Love and Other Cleaning Products

Ah, faithful reader! So glad you’re here. Things have been a little crazy lately.

A toxic roommate situation back home has me crashing with my guy at his place in the city. I also quit my troublesome full time job without having something solid lined up, so I’m scampering around between part time gigs while I search for more meaningful, stable work.

Despite everything being up in the air, I’m not complaining. I intentionally pulled the rug out from under myself! It’s an expression of wakefulness to change the patterns that no longer serve us. It’s freedom at its best. I’m opening up space for situations that are more in accord with what I find to be true and valuable.

That said, being out of an apartment and a job has obviously been cause for some worry. What’s magical, though, is that less than a year ago, this kind of turmoil probably would have rendered me a weepy mess. Nowadays I feel pretty confident about my choices, even if they are throwing me into uncertain circumstances. What has changed?

For one, I know where to look for support. The people I’m closest to at this wondrous point are the ones who don’t necessarily think they know best. They aren’t looking to save me, and they don’t press me with advice. Instead, they offer their experience and leave it to me to make decisions for myself. And no matter what I decide to do, they offer me love. We share meals and hugs, and set aside distractions in order to give each other our full attention.

My truest friends show me, by encouragement and example, that I have the wisdom and courage to listen deeply and follow my own path. I’m grateful to these people, and I don’t invest much energy in those who can’t meet me this way. This is a big change in my relationship paradigm. Maybe it goes without saying that my posse has shrunken…a lot. But I’m totally okay with that.

Another reason I feel grounded is that I meditate every day, which tends to put a cork in my drama-hole.

You might think that sitting around on a cushion while your life is in apparent shambles is not the right course of action. Maybe the better thing to do would be to toil relentlessly until I come up with a solution to my problems.


On the other hand, my mind keeps pretty busy at problem-solving whether I sit or not. Meditating just keeps it from going into emotional overdrive and blowing a gasket, so to speak.

So much of our mental energy is wasted on being afraid. Am I doing the right thing? What if this doesn’t work out the way I want it to? The irony is that all that agonizing just keeps us from being able to give full attention to where we’re at. It’s easy to get caught up in anti-fantasies about all the wrong turns we haven’t even made yet.

I bring my focus out of my mind and into my body, inhabiting the reality of my senses. On their own, thoughts have no substance, so they’re almost impossible to work with. Physical sensations, however, are tangible. I ask, How does this anxiety feel? A tightening in the chest, tension in the back of my neck, jitters in my tummy. I keep coming back to my senses, remembering again and again to live in my body.

Some ways that I come back to reality: I practice yoga, eat a nourishing meal, clean the shoebox-sized space I’m sharing with my boyfriend, or go for a walk or a bike ride. By working with my actual, physical being – which is not only my body, but the space I inhabit – I allow there to be some room around my thoughts. I don’t ignore what’s going on in my mind, but I don’t let it distract me from where I am.

It takes a lot of trust to step out of the storyline and just be here, and I don’t always succeed at it. Sometimes I definitely get caught up in feeling angry at my jerk roommate. I get homesick for my own space, or anxious that I won’t be able to pay my bills.

But if I do catch myself in the path of a mental avalanche, I can step out of its way and watch the feelings as they pass. If we can relate to our thoughts without letting them take us away, we can endure - and even grow - in each moment, even (especially) when there's discomfort.

When we are supported by love, and our mind and body are on the same page, we can move more wisely into the next moment, and the next moment, and the next moment. The future is not a freight train full of promise or despair heading straight for us. We're already on board.

Nadi Shodhana: the Breath that Balances

How often do you pause to notice that you are breathing? Taking oxygen and giving carbon dioxide is the most basic exchange between our internal and external worlds - a perpetual, life-sustaining dialogue between us and our environment - and yet so few of us even remember that we are doing it.

I’ve described the breath as an object of meditation, because it’s a constant, natural flow that you can bring your attention to again and again. Remembering the breath is a good way to step back from the chaos of our mental movie reel, because breath is the epitome of naturalness; it is so silent and simple compared to the rambling, complicated tangle of the mind.

In yoga, breath is prana, life energy. We forget that death is as simple as the inability to breathe. If we are willing to look at our human bodies honestly, we become aware of the fact that the number of breaths we are privileged to is actually limited. It is easy to forget. We could just keep ignoring the breath, sucking and blowing air in and out without giving it another thought, but I think that would be leaving a great resource untapped. I think the breath is a valuable tool for waking up to life in each moment.

Alternate nostril breathing, or nadi shodhana (“channel-clearing breath”) is a great place to start. I recently learned that our nostrils take turns breathing. Though we breathe through both nostrils, one is usually more active than the other, and they naturally switch every few minutes or so.

Breathing through the left nostril activates the parasympathetic nervous system. The PNS stimulates the right hemisphere of the brain, increases spatial performance, lowers blood sugar levels, and decreases the heart rate. Its effect is relaxation.

On the other side, the right nostril draws energy into the sympathetic nervous system, which stimulates our fight-or-flight response. The SNS rouses the left hemisphere of the brain, increases verbal performance, increases blood sugar levels, and increases the heart rate.

In short, the PNS (stimulated by the left nostril) relaxes us, and the SNS (stimulated by the right nostril) enlivens us.

The pranayama technique of alternate nostril breathing balances these channels. On the one hand, it’s calming, because it requires us to drop our mental storylines and focus on breathing. On the other, it also brings harmony to our nervous systems, like ballasts on a rocking ship. Think of it this way: the ship rocks because the sea is rough. You can’t force the ocean to give you smooth sailing, but you can equip yourself with practices that give you better balance. Try this practice as a prelude to meditation, or in any moment when you feel out-of-whack...

Your right hand is used to control the flow of breath through the nostrils. Sit in a comfortable position with upright posture. Block the left nostril with your ring finger and inhale smoothly through the right.

At the top of your inhale, release the left nostril and block the right nostril with your thumb. Exhale through the left nostril.

Inhale through the left nostril. When you reach the top of the inhale, switch nostrils again, exhaling through the right.

Repeat the cycle at least 3-5 times. If your mind wanders and you lose track of what you're doing, just gently notice and come back. I like to practice this breathing technique for 5 minutes or so before I sit meditation.

Special thanks to my teacher, Ken Lidden at ABT Yoga, not only for showing me this technique and being an all-around awesome instructor, but also for taking these pictures with my phone!

Life is Short, Stop Acting Adultish

Being stared at by a baby is one of the most fortunate things that can happen to you.

Have you had this experience? A child on public transit gazes at you unblinkingly. It is fearless. It has never seen a You before, so there is a lot to take in. The clarity of a stare so straightforward is disarming.

Children get absorbed in the simple act of looking because they are actually seeing. Whereas an adult will take in your appearance and immediately run down a subconscious checklist of comparisons and judgments, the child is without grounds to make snap assumptions. It looks at you openly because it is innocent. It looks at you out of sheer curiosity.

Understatement of the century: It would be nice if everyone made it a practice to view each other like children.

I keep a photograph of myself at age 4 on my wall as a reminder. I see child-me, wired with inquiry and honesty, and consider whether or not I am doing that dear little person any justice.

I ask myself: Have I allowed my world to get smaller even as I’ve grown bigger?

The way children see is what Zen master Shunryu Suzuki calls beginner’s mind: “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.” Purity (or goodness, or emptiness, however you want to talk about it) is natural. We were all children once.

In other words, concepts like shame were taught to us. This neurotic way we have of viewing each other - going back and forth between criticizing others and feeling sorry for ourselves - is not inherent.

Which also means that this nagging impulse to acquire more, to achieve more, to prove something, to get some ground under our feet, is a cosmic joke. It's like at some point during adolescence, they gave us blinders to wear for the race to the grave. That's not to say there's no point to achievement. That's not to say we shouldn't bother trying to live well.

But there is a natural clarity under all the insanity, and I'm disturbed by how few people return to it as a space where they can ask themselves what this "living well" even means. Imagine the wisdom that would arise if we were to combine our adult intelligence with a child's clarity of perception!

Meditation helps us come back to that openness. We can live more fully if we take up the discipline of re-learning the open-eyed, open-hearted way we were as kids. If we take the time to really pay attention to everything that's happening around us, I think we'll find ourselves fascinated again.

There was a time I ate a peach after a good long sit, and it was so good it brought tears to my eyes! This is pure joy: appreciating what is right here.

Living fully does not mean checking items off a Bucket List so that we can smile on our deathbed at the fact that we base-jumped El Capitan, dyed our hair purple, made six figures, or drove a loud motorcycle.

Living fully means experiencing our life for what it is, and not what we think it ought to be. It asks us to put aside the ego we've spent so much time growing. It asks us to remember that we are going to die, so the sooner we can stop deluding ourselves, running from one distraction to the next, the better.

Find some pictures of yourself as a child. Gently consider whether or not you have donned some tunnel vision over the years. Can you remember what it was like to be a blank canvas?

That's a good start. More on this another time.

How to Live Forever

My great-grandfather’s funeral last week was overflowing; my cousins and I had to stand in the aisles. The room was a-buzz as both young and old got up to share stories. We laughed and cried without discretion. We cajoled one another, embraced, and hollered our support. It was the best funeral I’ve ever been to, because it wasn’t a sermon so much as an untempered dialogue. It made me remember that the root of both grief and joy is love. In that crowd it was tangible.

Great Grampy’s legacy is assured because he asserted his love with countless kind gestures. When my aunt announced that she wanted to be a mechanic as a child, he gave her a set of tools and asked her to help him fix his truck. When I was little, he would point to a picture of me and ask “Do you know who that girl is? I love her!” Every time any of us visited he would stand us in the same spot in the kitchen and snap a Polaroid. I imagine he had stacks of Polaroids somewhere that you could use like flipbooks to watch us grow.

The stories extend backwards and forwards in time. The oldest grew in light of his loving presence, and pass that love down the line to the youngest. I wonder – who taught Great Grampy to love? And who taught those people to love? And those people? How much cumulative loving intention throughout the generations of people resulted in a man so radiant with it?

The effort of understanding it is like seeing a ripple on the edge of a lake and trying to return to the point where a hand touched the water. Love - that sublime energy that enlivens us with joy and sorrow - carries humankind through the ages, like a disease without antidote. One sincere gesture lifetimes ago can still be felt among the living, and the gestures are countless. This is our lineage: our actions have vaster consequences than we can see.

I feel the gravity of my heart. We express ourselves spatially and temporally because we’re bound by matter, these bodies that wither and pass. But the currents that run through us are beyond time and space. Our intentions radiate into the lives of the people we encounter, triggering chain reactions beyond our comprehension. What kind of ripples are you sending down the line? Are you fully open to being a conduit for the love you receive?

Walt Whitman writes:

What do you think has become of the young and old men?
And what do you think has become of the women and children?

They are alive and well somewhere,
The smallest sprout shows there is really no death,
And if ever there was it led forward life, and does not wait at the end to arrest it,
And ceas’d the moment life appear’d.

All goes onward and outward, nothing collapses,
And to die is different from what anyone supposed, and luckier.

The night before the funeral I dreamed he was laid out at my grandparents’ house. The rest of my family was sad and frantically busy. I watched them leave the room as they rushed off to get ready for the funeral, and when I turned back to look at him, he was sitting up, smiling at me.

His blue eyes shone. I said, “I thought you were gone.” He shrugged and said, “But I’m right here!” We laughed, and I said, “You’re going to freak everyone out if you are awake like this at your funeral.” The idea cracked us up. I looked to the door to see everyone rushing back into the room, and when I turned back, Grampy was laying down with his eyes closed again. He had the slightest grin on his face, as though he were keeping a beautiful secret. That's when I woke up.

The Prophet: On Wearing Makeup

And Almitra said, "Speak to us of wearing makeup." And he leaned towards the women, and looked lovingly upon their upturned faces.

"Some of you paint your faces, and say you would not leave the house without the concealment of makeup. Others of you never augment your natural beauty, and say you need not hide or lie behind such a false facade.

"I say unto both, be not ashamed of your radiance, which is neither diminished nor augmented by the costume of makeup.

"If you would use makeup, apply it in celebration of your beauty, which is God's beauty. When you make a caricature of perfect health, you celebrate the euphoria of the human form.

"Your blush is but an imitation of the flushed cheeks of lively exertion. Your mascara but serves as a way-sign to the radiance of your eyes, those sacred portals where the heart greets the world.

"Be not self-conscious about your urge to adorn your features, but know also that the glory of your form does not subsist in adornment. Let the application of paints be a ceremony of gratitude for what you have, for the poor in spirit will not find themselves made beautiful by makeup.

"Look upon yourself as a mother looks upon her peacefully sleeping child, knowing the true meaning of beauty with gratitude and tenderness. Without this reverence for oneself as spirit born in flesh, one may as well decorate a corpse."


(My amendment to The Prophet by Kahlil Gibran)

The entry I meant to write

I was going to take time tonight to write about some things I learned this week, but instead I rode my bicycle to the lighthouse point, sat up on a rock wall, and looked at the moon.

Make Bread, Not War

Yesterday morning I got up before the crack of dawn, put on a pot of coffee, and spontaneously started baking bread. When my roommate got up and came into the kitchen to find me kneading dough in my pajamas, eyes still half shut, he asked if I was stressed about something. My first reaction was to get a little defensive. "No, I'm just baking bread. We were out of bread."

This week I gave my notice at the bookstore and started working full time with a start-up venture. I'm excited about it, even though my new job involves a lot of sitting behind a computer screen. This week I've been confronting a new fear: that my creativity will shrivel up and die under the pressure of a 40-hour-a-week office job.

This is an interesting fear to pay attention to. It gets me up in the morning so I have time to play before work.

I came up with a whole wheat molasses oat bread, which tastes pretty delicious considering it's the first yeasted bread I've ever made. I followed a recipe from the Tassajara Bread Book, which is a resource I would highly recommend if you'd like some kind, thorough guidance and creative recipes.

Here is a brief version of the recipe I used. It makes two loaves.

3 cups lukewarm water (doesn't feel hot or cold on your wrist)
1 1/2 Tbs dry yeast
1/4 cup sweetening (honey, molasses, or brown sugar)
1 cup dry milk (optional)
2 eggs, beaten (optional)
4 cups whole wheat flour (substitute 1 or more cups unbleached white flour if desired)

4 tsp salt
1/3 cup oil (or butter or margarine)
3 cups additional whole wheat flour
1 cup whole wheat flour for kneeding

Dissolve the yeast in the water.
Stir in sweetening and dry milk.
Stir in eggs.
Stir in 4 cups of whole wheat flour to form a thick batter.
Beat well with a spoon (100 strokes).
Let rise 45 mins.
Fold in the salt and oil.
Fold in an additional 3 cups of flour until the dough comes away from the sides of the bowl.
Knead on a floured board, using more flour as needed to keep the dough from sticking to the board, about 10 minutes, until the dough is smooth.
Let rise 50-60 minutes until doubled in size.
Punch down.
Let rise 40-50 minutes until doubled in size again (optional).
Shape into loaves and place into oiled pans.
Let rise 20-25 minutes.
Brush tops with egg white/water mixture. Sprinkle with oats if desired.
Bake in 350 degree oven for 1 hour, or until golden brown.
Remove from pans to cool.

Happy baking!

Vast Spaces Pt 2: Greeting Achy Bones and Baggage Like the Rising Sun

"I want to describe myself
like a painting that I studied
closely for a long, long time,
like a word I finally understood,
like the pitcher of water I use everyday..."
- Rainer Maria Rilke (read the whole poem here)

Most of the time I'm a morning person. I wake to music, take a hot shower, and try to remember to thank each part of me as I wash it, paying special attention to whatever part is particularly achy that morning. If I waitstaffed at a catering gig the night before, for example, it'll be my feet: "Thank you feet, oh good little feet. You carry me so far. What humble, useful feet I have."

Back in my room I light an incense, make my bed, open the curtains, practice yoga asanas, and meditate, but not necessarily in that order. Each day necessitates its own rhythm. Tuning in, I re-introduce myself to the guests lodging in my consciousness, and relax into the mode of a most solicitous hostess: "Anxiety, why are you wearing coat hangers for earrings, running over the neighbor's cat with the lawn mower? Come have a seat here and tell me about it. Or keep running amuck like that, that's fine too, but know the offer still stands. I'm just going to pay attention and breathe."

In the kitchen, I make oatmeal and turn on the faucet for the cat to drink from. I sit at the table with my breakfast and write somewhere around three pages, letting whatever's on my mind spill into my journal with as little filter as possible. Among other topics of interest (joys, dreams from the night before, hopes, interactions, epiphanies), I write about those nuissances, my fears. A wise friend of mine once said that naming your fears declaws them.

Things I'm afraid of, as far as I've noticed: being misunderstood, being confined by an idea, being more of a burden than a help, not writing anything that people will want to read, and a whole array of issues having to do with money and the lack thereof.

Phew! Now you know. It's a relief, like shining a flashlight into a dark corner where you thought something really horrible was lurking, and it turns out to be an overweight poodle, just sitting there with its tongue hanging out, crapping all over your hopes and dreams. Which is kind of nasty, sure, but nothing you can't laugh at and clean up after. Take it outside and play some fetch, for God's sake.

Then I drink a cup of coffee and read for twenty minutes or so.

Most mornings, by the time I head to work after a couple hours of glorious alone time, I have an idea of where I'm at. On good days I can actually absorb what's going on around me. I can experience the primal joy of sensory overload that comes with sharpened attention. I have the mental space to laugh in sticky moments. On bad days I notice, "ah, yes, I feel funky today" and ask what I can do to offer myself the most support. More often than not, I'm more tuned in to what's going on with other people, too. I'm learning to be a better listener.

It seems like a paradox at first, especially in a culture where we can be made to feel guilty for taking time for ourselves (I think this especially pertains to women, who are more often expected to put their families' interests before their own). But I would argue that this variety of self-absorption is sacred. When we take the time to hang out and be real with our selves - even if it means we have to get up two hours before the sun - we break down the defenses that keep us from connecting with others. Alone time makes us better company, because we can't offer anyone anything that we aren't able to offer ourselves first: attention (which is another word for love), patience, honesty, trust, a mind open to possibility.

Just think of how much kinder a place the world would be if we'd all just confront our poodles. What have you done for your self today? What will you do tomorrow?

Vast Spaces

Earlier in the week I woke up before the sun to send two friends off at Logan airport. On the solo drive home it occurred to me, as it has so many times before, that loneliness, though saddening or irritating at times, begs you to know yourself. I hold it dear.

It looked like dusk as the sun rose in an overcast sky. NPR news was quiet on the radio. At first everything I passed gave the impression of turning inward - the run-down commercial lots unopened at that hour of the morning, the streetlights shutting off - but I realized that that was just how I felt. It's the middle of my 24th New England winter, a season when introspection comes naturally. But knowing what comes next, I also feel optimistic.

Soon the pavement will be washed of salt and turn black again, with a few more potholes to show for its trials. Soon the harbor down the street from my house will fill with boats, and people will shed their knitted goods like reptiles shed dead skin. Last night I dreamed I was planting seedlings in a garden. Spring is already happening in my mind, though it is still a couple months away.

I felt it viscerally on the drive home: isolation, exhaustion, and hope. A poignant emotional sensation seemingly spawned from thin air.

To get back to my point about loneliness: the frustrating thing about being human, and a writer especially, is that no matter how many words I use I'll never be able to convey the whole truth of that morning drive home. You will still only have a snapshot of my experience, because you can't possibly know all the things that led up to it. A whole lifetime has gone into crafting this complex filter of associations, where each new stimulus inspires a recollection of things already felt. We are fundamentally alone in the way we experience the world. No one else can see through our eyes.

In the novel Gilead by Marilyn Robinson, the protagonist (an old preacher in rural Iowa) expresses this sentiment very eloquently:

"In every important way we are such secrets from each other, and I do believe there is a separate language in each of us, also a separate aesthetics and a separate jurisprudence. Every single one of us is a little civilization built on the ruins of any number of preceding civilizations, but with our own variant notions of what is beautiful and what is acceptable - which, I hasten to add, we generally do not satisfy and by which we struggle to live. We take fortuitous resemblances among us to be actual likeness, because those around us have also fallen heir to the same customs, trade in the same coin, acknowledge, more or less, the same notions of decency and sanity. But all that really just allows us to coexist with the inviolable, untraversable, and utterly vast spaces between us."

I think learning to value our inherent solitude is essential, because if the self is the only person we can ever really know - and even that is a huge task - then we must learn to pay close attention to the weather inside. I try to find time every day to be alone, to poke amongst the ruins of my private civilization and see how they serve as a springboard for the way I carry myself in the world.

More on this theme next time...

If I could give the world a mix tape

Here is a playlist I hope will make you feel good.
Happy Valentine's Day!

On Being an OM-nivore

I read this article in the Times today about the role of food in the American yoga community. The debate about vegetarianism is ongoing – can you really live on the yogic path if you eat meat? One of the first moral principles listed by Patanjali in his Yoga Sutras (one of the foundational texts of yoga, dating back about 2000 years) is that of ahimsa, or non-violence. It means not causing harm to other sentient beings.

It’s unfortunate that the condition of the meat industry is such that we can’t eat meat with a clearer conscience. The result of our meat consumption is violence done not only to the animals, but also the environment, the laborers, and our own bodies. It is no wonder, then, that some avid meat-eaters feel a need to defend their decisions with an attitude of “I don’t give a shit, vegetarians are pussies.”

That said, I love bacon. And cheeseburgers. And cheeseburgers with bacon. These are temptations that my body doesn’t need the same way it needs leafy greens, though, so I only eat them every now and then. That’s my decision. A monthly cheeseburger tastes better than a weekly cheeseburger, anyways.

I wholeheartedly encourage anyone who wants to take up a meat-free diet. It does make a difference. For the rest of us, I’m going to make my usual argument: If we make choices mindfully, staying open to the truth of our actions, this awareness will contribute not only to our own well-being, but to the well-being of the world at large.

You eat to fuel yourself, but what are you fueling yourself towards? Everyday you take nourishment, likely shipped from far-away places for your consumption. Chances are there was some suffering involved in the process of providing you this food. What do you give in return?

At Thich Naht Hahn’s monastery in France, they recite the following Five Contemplations before every meal. Although this particular mindfulness practice stems from a Zen tradition, it is not unlike the Christian tradition of “saying grace.” I’ve posted them on the wall beside my kitchen table as a daily reminder that the ability to eat – no matter what we are eating - is not as simple or mundane as we might take for granted.

This food is a gift from the whole universe – the earth, the sky, and much hard work.

May we live in a way that is worthy of this food.

May we transform our unskillful states of mind, especially that of greed.

May we eat only foods that nourish us and prevent illness.

May we accept this food for the realization of the way of understanding and love.

Bon appetit!

Yoga as a Creative Act

Being creative is absolutely necessary to being well. It's in our nature to create. We have the opportunity to make something from whatever comes our way - whether it be music from an instrument, a meal from wholesome ingredients, or peace from chaos.

Sometimes I get caught up in my to-do list. I don't trust my inner child to be responsible, so I don't let her out. Who has time to cook when the sink is already full of dishes? Who has time to write a letter to an old friend when the bills need to be paid? But finding how to cope with the stresses of adult life, balancing what you want to do with what you need to do, is a creative process in itself.

I see yoga as a central creative act, a jumping-off place for all other endeavors, because a spacious quality of mind comes with regular practice. My thoughts refocus, setting all worrisome distractions aside in order to arrive in the present moment. To-do lists dissolve in the face of a challenging balance like Half Moon pose, because you generally can't balance on one foot with your limbs reaching in all directions and let your brain chatter away at the same time. Yoga cultivates control of the mind.

When you can focus your attention on the wisdom of the body, the physical sensations of the asanas (poses) become a joy to explore. I'm made aware of my aliveness. As I expand my body with breath, which is also called prana (life-energy), I create length, alignment, strength, and balance - a sound physical foundation to work from in all the other aspects of my life.

In this joyful, silent space where the mind is stilled and the body is nourished, creative solutions arise organically. It is a time to pause, go inward, and see where you are at.

Support Your Fish, Open Your Heart

In my practice (life + attention), I've found that the heart is more than an organ pumping blood. It is an energetic storehouse for personal truths.

It amazes me how vividly the mind manifests in that mushy spot beneath the sternum. When the mind is excited, the heart races. When the mind is at peace, the heart feels warm and expansive. When the mind experiences a sense of loss, the term "heartache" becomes irritatingly true to form.

If we tune into what's going on in our bodies, we often get clues about the things in our life that need to be addressed. It behooves us to pay closer attention to the heart, this poignant center of the mind-body connection.

Lately I've discovered that I hunch my shoulders forward in times of emotional upheaval, as though to protect my heart by literally closing my body around it. This creates a lot of tension in the upper back and chest. Some people live with this kind of tension for years, hunching their shoulders to subconsciously delay the healing process. I urge you to be compassionate with yourself, and try the following pose to keep your heart open.

This is a supported version of Matsyasana or Fish Pose. It opens the chest and releases tension in the upper back. This pose can be used for emotional healing, or just to correct bad posture (though I would argue that the two are usually related).

Position a support of some kind under your back, below your heart.

If you are pretty new to this kind of thing (like my friend Paul, pictured below) use a rolled blanket. Another folded blanket or cushion under your head is recommended to prevent compression in the back of the neck. Keep your knees bent to support your lower back.

If you are a little more advanced in a yoga practice, try using a rolled mat (as I am pictured) or a block. If you are a regular practitioner, you may not need a support under your head to keep the back of your neck long, and you may also be able to lengthen your legs away from you without putting strain on your lower back. Just do what is comfortable.Whatever variation of this pose suits you, breathe deeply. With each inhalation, imagine your heart opens wide. On the exhale, fully let go. As your chest opens, your back melts over the support. Stay with this - breathing, opening, and relaxing - for at least five minutes. Sometimes I do it for 20. In my experience with this pose, the more tension you release, the more you will see where you are still holding on.

At the end of this practice, carefully remove the support from under you and hug your knees to your chest. If it is comfortable, bring your head to your knees to round out your back.

If you want to share your experiences with this pose or if you have any questions, feel free to leave a comment or email me at jadetweston (at) gmail (dot) com. I honor your intention to do something kind for yourself.

Namaste.

Breathing down the mountain

I went skiing for the second time in my life on New Year's Day.

Warmest thanks to my friend Colin, who has skied for almost as long as he's walked. Colin continually pushes me to try things that are new and challenging, and then maintains an almost inhuman level of patience while I cop a bad attitude about it. At the end of our adventures together - usually while I tend my wounds (road rash, aches and bruises, near-hypothermia, damaged ego) - I realize how much I'm actually capable of enduring. We should all be so lucky to have friends that make us meet our edges. I try not to sound sarcastic while extending this gratitude, though it is sometimes difficult.

Putting me on skis was Colin's idea. First I was excited to go. Then I saw the mountain and got nervous. Then I fell down the mountain and got frustrated. But by the end of the day I was genuinely enjoying myself.


Being bad at skiing taught me a few lessons.

Firstly, my lack of patience (which usually reveals itself when I'm doing something that I am not particularly good at) is laughably unhelpful. At the beginning of the day I actually accused Colin of not having any patience for me, but he politely pointed out that I was projecting. Then I noticed it again and again; when I felt I was about to fall, my mind would suddenly flood with self-damning babble: I should be better at this, that four-year-old on a leash is better at this, why is this mountain so big, why is no one else falling down, I'm probably going to break both my legs, I should have worn a helmet.

The good thing about practicing yoga and meditation almost daily is that I picked up on these thought patterns pretty quickly. I saw them, and allowed them to happen while I pulled my attention to more important matters: namely, my movement and balance.

Think of this shift of attention as being similar to the way a loving parent ignores her child's temper tantrum. The wisdom-mind, which is grounded in the breath and the body, is the loving parent. The ego, which flails around on the vehicle of your thoughts, is the irritating child. Don't hit the child, just let it do its thing. If we approach our thoughts with this attitude of acceptance, without indulging or repressing them, they settle on their own.

I got better at skiing when I remembered to breathe. When you practice yoga, the movement of the breath accompanies the movement of the body. As I cruised down the mountain at a faster and faster pace, I tried to align my breath with my movement, beginning each inhale and exhale with each turn of my hips. When I could do this, my mind was quiet and the motion came naturally. I felt a little more graceful. If I thought about how I felt graceful, my skis would cross and I would tumble forward like a drunken Superman.

That was a big one to take off the mountain: I saw clearly that the mind's natural tendency is to detract from your experience of the present moment by cluttering it with thoughts. I knew this already, but trying to ski made it slapstick comedy.

If you can come back to the breath again and again, you will see how your monkey-mind starts to take the back burner. In its absence, your awareness is heightened and your sensory experience becomes more vivid. Activity is experienced in a way that is whole and visceral, as if each action were complete in itself.

Whether you are skiing, doing dishes, paying the bills, or driving, coming back to the breath is like being born back into reality. Sometimes we only catch glimpses of the world around us before the chatter picks up and we fall on our asses again. But from what I've seen in those instances of clarity, each moment is new.

Merry New Year

Ah, the holidays. There is something so refreshing about seeing them end.

This year is the first that I’ve had my own place, so I took it upon myself to find my own meaningful ways of cozying up for the beginning of winter. I think a lot of Christmas traditions are empty ceremony, and I've definitely had my fair share of holiday cynicism, but being a Scrooge and shunning Christmas as a whole doesn’t really suit me. I believe there is value in ritual as long as it is carried out mindfully.

I decided to see how I could adopt Christmas in a way that nurtures my well-being, rather than decimating it by carrying on with all the commercially-mandated rigmarole. Here’s what I found enjoyable about the season this year:

+ Stringing cranberries and popcorn: This is a tradition I learned from my mum, and one I’ll definitely keep. It involves a certain measure of patience, and the result is a decorative garland that is pretty and simple. Not to mention biodegradable.

+ Hanging real pine garland over my windows and doors: It’s an inexpensive way of being able to enjoy that comforting pine smell without all the fuss of a tree, and they don’t look out-of-place or depressing if they are still up after New Years.

+ Putting mistletoe up over the bathroom mirror: If you want to put the moves on someone in a doorway, just do it. There shouldn’t have to be some little plant dangling up there for an excuse. It can, however, remind you to love yourself every morning while you’re brushing your teeth. Don't accept this as an act of vanity; 'tis is the season for spreading the love, and it starts at home.

+ Avoiding the mall: Just about everyone on my list this year either got books, or things I made. I enjoy the challenge of the creative process when it is met with the motivation to brighten someone’s day. My favorite gift to give this year was a portrait I painted of my father in a bear suit, which got a little laugh out of him – exactly what I wanted for Christmas. Mix CD's and knit goods are also very sincere.

There were also a couple of things I learned didn’t work for me:

- Mulled wine and roasted chestnuts: Maybe I did a poor job cooking them, but neither was very palatable. Next year I’m sticking to hot rum-and-cider and gingerbread.

- Tacky decorations: I hung the bright red stockings that my grandmother gave to my roommate and I. She also gave us place mats and pot holders with images of Santa Claus and a snowman holding hands. Very cute. While I enjoyed the daily reminder of how sweet my grandmother is, they became a bit of an eyesore. I took them down after a week. Sorry, Gram. (Though the pot holders stayed – they won their place in my kitchen by being practical).

- Sticking around on Christmas day: I enjoy celebrating Christmas with my family on Christmas Eve, and sharing gifts and breakfast on Christmas morning, but by the time the afternoon hits it seems like everyone’s energy level drops through the basement. Next year I’ll avoid sharing in the communal lethargy by driving north to Maine or Vermont to enjoy some solitude as my own Part Two to the holiday. I’m finally set on the fact that there is nothing wrong with wanting to be alone on Christmas.

At the end of all of it, a new decade begins. I am grateful for the fact that Christmas, a holiday so concerned with the past, is balanced each year by the immediate onslaught of a holiday that encourages us to look into the future.

Happy New Year! May your 2010 be full of blessings, and may you find the wisdom it takes to be aware of all of them.