You get to choose too.
I have to remind myself of this a lot. When someone doesn’t choose me, or has a different way of doing things, my default is to think that there is something wrong with me. Their way is better. I am doing “everything” wrong.
We all have The Joneses - the people we compare ourselves to. These are the friends, the social media contacts and neighbors we choose to self-flagellate with. Our successes are either propped up or diminished by them.
For example; yesterday we hosted a “last day of school” party for a bunch of tweens. It was six hours of 12-year-olds rough housing, and video gaming. Fun and exhausting. This party was for the kids, but it was also a way for me to see how they interacted, what the social pecking order was and how my child fit into it.
It was also an opportunity to meet the parents connected to his friends. There was the usual exchange of pleasantries; thank you for having him, thank you for coming, etc. Some parents lingered a little longer to chat, some whisked their kids away in a hurry. We all communicated something specific about ourselves and our children. I am in a hurry because we have another engagement; our child is very popular. I have time to kill and feel like talking; I’ll linger a little longer and tell you the great things about us. I am late because my job kept me; I am very busy! I am relaxed and welcoming; hey, don’t worry about it.
Each interaction is the Story of Us; a tale of the family that we want others to not so much know about us, but to believe about us. We embellish. The Stories of Us is us at our best. It is our domestic fairy tale.
Every time I have one these interactions, I walk away feeling like a failure. My kids are often rude and unhelpful. I have to remind them to say “please” and “thank you” all the time. They are picky eaters. They pick on each other. They do not like sports.
I am not nearly as good at this parenting as this guy!
That is when I have to remind myself, “Jen, you get to choose.” I get to decide if that way of parenting is the “right” way, or if I am OK doing it my way. I decide to self-flagellate or not. We don’t just get told what we are doing is wrong. The final decision comes down to us. We either agree with them or we don’t. We decide.
We write our own story.
Yoga teaches us that power is not just forceful dominance. It is also receptive yielding. Accepting oneself is an act of yielding. It is often uncomfortable. Being able to sit in that discomfort is brave. It is also the source of acceptance.
As you head out to teach your classes make a brave choice to never, ever compare yourself to other teachers. Write “I Choose THIS!” this on the cover of a teaching notebook and fill that book with what it means to be a good teacher, what you need to do to make that a reality and what your next steps will be. Sit down after each teaching experience and figure out what worked and what you will do differently next time. Be honest with yourself, be critical and always write “next time I will…” Make sure you leave that door open. And never, ever compare your work to someone else’s. Unfollow your peers on social networks for a while if you find that you are getting too distracted by their stories. Go into your own experience and trust that your story is worth telling too.
Video Games & Philosophy
I picked up my son yesterday from a sleepover and he was strangely content. Usually when I pick him up after a sleepover he is a grumpy, overtired, hungry train wreck. But yesterday he was calm, happy, introspective. He said to me, “You know, right now I don’t want anything. I don’t need anything. I am fine. It’s such a strange feeling. I’ve never felt this way before.”
The sarcastic adult in me said to itself “Wait five minutes kid, it’ll pass.”
Thankfully, I kept my mouth shut because he went on talking. He talked about how we’re all the same, that basically nothing separates us; we’re all the same particles of space dust, a further iteration of the Big Bang, and that the only thing that separates us from each other is thought.
For an armchair philosopher such as myself, it was glorious. He went on to talk about these videos he watched about a video game (he is obsessed with video games and videos about video games). In this game, a robot gains sentience. He endures slavery and prejudice, grapples with free will and emotions, has to choose between right and wrong, etc. When I asked him, “wait, this is a video game?” he confirmed that yes, it is a video game and it hasn’t come out yet, but he can’t wait to play it.
A video game does that?
I was shocked!
Screens are the bane of my parenting life. I hate, I mean really deeply, hate video games. My kids would spend all day, every day on screens if I let them. But, screens make them moody zombies. Screens turn them into these creatures addicted to instant gratification. After playing games, they can’t do anything on their own. They just mull around waiting for something to stimulate them.
Yet, this game had this weird effect on my kiddo. He’s calm, introspective, thoughtful. Because of these videos, we had an amazing conversation about Descartes and the nature of consciousness.
We connected because of a video about a video game about sentience. And he can’t wait to play it.
Wow.
We often think that this way of doing something is bad or that way isn’t “the way” and yet… beauty can come out of anything.
Even a video game.
This is something I have to remind myself of constantly. The thing I think I know, the thing I think is right is only a perspective. We really have no idea. There is no one way of doing anything. There are ways. They either work for us or they work against us. And what that “thing” is, is up to us to decide individually.
Just something to think about on your way to your day today.
Practice Selfishly
I recently read an NPR article re the first government agency dedicated to the health and wellbeing of children. There is a line "women..., arguing to lawmakers that children are a national resource, and that if America's leaders didn't soon do something to help the next generation thrive, the future of the still-young country was at risk."
This idea - that people are a national resource - has stuck in my brain. A resource is a stock supply of something you draw upon to function well. It is always positive. That is why healthy, well cared for people create stable, healthy communities. They create great ideas. They innovate and elevate. Taking care of us is an imperative to creating a great nation.
Yet, taking care of each other is often reduced to an economic argument; I either believe in spending money to help others or I am against spending money on others. Simplifying the argument this way is reductive. It is also destructive. It ignores the actual, physical, mental and emotional benefits to oneself when we take care of each other. Ensuring our neighbors have clean, safe drinking water, access to health care and education, adequate support for joblessness, homelessness and hunger, means we are also improving our own lives. It decreases communicable diseases and infestations, social isolation, and improves public safety. Our lives improve despite the fact that we have less money.
The same can be said for our personal lives. When we believe our self-worth is linked to our financial status, we are over simplifying. We fail to take into consideration our need for expression, connection, play. We limit our ability to be resourceful, creative and engaged.
And while this may seem perfectly obvious, it is often forgotten when it comes to our efforts as a yoga teacher. Because, let’s be honest, teaching yoga is not always lucrative. Especially when we are just getting started.
So why do it? I mean, I took that training because I hate my job. I want to change my career, I want to be able to do this professionally!
Because, while I know we all need to make a living to pay the rent, doing something you love doesn’t have to be lucrative to be worth it. Tying your teaching success to your economics is too reductive. It thwarts your chances for future success. It keeps you from seeing a class of two people as an opportunity. You will walk into that class and think “only two people showed up, damn.” Instead of, “Oh wow - TWO WHOLE PEOPLE showed up! What a gift!”
Every opportunity to teach is a chance to build up your resources. Every teaching moment is a chance for you to practice honing your craft. It may not be lucrative, but it is rich with opportunity.
As you start teaching, think of your efforts like your yoga practice. Effort is not wasted. You need the practice. And practicing is a selfish endeavor. You practice for you. You practice learning, to become better skilled, more acquainted with yourself. You practice filling the tank. As the tank fills, you will have more resources to grow your business.
Yoga teaches us that momentary experiences are transient, that initial perception are often wrong, that loving oneself is an act of faith and determination, and that all of life is changeable. Learning these lessons over and over again as a teacher moves us from the selfish act of practice to the self-less act of sharing. Learning these lessons over and over again make us better teachers and being better teachers means we will be better suited for a life of teaching.
Do not cut out before you get a chance to cut your teeth ;)
I hope this helps. Feel free to below with your thoughts.
Freedom & Leadership
I have been spending a lot of time lately thinking about the concept of freedom and our perceptions of it. I think we are often told that being free is akin to eternal happiness. When we are truly “free” we will feel blissful, comfortable and calm. From an esoteric perspective, this is what freedom promises us; a life free from suffering. However, freedom from suffering doesn’t necessarily mean a life of happiness. The presumption that the other side of suffering is happiness is a human construct. It is based on the assumption that happiness in and of itself is a preferred state and that it is sustainable. It ignores the fact that unhappiness sits on the other side. Just like there is a sun and a moon, happiness and unhappiness are eternal bedfellows. If you have one, you will most definitely gain the other at some point. Therefore, the absence of suffering is not happiness. It is merely the absence of a state of being. What that looks like is truly anyone’s guess!
What we consider our own, personal freedoms are often misconstrued in the same way. Freedom as a concept invariably comes with the subtext of “happiness.” I enjoy freedoms; therefore, I am happy. Yet, human freedom is not always joyful. It is not always fun. In order to ensure my own freedom, I must confer freedom upon others. In conferring freedom upon others, I am going to be subjected to their differences. Their differences are going to make me mad, sad, uncomfortable. I will then have to grapple with the concept of what it means for everyone to be free, including the people I don’t like. I have to grapple with myself. Personal freedom is personal responsibility. We have to take ownership of our choices and their consequences. Personal, human freedom is, by its very nature, suffering. It forces us to look at our own nature and choose to either rise above or give into it.
Freedom isn’t a guarantee of safety. It never promises you will be safe from harm. We are not safe because we are free. We are free; and we may or may not be safe. That is why fighting for and accepting freedoms comes with risk. It is an act of courage and bravery. Not because we have to fight everyone who doesn’t think like us, but because we have to accept that everyone doesn’t act like us. We have to be big enough, bold enough, strong and brave enough to be OK with the shadow of the unknown, the “otherness” of others.
After 9/11, permits were filed to build a mosque next to the World Trade Center. The buildings were still in rubble and emotions were raw. There was a public outcry. I remember saying that I felt that, if the zoning laws permitted it, they should be allowed to build their mosque where they wanted. Someone snapped back “You do? Why?!” My response then, is my response now; freedoms don’t just apply to the dominant group. They belong to everyone. If I am pro this and you are anti that, you aren’t wrong because I think I am right. And the fear of “other” is not a sufficient reason to deny someone their humanity.
Accepting the freedoms of everyone is an act of bravery. It is a step off a ledge into the abyss. It is an act of faith and humility.
Leaders take that leap of faith first. Leaders survive the free fall of uncomfortable otherness and live to tell the tale.
Therefore, in your yoga practice, in your life, be the one to leap first. Others will follow.
Yoga for Everyone?
When I started teaching, “yoga is for everyone!” was a mantra I assumed was true. The fact that my “everyone” happened to be middle to upper-middle class white people, mostly women, was just circumstantial. It just reflected the neighborhood I taught in. Surely, anyone who walked in the door would be welcome.
Of course, we know that is not really the case. Ask any person of color, a larger bodied person, anyone non-gender conforming, etc. if they have had an uncomfortable or awful experience in a yoga studio, and you will hear a story of feeling not welcome, being subjected to racism, micro-aggressions, or out-right hostility.
Yoga is a $16 Billion[1] industry. The most aggressively marketed yoga image is that of the young, fit, attractive, white women. Yet, 36.7 Million Americans, or 25% of U.S. adults, practiced Yoga in 2016. How did a practice, that was originally designed for men, become such a “chick” thing?
There are many theories. Here are some of my thoughts:
Whenever the less dominant group attaches to something, it will immediately be denigrated by the dominant group. This is especially true when that thing is healthy or empowering for the less dominant group. The history of hip hop[2] is a perfect example.
Yoga is about power. The root word is often mistranslated as "union," but that is incorrect. It actually means "to yoke/bind." Yoking and binding something is distinctly different from uniting it. I yoke or bind things in order to create focused, controlled effort. Yoga practices are designed to yoke the body and mind; to reign them in. By controlling the body and mind, one is able to use them like a plow. I till the soil of experience, thus planting the seeds of enlightenment. The practice makes one's experience fertile for transformation. When one is very successful, one gains power over their own experience. We can decide what to react to, what not to react to, what to engage in and even, if successful enough, manifest supernatural powers.
I believe that when someone practices yoga, they feel better, healthier, etc., and they also feel more powerful. People regularly talk about how the practice helps them control their reactions to things. They will talk about how it helps them get over toxic relationships. When I tell a student that they can stand “this tall” or take up “this much room” they are initially shocked. It is often startling to them to realize that they are bigger, taller, more substantial than they thought. Then, then they are delighted! Delighted to take up space, to stand tall. That is power. We don't talk about yoga in those terms because, women in particular, are not allowed to say, "I do this because it makes me feel powerful." That is not socially acceptable.
The United States is a patriarchal society. Anything that is feminine is worth less in the patriarchy. Because the first people that "got" yoga the United States were primarily women, the obvious response from the patriarch is to belittle it. Making yoga "chick stuff" lessens its exposure to a wider range of people. It lessens its potential to upset the apple cart.
Second, the best way to denigrate anything in the United States is to hyper-sexualize and commodify it. This is a standard market-based/economic strategy for control. One of the most hyper-sexualized commodities marketed in the United States is the myth of the Young-Fit-Pretty-Affluent-White-Women. Thus, the creation of the mass marketed “perfect” yogi is: she must be must be young, thin, fit, wear something revealing and do something extraordinary (preferably on a beach). Narrowing the scope of the practice like this worked. Not only did it grow the market substantially, but it also ensured that the population, scope and reach of the practice remained small. It created a closed loop of control and commerce. For years yoga was primarily the practice of upper middle class white women; a group who already has the market share of female power in the United States.
Thirdly, as the earnings went up, the prices also started to rise. I paid $1100 for my 200-hour training. It was a large investment for me, but doable. I had to save and budget, but I could make it work. Over the course of my first five years of teaching, I watched the cost of trainings go from “investment, but doable,” to “expensive and unattainable.” The market became flooded with a very specific demographic of yoga teacher; one who either thre caution to the wind and leveraged the farm to attend the training, or, one who could afford to spend a lot of money and never recoup their investment.
This development forced many people out of yoga. Not only financially, but culturally as well. As the costs skyrocketed, the pool of viable teachers became increasingly narrow. The “welcoming” aspect of yoga decreased. As yoga progressed into a pastime for a specific demographic, it ceased to be for everyone else. Sadly, that is often how that works.
This frustrated me. Being able to study yoga changed the course of my life. It made me a better person. I would never have been able to make that transition if I had to pay what the market was demanding. Classism was my impetus for starting Three Sisters Yoga. I wanted to break the rules and offer what I had access to; an affordable, skills-based training.
My second impetus happened as a result of the first. When I started TSY, our trainings were filled with the “stereotypical” yoga student. Then something shifted. Without really trying, we started getting a more diverse student base. A recent study through Rutgers University[3] found that when an organization makes accommodations for one under-advantaged group, it can make other disadvantaged people feel safer and more welcome.
I think this is what happened at TSY. We set a tone that acknowledged the inherent bias in the current yoga market. This opened us up to further explore serious social issues because, as the demographic in my classes started to change, the stories started to come out. We started to hear first-hand what it was like to study yoga if you weren’t the “norm.” I was deeply uncomfortable when confronted with this information. But, more than that, I was heartbroken. I love my students. I do not want them to suffer.
What I learned was that I what it means for me to practice, to be a white woman in this country, is not shared. For me personally, the logical step was to start educating myself about what it means to be a minority in the United States. Racism, bigotry and sectarianism is rampant in this country. The only way out is listen to and believe people’s stories when they tell us what it is like to be them. As the privileged group, I need to be willing to be uncomfortable. I must control the impulse to deflect and say, “that does not happen!” Controlling this impulse is a yoga practice. It is a yoking of mind. Sutra 2.1 says, “Accepting pain as help for purification, study of spiritual books and surrender to the Supreme Being constitute Yoga in practice.”[4] Accepting “pain as help for purification” has been interpreted in many ways. What it essentially means is that, in doing this work, we accept that we are going to be uncomfortable a lot of the time.
And we do it anyway.
This has been the second greatest gift yoga has given me. It has taught me yet again, the power of allowing oneself to be messy, uncomfortable and flawed. While I am by no means a poster child of being “woke” or even an “accomplished yogi,” I am deeply committed to doing better. TSY is a manifestation of that work. We are a welcoming and diverse community. And I am very proud of that.
[1] https://www.yogaalliance.org/Portals/0/2016%20Yoga%20in%20America%20Study%20RESULTS.pdf
[2] https://www.npr.org/series/4823817/the-history-of-hip-hop
[3] http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1948550617737601
[4] Satchidananda, S. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali: Commentary on the Raja Yoga Sutras by Sri Swami Satchidananda (Kindle Locations 1434-1435). Integral Yoga Publications. Kindle Edition.”
Thinking like a Tween
I am going out on a limb here, but stick with me. I often hear people say that we should be more “childlike.” The reason being that children are pure of heart. If we connect to our inner child, we too will become pure of heart. This has always irritated me. Yes, children are blissfully, wonderfully, naïve. They are pure of heart. They often speak little pearls of wisdom. When they are happy and full of wonder, it is a joy. This is true.
Children are also needy. They need. They need adults to guide them. They need a world that protects and provides for them. They are dependent on outside forces to create the conditions for their bliss. And this is why this analogy annoys me. The work of coming into consciousness isn’t about living in a blissfully unaware state that depends upon the world to take care of us. Consciousness demands action. Consciousness demands that we become aware of ourselves in the world. It is accepting that, should we desire transcendence, we have to do the work of transcending our “self.”
That is why, I think we should all try to be more like middle schoolers.
Middle school is a liminal age. It is a great ball of hormonal fire hurtling towards adolescence at a snail’s pace. It is slow and awkward and often painful being a tween. They are awakening to adulthood, yet still comfortably nestled in the safety net of childhood. Tweendom is the bridge between Christmas Past and Christmas Yet to Come. They are more aware of themselves, but they are still so goofy. As they struggle to come understand life’s limitations, they are open to possibilities. They struggle with being sentient, with self-identity, and yet they are still very playful. They have amazing insight and are not afraid; but, they are also extremely self-conscious and totally afraid.
Tweens are, in many ways, the embodiment of present mindedness. They are becoming more aware of themselves, they are interested in the possibilities of an awakened life, but they still want to be tucked in at night. They still believe in fantasy, but are also weirdly practical. Funny, goofy, stinky, emotionally all over the place; middle schoolers are basically every one of our internal lives living outside our bodies. The other day my middle schooler turned to me and said, “being alive is so hard!”
Welcome to the big leagues, kid.
And this is not to say that little kids aren’t their own emotional wrecking balls, they are. But, toddlers have little to no control over their emotional lives. They are basically the Id in small shoes, daring you to try and make them feel better. A tween’s awareness, however, is dawning. They are trying to get comfortable with their burgeoning consciousness. They struggle every day with how to accept that they are small, insignificant, different; yet, they remain confident that a fantastic journey is just around the corner.
That is why I recommend that we be more like a tween. Don’t give up the thrill of make believe, hang on to the beauty of imagination, but channel it through the angst. Our angst is our longing. Longing is our consciousness’s urge to connect to something greater than ourselves. It’s the twitchy, itchy nerve that is only satisfied when we are truly connected to the beautiful. Our separateness creates the longing for connection. Longing, when directed and focused, draws us into the experience of beauty, into Pure Consciousness, Jiva, God. This experience teaches us how to be a good friend, a good neighbor, a good, global citizen. It moves us beyond the self and into the Self.
I know this may be way out there, but I stand by it. Tweens for the win! What about you? Do you remember what it was like to be a tween? Do you have a tween in your life now? If you had the chance to do it all again, would you?
Your Big Toe
by Jen Whinnen
My older son recently spent a day touring his brother’s art based school to see if he liked it better that his current school. He’s never been that into the arts but his interests have changed this year so we asked him to check it out just to be sure. Throughout his day at art school he was surly, sullen and bossy. He was mean to his brother and blatantly rude to the teachers. Half way through the day he texted his dad, asking to go home. When we tried to talk to him about it his only response was that he hated it, that it wasn’t what he wanted.
We’ve moved a lot in the last six years and he’s been to several different schools. Each time he’s moved to a new school he’s approached it with gusto and optimism. He had the faith of a child; he was going to be accepted and liked because this is a well ordered universe and that’s how things work. But, he’s older now. He’s entering into the world of “tween-dom” and the resilience of “just wait until they see how slick I am at Minecraft!” is waning. He’s becoming self consciousness. The idea of starting all over again was too stressful. It was clear that no matter how great the school may be for him, we needed to respect his wishes.
This is an important distinction, one that is often hard as a parent to make. Parents are supposed to make decisions for their children. We are supposed to figure out what is best for them, tell them what to do. However, as they mature, we also have to take into consideration their burgeoning sense of self. We have to allow them to make their own decisions and respect that they may actually know their own minds.
As a teacher however, I do not have to toe this line. As a teacher I have to do the opposite. I must accept that my students are fully in charge of their own experience. And believe it or not, this is often hard to do. In fact, one of the most common thoughts my student teachers begin their training with is “I am going to teach the yoga that transformed me so that others will be transformed the way I have been.” On the surface this sounds like a lovely, well intentioned idea. However, it is terribly misguided. A belief rooted in the assumption that everyone wants what we want, or conversely, if they don’t want what we want they are wrong, is a recipe for conflict and disappointment.
Like a specialized school designed to address the talents of specific children, yoga isn’t meant to convert or change others. It is meant to clear the lens to whatever degree that lens wants to be cleaned. Yoga will absolutely allow one to expand one’s consciousness beyond the mundane experience of being in a body, but yoga’s validity is not hinging upon that happening to every student of yoga.
The teacher’s role is not to save. It is to facilitate. The teacher provides guideposts and opportunity, but the experience, whatever it is, depends entirely upon the student. Understanding, transformation, if it takes place at all, arises from one’s own effort and will.
B.K.S. Iyengar once said “How can you know god if you don’t even know your big toe?” What a great question this is! How can we know anything about anything when we don’t even know our own minds? To presuppose that you know what someone’s motivations are, is to grant yourself an omniscience you do not have. We teach our children to share and tell them not to bite because they literally do not know any better. But when it comes to the motivations of adults, we have no real way of knowing what’s going on. Any time we step into the arena of deciding the emotionality of “why” someone is doing something, it’s a distraction. We’ve stepped out of the arena of our knowing our own big toe.
So, how can you know god when you can’t even keep yourself focused on knowing your own big toe? How can you say what is good or right for someone else?
You can’t.
When we sit as judge and jury on anyone, even if we are literally being called to serve on a jury of our peers, we don’t actually get to define their experience. We can cast a judgment on someone’s life, prescribe a punishment for a crime, we can look at the physical body and make suggestions based on what we see, but the internal life of that person will always be in their hands. What they choose to do with their punishment, what they do with our instructions, where they go in their mind, is up to them.
“Why would someone do that!?” Oh how I regularly find myself asking this question! And each time I do I take myself away from the work of finding right action.
If you are called to teach, do it. You don’t need a reason to do any more than you need a justification for learning or loving. That pendulum swings both ways – you can’t know what motivates others and they don’t get to dictate what motivates you.
Work to understand your big toe.
That my friends, is a full time job.
The Forgiving Meal
by Jen Whinnen
One morning over winter break I found Jack with his head buried into his Dad’s chest, choking back tears. When I asked him what was wrong, he said “Jai said he wishes Z was his brother instead of me.”
Ouch.
These are harsh from any sibling, but it’s especially harsh coming from a little brother whose adoration has always been absolute. My boys have, for the most part, enjoyed a pretty close friendship. The bedrock of this friendship is Jai’s unwavering belief that Jack is the world’s greatest big brother. Jai identifies himself as “Jack’s Brother.” That’s how he introduces himself, how he knows himself. To Jai, Jack knows every good thing in the world, has shown him every good thing in the world, and always has his back. Because of this, Jai has always been happy to step back and bask in his brother’s glow.
That is, until recently. Lately they are like two little tributaries, diverging off in different directions. Jack sometimes just wants to be left alone. Jai never wants to be alone. Jack finds himself annoyed and frustrated by his little brother. Jai is constantly being hurt by the rejection. My hope is that some day they will merge back into the same river, that they will find the same flow, but right now they bicker. They pick on each other. They yell and fight a lot.
Over the break Jack’s best friend spent a few days visiting us. Jack didn’t want to share his friend. He was mean, telling Jai to go away, not including him. To someone who’s always been included in every activity, who sees Jack as his best friend, this hurt. It hurt a lot. So, Jai went for the jugular.
“I wish you weren’t my brother! I wish Z was my brother instead!”
Jack was crushed. And then, of course, he got mad back. “Jai is the worst brother in the world! I will never forgive him! Never!”
My older son is at a (highly dramatic) crossroads. He can choose to retaliate, to say something cruel, to punch his brother. He can go on excluding him, tell him he’s a terrible brother, that he never wants to see him again. All the anger options were on the table. And they all looked pretty good. Anger and Revenge always come ready to party. They bring the dishes with the best sauces and most delicious toppings. Dripping in buttery pools of contempt and sugary indignation, they are so very, very appealing.
That is why, when I pointed out the small, steamed, unadorned plate of empathy and forgiveness, Jack gagged. Where’s the sweet satisfaction of retribution in a small plate of humble pie? I want to carbo load on gooey piles of hot, steaming anger! Where is my righteous heartburn if I put myself in someone else’s shoes?
I tried to reason with him, “Try and understand where Jai is coming from. How would you feel if you were being excluded?”
As Jack railed against my logic and I continued to try and reason with him I thought “oh man, I sound just like my dad!” and I groaned a little inside. My dad had this “empathy and forgiveness” lecture/sermon that he usually delivered after I’d had a fight with one of my sisters. I would sit on my bed, staring at the bedspread patterns, twirling a loose thread around my finger, and meow out while he droned on and on and on about how important it was to let go of your anger, to try and put yourself in someone else’s shoes, to forgive.
Of course he wasn’t wrong. To give in to rage, passionate anger and indignation is a kind of suffering. We are the ones who have to struggle through it and if we don’t let it go, it stays with us. It compromises our peace. It wears us down.
In my years of recovery after my dad died, I spent many a bitter thought lambasting my dad’s philosophy. I saw it as his manipulative way of not taking responsibility for his past, for forcing us into “forgiving” him and never taking responsibility. But, what I understand now is that he wasn’t telling me “just forgive me so I feel better about me,” but “forgive so you feel better.” He was trying to tell me that he couldn’t do it for me. I had to make that choice. I could hold tight to my anger forever, nurse it for as long as I wanted, or I could chose to forgive. Either choice is viable. But, either way I must choose.
My little pep talk with Jack yielded exactly zero empathy result. (I totally get why my dad held me hostage for so long – kids are stubborn!) I let him go and an hour later all the boys were playing together just fine. Such is the memory of a child!
However, I am still here thinking about anger. Anger is a force, a power. It’s not bad per say. There are times when it can be useful. But it is a powerful force. It can rule us or we can choose to master it. I know that I often use it to distraction. I get mad for petty reasons, I punish unnecessarily. I use it as a default in many ways for dealing with the day-to-day mundane things I don’t like.
And that’s an abuse of power.
With the inauguration less than 24 hours away many of us feel pretty angry. Understandably so. It’s important that we remember why we’re angry and remain vigilant in our support of those working for social justice and our public health.
It’s also important to remember how much that anger and frustration taxes us, how much it takes from us.
So what to do? I’m not entirely sure. I do know that I need to lean into my practice more. Yoga teaches us to be comfortable in the uncomfortable. It shows us how to engage while disengaging from the ego. It helps us remain calm and practical. These practices are going to be vital in the years to come.
Since I can not control anyone other than myself, I will offer you my own personal “treatise” for the coming administration in hopes that it might help you too:
- I will continue to try and engage in political discourse with those who do not share my views respectfully and with an open mind.
- I will continue to resist social injustice and support those organizations that align with my morals and values.
- I will continue to teach my children the importance of empathy, sympathy and compassion (whether they like it or not).
- I will try to do all of this with as little anger as possible.
When I step up to the emotional table and take a look around at all of the offerings, I will try and remember to choose the healthier, lighter options. I will aim to take small portions of the gooey stuff and go easy on the gravy. Hopefully by the end of the meal I will be able to walk away from the table less bloated and a little lighter.
I hope the same for you.
Resilience Training
by Jen Whinnen
Whew, what a season this has been!
I’ve sat down a dozen times to try and write the opening of this newsletter and I keep getting stuck. I find myself just sitting, staring at a confused screen full of jumbled thoughts and messy sentences. I don’t have adequate words for what’s been happening in this country and in my own personal life. I am entirely inadequate. I feel completely incapable of completing the tasks set before me. Where do we go when we feel there’s so much to do, and so many people to protect, and we’re so full of worry and doubt that we just want to flee? I don’t actually have an answer for that. Oh how I wish I did!
However, I do know that we have to keep plugging along. We have to keep trying to be the best, most loving, most supportive people we can be. And to do that, we have to refine our resilience skills. Because resilience, the ability to accept that things are going to be hard and uncomfortable, but to keep doing it anyway, will fortify us.
Resilience can be learned. And I know this because I was in my late my 20’s before I had any resilience skills. Before that every time something got uncomfortable, I quit. I simply didn’t know how to be uncomfortable. When I was “bad” at something, I assumed that meant I was bad at that thing forever and gave up.
So how did I learn otherwise? Yoga, of course! The routine of a regular yoga practice, of teaching myself to just show up regardless of how “bad” I was at it, slowly changed my mindset and taught me how to try again. This seemingly basic skill, learning how to start all over again, created the conditions for success and wellbeing. Thanks so much yoga!
Now, I’m not going to say that yoga will fix the current state of affairs. It won’t. We can’t fix community problems by going to a yoga class. But, yoga can calm the mind. It can help unbind bound emotions and give us a moment of pause. And in those moments we find a path, a way of being of service, a way to hold down the fort, to protect others. The practice itself won’t do the big things, but it will direct us to ways that we can. So, get on your mat again and again. Use it to reveal the path you need to take to muddle through these murky waters.
And then, get off the mat and do the things. Use the practice to teach you to be flawed, but dogged in your pursuits. Don’t give up, but also know that you are going to have bad practices. And then get up and do it again. Be redundant in your effort. Show up every day and stick with it.
You are proficient, powerful and have so much offer so get to it!
Entitled to Our Yoga?
by Jen Whinnen
Several months ago New York Magazine published an article that opened with a seasoned teacher that had lost her studio and now works in retail. The reason for her loss was the commercialization of yoga. The glut of corporate yoga studios and teacher trainings churning out poorly trained teachers, combined with the trend towards turning yoga into an entertainment industry, pushed her out of a job. Then, another article popped up on my feed just last month decrying much the same thing; that modern yoga has become a wasteland, a glut of teacher trainings pooping out poorly trained teachers and a relatively worthless credentialing system to govern the lot of them.
Every time I read an article like this I bristle. One, because, as the director and owner of a yoga teacher training school, I am the accused and the accursed. It’s irresponsible people like me that are creating the glut in the market. And two, because, while I think this is an attempt to shed light on how yoga is being taught and passed on to the next generation, it’s actually a commentary on the changing economics of pedaling yoga. The commerce of yoga is not the same thing as the study of yoga. And lumping the two together is, and always has been, the problem.
Both the teachers showcased in these articles were “successful” yoga teachers. Meaning, they made good money. They had their own studios, they were given products, featured in magazines, etc. Then the waves of economy shifted, there was a ground swell, and they got swept up. When something like this happens there is questioning and inevitably that questioning is answered with a lot of finger pointing, shaming and recrimination. Such is the way of the world.
But here’s the thing; when you create and participate in a culture that glorifies your beauty and your physical prowess, one day you aren’t going to be the prettiest girl in the room. Some day there is going to be a new, younger, prettier thing and she is going to take your place. That is how that system works.
What happened to the economics of yoga (which again, is not the same thing as Yoga) is something that has been in the pipeline for a long time. This “commercialization” was not an amorphic sneaky force that popped up suddenly. Putting beautiful and highly accomplished athletes on the covers of magazines and on products, offering swag to teachers and promoting them as “rock stars” has been the norm for over 20 years. And we, the generation of 40+ year old yoga teachers, are the ones who created and perpetuated it. It didn’t happen to us. It happened because of us. The mirror reflects.
The idea that yoga teachers are entitled to a good job because we have a lot of years of experience is hubris. Since when was our education and experience a guarantee of anything? Sure it can be helpful, but it is by no means a guaranteed ticket to ride. Yoga owes us nothing. We are here to serve, to participate, to do, to be. The choice to make teaching one’s sole means of income is one’s own. If I commodify my experience I have decided that my self worth is driven by a dollar amount and I am responsible for that decision. This is not to say that we are right or wrong for doing so, but no one owes us the right to make it so because we want it.
Allow me to provide a very different kind of “yoga career” narrative; I’ve been practicing yoga for 22 years, teaching for 18. I have thousands of training and teaching hours. I am both a skilled and qualified yoga teacher and I constantly endeavor to become better at my craft. Nevertheless, of my 18 years of teaching, only 4 of them have been spent without another job. Four. Fourteen of the 18 years of teaching I’ve supplemented my income with another, non-yoga related job.
Teaching to me is a gift, a blessing, a chance to share something I love. Because of this, I don’t look at the commercialization of yoga as the reason I had to work a second job or why my little school has remained little. In fact, I feel the exact opposite. Yoga is more popular today than it has ever been. More and more people are discovering its benefits. The huge money machines that pump out the silly, glitzy, over priced products are creating a steady stream of curious students. People who might not have ever been exposed to yoga are interested in this topic because the corporate machine has normalized it and I think this is a good thing.
Are there piles of bad teachers and terrible classes? Yes, of course. This is the United States of America. Excess is our calling card. But scratch beneath the surface and we find so many people who are interested in this subject, craving connection to others, looking for a way to experience health and wellbeing. They are seeking more information. One of the teachers in the above articles spoke about how, in each of his “bad” teacher trainings, he was routinely confronted with a room full of people with little or no yoga practice. He was forced to un-train bad habits, and basically recreate the wheel. While I understand objectively how frustrating that might be, I personally find it delightful! I love sitting down with a new group of curious and eager students, helping them figure out proper alignment, to engage in meaningful discourse, to facilitate loving relationships with themselves and others. To me, a 200 hour course is, at it’s best, a primer, a first step into deeper learning. It should teach you how to study, to pique your curiosity and inspire you to keep learning. It is a platform, a learning tool. And it is in no way sacred.
The demise or sanctity of modern yoga isn’t really an issue. Yoga will continue beyond this iteration. These teachings survive because they are Truth. And Truth is not affected by commercialism.
It’s not yoga’s job to support me. It’s not yoga’s job to ensure that I am able to continue doing what I’m doing. That’s my job. And we are not entitled to a life just because we desire it to be so. As I’ve mentioned before, one of my favorite stanzas from the Bhagavad Gita is “You are only entitled to the action, never to its fruits. Do not let the fruits of action be your motive, but do not attach yourself to nonaction.” (2.47) So do the work. If you are successful, so be it. And if you are not successful?
Find something else to do.
Failing Well
by Jen Whinnen
On the last night of winter break my son got out of bed to make a confession. He needed to tell me about something he’d done. It had been eating away at him all break, torturing him. He hoped it would go away, but he couldn’t take it any longer. He had to come clean.
He failed a test. His teacher had given them a pop geography quiz before the break and he only got 1 out of 7 correct. Other kids in the class knew all of the answers and were going on the next round of a geography bee, but he was not. He “didn’t even know where New York was!” In front of his entire class, he failed.
Watching him paced the floor like a caged animal while choking down tears broke my heart. What a small thing to be so tortured over! A pop quiz? Geez, I’ve probably failed thousands of those!
But, Jack never fails tests. Learning has always come easy to him. He was reading novels before he lost his first tooth and he understands abstract concepts and complicated math better than most adults (present company included). He’s a brainiac who goes to smarty pants school with other brainiacs and has no idea what it’s like to struggle to learn.
He was at a crossroads. If he’s not smart, what is he? How can he live in a world where he fails at the one thing he’s really good at?
Jack’s feelings of worthlessness and identity-lessness in the face of a small failure are not unusual. In a job market that is increasingly competitive, our children are being raised to believe that they have to be the best at all times or some terrible impoverished fate will befall them. Likewise, our social media driven world glorifies a glossy, photoshopped perfection. Success is, more than ever, measured by a very outward display of accumulation. We succeed when we are well groomed, eat well prepared meals and can do handstands in the sand. When stacked up against cyber perfection, it’s not uncommon for most of us to feel defeated by our flaws.
And while I don’t find social media good or bad, it’s also not the whole story. Social media is the equivalent of our living rooms. It’s the place to show the nicest, most “successful” sides of ourselves; our family photos and vacation slide shows, cyber nic nacs and tastes. But, it’s not the whole house. We don’t show our closets or cupboards on social media (nor should we) and our ability to be resilient, pliant, flexible or agile in mind and measure don’t photograph well. Nevertheless, each of our lives are filled with clogged drains, closets we are trying to sort through and unfinished projects. Our life houses are stacked, top to bottom, day in and day out, with little and big failures.
That’s why for the New Year, I suggest we get good at failing. We need to get big and bold about our failures!
Using failure as a New Year’s resolution theme may seems tragically defeatist, but I don’t really think so. It’s important to learn how to fail well. Learning how to fail is key to unlocking a truly bountiful life. Learning to fail means that we trust that our self worth is not diminished when what we set out to do does not go as planned. It is understanding and believing that we are OK regardless of the outcome of our efforts. It’s the faith that we are allowed to try again. It’s the way in which we make it past week two in our resolutions and how we get busy doing the work of doing. In order to be successful, we need to get comfortable with being “bad” at things.
In yoga we talk about the idea of accepting where you are. I’ve often misinterpreted this as “where I am is OK, because sticking with this will make me better.” This is not the same thing as allowing myself the option of falling flat on my face, of looking stupid and feeling silly. Detachment is not being attached to the fruits of our labor. That means not being attached to getting what I want to happen, as well as, not getting attached to the things I did not want to happen.
Getting good at being bad teaches us that the discomfort we feel isn’t the whole story. It is a chapter, a passage, in the novel of our lives. It brings us back to knowing our intrinsic beauty. When we allow ourselves to be in process, to be efforting, when we know we are not diminished when we do not accomplish goals, we afford ourselves grace. We give ourselves permission to try again. We continue to grow. And growth is our birthright.
No matter what happens, we are perfect, beautiful and allowed to be here. When we provide a consistent, reliable do over button for ourselves it creates a groove. It teaches us the language of forgiveness and love. It reaffirms that this moment isn’t any more important than any other. When I know I am “good” at something I identify with it and I can no longer be. If I can hang onto “I am” then I can “be” anything. I can try. I can fail. No matter what happens, I am. Messing up, failing tests, failing at relationships, crashing the car, breaking a bone, going bankrupt, saying unkind things, cheating on a lover, none of these things is the sum total of who we are. Because we are. I am. Flaws and all.
Medicated Yoga
by Jen Whinnen
As a yoga teaching community it is important that we know that depression and anxiety are two very popular reasons people come to the practice. Yoga is an effective tool in managing many illnesses, depression and anxiety included, so this is not unusual. It is imperative however, that we understand that when someone comes to the practice looking for tools to manage their illness, they are not served by our opinions about how they “should” manage it off the mat.
In each training I ask my student-teachers about how they feel about “western medicine” because I’ve found that people’s feelings about this subject are similar to their political beliefs; they do not change easily. How they feel about about medications, namely antidepressants and anti anxiety medication, will often dictate how they intend to talk to their classes. If they fall into the “no meds” camp, they are running a great danger of creating conditions for suffering in their students. Therefore, it’s important that we as a learning community suss out our feelings before stepping into a classroom.
The United States is a melting pot of split personalities when it comes to our relationship with mental health. We have the best medications on the planet, the best psychiatric care, we know more than we ever have about potential causes and triggers of mental illness, yet we persist in stigmatizing it. Psychotherapy is still the butt of cocktail party jokes and medications are largely condemned as the means by which Big Pharma gets richer. If you need help and accept help, there’s something intrinsically wrong with you. A kind of wrong that makes you “less than” those who don’t need help. Accepting help is often seen as a flaw, something to overcome. If you go through a rough patch and come out the other side, you are a hero, a warrior. If you need this help the rest of your life, you have somehow failed as a person. It separates you from the rest of humanity. It keeps you from being able to make friends, from getting a decent job, it isolates you. It can be a twisted, painful situation for someone suffering from a mental illness. A dirty little secret you can’t tell anyone. Just imagine what it is like to live in a world that says “here are things that can help you, but if you need them you are bad. Oh and don’t tell anyone you are taking advantage of these things because they won’t want to hire you or be your friend.”
My family’s mental illness pedigree goes back many generations. It is a colorful patchwork quilt of alcoholism, anorexia, depression, suicide, bipolar disorder, mania and PTSD. Each of us contributes to the quilt in our own special way, but some of us add more squares than others. One of the greatest contributors has been my dad. He suffered from type 1 bipolar disorder. Diagnosed when I was six and in and out of institutions, hospitals and prisons for most of my childhood, his life was a roller coaster of manic highs and debilitating lows. He would regularly take his medications and regularly throw them out, both with varying degrees of success. At the time of his death he was being weaned off one medication and onto something else. This caused him to slip into a hypomanic state. In his hypomania, he walked into the woods, got lost and died from exposure.
His meds basically killed him. The first medication made things worse, the second didn’t fix it. If he’d never started on that one he wouldn’t have had to move him onto something else. If the second had been more effective, he never would have had the anxiety attack that caused his brain to switch over into hypomania, etc. He died because of the drugs.
So, I am violently anti-meds right? No. I am 100% pro meds. GO meds!
Why?
Because, although my father’s case is extreme, I still believe modern medicine saved his life. Because, I have other bipolar family members who have done amazingly well on meds. Because, without meds, these family members would be dead by now.
Because, no matter what I think about the pharmaceutical industry or about healthcare in the United States, no matter how many close family members and friends I’ve seen suffer, I still do not know what it is like to live with a chronic mental illness.
And because of all this, I know that I can not judge someone else’s life.
My student-teachers will often say “yeah, but you are talking about extreme cases. Those people are really, really sick. What I am talking about is the person who just feels sad and can’t deal.” And no, I’m not. I’m also talking about the sad guy who “can’t deal” and goes to his doctor and asks for Zoloft. Him too. We don’t get to pass judgement on the degree of someone’s pain any more than we get to decide someone’s sexuality. Their choice is not a reflection of our hurts or our recovery, it is not related to our friend who was on meds and successfully got off them or about the family member who committed suicide because of them. No matter the belief; whether it’s that we are an overmedicated society that is too dependent on drugs, or everyone should be on something, we are not the judge and jury of someone else’s mental health.
Yoga teaches us first and foremost that the practice is personal. The first sutra of The Yoga Sutras says Atha Yoganusanam (1.1), Now the exposition of Yoga is being made. Now, meaning this moment, we chose to take this audience. We chose to sit at the feet of the learning right now. Not “when you are ready, turn to page six” or “next week we will cover this topic” but we do it in the present. We make a conscious choice. The doing is done by us. We chose. The second sutra, Yogas chitta vritti nirodhah (1.2), The restraint of the modifications of the mind-stuff is Yoga, means to practice yoga, we control our mind’s chatter. We learn to reign in our mind and focus it.
Now I choose to control my thoughts.
Not; “Now I choose to control the thoughts of others.”
Even when I am sure I know what everyone else should do, I must come to grips with the fact that that conviction is a distraction. A distraction that keeps me from doing the work of knowing my true Self.
If you have a visceral reaction to medications, if you feel strongly that everyone can and should get off their meds, that the world is overmedicated, that is totally, totally fine. You are free to believe whatever you want. Go for it. But, know that how you feel about medication is just a feeling. Feelings, even strong ones, don’t make us right. They just makes us opinionated. Opinions are not facts. Opinions are not truth. They are distractions.
Whether Prozac and its brethren are a deplorable representation of the state of life in the modern age, a reflection of our inability to cope, or a need being filled, doesn’t matter. Because yoga teachers are not preachers. We teach yoga. That’s it.
Teach yoga and practice Ahimsa by holding your tongue. As Satchidananda says “If by being honest we will cause trouble, difficulty or harm to anyone, we should keep quiet.”
And if you can’t hold your tongue, then don’t teach yoga. Your visceral feelings about meds will not help someone decide what’s the best course of action for him/herself.
Each time you think about commenting on psyche meds or making a statement like “you don’t need that crap” try and remember that there is a human being on the receiving end of that statement. A person who showed up to the mat. They showed up. That’s enough.
That’s all we can ask of anyone who comes to our class.
The Schism of Yoga and Capitalism
by Jen Whinnen
I am a professional yoga teacher. This is my career. I use my philosophical and spiritual practices to make a living. As such, I live in an irreconcilable paradox. By profiting from my spiritual work, I willingly participate in the system of capitalism. Capitalism is in direct contrast to the principles of yoga. Capitalism is an economic and political system that is interested in profit, in gain. Yogic practices aim to free oneself from the things capitalism relies upon to thrive; desire and attachment. Capitalism aims to produce an experience in the material world. Yoga aims to release the consciousness from the material world. Capitalism does not care about yoga. Yoga cares not for capitalism. They are irreconcilable.
However, I do not feel the need to bring these two systems to a peace accord. I do not believe, as is often touted in yoga circles, that I can make my capitalistic career yogic. “Conscious Capitalism” is an oxymoron. It places morality upon a concept, a thing. Things are not moral or amoral. They are things. A natural disaster is a disaster in name only. Nature shines and produces, rages and destroys. That’s what it does. Our feelings about destruction are not shared by nature. Capitalism produces and consumes for profit. That’s what it does. Therefore, conscious capitalism is a distraction. It takes the responsibility of consciousness off me. It anthropomorphizes a thing, giving it a moral compass it does not have. This is the antithesis of the yoga practice. I can not rewrite the terms of capitalism because it makes me uncomfortable.
I can, however, get comfortable with the fact that, in terms of my yoga practice, choosing to participate in capitalism is an imperfect choice. I, being a sentient being with a mind and body to govern, must acknowledge that I am making an imperfect choice.
Imperfect however, does not mean “bad.” It simply means not perfect. Perfect Love, Universal Consciousness, the Ultimate, is a concept that is nearly impossible to conceive, let alone achieve. How many of my day-to-day actions reflect this kind of experience? Very little. Probably none. But that doesn’t mean I am bad. It simply means I am not perfect. I am not fully realized.
Ironically, this imperfection is the thing that assists in revealing the Perfect to me. This is the yogic paradigm. We have to be in the world, to use the world, to reveal the truth that is beyond the world. Accepting my imperfection, my limitedness, accepting that my experience is skewed by my misconceptions is the thing that will afford me an opportunity to change. Understanding my actions as being imperfect calms down the constant babble of “Oh no I am right for doing this because I want it. And because I want it, it must be the thing I need to do!” These thoughts keep me furiously racing in the hamster wheel.
However, when I start to think “Wait, do I need this? Do I want this? Does the thing need to change or do I need to change?” then I slow down. Once I slow down, I see that I can also moderate my pace. I can get off the wheel if I want. It’s not until I come to the point of realizing my imperfection that I can even conceive of the notion that I made a choice. I choose to run fast or run slow. I choose to stay on or get off. The wheel is just a thing. The wheel is there, but I choose my participation. If I stay, according to the yogic paradigm, I am doing so consciously. I am here of my own free will. I am participating in my own experience. I can not change the storms or stop the rains, I can not change the wheel. But I can change my relationship to the wheel. I can change the way I think. That is the only thing I can do.
Making money as a teacher is not a yogic act. Giving away my teaching for free is not a yogic act. I can be just as invested in my generosity as I can in my greed. Both are actions. What is yogic is how I manage my mind when I act. Krishna tells Arjuna “You have the rights to action, but not its fruit” (2.47). How easy is it to act without wanting a reward? This is No. Small. Task. This is a Big Idea. A big concept to wrangle with and work on. In order to do so I must accept that I willingly make imperfect choices. In doing so I become aware of my desires, my attachments to the fruits of my actions.
As a “householder,” a mother, a wife, lover of chocolate and cheese, a teacher, a writer, I work trying to let go of my desires for romantic love, praise, stuff and try. Invariably I fall short, but that is not a reason to bemoan the effort. The efforting is the thing. Consciously accepting that I miss the mark keeps me from getting distracted with useless attempts at justifying my choices as valid or invalid. It liberates me. It allows me to be forgiving of myself and forgiving of others for doing the same stuff. I am in it too. Being imperfect opens me to the Perfect because I see that we are all, everyone one of us, doing the best we can.
I often joke with my students that I have no misconceptions about my place in the cycle of samsara (the cycles of reincarnation). If reincarnation is real, I accept that I am coming around again. I tell them, “So, I’ll see you next time. We’ll get together and have a coffee!”
My treat.
Refining Your Teaching; What’s Going on in the World Around You?
by Jen Whinnen
A significant part of my work is spent teaching my teacher trainees how to “see” better, meaning how to look at each class as a real time event that needs to be tended to in the present moment. Classes need to be organized around our understanding of what is going on around us, but to do that effectively, we need to cultivate better vision. Part of cultivating better vision is simply learning what goes where and how. This is the grossest form of teaching. Beyond that a teacher must become competent at discerning if what I say either improves or compromises the class. To do that we first look for misalignment, for grunts and groans, for caught breathing, for lags and peaks in the classroom energy, then modify our teaching from there.
To refine our teaching even further, we can work towards cultivating awareness by observing the world around us and creating classes that take into consideration the experience of our students in the world. To do this well, it’s best to start with the basics. Remember that human beings are both organic and social creatures. As such, two of the biggest contributing factors in our lives, either consciously or unconsciously, will be the seasons and culturally significant events. It has been my experience that these two things are the greatest classroom temperament gauges. The season and culturally significant events influence how we function together. One dictates our biological response to the world the other significantly influences our interactions with each other.
Let’s take our current season, winter, and its correlating holidays. In the winter, the days are shorter and the nights are longer. In many places, the ground freezes and growing stops. For some plants and animals, this season is required for them to reproduce or gestate. The “death” of winter is often a necessary period of respite that allows for rejuvenation. The body, being bound to the earth, often wants to obey this rhythm. When the days are shorter and colder, the body metabolizes slower because it is striving to conserve energy and stay warm. Additionally, because there is less light, people may find that they feel blue or crave more sleep. This is a natural response to winter. No matter how modern we are, how completely turned into electronics we may be, when winter is upon us we feel the effects of it, especially when we are in a group environment. This, when approached with understanding and acceptance, is the boon of being born in a body, of being a part of the natural world and part of community. When we attend well to the effects of the seasons on us we will be comfortable and successful. We will be embodied.
Additionally, it is no coincidence that one of our most significant holidays is connected to the lessening and lengthening of daylight. Winter rituals at their heart reflect our desire to be close and cuddle. They represent our need to become more reflective and introspective. They represent our hope that we will move through darkness and back out into light. And, because Christmas in particular tends to be one of the most hyped holidays, expectations high, the push for spending is high, and over indulgence is expected, it is also one of the most stressful times of year for many.
Our classes should take these factors into consideration. Winter practices should be forward bending practices. Forward bending is a turning in, a folding and refolding. It’s the image of the earth during its death. It’s introspective and restorative.
Does this mean we take 3 – 4 months of only forward bending? No, that is silly. It means we create balanced classes with an emphasis on those practices that enhance our relationship to what’s going on around us. This is a tantric practice, an entering into the world to work through the world. In the Iyengar system classes are taught in a series. Each week has a different focus. One of the weeks is back bending. The back bending week would not be skipped over in the winter, however, the backbends are going to be different in the winter then they are in the summer. This is a good example of conscientious sequencing.
I recently attended a series of classes at a studio where their December “practice of the month” was back bending. Deep, intensive back bending and a month of deep, intensive back bending is not a winter practice. Of all the pose categories, back bending tends to be the most allusive to people because it is the least natural of all our body’s movements. In order to backbend well all the other parts need to be prepared. You need good vertical extension, a very open front body and the spine must be protected and strong. Additionally, there needs to be an understanding of the basic mechanics of the spine to back bend well lest the student take the brunt of the work in the lumbar. Back bending must be worked up to and warmed up to and therefore we need the long daylight hours, the open warmth of summer to bring us into the open mindedness of continuous, deep back bending. When we are in a season of conservation, when the body is “hibernating” asking it to work against that is counter-intuitive.
Of course, the counter argument may be, “but back bending is enlivening! It opens your heart and wakes you up! It gets you out of that funk of winter!” Who says winter is a funk? It’s a funk when we identify too closely with summer. That attachment, like all attachments, creates suffering. The practice teaches us to accept life as it is, to be receptive to things rather than working to bend it to our will. Asking students to back bend aggressively during the winter season is too much of a “good” thing. It stresses out the nervous system and causes injuries. In fact, one of the teacher’s at the above mentioned studio commented that she’d noticed decline in class size as the month went on. Her rational was that it was because people are afraid of back bending and so they were avoiding it. This is a common teacher mistake. The student must be doing something wrong. It’s not them. It’s us. A decline in a class size during a “pose of the month” means we are not paying attention. We have missed the cues that our students are giving us and failed to modify our classes accordingly.
When students come to your class they come to be in community. They come to be seen. One of the surest ways of guaranteeing that students know we see them is to acknowledge the greater influences around them. As teachers it’s important that we are mindful of that. In your on-going efforts to learn and grow, try and remember that life is playing a part in how your students arrive in class. There is a teaming mass of activity going on outside the doors of our yoga space and although we want to be able to put that aside for the hour or so, class doesn’t exist in a bubble. Our students are organic, social creatures who pulse with life around them. Work to see this, respond to this and you will be pleasantly surprised at how your students respond to you.
Shame in Yoga
by Jen Whinnen
I attended a class awhile back where the teacher was talking about addiction in relation to the gunas. In yoga there are three states of being, or “gunas”: sattva, rajas, and tamas. Sattva is purity, rajas is dim and tamas is dark. His hypothesis was that in order for someone to become addicted to something it has to be an acquired thing, that in our most sattvik state, we do not indulge in behaviors that make our souls dim or dark. Only when we are in a rajasik or tamasik state do we do things that are bad for us.
He then went on to say “I mean you only have to look at kids to know what is good for you. It’s not that hard. Kids, well kids are pure right? They will always tell you if something is good or bad for you. You give a kid scotch and what do you think they will do? They will wrinkle their noses and spit it out, right?”
Ah yes, the eternal “purity of children” speech. How many yoga classes have I been in where the teacher uses the impulsiveness of children as an example of our “true and blissful” state or, better yet, the lack of impulse control as an example of what we “should” do? Postulating that children intrinsically know good from bad/right from wrong because they are pure of heart is a trite idea. Believing that the only reason we adults make harmful choices is because we had the audacity to grow up, to become tainted by our environment, time, experiences is, at it’s most banal, absurdly simplistic. At it’s most egregious, it is emotionally damaging and manipulative.
First of all, no matter how adorable and fun kids are, they do not have that “pure” filter people fantasize about. Leave a bunch of kids to fend for themselves for a period of time and I promise you it will be way more Lord of the Flies then Never, Never Land. Being a kid is not simple. It’s hard. Every day is an organizational mess. It’s a constant struggle of learning new tools, impulse control, of being dependent upon, yet wanting to be independent of those who protect them. Their emotional lives make the Real Housewives look like a Zen masters. They spend all their time trying to understand the world around them and learn new things all the while being frustrated by the constant stream of “no’s” and “don’t do that’s” and “be careful’s.” Sure, they appreciate the small things, they play with abandon, think the world is their oyster, but not because they are more spiritually realized than adults. They do so because someone has their backs. A happy, healthy child is not an abandoned or neglected one. A happy, healthy child has someone watching over him, taking care of his needs, helping him navigate the world.
And this is not to say “Hey what about us grown-ups? Let’s give a shout out to the real hero here!” but merely to say that childhood is not an end unto itself. It is not something we are supposed to sustain or better yet, aspire to. Childhood is necessarily transient. It’s a tipping off point. The place where we get the tools we will use to go into the world and either support or destroy it.
Second of all, when someone says “be more childlike” most often they aren’t fantasizing about the perfection of childhood, but rather cloaking sanctimoniousness. Telling an alcoholic that “a kid will tell you that stuff is crap” separates those without suffering as “good” people who know better, from those who suffer as “bad” people who don’t. Even a little kid knows that stuff isn’t good for you. Why don’t you?
Suffering does not mean someone is good or bad, or lazy or stupid. It means he suffers. When we condemn pain as so simplistic that even a child could do better, what we are really saying is “be like me” or “do things my way.” There is no progress in that. It only creates shame.
But, shame is powerful. It’s the Alpha Male of the emotional manipulation pack. Shame makes people feel dirty, worthless and awful. They will do anything to avoid having it bear down on them. It creates fear. And fear begets obedience. People will follow the rules of the shamer implicitly. The shamer, full of conviction and authority, has power to either validate or invalidate everyone around him.
The only problem is, no matter how much power shame wields, it doesn’t support authentic healing. Blind obedience out of fear of recrimination isn’t the same thing as someone saying “I do not want this in my life anymore. I choose a different path.”
It’s hard to see human suffering. It makes us uncomfortable. It’s confusing and often disorienting. We’re confronted with our own limitations and our own lack of suffering. We’re intensely grateful not to be suffering, maybe even feel a little guilty that we’re not suffering. This may make us desperate to do something to make the uncomfortable situation go away. It’s so much harder to say “This pain you are carrying is terrible. This pain is confusing. But, this pain is not you. It’s not your punishment. It’s not your fate. Let’s sit together and see if this faith, this practice, this place, this medication, etc. can help in some way alleviate your suffering.” So instead we offer up easy answers wrapped up in greeting card slogans.
Sadly, the remedies to suffering often aren’t very easy. Simple in nature maybe, but in practice? Not so much. Barring fundamental injustices like lack of clean water, food, shelter, clothing and medical care, most causes of suffering are complexly human. They are a combination of life experiences, physical limitations, economic restrictions, genetics, etc. The remedies are going to be as varied as the people suffering. The “correct” action is not just one thing, but a collection of tools and supplies tailored to meet the person’s needs.
It’s like a house. A newer house is going to need different attention then an older one. If you want to strip and repaint the interior of a new home, you just get the supplies and do it. But, in an old home you have to take precautions. You have to seal off the room, wear specially designed protective gear and be meticulous about clean up after. In the end both homes get a new coat of paint but how they get it is very different.
Rather than glorify one state of being, i.e. childhood, as something we need to sustain, or tell each other that we aren’t “doing it right” because the cure we found that worked so well for us isn’t producing the same results for someone else, why not create for grown-ups what we strive to do for our kids: safe, nurturing environments where we are free to explore, question and be ourselves.
When we encourage each other and remain open to different ideas, we create environments where the healing goes from a promise to a possibility. And it’s that possibility of being that lays the foundation for genuine, authentic change. It’s that possibility that eases suffering. It may not always be the right fit, but it’s active and participatory. It allows you to affect your own being, to remain flexible and interested in your own life.
So, you take care of your house. Choose tools, materials and contractors that prop you up and make you the strongest, healthiest and most structurally sound person you can be within the framework you’ve got.
this post was taken from Jen’s personal blog “The Inner Child” on 11/1/10. To read more, click here: http://yogajen.blogspot.com/
Lesson from a Raccoon
By Jen Whinnen
Yesterday I head a bird outside my window squawking. It was clearly in distress, yelling loudly and aggressively. Looking into the tree I saw, draping down the side of what looked like a bird’s nest, a long black and white striped tail. A raccoon had taken up residency in the bird’s nest. The bird was a mess. Hopping madly from branch to branch, crying, yelling, screeching with all her might, she was at a loss as what to do. Beyond using her vocal chords, she was completely impotent. She was powerless against the hulking mass of claws, fur, teeth and jaws that had taken over her home.
I also felt distressed and impotent. I wanted to help that little bird, but what could I do? The nest was too far for me to reach and even if I did somehow manage to scare the raccoon out of it, the damage had already been done. Clearly he’d had a very satiating meal of bird eggs.
Self-satisfied, tummy full, the raccoon, as if sensing mine and the birds’ dismay, rolled over and exposed his rump and went back to sleep. It was as if he said “here’s what I think of your stress. Now please, leave me alone.”
When I showed the nest to my boys, my oldest assured me that in fact the raccoon did not eat the birds’ eggs. “Birds lay their eggs in June. Those baby birds have already left the nest. That raccoon built that nest all by himself. That’s his nest actually.” His confidence was the confidence of nativity; making up “facts” that worked in his favor. Say it out loud, with great confidence and volume and so it will be! My son simply could not accept that nature is both cruel and random. For him, we live in a just and verdant universe. The bad guy never gets away with it because the super hero always saves the day and all babies everywhere are well protected and cared for.
We adults know this isn’t true. Raccoons eat bird eggs, shove their butts in your face and tell you to “suck it” all the time while we sit here feeling completely and utterly helpless. This past month however has felt a little like a role reversal. It’s like we’re the raccoon and society is screaming at our fat behinds saying “Hey! You are in my nest! Get the out of my nest! Don’t do that!” From Robin William’s death, to Ferguson to the current Ice Bucket challenge, we’ve been bombarded with a new kind of imagery; one that is begging for us to pay attention and help each other out.
So, are we hapless, self- indulgent raccoons out for ourselves or are we something more?
Yoga points to more. But, the practice itself does not mystically change the fabric of society. It is a tool that assists us in changing how we see and think. Yoga does not change who we are, it does not make us something different, but it does point us towards knowledge. And often it is the knowledge of what we are not. We are not alone, we are not separate, we are not more entitled, we are not better, we are not worse. We are connected and we are a powerful force for change.
As we head into the season of reaping and sowing I encourage you to continue to throw buckets of cold water on your heads and use that shocking sensation to remind you that you can do more. Write your congressman and tell him you want more money spent on medical research, that you want more funds ear marked towards mental healthcare. Volunteer in your community and encourage your friends and family to volunteer too (here are a couple great resources for finding volunteer opportunities: New York Cares & Hands on Portland). Donate more of your discretionary funds on a regular basis towards organizations that are working to fight disease, injustice and intolerance. Read this blog and talk about race issues. Be kind. Be useful. And above all, use your practice to reveal to you how very, very potent you are.
The Doing or the Done?
by Jen Whinnen
Sometimes I just sit and spin my wheels and spin and spin and spin. I sit at the computer and just become this lump of Idle, whiling away time looking at Facebook and generally worrying over things I can neither control nor fix (oil leak anyone?). At times like this I end up feeling utterly impotent and useless. Time becomes the enemy. It taunts me and slips away as I try and will myself into some kind of focus and concentration.
Yet, as I actively curse my idle ways, I never seem to stop indulging in them.
I’m sure I’m not alone in my malaise. How many of us do things we know don’t resonate with us, stand outside ourselves and watch us do things we know we will regret, yet seem completely incapable of stopping ourselves?
For me at times like this, the best thing to do is to sit down and write. I am a writer. Not professionally or artistically, but I am a writer. Some people are bikers, cooks, readers, runners, some dance, some solve math problems or take photos, but we all have a “thing” that connects us to the larger world and makes us feel like we are where we ought to be. When I am out of sync with myself it’s because I have forgotten that I am a person who writes. When I don’t know what to do with myself or where to go, when I am confused or frustrated, I get back by sitting down with my friends Writing Utensil and Paper. And it’s not the actual words themselves that make so much of a difference as it is the act of writing. The comfort of dragging a pen across the page, of sitting down at my desk and feeling the breeze through the window, hearing the noises of the city, the children playing. When I am in that space I am not withdrawn or self damning, but instead feel a deep sense of wholeness.
Most of what I write is utter junk that will never see the light of day, but this is irrelevant. Regardless of the outcome, putting it together is the thing. It’s the doing, not the done. Ask any artist, any athlete, any scholar and they will tell you that the actual success of the thing is far less satisfying than the doing of the thing. When a dancer speaks of her performance, she becomes most alive and most engaging when she jumps up and starts demonstrating the piece for you. At that moment, the Dance dances. At that moment, she is connected to her Spanda, to the internal vibration of Shakti, to the Cosmos, to God.
In our teacher trainings we talk a lot about how yoga is just a conduit. Yoga itself is not a thing. It’s just a practice. The poses themselves are just physical movements that, in order to be useful, must meet the person where they are. If the pose does not serve the person practicing it, does not promote self-awareness and health, then it has no purpose, it has no movement. Similar to life, if our lives have no purpose, if we have nothing to do, we waste it. Engaging in activities that align us to ourselves and our communities not only makes us “feel good” but it connects us to the Atman or the Jiva; to our Authentic Self.
Personally, I would like to see more doing in the world and less done. Listening to the Spanda Shakti only takes moments a day, but it resonates throughout our lives. I can’t help but wonder – how many of our issues could we resolve if we listened to our authentic voice and rather than say “oh, but I can’t make any money on that” or “yeah, but I’m not very good” or “oh, that was something I when I was a kid” we actually just went for the ride, took that class, got out the paints or simple stood up and shook what our mamma gave us?
Lessons from a Spider
By Jen Whinnen
This past summer I relocated and now live half the year in Portland, OR. The costs of living and the proximity to family made the “half NYC/half Portland” idea make sense and so here we are, embarking on yet another lifestyle experiment.
So far I have found that Portland is a city very interested in what’s “in season” and what’s coming up “next season,” which is kind of ironic, because Portland doesn’t really have seasons. It’s a temperate climate. It has two seasons; rainy and cold or sunny and warm. Coming from New York where the weather is like the extreme mood swings of a toddler, the relative calm of Portland doesn’t exactly scream “seasons” to me. But, perhaps that is why people are so interested in seasons here. They like to imagine that talking in variables will make noticeable changes in their environment.
Whatever the reason, one of the seasons we have experienced thus far is Bug Season. August is spider season. It comes after wasp season and before stink bug season. Of all the seasons, Bug Season has been my least favorite. And of the bug seasons, spider season ranks last. In August spiders were everywhere. In bushes, in trees, between trees, on the grass, in the flowers, on our ceiling, in the corners, on the car door, in the sink, in the tub, hanging mid air from who knows where, if you can name it, a spider had claimed it.
One morning a spider spun a web between the posts of our front porch and I came within an inch of getting a face full of web and squiggly spider. I was an inch away from panic attack level screams of “get it off me!” hysteria when I noticed this little punk tiger striped arachnid sitting there upside down in middle of his web staring at me. Just sitting there watching and waiting. He must have thought he was pretty clever. Why build a web in the rhododendrons and blackberry bushes when you can bag a human? He must have thought “enough of this small time game hunting! Capture bug, ruin web, eat bug, fix web, and capture another. What a waste of time. I’m gonna kill a person and be done for the season.”
It had been like this for days so it was not a surprise when, outside my window, I saw a spider spinning a web one morning. I’ve seen spiders spin webs before, or rather, I thought I had. I know I’ve seen it on nature shows. But, until that morning, I don’t think I’ve ever actually watched a spider work.
It was fascinating.
The web she was making was huge. She’d picked a spot between two large tree limbs that were pretty far apart so the circumference was about the size of a garbage can lid. And this was a little spider. She was about the size of a nickel. That something so small could make something so big was quite a feat of engineering. How many times did she leap from one branch to the other before she got it right? If she fell to the ground, would she climb all the way back up and start all over again? And if she made a lot of attempts, did she go back to that same spot?
And the way she worked was so interesting. There was so much power in her. It looked like she was hovering in the air; flying from one end of her invisible web to the other, spinning line after line in an intricate, specific pattern. She was deft and fast and worked with clean precision. She knew exactly what to do next, which direction to go. She’d make a line somewhere and then double back to the center of the web to reinforce it and then head back out again. Her long, fuzzy, little legs would make the minutest adjustments to the thread, making the web stronger, more exact.
Her life is basic: catch and kill, eat, survive, reproduce. Wash, rinse, repeat. She works away, busily engaged in the practice of just doing what she’s doing. She’s not straying from her task she’s just at it, busy and focused. It’s cyclical and repetitive, but it’s leading towards something. Completely focused on the task she was a great example of controlled concentration.
Yet, she is so fragile. She’s literally hanging on by a thread. This fine line of invisible stuff, if I wanted, I could wipe it down with one finger. On the other hand, it suits her needs. Her web is as weak as any other spiders, but unlike the ill-planned web of my would-be captor, she’s built it well. She’s picked a great spot; high in the trees near the fruit where bees and bugs will fly by. It’s partially covered under the eaves of the house so it’s sheltered from the wind and the rain.
Watching her work made me wonder, “Is my life really that different from a spider’s?” Life is fragile and cyclical and ultimately, it is redundant. We do the same things over and over again. Our bodies do the same things over and over again. It is amazing and fascinating, but it is not unique. It is mundane. This kind of plodding focused, dogmatic dedication to her work isn’t really that dissimilar to mine. When I pay attention to how I deal with the mundane it guides me towards a life I want. Likewise, I’ve noticed that when I act like the spider on the porch, making poor choices and living a disconnected life, regardless of how beautiful the dream is, will draw me further away from what I am seeking.
Sitting there watching that spider I realized a well balanced life is mundane. A balanced life is not a string of passionate love affairs, but a monotonous cycle that helps draw me back to the middle. It’s about how I spin my web. When I live on the fringes of it, when I over extend, spin too wide, spin to small, when I lose focus or pick a bad spot, people walk through it, the bugs avoid it, the wind rips it to shreds and I go hungry. When I focus and am consistent, when I do the work of learning how to deal, life begins to reveal itself, it lays out a pattern. It tells me where to go and reminds how to get back, it reinforces the learning.
For good or for ill, it is not the grand gestures that make us who we are but the mundane. The routine itself reveals the Self.
With this idea in mind, I embarked on an experiment. My goal was to cultivate a more consistent meditation and writing practice. I am not very good at either, but both are important to me. When I meditate it helps clear my head and I write better. When I write it’s a form of meditation. So, I decided I would meditate and write every day for 45 days. My plan was to get up in the morning, meditate for 30 minutes and then sit down and write for 30 minutes.
Like any well made plan, it was a good one. It was the new car of plans; shiny and bright, I was excited about it and I wanted to take my New Plan out for a spin as soon as possible. But, just like a new car, the New Plan lost 20% of its value as soon as I drove off the lot. I found that a new plan gets banged up pretty quickly when you are in the middle of a move. It is also really hard to keep a New Plan going when you have children on summer vacation who want a lot of your attention. And of course there were just the days. Days when I was simply too tired, sick, stressed or distracted, days when I sat there and nothing came and nothing worked. And there were days that I just didn’t care anymore. Like my little friend’s web, my link to my process is fragile. It is tenuous and slips out of my grasp quickly.
But, I keep at it. Sitting as often as I can and writing as often as I can after. It’s becoming more and more a part of my life. It’s almost, almost a routine. I have learned through the mundane process of just getting up almost every day and doing it, that even if there is a break in the routine; I am laying down the foundations for what I am seeking.
The “holiday season” just ended and now we’re in the season of resolutions and new beginnings. We are constantly inundated this time of year with messages telling us that now is the time to make those changes you’ve been wanting to make! So often we start off the new year thinking “yes! This year gonna be It!” only to get frustrated and disappointed when the days come that don’t turn out to be It. We lose faith in ourselves and the process. Whether you start a New Plan today or next month doesn’t matter. What matters is starting over. And then starting over again. And then starting over again and again. My New Year’s resolution is the same one I’ve had since I started this project six months ago. To be routine. To go back to the process again and again. To stick to the practice.
The results will take care of themselves.
this post was taken from Jen’s personal blog “The Year of the Spider” on 1/2/14. To read more, click here: http://yogajen.blogspot.com/
The Birthday: My Advice on How to Better Enjoy Getting Older
by Jen Whinnen
I turned forty years old this year. Forty. It’s weird being forty because forty is supposedly nothing these days. Forty is the new thirty! People live to be 110 and have babies in their 50s. I can pump my face full of Botox, veneer my teeth and pretend I am young until I’ve got one ancient foot in the grave.
and yet… I think there is a point when, regardless of how you spin it, we all know that we are no longer young. There is a point when we have to face facts. Time waits for no one. Forty is pretty much that point. It’s the threshold to Old Age. Forty is “young old”. Forty’s got lots of good years left, but let’s face it; retirement is closer than our high school graduations.
I remember when I realized my mom was 40. She seemed like the oldest woman in the world. Who lives to be 40? It was a number I could not wrap my mind around. I knew in some vague way that my grandma was older than my mom, but that didn’t really mean anything. My grandma wasn’t a person who did stuff. She just made really good pickles and showed up for recitals and holidays. My mom, on the other hand, lived at my house. She was the librarian at my school. She bought my groceries and did my laundry. She was a real person. And she was forty years old. How did she live with stretch marks and wrinkles? Wasn’t she embarrassed? How does she live through ever day knowing that she’s so. very. old?
Then I realized my dad was forty and that was terrifying. At forty he had a bad knee and ankle and walked with a slight shuffle, he was missing his middle finger on his right hand and had severe arthritis in his arm, he was overweight and basically blind without his glasses. How did these two geezers get into my house?
Suddenly it dawned on me….my parents were going to be really, really old one day. Like Grandma old. And some day they were going to die. My teen brain made calculations and realized once you hit forty you were basically dead. You were just a few short moments away from standing in line at the gates of Hades.
Happily, my parents made it past this mythical landmark and lived to see me graduate college. It was the first time they’d come to see me in New York and I was excited. I was 22 years old, living on my own, living in NYC and full of pep and vigor and vitality. One of the first things we did was go for a walk in Central Park. As we sat on bench taking in the view of people and trees and squirrels, my dad let out a big sigh and said, “You know I envy you. You wake up every morning excited about the day.”
I felt a little awkward, guilty even. I wasn’t sure what to say so I mumbled a feeble, “Yeah I guess.”
And then he said, “I remember that feeling. When I close my eyes I am where you are. I feel young. I forget some times that I don’t have that body anymore. It’s confusing. It’s confusing to be in this body when my mind is still young. In my mind I am still 22, but in my body…. well, I’m not.”
My dad was 48. He was only eight years older than I am now. If I take his experience as an indication of the aging process I can expect that in less than eight years I will be looking back on my life and sighing.
and yet… I cannot relate to my dad at all. I simply do not look back on my youth wistfully. I have fond memories, but I don’t long to go back there. I’m wrinkly and fatter now but, I don’t feel disconnected from my body or my mind. In fact, I feel quite the opposite. I am calmer, more peaceful and much happier than I was in my youth.
Youth is a temperamental, moody brat who is never satiated. There is never an end to her need or want. She is a swirling, dive bombing carnival ride of insecurities, a vain, silly bimbo who will never, ever love you back. Youth is the ultimate gold digger. She is only using you for your time and once it is gone, she will leave you.
Age can never be enjoyed if we are chasing after Youth. Age is like getting off the ride and gaining our equilibrium. Our lives after we leave the carnival. It’s walking back to the car in a quiet parking lot full of stars holding your lover’s hand and enjoying the sounds of the carnival in the distance. It is wisdom and grace. It is deep, rumbling laughter. It’s the time you have to think and be alone.
One of my teachers is working up to being able to hold plow pose for an hour. She wants to do this so that when she “is old and no one wants to talk to her anymore” she can be with herself and be interesting to herself. That’s what aging is all about. It’s about finding out how to be without. First people lose interest in you and then you lose interest in the world so that you can go in and get interesting. Youth takes everything from you and asks you to give it all away, Age gives back and restores.
But, it can only give what we are willing to take.
Now, I normally shy away from “lists of things that you can do to make your life happy” kind of writing, (I’m pretty sure life’s lessons can’t be summarized in pithy little bullet points), but I do have this list of reminders I keep in my head and so far it’s been working for me. And so, since I am crossing into my golden years and it’s my birthday, I’m going take part in the time honored tradition of old women everywhere. I am going to give away some unsolicited advice (via pithy little bullet points).
My Unsolicited Advice on How to Better Enjoy Getting Older:
- Find old people to teach you how to be old. This is the biggest one. I recently had a conversation with a friend who is training to be a lactation consultant. She was saying that breast feeding in many ways is a lost art because it needs to be handed down from mother to mother. Since we lost two generations of women to formula feeding, we’ve had to relearn how to do it and how to teach it. I think the same can be said for aging. In a country where we glorify youth and vilify aging, we’ve lost some basic common sense how-to. Seek out wise, funny older people and make them your friends. Listen to their advice and do what they say. (side note: I highly recommend “mature” yoga teachers, especially if you are a woman. Nothing is more inspiring that seeing a spry, intellectual, spiritual woman on a regular basis. It’s one of the greatest gifts you will ever give yourself.)
- Meditate or pray or do something contemplative. Besides the fact that it has proven to increase gray matter which will help your brain stay fit, it’s also the best way to get acquainted with the internal landscape of your mind and spirit.
- Read. Trashy novels, classic lit, medical journals, magazines, kid’s books, e-books, hard copies, it doesn’t matter. Just find stuff you like and read. (One caveat: do not read fashion magazines. That’s toxic at any age.)
- Find something physical you like to do and do it regularly.
- Enjoy your food. Do not be a glutton. Do not starve. Enjoy your food.
- Find things and people that make you laugh and keep them around. Seek out the laughs.
- Help others. Be generous with your time and disposable income. Be helpful.
Birthdays are a reminder that we were brought into this world to participate in it. Youth is not your last chance to contribute so do not limit you experience by believing that all possibility has passed with the passing of time.
The Practice of Contentment
by Jen Whinnen
Many, many years ago my grandparents bought a cabin in the woods near a lake in northern Idaho to commemorate one of their wedding anniversaries. They paid cash. I think my grandma said they paid $5,000 for it. It was a summer cabin, just one step up from tent camping and small; about the size of most modern suburban living rooms with a small alcove off one end that could fit two twin beds, one along one wall and the other at its feet along the opposite wall.
It didn’t have a heating system and wasn’t insulated. It sits high in the mountains where, even in the middle of summer, the temperature can easily dip down into the 40s. My grandpa was a furnace repairman so he built a wooden stove out of sheet metal and this was the cabin’s sole source of heat. The only other amenities were a kitchen sink with running water, electricity, a hot plate and a refrigerator.
It did not have a bathroom. There was an outhouse. The outhouse was smelly, dark and creepy. As such, it was a constant source of fascination and repulsion to us kids. We hated it, but couldn’t seem to stay away from it. We found seemingly endless ways to tease each other over it.
There was the time my sister and my cousins convinced me that a chicken had fallen in and that we were gonna have to send down the skinniest kid (me) to save it. Or the time my uncle lined us all up under a tarp and made us stand in line in the rain while everyone peed before going to bed. Or the countless times we took flashlights in so that we could stare down into the pit of poop. If you were trying to do your biz, there was a 99.99% chance that someone would materialize outside the door to tease you saying things like “don’t fall in! Wipe fast and don’t look down!” or promise you that something creepy was going to come out of the ooze and drag you down with it.
I am pretty sure I spent most of my early childhood summers constipated.
My grandpa eventually built a “bathroom” in the cabin. He installed a little toilet and sink off the side of the miniature bedroom. It was the size of a broom closet. Being a frugal man, he refused to open up additional fields of the septic system. To this day no one in my family can quite grasps the logic of this choice or how it relates to being frugal, but in doing so, everything made the little toilet back up. You could sneeze near this thing and it would need a couple of hours to settle down.
My grandpa was obsessed with the toilet. It was as if he felt like he’d spoiled us all by putting in this small piece of modern plumbing. What was the point of a toilet when there was a perfectly acceptable and useable outhouse 20 feet from the cabin? He simply did not want anything to go to waste. Not even an outhouse. Therefore, the toilet came with a set of very specific rules:
- No Pooping in the Toilet Until Night Time. If you had to do #2 during the day, go to the outhouse.
- No Peeing in the Toilet Until Night Time. During the day, use the outhouse.
- If You Pee in the Toilet at Night, DO NOT FLUSH. Wait until morning and flush everyone’s pee at once.
- If You Poop in the Toilet At Night, You May Flush the Toilet ONCE. Any left overs could wait with the pee for morning.
Basically it was a nocturnal toilet.
These rules created a weird sneakiness among my family. I am pretty sure, although no one has openly admitted it, that everyone at one point sneaked in and used that toilet while the sun was up. I definitely remember slipping into the cabin after everyone had gone to the beach, making a mad dash, praying that no one would catch me and that damn thing would fully flush.
But, despite the hassle of the Nocturnal Toilet, the cabin itself was a bright, cheery, cozy little haven. White washed pine walls and gingham curtains, a large red kitchen table, a huge oval red and grey rag rug and a front porch with two rocking chairs and a little hibachi. It was homey and sweet and simple. Everyone was welcome (provided they only used the toilet at night) and everyone had fun.
The cabin was the sum total of all my summer vacations. Every summer we went to the Lake. We’d play cards, read, swim, hike, pick berries, build bonfires, roast marsh mellows, skinny dip, have epic pillow fights, put on vaudeville shows, eat piles of junk food, laugh until our sides hurt, see moose, deer, elk, bear, rabbits, squirrels, collect bugs, rocks and pinecones.
Looking back now I realize how lucky I was to have the cabin, however, at the time I felt like I was missing out. The cabin was small and cramped, it wasn’t on the water, we didn’t have a boat, our beach was communal and not private, we had the outhouse and the Nocturnal Toilet. I wanted Disneyland and Hawaii, a European vacation or even a trip to Yellowstone. Something I could take back to school and say “THIS is what I did on summer vacation!”
When my mom inherited the cabin she opened up the septic fields, put in a full bathroom, a washer/dryer and built a small bedroom. She knocked down the outhouse, put a shed over it and filled it with water toys and bikes. And now, I take my children to the lake lake every summer. It is the sum total of all our vacations. We hike, swim, pick berries, play cards, eat junk food and have a great time.
We are very lucky.
One day while we were at the (public) beach, I was struck by the unbelievable beauty of the lake. I was overcome with sweet childhood memories and a wave of gratitude. I couldn’t believe how amazingly fortunate I was to have grown up coming to a place like this and that I was now sitting here with my own children. I felt like my heart was going to burst from pure, uninhibited gratitude and joy.
And then, I had a moment of contraction. Suddenly I was struck with a numbing fear. We were going to be leaving soon. I may never see the lake again. I panicked. I didn’t want to go. I didn’t want to lose this moment! I didn’t want it to end!
But then it occurred to me, it’s already gone.
The minute I started to panic, it was gone. The depth of my gratitude, my peace and tranquility were gone. And I did it. I was the cause of both my peace and my panic.
And then I had one of those moments that comes when you are truly lucky. I realized that contentment is something you can actually practice.
This is revelatory to me. Up until this point I have always thought of contentment at something you achieve, something you earn. Work long days, put in hard hours, study and keep your nose to the grind stone and some day you will get to retire and spend all your hard earned money contentedly sitting around. It never occurred to me that contentment is something I could actually practice right now.
In the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, the second of the “observances” (Niyamasa) is Santosha: contentment. The Sutras say that in order to become enlightened one must practice being content. I am sure oft over-used yoga catch phrase of “acceptance” could be used as another way of saying “contentment” but to me that would be incorrect. Acceptance implies a kind of acquiescence, a rolling over and letting the world pass over you. To practice contentment means that you are actively choosing to engage in the world according to your own terms. It means acknowledging when you have enough and being satisfied with it.
In conversations with my friends and students the question of being depleted and being dissatisfied has been coming up a lot. And while I am by no means above the fray, I can’t help but wonder, how often do we think our needs are not being met when in fact they are? How often do we actively practice being discontented and how drastically would our lives change if we did the opposite? Americans are constantly being encouraged to crave, to be dissatisfied, to hunger so that we keep consuming. The fabric of our economy seems to depend on us remaining discontent, believing that we are too fat, too ugly, too old and too poor.
But are we? What would happen if we didn’t believe that? What would it look like if we looked at our tiny cabins, and our outhouses and nocturnal toilets and said things like “Wow, this place is perfect. I get a respite from my life and time alone with my family. I need to take a crap and here is a place to do it. It satisfies my need. I am content with that.”
this post was taken from Jen’s personal blog “The Cabin” on 7/19/12. To read more, click here: http://yogajen.blogspot.com/