Yoga Musing

Yesterday was filled with so much delight. This year’s Connect DC summer solstice ritual will henceforth be known as the laughing ritual. That is what happens when you invoke both Coyote and Hotei, the laughing Buddha. My cheeks were already aching from the London bridges falling down grounding, the hokey pokey circle casting, and the nursery rhyme calling of the elements. By the time we got to the laughing yoga meditation and later the coyote dance throw down, oh my goodness, several of us were holding our bellies as our grins stretched all the way back to our ears. It was glorious!

But this morning I woke up tired.

So after stumbling through the morning service to the feline deities, I reluctantly rolled out the yoga mat. I was convinced that it would be near impossible to squeeze in more than three salutations. Heck I thought as I settled down to chant the invocation, I will be lucky to do one.

So as I started my sixth (!) salutation, I felt such gratitude to my yoga teachers. All these years of stumbling into yoga class, holding on to hope when my muscles seized and joints ached, all those blessed props and adjustments to help those muscles and joints, and here I am joyfully completing six salutes … on a Monday … after a public ritual … when I would have rather slept till noon. Wow.

As I laid down for savasana, I remembered how even the thought of yoga use to frighten me. I had thought that yoga was all about those incredible poses you always saw on book and video covers. I thought yoga was for the fit, the flexible, and the strong. I thought yoga was for slim people who ate nothing but petals, seeds and fragrant rice. I thought that yoga was out of the question for a fat, sick, stiff jointed old reprobate like myself. I was so incredibly wrong.

Yoga is so much more than poses, it is a system of philosophy, a worldview – some would call it a spiritual journey. I read at some point that all the poses are about teaching you how to breathe. Most folks who feel good after a yoga practice do so because they finally got all the oxygen they needed.

But what about those poses?

There is no requirement, at least in Anusara yoga, that you attain the “perfect” pose. What you aim for is your pose, your own variant that expresses the ideal of the pose in your body. But it is not just a game of improvisation. Your pose consists of applying the principles of yoga to the unique abilities and capacities of your body. And the principles, although you can read about them in a book or listen to them on recorded media, are best learned at the hands of an experienced teacher.

A yoga teacher can help you attain your pose by teaching the principles, demonstrating the poses, and illustrating adjustments and props, but more importantly by adjusting your pose. And this is crucial. As I said above, your pose is found by applying the yoga principles to your body. So a good teacher will help you to examine your edges and respect your limits. It is only in this container of self-examination and self-respect that your pose can be defined.

It is a lot like life.

I have had such incredible teachers throughout my life. They have demonstrated the principles of vocation, self-sacrifice, joy filled living, devotion, continuous study, delayed gratification, self care, gratitude, right livelihood, leadership, humility, service, discipline, independence, interdependence, compassion, tough love, resilience, ambition, recognition, and confidence amongst many other gifts. My teachers have illustrated how to move toward these principles by taking one step after another. And they, like my yoga teachers, offered me the assistance I needed to examine my edges and respect my limits so I could discover how each of these fundamental ideals expressed itself in my life … on my journey.

And so this morning I am filled with gratitude. To all my teachers and to all my students who teach me as well, thank you. Today, this very morning, I am grateful for finding my pose.

Posted in

• Awareness
• Rants

• katrina's blog
• Add new comment
• 303 reads

Reality

Well, after writing about my pain, I realized that Helena and Northlight were right. I could still compose my thoughts; I just had to acknowledge the lens through which my ideas are currently being filtered. I had meant to write about this very topic before the current misadventure, and besides, it bubbled up on its own during my walk. And thank you to all who have sent their prayers and love. I truly appreciate it.

I have just finished my walk and am now sitting in a Takoma Park café. Not quite on the sidewalk, but hey they have wifi. I was thinking about the nature of reality. I have been reading several mystical texts and this subject comes up frequently.

As I walked, I had observed the interiority of my experience. I was forcing myself to really look at the trees and plants. During the pain-free window, I was delighted to discover just how beautiful this park really is when you open to it. I always knew it was beautiful, but I had no idea how much of the beauty was unknown to me. Now with the pain pushed just a bit away by the prednisone, I was able to briefly access the reverie. There is still too much pain for me to completely open. I could feel it acting like a dirty lens over my senses.

I despise this crippling. Now that I know what is possible, I want to drink in the beauty and allow my soul to take flight.

I equally despise pain pills however. Back in 1980 when I initially injured my knee, it was the pain pills that caused me to do so much harm to my body. I thought naively that the pills were a cure. All they did was mask the pain, so I kept running, lifting weights and climbing ladders. And oh my god … by the time I figured out what was happening I had ruined not only my left knee but also my right one as well. So I do not trust pain pills.

But, that is also not the complete truth. I also despised what they do to my perceptions of reality. When I was recovering from my emergency surgery of a few years back, first the nurses then Ishtar had to force me to ingest my cocktail of drugs. I was on oxycontin, percasec and vioxx all at the same time – and I was still in pain! The only thing that made me take them was the knowledge that the extreme level of my pain was actually interfering with my recovery.

Still … I hated how loopy and out of touch I was with reality. This probably sounds odd considering how much time I intentionally spend in a spaced out state as a mystic. But I know exactly where I am and what I am doing when I cross that boundary. The drugs took me there without any of my hard won self-awareness or self-control.

So I intensely dislike how the prednisone is messing with my emotions. Dr. H says I can double the dose, but I am reluctant. I do not like how it disrupts my almost Vulcan-like self-composure. Now I completely get how my subjective perceptions do not match up completely with how folks who know me might describe my emotional flexibility. I am fully aware that I am quite capable of expressing a wide range of emotions and the overall healthy way I can access my emotional core without a lot of prompting. Yet, I do have a sense of what does and what does not disturb me. So I do not like how my emotional balance seems to be at the mercy of every insufferable passer-by. And yeah, I know that it is a subjective assessment.

Subjectivity has its place along the spectrum of perception; we each in our own ways can provide a slightly more objective assessment for each other. But even as we mirror and validate, or correct and inform each other’s subjective assessments, we too are victims of our own subjective filters even when we view each other.

We exist and intermingle alongside each other at the subjective end of the perception spectrum. Further along is what we refer to as objective reality, which is just a tad ahead of what we laughingly refer to as consensual reality. We call it consensual as if we have a choice – we don’t. Consensual reality is more like the gates parents erect to keep their children safe. It provides a safe place for us to grow, evolve and transform. The edge is “sanitize for our protection.” Beyond this consensual barrier is what we mystics call the Absolute Reality. It contains the building blocks of life, the playground of the gods and the essence of existence. We are not supposed to live there. In fact, we developed as individuals so we could populate the subjective end of the spectrum. That is our domain.

But realizing there is something beyond our subjective sense is one measure of evolution, and dare I say it … of maturity. Not just as individuals, but most especially as a culture, a nation, a species and as a planet. So the call from the divine we hear is actually a call from the other side. It is a call to awaken and a call to return. To get there however, we have to climb back along that ladder back towards the real.

And so I acknowledge that I am stronger than I have ever been and healthier than I ever dared to imagine. And … I am in pain. I want enough of a break from the pain that it no longer blunts my living in beauty, but not so much that it wreaks havoc with my emotions. Ultimately, I want to be rid of this constant pain. I am willing to undergo the journey, but I will do it on my terms.

So for at least today, I will enjoy the beauty that peeks through and allow my Vulcan side a bit of peace from the storm. And I completely own that this is my subjective view of what we call reality. I heartily encourage all of us to do the same.

Thanks for all your prayers and thank you everyone for listening.

Posted in

• Awareness
• Challenges
• Rants

• katrina's blog
• 1 comment
• 533 reads

The Epic Burn

I have not been able to describe what I have been facing because I cannot as of yet get enough emotional distance from it. Every time I pause on the page, my eyes begin to tear up and I have to abandon the effort. It is too close, too present and much too raw.

But dearest Northlight says she wants to read about it. So I will share where I am at the moment. My hope is that my sharing will inform, validate and/or educate folks about invisible illnesses such as mine.

I need to find a place to start, and that has been a large part of the problem. So I will try and start at the beginning … no not the beginning, maybe more like a few weeks ago.

As most folks who know me are aware, for the past couple of decades, I have pretty much been in almost constant pain. However, the full extent of the pain was apparently a mystery even to me. This is the story of how I came face to face with this mystery.

So … every winter I face a really bad outbreak of my eczema. I call it the creeping crud. This winter’s version was particularly bad since I never fully recovered from the previous winter’s scourge. So I decided in a rare case of exasperation to ask my doctor for help. She prescribed a steroid pack to knock out the infection. The steroids would stem the inflammation and give my poor skin a chance to recover. I would take six pills on day one, five on day two, till I finished off the pack with a single pill on day six.

Well, you can guess what happened next.

I started the pack the morning after one of my all day classes. I was exhausted, drained and feeling like I was swimming through pea soup. I swallowed the first two pills, ate breakfast and laid down for my usual morning-after-teaching coma. And suddenly my eyesight improved and I even felt a jolt in my energy. I sat up shocked as I suddenly could think and breathe fully. I stood up and suddenly I could feel the muscles in my legs.

As the day progressed, I found that I could read and comprehend complicated text, my bra stopped feeling like it was biting into my skin, my shoulders relaxed enough to not need pillows behind me as support, and I even played with my kitten. My taste buds were able to discern the subtle flavors of the fruit, cheeses, teas and olive oil. My whole world opened up and I felt more alive than I had felt in years, decades … lifetimes.

And then reality hit me. I finally realized just how much pain I had been enduring all these years, and more importantly I finally knew how much it had cost me. As each day brought more and more revelations, I would find myself crying as I began dreading the return of what I now knew was a terrible burden in my life.

In yoga class, I finally understood how all those poses affected the muscles in my body. I had never registered how much each pose both strengthened and challenged my body. I could meditate at the drop of a hat since now I did not have to first use such a commanding will to force myself to relax – I just relaxed.

Folks kept saying how I even looked younger. I also discovered what everybody else was complaining about with tight muscles, being worn out from exercising and even … just being hungry. I ate better because I could actually feel when I was hungry. I knew when I was tired, thirsty or even just content. All my emotional, physical and mental responses were based on being able to sense my own body without all the clues being masked by pain. I danced with glee after a day filled with yoga, walking and writing.

A few days before I finished the pack, I fell into a deep awareness of just how brutal I have been with myself. All these years, I have beaten myself up for not being able to keep up with the rigors of my life all the while completely unaware of just how much of my life had been obscured by pain.

I was deeply humbled by all I had been able to accomplish in spite of the pain. I also spent a lot of time forgiving myself for all the self-abuse I had engaged in unknowingly. I also allowed myself to grieve all that I had let go of because of the pain – all the dreams, the opportunities and even my corporate career.

Then I finished the pack. And just as I feared, all the pain slowly roared back. And oh my god … it was far worse than before. Because prior to this regimen, I had been able to bury my awareness of it. But here it was, front and center – it was excruciating. By day three off the pills, even my face was on fire.

My entire body was engulfed in flames. There were some vestiges of the reprieve still present. I could still inhale deeply at times. I could concentrate and read detailed descriptions early in the day. Meditation went back to being a real struggle. But the worst was yoga class. I had lost the ability to feel anything but constant pain. Every pose, every breath and every turn elicited just more pain. I could do the poses, but nothing felt good about it. At the end, I laid down on the mat and finally just let myself weep all the tears I had fought back during the session. It was horrible.

So now I am on prednisone till my doctor can figure out what can be done to help me. Prednisone affects the emotions among other things, so the slight easing of the wall of flames comes with a fiery emotional response – oh goody!

I have gone this route many, many times before. Test after test comes back inconclusive, till I finally just give up and stop complaining. I do not want to live my life on painkillers. But I do not want to go back to that level of pain. It is infuriating. It is maddening. And it just makes me want to shout, scream and … cry.

I have no emotional distance from this reality. Normally when I can write about my life challenges, I have enough distance from it that I can see what is there for me within the difficulty. Right now … all I can see are irritations.

But there is a deeper message here and I want so desperately to share it. Suffering on its own is not redemptive; sometimes … hell most times … it suppresses the life force. It is a lot like oppression. There is nothing noble or endearing about pain or suffering. Yes, it can make you stronger, and it can teach you a lot about what you are made of … but it comes at a cost. All these years, I had been unconsciously buying into all those stories from my childhood of Catholic martyrdom. Enough.

I would very much like to experience life on its own terms without the blanket of pain, thank you very much. And if *you* are suffering in silence, stop it. There is no reason, no good reason, for any of us to miss out on what life has to offer. Right now I am missing yoga because I do not want to spend my time on the mat in tears. But as soon as the sun comes out fully and it warms up, I am going for a walk. Because dammit … I *refuse* to miss out on life … again.

Posted in

• Awareness
• Challenges
• Healing
• Rants

• katrina's blog
• 4 comments
• 492 reads

Lights On - Doors Open

I have been quiet as of late because so much was going on within me that I found it difficult to put words to the tumult within. These past several weeks have been filled with reflection, journaling, dreams, meditation, prayers, revelation and despair. And then suddenly as if the fog lifted, there is clarity.

I have been picking at a particular scab for months. Digging deeply into the shadowy realms of my unconscious searching … searching for an answer to an age-old question – Why *do* I shrink from the light?

When I started, I did not even know what the question was much less having an answer. All I knew was that something felt off, out of balance. As I reached new levels of physical health, my incrementally increasing serenity revealed a fundamental imbalance within.

The weekly readings of Thich Nhat Hanh helped tremendously. By returning to the text day after day, the revealed discomfort became more and more palpable. Until it could be denied no further and I was forced to face a well of pain, fear and rage.

I was not surprised to find these emotions, what surprised me was that I was not able to discern their source. Normally I can attach the emotions readily to either something occurring in my day to day life and/or a resurfacing memory of an incident from my past being triggered by something in the present day.

But this time, I was at a complete loss. So I prayed, meditated, recited mantras and allowed myself to wander in the darkness longer than I am accustomed. And wander is a good description for the meandering path I followed—the serpentine path of the snake.

And sitting in a recent Touch Drawing class, I felt the serpent rising slowly, gradually – she was taking her own sweet time. An image from that class became a calming practice as I drew it again and again in my sketchpad. Spirals on spirals revealing the shape of a woman wandering on a path strewn with eyes.

At some point, it dawned on me that I was in a completely opposite mode from last fall. I had far too little to occupy my time – and this was very upsetting to me. I fought the decline of busyness, throwing up fears and rationalizations one on top of another – till even I knew it was a lie. Even my intuitive healer noted a strand of terror laying in wait just below the surface of my skin.

What I feared was a revelation surfacing from deep within. Dream after dream revealed a deep, dark discomfort, a disquieting revelation just at the edge, peering maliciously into my intimate quarters. In dream after dream, I pushed away this malingerer, closing the doors against him time after time. Finally I said out loud, “What are my dreams trying to tell me?”

And then it happened.

I awakened to find all the lights on and all the doors open wide. I jumped up startled, it was dark out and here was my house lit up and open. I ran to the front door turning off lights quickly as I shut then bolted the door. Outside I could see dark shadowy figures walking along on the sidewalk.

Across the street was a firehouse, a part of my mind stirred but I ignored it. But seeing the firehouse reassured me a little. But I was still in the state of sheer panic. I ran toward the back the house turning off lights as I went.

Reaching the back door, again my mind stirred. I was in the kitchen trying to force the back door closed. But it was stuck, the door was hanging just a little off its hinges. So as I lifted and pushed to finally close the door, it finally dawns on me – this is not my house! This is the house of my childhood!

But the panic refused to subside, even though I now … finally ... realized it was all a dream. I raced back toward the front to find two small lights still on, and even these I shut off. Till finally …I felt safe and secure … back in the dark.

And it hit me – visible and accessible => panic and sheer terror.

Oh.

Then I woke up.

Posted in

• Awareness
• Dreams
• Shadow
• Rants

• katrina's blog
• Add new comment
• 429 reads