Pink of Perfection

You know when you’re cruising along, feeling holiday, slicing through life like that proverbial knife through the butter, and then wham-o: Stress City? I knew the other shoe had to drop: the sun had been shining for days and days, I was in an unflappable mood, and the tone at home was cheerful and almost annoyingly upbeat. And then this week came along.

On Wednesday I dropped into a nearby coffee shop for fifteen minutes before work just to sit by myself. I scribbled down the things that were weighing on me––some bills that needed paying, a meeting I needed to prepare for––and then still felt that jittery cast of negativity and anxiety. I believe it goes by the common name of stress.

So then I tried to write down a few quick ideas of what would help ease that. The solutions weren’t anything new (exercise, eat healthy food, read an uplifting blog), but I felt a little better for making the list. (And nothing, by the by, seemed quite as helpful as the old-fashioned I drank in a bubble bath that night while reading Barbara Pym.)

Continue reading “How Do You Deal With Stress?” »

When my sister first sent me the details of our yoga retreat, I wasn’t sure I wanted to go. Hanuman, the monkey god, was the weekend’s theme, and while he might be a fine guy, I couldn’t get Hanumanasana, his namesake pose, out of my head. I was nearly enough to make me not want to go: it’s a pose I find uncomfortable, scary, and not to put too fine a point on it, just yuck.

But, as I learned over the weekend, Hanuman is so much more than the splits. Can I tell you a bit about him? You might learn to love him as much as I did.

Continue reading “Playing, Not Perfecting” »

This weekend, I went on my first yoga retreat. There were so many themes brought up over two days in the mountains that I couldn’t wait to bring back here, and I plan on teasing these out over several posts. (It’s just too juicy to smash into one!) But it makes the most sense to start at the beginning.

Before my sister and I drove up the crazy steep incline to a small guest house nestled at the top of a mountain, we received an email from the weekend’s teachers. They asked us to pause in our lives to ask ourselves: What is unfolding within you this spring? How can you nourish and cultivate those tender, tiny sprouts?

Isn’t it funny how it so often takes someone else to ask us to reflect for us to actually do it? We go from moment to moment in our lives, seamlessly moving from one thought, one action, one task to the next. At its best, life can move along smoothly like this, and at its worst, we can feel like automatons, going through the motions of our days without any heart or mindfulness.

I think this is why so many of us turn to our favorite wise souls for their blogs and books. These outside influences serve as a reminder to check in with our hearts and see what needs tending there: what do I want in my life? How can I support that desire today, tomorrow, this week, this year?

It would be lovely to have a practice of checking in with ourselves. For many of us, this is what yoga and journaling are often about. But even our regular soul-filled practices can become routine, and then we might need to fully step out of our lives to bring new attention to our intentions. I went to the top of a mountain in Massachusetts with wood stoves, wide windows, and a view that made my heart sing. There, two teachers broke my heart wide open, and I could see each little seedling growing within me, tiny green shoots of what I most value, who I love, and how I can live to best support all of that.

Retreating from the hum and buzz of our lives every now and then feels essential, but you don’t have to go to the top of a mountain to make it happen. You might walk up to the park and sit on a bench in the sun for a full hour with your eyes closed, just feeling the sweet warmth. Or close the door to the bedroom, light a candle, and give yourself the space and time to sit with what’s growing within you. And luckily, we have these friends on the internet to prod us with questions, give us the spark of creativity and desire to flourish that makes us want to answer over and over again: what is unfolding within me this spring?

Last week I lost my footing. It would be strange, I reasoned, to start a new job and not feel overwhelmed. I was learning something new, and moving at a snail’s pace. It took 110% of my focus to make sure I was getting all the details squared away, and I ended the day with knowledge of a new world of acronyms and shoulders in hard knots. It is just the learning curve, I told myself. In six months I’ll look back on this, my friend said, and wonder what I was so worked up about.

Still, it threw my life out of whack––as it should––and I’ve been thinking since then about how to set it right, especially during these early days of required laser focus, attention and intensity. The article from Zen Habits about work-life balance came at just the right moment, but so did a really interesting tarot reading.

One of the reasons I love the tarot is the same reason I’m so drawn to art, literature, and the work of Joseph Campbell: meaning is everywhere, but the the interpretive process can be especially rich when you’re working within a framework of juicy themes. Each tarot card has a fixed meaning, but we also bring to it our own interpretation based on the details of  lives, our knowledge of ourselves, and the way it relates to other cards in a reading.

Over the weekend, I was thinking about the Hanged Man. This card seems scary in name, but take a look at him: he’s not uncomfortable or in agony; he’s just chilling. He’s got his favorite red tights on. The Hanged Man is about the paradox of surrender. As Joan Bunning writes, “we ‘control’ by letting go, we ‘win’ by surrendering.” Or, put another way, “The Hanged Man is in a state of purposeful, complete surrender, yielding his mind and body to the Universal flow.”

The idea of “going with the flow” came up for me again at yoga yesterday (where a POP reader was my spotter––hey Gabrielle!). My first attempt at crow, a challenging pose for me, was a complete flop. And then our teacher did another demonstration. “Shift your center of gravity from your butt to your heart. Trust your heart.”

It might sound a little touchy-feely that trust in your heart would allow you to soar in this pose, but it was just the pep talk I needed.  Our fear of past failures (“Crow is hard for me”) can keep us from trusting in the idea that we can succeed. I surrendered to the idea that my heart could lead the way, I trusted in that feeling, and then I did it. For, like, three seconds. But still: major triumph for me!

I love that idea of surrender: we try so hard to control every little factor of our lives with five year plans and daily schedules, when maybe there is a lesson to be learned in yielding to the flow. We still have to show up for work on time and keep a supply of toilet paper in the bathroom, but maybe a dose of letting go–accepting what is rather than willing a new way into being–could serve us. What would you surrender to today? What will you accept?

In yoga, teachers will often ask you to set an intention for the class, or they’ll gently provide one, often in the form of a theme to consider. What they don’t say is, “What’s your resolution for this class? Are you finally going to beat handstands at their own game?”

It’s the time of year for resolutions, only so often their focus is on what isn’t working: the habits we want to break, the junk drawer we want to surmount, the unfulfilling job we want to escape. In our effort to be “better,” we have to improve something that’s, well, not good. Our focus is on the negative. There’s this terrible thing about our lives or ourselves that we will finally triumph over! And it will happen in 2011!

“Resolve” sounds gutsy, fierce, and strong––all good words. But I worry that in our rush to resolve this or that, we are trying so hard to “fix” things that we bring all our attention to negative spots in our lives. It’s like something I read in a book about child rearing once: when a kid is doing something you don’t want them to do, it’s harder for them to grasp, “Don’t do that.” It’s like sitting in meditation and thinking, “Don’t think.” That’s exactly when the thoughts arise, because your mind has to invert that direction in order to find out what it should do. Instead of instructing with a negative, the book suggested, instruct with a positive, saying something like, “Use the fork like a forklift to get the peas in your mouth!” to get them to stop poking themselves with it in the eye. (Note: I’m not a parent, so I don’t know anything about anything.)

But I do know that when we focus our attention on what’s not working in our lives, it can swell up like a blister. What you resist persists.

And what about what you embrace? Could it swell, too, and fill up the crevices of your life? Could it push out what’s not working, minimize it so much until its role becomes so tiny that it finally atrophies and falls away?

That seems entirely possible to me. Bringing more attention to what is working seems an awfully nice way to increase the good in our lives. What’s working for me? Checking in with how I really feel about things, like my relationships or the pile of clothes on the bathroom floor, and acting from that honest place of awareness, for better (hopefully) or for worse (well, that happens, too). Reading in bed instead of surfing the internet. Going to my favorite yoga class. Nurturing the sense of community in my life. Jumping at every chance that comes along to do something physical outside, whether that means dancing in a driveway or snowshoeing across a field. All of that is working for me, and I want to embrace them even more so this year, till they swell and take over. What’s working for you?

Photo: erix!

I first fell for Julie when she came over to me during down dog. She told me to spread out more, to take the pose in a longer stance. “You’re strong,” she said, by way of reasoning or encouragement. It’s the same thing the pediatrician said when I had childhood asthma. They say it, and I want to make it so. And so I like to think it was a miracle of the mind-body connection that I didn’t have asthma for long (not because, you know, we stopped spending dry, cold winters at super high altitudes), and that, because Julie says I’m strong, my down dog is as mighty as a stretching Great Dane.

Julie gives these great talks at the outset of class that transform me into a beatific light-filled, hippie-freedom cornball. It feels amazing. (More evidence I’m getting old?) The last two classes have focused on the cinematic happenings in the night sky. Last night, there was a lunar eclipse, the moon glowing a hazy red at 3AM, she reported. Tonight is the winter solstice, the longest night of the year, and, if you can believe it, also a full moon. This is all very rare––though there’s some debate about how rare––but regardless, it’s something to be jazzed about. Today is a very powerful day of darkness.

Astrologers, according to Julie, consider eclipses like portals. Like a black hole/white hole mirror image, they both absorb what’s not working for you anymore and renew a sense of purpose within you. How glorious is that? It’s like cosmically cleaning out your closet, getting rid of those dresses that don’t fit anymore, the skirt that was either deeply cool or a little fugly, and rediscovering that amazing puffy-sleeve sweater you’d forgotten all about. We always have the opportunity to walk through a doorway of change. But there’s something especially encouraging when the stars reinforce our efforts.

Last night, very late, my friend Alison and I decided to cut the tarot deck. “Let’s just shuffle the cards,” I said, “and draw one out, like a mini-reading.” We were full of Alison’s winning success with Thomas Keller’s roast chicken and root vegetables and champagne cocktails (both equally golden and delicious). We were feeling very end-of-the-year, very what-will-2011-hold? We were looking for signs.

I shuffled and shuffled, cut the deck, and flipped a card over: it was The Star. Now, I really don’t know squat about tarot, but even just from the looks of it, you can tell this is a beautiful card. It reminded of Vermeer’s milk maid and the kneeling figure in the background of Luncheon on the Grass. We flipped to the explanatory page in Alison’s  Learning the Tarot book. The Star is about serenity, trust, rejuvenation, and hope. It’s about feeling inspired, loving freely, and being generous. One blog explained it like this: “Take heart, be at peace, and know that all is well.”

It’s a feeling that can pop up in the most unusual places: In the face of chaos, devastation, loss, or uncertainty, we can be ambling down the street or standing in line at the grocery store when we are overcome by a sense that everything’s going to be all right. The first time I can remember this happening, I was riding a train north from Naples, lonely and lovelorn. Looking out the window at a bare winter landscape, there it was: everything will be all right. And again, as I’ve written here before, when my mom was being treated for cancer, there it was again: everything will be all right. And now, with so much uncertainty about what’s coming next for me, I feel all right. The Star couldn’t have come at a better time.

I feel bad for winter sometimes. It’s so hated and misunderstood, and it gets gets short shrift on symbolism; it’s so easy to just see the world as dead during winter. But my image of this cold, dark season is one still so tied to an illustration from a children’s book I saw twenty years ago or more. In a dark and cozy cave, a bear, thick with fur, sleeps. His tummy is full, his lair is warm; he’s just resting up for what comes next. I like to think of winter as a time to turn inward, to stoke the fire. With the darkest night upon us, what better night could there be to let that light glow?

Image: Kali

Tuesday night a friend and I went to a panel on writing. We were wrapped in scarves, and had just finished eating soup and sandwiches. The evening felt so collegiate, as we carried our trays in the bright lighting of a cafeteria-like restaurant and ventured out into the cool night in our tweed blazers to attend a lecture. We were in good moods.

A writing teacher of mine was speaking on the panel, and the evening was organized by a woman my teacher thought I ought next to take a class with. The room was packed, and to complete that fall feeling of being at the big game, we sat on bleachers in the back of the college bookstore. The writer in charge was a high-octane, fast-talking, take-no-prisoners MC, unapologetically cutting off authors who droned on a little long. “We’ve got a lot to cover, so I’ll just summarize your points,” she interjected.

As each author talked––about stalking agents in bars or soliciting quotes from Ian Frazier––I found myself growing more and more antsy and irritated. I was hugely annoyed by everyone earnestly taking notes about how to publish a bestseller. When the question and answer period was over and people started queuing up for coffee and cookies, I just wanted to flee to the nearest bar.

Continue reading “There is Enough” »

A practice is an invitation into a consistent, long-standing relationship between you, the practitioner, and “it,” the thing to which you are committing. The concept of practice can be challenging for Western minds. Being linear and goal-orientated, we often focus on perfection and completion, which do not lend themselves to an attempted lifestyle change or spiritual development.

Practicing yoga, eating a healthier diet, or starting an exercise regime all demand release from the idea of “completion” and “perfection.” When we consistently practice, we enter into a conscious experiment, allowing the natural evolution of the process of change to unfold. Just as in “two steps forward, one step backward,” we watch without judgment and we realign with our commitment. We continue moving forward, strengthened and informed by our “backward” steps. ––Aruni Nan Futuronsky, Senior Life Coach, Kripalu

“Practicing Chopin” print available on Etsy