Ponder of the Day: The Mind, Yoga, and Stillness

Well, it's been awhile since I was here last, but, due to a recent flood of readings about "cultivation" today, I feel a bit guilty about how long I've been away. I suppose that certain words, like "cultivation" and "liberation" and "freedom" are speaking loudly to me because they resonate with an area of focus I have been devoting some time to cultivating. I have been thinking about mental activity (such redundancy, I know) and how to tame such an unwieldy force in my life. Yes, I am victim to an overly active mind, much to my own detriment. I over-think many things, and I have been practicing the silencing or stilling of that mind for about six months now. I think I am starting to get the hang of it, and yet, it seems to be a daily challenge. But today was a source of renewed inspiration, which naturally made me want to share, here.

To contextualize, I recently started my PhD work at Claremont Graduate University, and one of the courses I am taking is in religion, entitled "Yoga and Ultimate Reality." Yes, the yogi in me was desperate to enroll.  My professor has introduced me to some fascinating books and articles and ideas regarding Indian philosophy, Hindu culture, and yogic practice, some of which I would like to share. However, in order for us to be on the same page, I would like you suspend any notions that you may have about yoga. Most of us in the Western world associate yoga with a way of maintaining physical fitness; however, yoga is much deeper than poses and exercise. So if you decide to keep reading, I suggest temporarily letting go of whatever preconceived notions you may have about yoga, and instead, let your thoughts be open to a perhaps new or rededicated way of thinking about yoga.

The book is Yoga: Discipline of Freedom, attributed to Patanjali and translated by Barbara Stoler Miller.

"The aim of yoga is to eliminate the control that material nature exerts over the human spirit, to rediscover through introspective practice what the poet T.S. Eliot called the 'still point of the turning world.' This is a state of perfect equilibrium and absolute spiritual calm, an interior refuge in the chaos of worldly existence.  In the view of Patanjali, yogic practice can break habitual ways of thinking and acting that bind one to the corruptions of everyday life" (1).

"Cultivation of mental tranquility is crucial to reversing the accumulation of psychological fetters, for only when thought is tranquil can one realize one's spiritual nature" (17).

"The goal of yogic transformation is realized in contemplative practice. The path to freedom consists of a gradual unwinding of misconceptions that allows for fresh perceptions... The way of yoga is not a simple, linear path. Rather, it is a complex method involving a radical change in the way we experience the world and conceive the process of knowing ourselves. It gives us techniques with which to analyze our own thought processes and finally to lay bare our true human identity" (25).

"The goal of yoga is to stop the thought processes so that the spirit can be free, isolated from the turmoil of thought from which it mistakenly takes its identity" (30).

"For Patanjali, the interior dimensions of yoga are impossible to attain unless one first pays attention to the body. Later traditions expand this aspect of yoga into a system of physically and spiritually efficacious postures, commonly known as hatha-yoga" (57).

So, beginning with the asanas (or postures/poses) is a start, but it is not enough.  More is waiting... will we discover it???

A Doozie

Years ago I read a novel by Max Frisch called I’m Not Stiller. The themes all circle around identity, and there is one scene that sticks out in my mind. The protagonist, Anatol, wanders down into a dark cave, where he encounters a man—a man who is himself. The two men wrestle until only one is left. Anatol emerges from the cave, having wrestled and defeated himself. He emerges the victor. 

One of the major issues I battled during my EMDR sessions had to do with a belief I held about myself—that I am not good enough to be loved. There are a lot of things from my past that play into this belief, and for the most part, I knew what those things were. In fact, I had spent many years of my life trying to sort them out and let them go. I didn’t want them as baggage in my life, and so I chose to release them. It wasn’t until January when I started to discover that this same narrative of “Not Good Enough” wasn’t nearly as resolved as I thought. On more than one occasion during counseling, I felt really down on myself. I left there feeling not good enough, specifically, not good enough for someone to choose over and over again to love me. This is the point when I decided to see Saranne and begin my work in EMDR. 

At the beginning and end of every session, Saranne asked me the following question: “How true is this statement for you: I feel good enough.” I would then rate the truth of that statement on a scale of one to ten, one being not true at all, ten being totally true. With each session, I found the rating was growing higher and higher. But the number wasn’t magically growing. It was growing because I was down in that cave, wrestling myself. I had to go down into the muck, uncover some of the old beliefs, rewire them, and then emerge victorious, free from those untrue, unproductive beliefs. 

I blogged my way through the EMDR sessions, but there is one thing I haven’t yet shared. The thing that made me reactive in my romantic relationship linked back to an incorrect belief that I continually invested in. It was the way I interpreted (or misinterpreted) a statement, which was something to the tune of this: I better be on good behavior or else he will leave me. But this interpretation was deeply flawed for many reasons. And this is why EMDR makes sense. The narrative I had on repeat in my head about not being good enough became embedded in my mind, in my subconscious, becoming a truth onto which I fervently held. So I was terrified of my bad behaviors because I believed I would be abandoned if I didn't check those misdeeds, also translated as this: I must be perfect all the time in order to be loved. Given the main issue I decided to see Saranne (my reactive behavior), I saw myself behaving badly all the time, thus, I was all-the-time afraid of abandonment and I believed I was not good enough to be loved. It sounded so silly when I actually said it aloud, but I had permitted myself to operate from this belief for at least six months. 

Now for some yoga to pull it all together. I came to Mosaic (my yoga studio) around the same time that I started seeing Saranne (January 2011), at a time when I felt broken, disheartened, and completely lacking faith in myself. One night, while I was waiting for class to begin, the girl in front of me positioned herself, and I mean deeply positioned herself, into a pose that is incredibly challenging for me (half pigeon). At first, my mind thought, “Gosh, she’s so much better than me. I totally suck at that pose. I need to practice more.” And then, I stopped myself. That very moment, I promised to not let my yoga practice be another place where I am hard on myself. And I’ve done a pretty good job at keeping that promise, I think. In yoga, I practice loving myself, which served as a great supplement to my work with Saranne. In EMDR, I was breaking myself down; in yoga, I was building myself back up. So at Mosaic, I took the broken pieces and began to reform them, turning what was broken into something new and beautiful. 

My journey led me to a path of learning to heal myself, forgive myself, and love myself. And choosing love sometimes means doing something difficult. Sometimes choosing love means being willing to go down into that dark cave, deal with the parts of yourself that are harmful or unhealthy or destructive, and emerge anew.

A Momentary Challenge to My Belief in the Goodness of Humanity

I was in Kohl’s today shopping for Jenna’s son’s 10^th birthday present. I headed to the Boys 8-20 section (seriously… 8-20?  seems like a crazy large range for “boys” sizes in one section), already feeling totally out of my shopping league. Jenna said size ten, but the Nike shirts were labeled in S, M, L, and XL. I texted Jenna. Twice. Nothing. I called Allison, hoping she might lend some of her mommy intuition help. Nothing. I held up the shirt to the approximate height of Gavin, guesstimating whether or not the M or L was better. In a moment of desperation, I scanned the aisles for some help. Ah! A woman with two boys, and one of them about Gavin’s size. I walked toward her, smiling, holding the shirt just slightly in front of me. As I approached, still smiling, she looked over at me with suspicious, almost alarmed, eyes. She immediately, instinctually, backed up away from my direction, prodding her sons to do the same. I didn't understand. I was smiling. I was wearing my red cowgirl boots, a funky cute jean dress, and my pearls, and I was smiling… what in the world could be startling or intimidating about me? I heard her speaking another language to her sons as I slowly got nearer, and I gently asked her if she spoke English. She replied, “A little.” I softly told her about my predicament, asked her if she could give me any advice, and then she softened, pushed her Gavin-sized son my way, and invited my hands to bring the shirt near to him for measure. She nodded, giving me approval that the L shirt would work. I looked into her eyes, thanked her, did the same to her son, smiled more, and then walked away. 

I imagined why she might have resisted my advance, why it might have made her nervous, why she might have drawn back at my approach. Then it occurred to me that perhaps there have been other situations like this, but unlike this. Perhaps others notice her headscarf, her long garb, and approach her with a different demeanor, without smiles, without gentleness, and certainly without compassion. I couldn’t help but feel sad, deeply saddened at the thought of it, at the thought of someone giving her reason to fear my approach in a department store. My suspicions at the cause of her reaction made me feel disappointed in how humans can behave toward one another. And then, trying to turn my sadness around, I hoped that maybe, after her experience with me today, when I looked into her eyes, when I took time to think about her situation and try to put myself into her shoes, that just maybe she won’t resist next time someone approaches her and her sons. 

A Yoga Story

The other night in yoga, I had an experience that I will never forget. It’s funny to me that I write so much about the metaphysical, read so much scholarship on the sublime, and seek to find ways of finding those encounters, and yet, when they come to me, I always find myself surprised, delighted, and totally mystified. The yoga studio I attend (www.exploremosaic.com) offers Reiki, and actually, as I type that, I am not even quite sure that Reiki is responsible for what happened the other night, but I offer that up as a potential contributor to the experience. 

One of my yoga instructors has this way to challenging students in the perfectly right way. I always push harder, hold for longer, and extend farther than I thought possible. This night was one of those nights. To give some perspective, about once a month I am able to do something in my yoga practice that I wasn’t able to do before. About once a month. This particular night, I pushed myself (per the prodding of the instructor) to do three new things. Three new things in one night! (Note, it is exhilarating to see the physical manifestation of my growth in yoga). By the end of practice, I was physically exhausted. 

But let me back up for a second to reflect on one thing. At the beginning of the practice, the instructor went around asking students what they needed. I thought for a moment, and then I answered, “Balance.” 

My instructor asked, “Balance, like physical balance, or balance in general.” 

Of course my first thought when I blurted out “Balance” was physical balance, as in balancing poses… but as I thought about the question, I realized I was seeking balance in my life. 

So at the very end of practice, my instructor came over to me while I was in shavasana, adjusted my shoulders into a state of deeper relaxation, then barely touched my head near my temples before fully gripping the crown of my head. At first, I was a bit uncomfortable (this is only the second time an instructor has ever done this to me, and in both experiences, I tried my best to relax, but, naturally, it makes one slightly self-conscious to feel another person’s presence over your head), but as I breathed in and silenced my thoughts, I was suddenly able to receive the gift. I felt like I was in a Dostoevsky novel. A human being was generously giving me compassion, giving me love, and giving me what I needed… and I was receiving it. At first I thought that it was unsolicited and undeserved. But then I quickly reminded myself that we as human beings are constantly soliciting love and compassion from others, and that this solicitation and willingness to receive is totally deserved. We all deserve to be loved, to receive love from everyone we encounter. 

The moment I felt the hands release, I was overwhelmed with emotion. I began to cry and couldn’t stop myself (fortunately, everyone’s eyes were closed until the end of practice, so I was not disruptive to the rest of the class!). At first I wasn’t sure what was happening. The skeptic in me was thinking about my day and reasons why I might be more emotional than usual, but as I left the studio, still wiping my eyes, I realized exactly what occurred in that short yet powerful time. I was completely overcome with emotion—I felt nurtured, cared for, loved. It was glorious and euphoric. It is what I live for. It is what we all live for. Ecstasy. 

This same instructor once said that humans so often don’t love people the way they need to be loved. It felt so true. How we hurt one another instead of loving one another. How we fail one another instead of supporting one another. We are designed, we are built, we are here to love one another, and to love ourselves, fully, completely, and without reservation. Imagine if we all lived our lives fully giving love to as many people as we can, fully receiving love from as many people as we can. We would never feel exhausted because the love would be cyclical, recycling itself over and over, flowing in and out of every one of us. Imagine how different our world would be if we all practiced this way of being. How often those moments of ecstasy would overwhelm us. I don’t know that there is anything more beautiful in this world than to love other people. To quote Monsieur Victor Hugo, “To love another person is to see the face of God.” 

Thrift-Store Gem

$12 Vintage Dress from Paris that was falling apart (literally). A little love, ribbon, and thread, and it's the perfect dress to bring in my 30s!

Healing

I have always considered myself to be one who seeks a healthy mental and emotional life, and this includes an obsession with analyzing my psychological well-being, as well as a constant draw toward a spiritual life. And yet, I have a confession to make: prior to seeing Dr. Dan and doing the EMDR thing, I have never done one-on-one therapy sessions. And even worse, I only had one one-on-one session with Dr. Dan before he recommended me to EMDR. Apparently I was so messed up that he immediately referred me elsewhere! No, in fairness to Dr. Dan, that was not even close to how things went down. It was more like, “April, you are already aware of your struggles. Maybe tapping into your subconscious is the way to go.” Great. My SUBCONSIOUS?!?! God only knows what’s down there, lurking in the caverns and swamps. My subconscious is really the last place I want to go. However, I knew he was right. Maybe deep down I knew that my life-long tendency of overanalyzing was a response to my subconscious calling out to me for a visit. And I wasn’t opposed to seeing someone for talk therapy. Aside from actual EMDR bit, I wasn’t even nervous about going. I have friends who see a therapist once a week, have been doing so for years, and recommend it highly. A friend who works in the field psychology insists that everyone needs to see a therapist. While I believe that these things are true, I have always privileged my excuses. I don’t have the money, I don’t have the time, I don’t have the time or money. But honestly I believe in talk therapy. I believe that talking things through is part of the healing process, and I certainly have my fair share of wounds to heal, especially in light of all my failed efforts to fix this one thing (refer to previous blog). However, I always thought that since I am so introspective and so contemplative and analytical to a fault, I could get by on my own resources/devices. But when I am honest with myself, I know that there are wounds I simply cannot heal on my own, the ones that are too deep, too painful, and too far down for me to reach. I want to receive healing, even for the things that I am not entirely convinced are still hurting. I want no rock left unturned; I want to shed light on every dark crevice within that cave of mine. And I guess that I was hoping EMDR would do the trick.


Awhile back when I talked to Dr. Dan about my interest in the process of healing, he enlightened me on the theories about healing in the field of psychology. He said that while some experts believe that healing comes from within, others believe healing comes from talk therapy. But the most current theory fascinated me most: healing comes from your partner. As soon as Dr. Dan said this, I thought back to something I read about a romantic relationship being like a mirror up—because of the profound intimacy level created in that kind of intimacy, the other person cannot help but penetrate into the deepest, darkest areas of who you are. It makes complete sense that within the safe harbors of a loving relationship, healing can take place from one partner to the other. Fascinating!


In PAX (http://understandmen.com/) I learned that any person can heal another person, even if the healer is not the person who inflicted the wound. If this is true, then I can receive healing for all of the things in my life that caused me pain, and I could give healing to anyone who needed it and would allow me to administer it. Wow. Though I learned the steps involved in the process, sadly, I have never practiced healing another person before, and I have never asked for healing. Perhaps the fear is that two amateurs may inflict more damage than good. So instead, I found myself in the room of an expert, doing EMDR with Ms. Wilson, Dr. Dan’s “witch lady.” 


During our first session, she simply asked me questions about my life. We pinpointed what I was hoping to achieve from these visits (no longer being reactionary), and she helped me target some of my fears and/or beliefs about myself. The second visit, Ms. Wilson had me focus in on my most safe place, which is the final resting pose at the end of every yoga session, shavasana, or corpse pose. We did some eye movements while I imagined myself in shavasana. To describe the eye movement thing, basically she pointed and put together her index finger and middle finger, and then moved her hand from side to side in front of her body while I followed her hand with my eyes. At first I thought it was ridiculous and even silly. I laughed a bit and found it difficult to keep a straight face, but eventually I let go of my inhibitions and allowed myself to participate. After talking about shavasana for awhile and really honing in on what qualities it offered to me as a safe place, we got to work on the rest, beginning our descent into my subconscious, plunging into the unknown. I did cry at one difficult point, but overall, the information I discovered was not shocking. The same was true for next few sessions. Ms. Wilson said I was moving at a much quicker pace than most people and asked if I had ever thought about the information I was sharing before this experience. As I thought about her question, I realized that while I had thought about all of these findings before, I had always kept them compartmentalized as isolated incidents. After the sessions with EMDR, I began making profound connections and realizations about how they all worked together. As Ms. Wilson and I explored my subconscious, my subconscious was activating certain memories and linking those moments with cause-and-effect behaviors. It was absolutely fascinating. So far, the reactionary tendency has diminished greatly. However, there was one major discovery that stands out, which I will share in my next blog. But the bottom line is that I did the very intense, hard work I needed to do to unlock and hopefully release these bad behaviors. I was feeling very low and very discouraged at the beginning of this treatment. And only a month later, I feel empowered and excited.  But the work is not over. Learning to forgive yourself, to love yourself, is not easy, and it takes a lot of practice, as I'm learning. 

A Quote

Down those old ancient streets,

Down those old ancient roads,

Baby there together we must go

Till we get the healing done.

            -Van Morrison