More on Yoga and Religion

http://www.nst.com.my/Current_News/NST/Thursday/NewsBreak/20081030151705/Article/index_html

 

Oftentimes, I think religions see themselves as changing a person from without.  People who are lucky will take that change and begin seeing a change from within.  Yoga changes people from within.  Maybe that is one explanation why some religions feel threatened versus their members practicing yoga.

 

John has female friends and I have male friends.  Our abilites to grow as individuals strengthen our marriage.  I think that goes for everything in this world.  Anything that stifles me or tries to compartmentalize me brings my growth as a person to a halt, and although those things might help me feel better shortterm, they have never lasted longterm.  The most ideal religion for me would be one where my individuality is respected and indeed celebrated.

Is Mindfulness Good for your Brain?

As I was showering this morning I thought about the towel.  I had the towel hung behind the shower door, and my bicycling clothes from last week hung on the towel rack to dry.  When I moved the bicycling clothes from the towel rack into my bureau, I didn't realize that I could move my towel from the door back over to the towel rack.  As I stood looking at the scene, I could feel the gears in my brain reorganizing things so that the towel was on the towel rack again.

 

This is a minor thing in the grand scheme of my day.  But the reason I mention it is because I could stop and observe myself as I worked this infinitessimally trivial thing out.  If I could be conscious of doing this, then I could expand it to being conscious of the rest of my world and the way I interact with it.

 

One of the books I listen to at night is a book about the Buddhist precepts.  One of the things that he says is that we can view our bodies as physical manifestations that we're temporarily being given control over.  That struck me as an interesting concept.  If I view my body as a thing outside of who "I" am, then I can separate the "me" from the "it", which also separates the "me" from the thoughts in "its" brain.  How does that help me?  I guess mainly that I can project a loving relationship onto this body as I care for it -- feed it, exercise it, do the things I need to do to keep it healthy --  and I can remember that when "it" is sick and unhealthy that there is an "I" underneath that is a constant.  The concept is fuzzy, and for all I know, I completely misinterpreted what he said, but still, it got me to thinking.....

 

Yoga and the Child Within Me

I've been doing 30 minutes of the "Power Yoga" Rodney Yee DvD in the mornings.  I always follow it up with a sitting meditation.  The more familiar and proficient I get at doing the 30 minutes of this DvD, the more intense the workout is getting for me.  This morning, in my follow-on meditation, I found myself sinking effortlessly into a state of perfect calm and contentment.  It felt like brilliant sunshine, and I celebrated it by dedicated my practice to my mother, mother-in-law, a dying uncle, and my boss at work.  I accepted the suffering that each is going through at the moment, and gave each a silent offering of the peace that I was feeling.  It was a very nice meditation.

 

Afterwards, I went into the bathroom to take my morning shower and noticed that I had a bottle of a new type of shampoo, and I felt the child inside of me jump with glee "wheeee, a new shampoo, how fun!".

 

Yoga is bringing back the child in me :)

The Question of Yoga and Religion

I've been thinking about the question "Is Yoga a Religion" since I read the article about the school that had issues with yoga being taught because they didn't want some "cult" religion to be taught to the kids.  It took me by surprise.

 

I can't deny, though, that I do feel very spiritual when I do tai chi, or yoga, or even go to holistic practitioners or natural foods stores.  Why?  Because those things make me feel better.  When I feel physically healthy and alive, then my mental outlook changes, and I can't help but have a sense of deep spirituality.  I feel that spirituality in the muscles of my body when I do my yoga stretches, or when I am thinking about my yoga body as I move about my day and check my breathing.

 

I can't tell whether this means that yoga is a religion for me.  Is it the end result that defines a religion or the path towards that end?

Bicycling, dog training, Extended Side Angle, and Building Post-Mastectomy Arm Strength

Last week a friend at work told me about his son.  His son is 7 years old, and an avid mountain biker.  My friend was telling me how much he's learned from this little 7 year-older, who has an intuitive sense about how to shift his weight and maneuver his bike through difficult trails.

 

I've thought about this over the past week.  I spend a good portion of every single day studying my body and muscles.  "Am I standing correctly?  Is my back relaxed and wide when I'm walking?  Am I breathing?  Is my neck tense?"  I seem to have lost my ability to handle my body "intuitively".  How is it that I need to relearn the very seemlingly basic forms of standing upright and walking?  In that same vein, how is it that my body doesn't intuitively understand what it needs in order for me to maintain good health?

 

Yesterday John and I had a gorgeous bike ride around our neighborhood.  The weather was warm, and the road was covered with leaves.  We laughed at a small poodle sitting in his yard.  The first time we passed her, she barked at us.  Second time we passed, she barked, but after we passed her.  Third time we passed, she didn't bat an eyelash.  How easy it is to train a dog :)

 

I bought a Rodney Yee DvD called "Power Yoga", and I've been doing the first 1/2 hour every morning.  Thankfully it's not as hard as I anticipated.  It's not easy either.  I like that you are thrown directly into the workout without long, tedious explanations.  I feel like that 1/2 hour is well-spent, doing one move after another.  It's a perfect complement to the "Moving Towards Balance: 8 weeks of Yoga with Rodney Yee" book.  The DvD starts off gradually with the Mountain, Standing Backbend, Forward Bend, Lunge, Downward Facing Dog, Upward Facing Dog, etc, and then works up to Warrior 2, and then Extended Side Angle, and then Triangle, and then sends you through different combinations of doing one after the other.  It's very nice.

 

I smiled last night as I was doing my nightly "Moving Towards Balance: 8 weeks of Yoga with Rodney Yee" lesson.  The Triangle and Extended Side Angle poses in the lesson are so easy now that I'm doing them with the DvD in the mornings.  I still find the Extended Side Angle to be one of the most challenging because of the arm limitations from my cancer surgery and my back pain.

 

Speaking of which....  one of the new things I've been adding lately is handstand.  I've been doing that twice a day for the past couple of weeks.  Just in the doorway for now, though, and only for 5-10 seconds at a time.  I have a long ways to go to build up my arm strength.  After breast cancer surgery I was told to never lift anything more than 5 pounds for the rest of my life or I would get lymphedema in my arm.  So, for the past 7 years, I've done nothing at all with my arm -- babying it obssessively.  Yoga is teaching me that I never had to do that.  The medical establishment still hasn't figured out how to heal people in the true sense of the word.  99% of the population will never study yoga or any of the holistic practices, so 99% of all breast cancer survivors will go the rest of their lives never picking up more than 5 pounds.

Looking to Where the Teacher is Pointing, and not to the Teacher

I've been thinking the past few days about spiritual leaders and their responsibilities.  The reason is that I googled "Rodney Yee" and discovered an article about his extramarital affair.  I found myself filled with disappointment that this had to happen to me yet again.  It seems that this has happened to me over and over in my life.  I become engrossed following someone who is resonsibile for a life transformation in me, and they turn out to be human.  Then I become disenchanted with the person/group, get a bad attitude and leave.

 

In thinking about this, I've realized something.  If I can't forgive my "spiritual leaders" for being human, then who am I to forgive myself for being human.  After all, they are not saying that they're gods (and therefore perfect, by whoever's standards) by any means.  Now that I've been through this exact conundrum a handful of times and am older and wiser, I'm beginning to realize that this has nothing at all to do with them, it has to do with me, and my ability to look at the world through mature eyes.

 

In my own always-trying-to-find-a-spiritual-answer-to-everything way, I am seeing this as Rodney Yee's lesson to me.  It's an opportunity for me to learn.  I can walk away from my yoga book and never buy or look at another lesson by him, or I can continue with what I'm doing and continue to grow spiritually and physically and keep my eyes focused on the real goal, which is the thing that is at the end of the path that Rodney Yee and the rest of us are all on together -- the path to a place of peace and harmony and a world of tolerance and love for each other.

Goal for today: breathe

Yesterday my back killed me.  It was one of the very few days that I skipped my yoga.  I suppose it was from increased activity.  I was so busy, that at the end of the day I found myself collapsed in front of the TV, hardly able to keep my eyes open, my body was so tired and my back so achy.

 

As I was puttering around washing dishes and doing my various pre-bed preparations, I realized that I spend a lot of my time holding my breath.  It's most obvious when I'm washing the dishes.  The thought of my breath came to mind from watching a new DvD I bought called "Yoga Burn" by Rodney Yee.   He makes a point of using the word "breath" in almost every single one of the 3 billion or so poses that he demonstrates on that DvD.

 

I woke up this morning and thought about breathing, making a conscious effort to breathe into my lower back as I hiked the dogs, did my sun salutations, and got ready for work.  I noticed that thinking about breathing into my lower back affects my Downward Facing Dog pose quite a bit, in a subtle way.

 

My goal for today is to breathe.

There But for the Grace of God Go I

This morning I thought about my yoga practice and how it seems that yoga is so much more than placement of body and breathing and stretching. Once you get past the point where you're just trying to get somewhere even slightly close to what you're supposed to be doing, things relax, and then it becomes a process of listening to your body. As the weeks and months pass, I find myself reading the instructions in my "Finding Balance: Yoga in 8 weeks with Rodney Yee" book and getting into my pose, but after that, Rodney Yee seems to fade away and the dialog is between me and my body. And even more profoundly, most of the dialog is about my body talking to me.

The more I continue my yoga practice, the more I'm drawn towards the reality of how lacking most of our society is in finding empowerment to heal themselves. I find myself associating myself more and more with "fringe" groups -- the "touchy feely, spiritual, tree-hugging-mouse-saving" types who, like me, are in their middle age and continue to search for meaning, purpose, and explanations in their lives. The reason I'm drawn towards these groups is that I find that most everyone else is just plain stressed out and not doing a thing about it.

Having been there for most of my life, and seeing myself where I am today, I know that "that" part of myself that can become chronically stressed out can overwhelm the real person underneath. So the world never gets to see that person underneath when I'm in that state. My dialog, actions, activities, diet, addictions become a web of protective covering and escape and deception both to myself and to everyone around me. Seeing that in the people around me, I can say to myself "there but for the grace of God go I....". May I never lose my true self again

Sleeping with the Dalai Lama

I have lots of issues with sleep.  I find myself needing sleeping pills a lot more than I should because I have so many issues with hot flashes, which will often wake me up 4 or 5 times a night in panic.  I've been trying to figure out how to wean the sleeping pills from my life and how to learn to live with the hot flashes and still be able to function during the day after sleepless nights.

 

Last night I decided to play an audio book that I have called "How to Practice" by the Dalai Lama.

 

I haven't decided whether I consider myself deeply religious or not.  I think of deeply religous people as being people who have some sort of religious tenet that they follow.  One of the things that helped me get through my cancer treatments in 2001 was the meditation classes that I took from a Tibetan group called Rigpa.  I like the Buddhist view of the world where, instead of changing the world, they believe that first and foremost the person needs to change.  I guess in that respect, I would consider myself a Buddhist.  Tibet is a wonderful icon of what all of the world should be, I believe.  And I also believe that if there would be any hope at all of my helping to create that world, I would need to find a solid ground within myself first, so that I would have a firm foundation upon which to stand as I hold my hand out to the next person.

 

So, in that vein, I thought that playing a Dalai Lama audiobook might be something that could help get me through the night and hopefully instead of waking up agitated and unable to meditate and/or get back to sleep, having the Dalai Lama speaking to me and helping me to focus on that image of world of peace and simplicity, and finding it all within myself.

 

I woke up at 6:00 this morning, feeling completely rested.  I was amazed.

Finding a balance between what I can do and challenging myself to go one step further

I took 4 days off from my yoga to deal with a colonoscopy and recovery from its associated complications.  The last day before I took off, I did the first day of week 5: Twisting of "Moving Toward Balance: 8 Weeks of Yoga with Rodney Yee".  I remembered while I was doing this lesson that the last time that I did this weeks lessons, I really hated it.  The pretzel-like twists in his variation 3 of most of the new poses are completely out of the scope of my abilities, and if I try to do them, I find that I struggle with just getting my arms to go the right way.  And if I can finally manage to grab my toe (arm, waist, etc), my body is so contorted out of proper position, I find it frustrating and I begin resenting the lesson and secretly accusing Rodney of being unnecessarily difficult and tedious.

 

So...  after taking four days off, I had a hard time motivating myself to come back to week 5 of the book.  I played with whether I should begin at week 1 again, or take a break from Rodney Yee and do my Richard Hittleman "Yoga: 28 Day Exercise Plan" routines.

 

A part of me didn't really think that quitting at a time that I hate the lessons was a good time, so I negotiated with myself.  I told myself to just do the ones that I can do, and not even attempt to do the version 3 twists.  And maybe not even try to twist far, but instead of making it a tedious lesson, try to make it more meditative and gentle.

 

That's what I did last night.  I re-did lesson 1 of week 5 on Twisting, but I did the twists in a very gentle, contemplative way, concentrating on listening to my body and the things that Rodney says we should be thinking about:  Inhaling into the bottom of the twist, exhaling as I'm twisting and feeling my body rising, and then inhaling as I untwist slightly.

 

It turned out to be perfect for me to approach the lesson that way.  I felt very positive afterwards, and felt good that I could come up with a way to modify the lesson so that I could feel good about it.  I'm sure if I went back over the instructions in the book I'd find that somewhere along the line Rodney says to do that.  It's hard to find a balance between doing what I can do and challenging myself to go just one step further.

 

It felt wonderful to do the meditations after last nights lesson.  My "chi" was full of positive, relaxing energy, and I found myself at peace, even during the sitting-against-the-wall part of the meditation which I find to be hard.  Maybe the pillow in the small of the back helped.  This is the first sitting-against-the-wall instruction where Rodney has you using a pillow at the small of your back.  Or maybe it was just that my practice was so wonderful.