Jedi master. I’m convinced! Meet him and see for yourself.
Basing his presentation on the assumption that people want to be happy, and using current research on what makes people happy, Keith asked key questions to elicit in each attendee more clarity about what gives meaning to their lives and therefore brings happiness.
I recognize that I am undergoing a sea change in my life purpose and values, and my conscious mind is the last to know! These changes start deep within the unconscious, and are really just starting to take shape consciously about living my life’s purpose. I’ll be writing more as it becomes clear to me.
Thank you, Keith, for the value you’ve added to my life, and for being a friend and Jedi master.
~~~
I’m grateful for awareness. The faculty of awareness, and specific instances of awareness. Awareness allows me to recognize gratitude.
After I meditate, I get up and then bow to my empty zafu. It serves as a symbol and location for my experience of awareness.
Thank you.
Just a quick post to share something I encountered online today that made a strong impression. The magazine Yoga Journal is holding a conference right now, and someone commented online on a class given by Paul Muller-Ortega on meditation.
Kelle Walsh included the following two paragraphs in her post:
Instead of turning the comment into meditation versus asana debate, he graciously acknowledged the value of all the paths people choose to come to this place of self-study. “All of the practices are complementary and mutually supportive,” he explained, each offering its own function in creating the conditions to gain access to the deep vibratory silence within all of us.
One of things I appreciated the most from this discussion was Muller-Ortega’s comments about the path of going within not having an end result, the enlightenment so many hope to find. Instead, the purpose and only tangible goal is to activate the best version possible of yourself, and then to live from that consciousness.
Paul Muller-Ortega’s website is called Blue Throat Yoga.
Stress is the perversion of time. ~ John O’Donohue
Since leaving full-time employment at the beginning of December, I’ve struggled with how to structure my days. This is the first post on how that’s going for me.
Every full-time employee dreams of being able to call her time her own rather than trying to squeeze her life into and around the 40-hour, Monday through Friday workweek.
When I was working, I dreamed of owning my time, of getting up when my body was ready to get up instead of when the alarm woke me. I dreamed of doing yoga and meditation each morning before a leisurely breakfast and then working productively on my writing, meeting friends for lunch, going for walks, taking or teaching the occasional yoga class, taking my laptop to a coffeehouse for a chai and wi-fi just to get out of the house. In the evenings I’d read or watch movies, cook, have friends over, and occasionally go out.
Well. That was the ideal, not what was real. It’s been more of a struggle than I anticipated.
I had just put my house on the market before leaving my job, so I’d already done a lot of downsizing and cleaning. My goal was to get the house listed by the end of November, which happened. Yay, I reached my goal!
But to reach it, I had stuffed a large pile of papers (mail, bills, receipts, papers I had no idea what to do with but couldn’t just recycle) into a cardboard box and stuck it on a shelf in my study to make the house look tidy for prospective buyers.
(I feel compelled to explain that I am messy by nature. I like being able to see things, having them out in full view. Staging is the antithesis of that. You make your house look impersonal. You take down all your photos and get rid of your clutter. You start living in a house that doesn’t feel like your house. It feels like somebody else’s house — somebody who lives in a magazine.)
It took a few days to get around to that box of papers after my job ended. The first weekend I spent as an assistant at NLP training. The second weekend I participated in an Evolutionary NLP workshop. In between, I’m happy to say, I did get that pile of papers sorted and filed.
And there was the excitement of being contacted about possibly being on a TV show, Sell This House. Ultimately, my house wasn’t chosen, and I don’t know whether to feel sorry or relieved about that. All this during December, with holiday events and parties and activities galore.
For Sale
The other thing that brought my dream schedule down to earth was showing the house. Realtors would call about showing it to prospective buyers either later that day or the next, and I would need to clean up and leave, usually right before they arrived.
I’ve got this down to a quick routine 5 weeks later, but it took awhile to learn to tidy one room at a time.
Sometimes there are two or even three showings a day. I’ve done so much housekeeping in the last five weeks, I could become a maid.
The truth is, I appreciate my new habits very much. I enjoy living in a clean, tidy, spacious, decluttered house. It feels very Zen.
And now it’s January 8, and I still haven’t settled into the kind of structure I imagined. I go to bed later and get up later. When I do get up, why, sometimes I get sucked right into my laptop (Facebook, email, and blog stats are like crack) before I’ve done any yoga or meditation, and the next thing I know, it’s 10 am and I haven’t brushed my teeth yet. And then a realtor calls and wants to show it at 11….
I want to do better than this.
The Well: bodymindheartspirit 