The Beauty of the Fire

Ian Britton/Freephoto.com

We must destroy to create. My intention in saying this is not an endorsement of aggression or violence, but an observation of a fundamental fact of nature. When we truly desire change in our lives, when we crave the transformation of our bodies and minds, we need to burn down our old patterns and habits to make room for the new. We must dramatically and emphatically rid ourselves of that which no longer serves us. Sometimes things need to fall apart before they can come back together in a more positive and substantial way. When you burn something, you transform it – it is a form of alchemy.

Now, what you need to throw into the fire could be a bad habit, an addictive behavior, a toxic friendship, or a negative thought pattern - anything that holds you back from being your greatest self. I remember Olympic swimming champion Michael Phelps saying that whenever someone insulted or harassed him, he used it as fuel to feed his practice. Whatever came at him he was able to alchemize. These transformed experiences nourished the soil of his practice.

There are fire rituals in virtually every spiritual tradition. Fire symbolizes memory, alchemy, disintegration, and transformation. In Anusara Yoga we begin every class with the mantra Om Namah Shivaya, which can sometimes be interpreted as: I honor Shiva, the great Destroyer. The Shiva we refer to is our own inner light, our own inner fire. This light is luminous and powerful, beautiful and frightening. When, through our practice, we tend to the inner flame, burning away that negative habit – that destructive tendency - that nagging doubt, we clear our inner landscape, creating a fertile ground for personal growth.

So what is holding you back from being your greatest self?

What in your life isn’t serving you?

Envision throwing that thing into the fire. Visualize it burning until there is nothing left but ash. Feed the flame. Transform your self.

The Beauty of Practice III

Imagine yourself as an ocean. Now imagine yourself as a rock tumbling through the waves of that ocean, grating upon sand, other rocks, shells, and seaweed, and being smoothed by the incessant movement of the waves. This is you and your practice.

Stepping into your practice is like diving into the ocean of you – all of your complexities churn and shift as you are buffeted by excitement, curiosity, doubt, frustration, exhaustion, and bliss. These are the thoughts and sensations that arise within the context of your practice. Some of these sensations might be residual from your day or your week, others might be hidden on the ocean floor of your psyche, just waiting for the churning of your body and mind to jiggle them loose. But it is all you – you are the rock, cleansed by the practice, debris shaken loose, rough edges smoothed. And you are the ocean, your own world, deep and enveloping, in which anything can happen. In your practice you plunge into the depths. You move. You see what arises.

Your practice, like the ocean, is always right there waiting for you to step into it. But in a sense you are never not practicing. Everything you do feeds your practice in some way. So the relevant question becomes:

How deeply are you willing to dive into the ocean of your practice?

Or, to paraphrase:

How deeply are you willing to dive into the ocean of you?

The Beauty of Practice II

Sianna Sherman at Dig Yoga

“Practice, practice, practice and all will come…” -Shri K. Pattabhi Jois

I woke up Saturday to the birdlike sound of a flute playing a raga, listening as the sound wandered, swooping down, climbing up, and meandering through the morning quiet. Sleeping downstairs from me for the weekend was master bamboo flautist Steve Gorn. who was engaged in his morning practice. In the bedroom next to mine, Sianna Sherman was on her asana mat and across the hall, our host, Sue Elkind, was deep in meditation. As I moved through my own morning rituals of meditation and asana, the sound of the flute connected us, telling the story of our love for our own practices.

The reason why I share this moment is to make a point about practice. All of these people are brilliant practitioners who had converged for a weekend Intensive at Dig Yoga in Lambertville, NJ, along with the brilliant Tantric scholar Paul Muller-Ortega. These individuals have more skill in their fields than most people dream of acquiring in a lifetime. But what do they do first thing in the morning? They practice. Clearly, they all have a natural gift, but without practice, the gift might never have emerged or fulfilled its potential. Their brilliance, like everyone’s, is in a state of continual evolution. Without practice, it can’t grow, develop, or flourish. The gift shrivels, like a neglected plant.

Accepting that moments of frustration and dissatisfaction are part of a whole that also contains contentment, curiosity, and sometimes ecstasy, is part of being a mature practitioner of any art. Yoga-running-writing-painting-cooking-singing-whatever. My teacher, John Friend, reminds us of how many times he had to fall in a pose to get to where he is now. And it never ends. That’s the beauty of having a practice. As Paul Muller-Ortega said to us on the last day of the Intensive, “You cultivate this path with love, commitment, dedication, vigilance…Life is the process of refinement.” And to refine, you have to practice.

The Beauty of Boundaries

River Bank (via makelessnoise)

“Clear Boundaries - No Limits” -Gopala Aiyar Sundaramoorthy

Boundaries are different from limits. Boundaries delineate, cultivate, and protect. Limits obstruct, denying possibility or real growth. In my yoga class I tell often tell my students this: Imagine your body as a river. Without riverbanks the water would have no direction or force. The riverbanks create directionality, purpose, here-to-thereness. The riverbanks are parameters, just as any particular yoga pose or asana is a specific set of parameters. When you move into an asana, you pour your body into a specific configuration that creates an effect. If it is a backbend or an arm balance the effect is often agitating and exhilarating, channeling the energy up and out. If the asana is a deep hip-opener, the effect is generally grounding, calming - the waters settle. We apply alignment principles in order to best serve the body’s energy flow – expanding and narrowing the riverbanks according to the form of the asana and the individual needs of our bodies.

Boundaries allow the asana practice to deepen in a clear way. For example, there is a basic form for down dog, but within that form you can personalize it, bringing your body’s particularities and your own associations to it. Limits would deny the expansive potential of down dog, dictating, “only do it exactly like this.” Once you shape your body into an asana, you choose your boundaries. Let them be strong but malleable, like the banks of a river.

Now, invite this concept into your mind. Invite it into your heart. Apply it to any particular situation or relationship. And then ask yourself:

What kind of boundaries do I need here?

Where have I created limits instead of boundaries?

How can I be as wildly creative as possible within the boundaries that I’ve chosen?

This is doing the yoga.

The Beauty of the Farmers Market

Via Lizard10979

Looking, smelling, touching, tasting. For me, the Farmers Market is a party of the senses. One of the upsides of teaching a 7am yoga private is that by 8:15, I am wandering through the freshly displayed fruits and vegetables in Union Square. I find myself in the inspiring company of restaurant chefs and sous-chefs in their white kitchen jackets, conversing, inspecting, and buying in bulk. I follow their lead as they descend upon the sugar snap peas, the bunches of fresh herbs, the wild garlic and mushrooms.

The first Farmers Market thrill for me each spring is the emergence of favas and ramps, and after that wild strawberries. That was a few weeks ago, although you can still find them here and there. Now suddenly this week lavish orange squash blossoms are everywhere and the green curling shiseido peppers which are so amazing just seared in olive oil. Or a bunch of the most delicious french breakfast radishes dipped in goat butter and sea salt. Amazing raw milk cheeses and fresh eggs – fresh as in feathers stuck to the carton and you have to rinse off the stickiness before cracking them. And then the flowers…you can smell the roses from yards away, gently squeeze the snapdragons, inhale the scent of lilies and gaze upon sunflowers…

Touching and eating things that have recently been in the ground makes me feel that much closer to the earth. As I go through the frankly sensual process of gathering, preparing, and eating my Farmers Market meal, I feel clean. There is less of an intermediary between my food and myself. I have thwarted the takeout container and the hastily prepared meal. I am reminded that the tons of concrete, steel, glass, and miles of electrical wiring that surround me can’t entirely obscure the innate relationship of my body to nature.

So take the time this week to find one perfect peach or tomato or ear of corn. Look at its shape and color. Feel its texture. Inhale its fragrance. And then don’t do anything else while you eat it. Being mindful of our senses offers us a deeper, more satisfying experience of ourselves and of the natural world in which we reside. 

The Beauty of The Guru

Gopala Aiyar Sundaramoorthy, my teacher's teacher.

Maybe it was the person who first taught you to read. Or perhaps that teacher who saw something special in you and urged you to push just beyond what you thought were your limits. It could have been a friend or family member who extended him or herself for you, showing you how to be a better person in the process. Or an artist, a writer, an athlete who ignited something inside you that made you want to dance or paint or write or run as brilliantly and as beautifully as you ever had before. That person on some level was a guru - a spiritual guide in your life.

The word guru comes fraught with all sorts of associations in our culture – there is an implication of a submissive worshipfulness that is anathema to many independent and free-thinking people, myself included. There are stories of gurus with fleets of Rolls-Royces and/or dubious behavior in their personal lives. For many people I know, it is a term that evokes a certain uneasy feeling. None of my teachers will allow this term to be applied to them. We dance around it, embracing its true meaning, but not its sometimes unfortunate associations.

Let’s make this simple: Gu can be defined as darkness. Ru can be defined as illumination. The Sanskrit word guru means the one who draws you from darkness to light. That would be a teacher. But here’s where it gets interesting for those of you who aren’t into geeking out over Sanskrit grammar: a guru can be anyone or anything that offers you an illuminating experience. I think about the dazzling brilliance of my college art history professor but I also think about the beauty and tenacity of a blade of grass popping up through the NYC concrete.  Both sweetly and ferociously affirm life. Both take the role of guru in a particular manner.

This past Sunday, July 25 was Guru Purnima, which, for yogis, is the annual celebration of our teachers. It always falls at this time of year on the full moon (purnima = Sanskrit for full moon). A flurry of yogi messages criss-crossed on Facebook, as so many of us in the Anusara Yoga and the Rajanaka Yoga communities thanked our teachers and each other. So to my teachers, my gurus, to all of you who inspire me, push me, encourage me, and coach me through life…Thank you!

Ask yourself this:

Who are my teachers?

To whom am I a teacher?

And then:

Thank them…via phone, email, letter, or face-to-face conversation.

With this gesture, you become the teacher too.

The Beauty of Choosing Happiness

“First happiness is a choice. Then it is a practice.” Jason Nemer, co-founder of AcroYoga

You have to make the choice to be happy – it is like anything else – sometimes it is graceful and effortless and sometimes it seems beyond our grasp. When petty irritations arise or a sense of futility or loss dominates our days, it’s time to ask yourself,  “Do I want to live in this place?” I was discussing life on and off the mat with friend and fellow yoga teacher Siri Peterson. When we teach, we put our best selves forward. So what happens if we carry that off of the mat and into our daily lives? Both of us are in the art world - I am a visual artist and Siri is a dancer. Both worlds can be viciously competitive environments, which, after a while, leave their imprint. Although competition is a reality in any professional world including yoga, the overall tone of the yoga world is one of openness, assistance, compassion, and warmth. Needless to say, we both lead slightly divided lives.

I decided this week to take that best self from the studio out into the streets. Normally, if someone slammed into me in the subway, I might snap at them or fume, feeling irritable and wronged. If a student pushed past me at Virayoga, where I teach, or shoved aside my things to put down their own, what would I do? Not much, actually. I would think, “that person really needs class today,” and then seek them out, acknowledge them, let them be heard. And that would feel good.

As a yoga teacher I make an easy choice to be my best self. Anger begets anger, just like sorrow does sorrow and happiness - happiness. When we default to anger or irritability, we perpetuate the grasp of those destructive sensations in our lives. Don’t get me wrong, feeling the entire cycle of emotions is an essential part of being complete human beings, but getting stuck in the ones that drag us down is a problem.  This goes for sadness as well. When something painful happens, feel it fully – go to the depths, but then rise back up. Choose to surface. This is both liberating and empowering. Think of the sensations in your body and mind when you feel any particular emotion. What feels the worst? What feels best? What serves you most in your daily actions and interactions? Choose to constantly move toward that feeling, that emotion. Dedicate your day to it. Your week.

All week, my experiment has been surprisingly smooth. It has actually been easier to not succumb to negativity in that my mood stays balanced, my interactions graceful. I feel happy. But still, it is a practice. So try it. Begin like this:

Inhale into anything that feels stuck or blocked inside your body and mind.

Exhale whatever is not serving you.

Repeat this as many times as you need.

And then choose happiness. Again. And again. And again.

It’s like answering to the universe. And answering to the universe opens up the vastness of your heart.