Stories we tell

I've got allergies.

 

By mcfarlandmo [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Big, dry-eyed, sneezin, snot-drippin allergies.

I have never had allergies, I say to myself. I always check no on the allergic-to-anything box. For the past couple years, allergy season has rolled around and I've sneezed and people have said it's allergies and I've said oh, no, I don't have allergies.

And then Thursday before class I sat down to center myself and the first thought in my head was "So fine, so I have allergies, then."

And I had my thought to impart for the day. I've been sneaking them in, now that I'm more comfortable with the actual teaching of the poses, I've been adding a little "yoga-talk" or thought to the beginning of the practice. It's just another one of those things I knew I would do when the time was right, so I didn't set a particular date or goal of doing it. I didn't even have a thought planned for yesterday, but when I came to my mat and got quiet it came to me.

We define ourselves as someone, saying "I am someone who..." or "I am someone who does not..." and in defining ourselves, we create ourselves. When I say that I am single, I reinforce that idea. Certainly it does not help when the @#)%#@)%( optometrist asks me to check a box for single or married (still the only two options, and I don't check either because they are checking my eyes). The idea gets reinforced every time there is a box to tick, even if it's an idea we don't particularly care for. Not only our definitions of ourselves as requested by the boxes on a form, but the very idea that this matters.

So I don't check the box. And somehow that seems like a marked option too, like if I were more at ease with what is -- the fact that I am single -- then it wouldn't be an issue with me, to check it or not check it.

But I persist in wondering why it matters.

All Along

The funny thing is, the person who first said this to me -- that you have it in you, this peace, and you can access it at any time -- was, at the time, an adherent to a religion I consider decidedly kooky and fearful of outsiders.

I had just come back from Kripalu and I was so at peace. I was full of love for absolutely everyone and I couldn't really even talk about my experience without sounding a little bonkers.

By Sonoma-rich at en.wikipedia [Public domain], from Wikimedia Commons 

Vacation-happiness tends to fall away after a week or so. The return to real life, the stresses of the job I was trying to do at the time, it all just took over and I spiraled downward.

And that's what he said, when I came back. That now that I had found that peace, I could access it any time.

I still want to go back, of course, because it's beautiful there, and who doesn't want to go on vacation -- especially when the place I'd be going to on vacation is myself.

Taken from the High Line, NYC, 10-02-2009

I heard it again when I started teacher training: that we all have this place inside of us. That we don't need anything special, no one to find it for us. We don't need to ask anyone or look anywhere outside of ourselves. We just need to be still and let it be there.

First step

I taught my first yoga class Thursday night. Even though I had anxiety tummy all day, I was not overly hyping it up in my head. My thoughts were these:

1. It does not have to be the greatest yoga class ever
2. I just really don't want anyone to be injured
3. There is something "more" that isn't quite there yet, and the only way to figure it out is to teach. So enough already, start teaching.

And just like that, an opportunity came up to fill in as a volunteer teacher for a group organized through Americorps for people without health insurance. I am both an Americorps grant recipient (paid off my expensive grad school degree!) and a person who doesn't always have health insurance. Plus the class was 10 minutes from both work and home.

I got there early, did the aura kriya, had my usual when-are-they-coming am-I-in-the-right-place-even-though-I-asked-and-was-told-it-is-in-this-room head thoughts, meditated, and the volunteers showed up. Granted I only had 4 students, but that's a good number, sufficient to watch and see what they're doing.

It was a little not-real, in that it was in a cafeteria. So it didn't feel yoga-ish. They didn't say "namaste" back to me, but then, why would they. Still. They did good work, didn't get hurt, and even though I forgot about 5 minutes of my sequence (It was right on the floor next to me, but I was looking at my students, not my notebook, which is probably how it should be if a choice has to be made) and wondered why my class ran so short, they'll never know that I left something out.

What I understand from my first "real" class is that there is a continuum. That I have started on this journey. That I have made the leap from yoga-teacher-trainee to beginning yoga teacher, and that it's only going to get better, more natural, and more me from here.  The only way to do it is to do it.

By Ciro Duran from Caracas, Venezuela (Master Yoda) [CC-BY-2.0], via Wikimedia Commons

Tapas

The word of the week is tapas. Ironically this was chosen a bit lazily, as it was on the back of the card with last week's word. Tapas is variously translated as fire, heat, burning enthusiasm. Something I have been lacking lately, so I decided it was the right word.

Well, not so much lacking as I have been overwhelmed, running from one thing to the next, constantly, not having enough time to simply sit and be. In some ways this flurry of activity is good, because it keeps me from thinking too much about those things that I can't change, or don't yet know how to change. But feeling tired and overwhelmed is not good.

And so in the midst of a week when I was supposed to be thinking about burning enthusiasm, I skipped those things that I supposedly feel the most enthusiasm for -- dance and yoga -- and sat at home weeding the peonies.

Which, as it turns out, is another thing for which I have burning enthusiasm.

What I've learned about tapas this week is that it's not just doing things with enthusiasm -- it's finding the things for which I have the most enthusiasm, and making sure I do those things as well as the things which I "have to do" (like work, and clean the bathroom -- both things that bring benefits that I want to experience, but not things I would define as "enjoyable").

That brings me back to a poem by David Whyte I first heard in a movement workshop at Kripalu. The poem ends

anything or anyone

that does not bring you alive

is too small for you.

Remembering this every day, with every choice I make about how to spend my moments.

On meeting yourself where you are

In the fall of 2010, my school had an ice-skating event.

I'm from Southern California. In other words, I don't ice skate. I've been skating maybe half a dozen times in my life, unlike these Pennsylvania natives who have skated on actual frozen lakes.

My student, Justin, zipped back and forth, cutting across the ice, unafraid of the vast open center of the rink. My coworkers skated around, talking, turning, stopping with ease. I like to try things, I thought. And work is paying for it. I'll get a pair of skates. I'm sure I can do this.

image from morguefile.com

Justin, a hockey player, laughed at me as I nervously gripped the edge and inched my way around the rink. Another teacher, Brandon - who is not a small man - was new at skating too. He valiantly attempted to skate - with the aid of a walker-type contraption, the likes of which I'd never seen. Of course it was sized for children, so he was bent over it uncomfortably. He was a sight! But he trudged on, uncaring how he looked and enjoying himself immensely.

On my fourth tortured creep around the rink, as I ventured away from the wall a little more, I fell and twisted my ankle. When I finally conceded to go to a doctor, I learned it was a sprain.

I don't yet know how to ice skate. I know that now. It's not that it's wrong to poke at your limits - in fact, it's the only way we ever learn anything new. But by accepting our limitations, and accepting the help that is available to us, we stay safe from injury. We may be too proud to use a wall to steady our balance in Vrkasana (Tree Pose), or insist that our hands can reach the floor without a block in Trikonasana (Triangle Pose). We don't admit that we need to look up that word we don't know, or insist that we can carry all the bags to the front door in one trip. We fail to accept the help that is available out of pride, or the fear of seeming weak.

But the figure of Brandon scooting around behind that undersized "ice skating training aid" reminds me that there is strength in seeing the help that is available and in not being afraid to use it. To say "this is where I am today, and I'm okay with that."