In between.

I woke up this morning (as I often do) in the place I can only refer to as "in between."  I wish I knew if the yogis -- or mystics of any kind -- have a name for this space of being.  These moments, waking up and not fully impeded by my conscious self, are some of the times when I feel most connected with the Other voice: the one that is not fully mine, but comes into being by way of me.  I get clear messages about myself, questions I've been pondering, or information about the nature of the world -- or thought, or being -- that I seem not to have access to as readily in my waking moments.

Is this making sense or do I need to be medicated?

So, having just registered for my first training workshop on my path to becoming a certified doula (!), I listened to the audio downloads that were made available to me last night.  That, and starting YTT this summer, I of course was full of a subtle and exciting sense of, THIS IS WHO I AM.

I found myself in the car on my way home talking to myself (I do this a lot, too), introducing myself as a yoga teacher, doula and photographer: these are the things I want to represent in life, because I'm proud of them, and in my years post-college doing (mostly) work I don't want to do, it's thrilling to feel like I'm on a path of self-actualization, having given myself permission to do and be just what my spirit is calling for.

But also, as I am keenly aware, the Universe has a way of putting you in your place.  One of my teachers, Lisa, says that the Universe gives us just what we need each and every day, and sometimes that finds you crying, confused and exploring all the neurotic facets of self.

Oh.  Just me then?

A couple of months ago, after reflecting on how much yoga practice means to me (and also at the height of having my relationship with my current studio threatened by personal conflict at the studio), it occurred to me that, if I'm not careful to remain neutral enough in my approach to yoga, the Universe is likely to teach me that I don't need it -- or at least to be attached to it -- by way of making yoga inaccessible to me.  Here, I began imagining physical injury which would make me, for instance, incapable of doing a forward fold.

I'm sure you can imagine the panic this evoked in me.  No forward folds?!?!?  DON'T TALK LIKE THAT.

So I took a moment, and explored that possible reality, and then after a pause, decided that that eventuality would be okay.... and then I let it go.

So after my self-talk last night (the whole introducing myself to myself as a yoga teacher, doula, etc), my "in between" voice this morning didn't exactly speak, but it gave me a clear message: Tread lightly.

It's one thing to "be" a yoga teacher, but it is another thing to teach yoga, and further, another thing entirely to not "be" a yoga teacher, much less anything else.  Here, I mean to imply that we can get lost in our images of ourselves, our definitions of self, and our definitions of others and the world we inhabit.  These things become the way we relate to ourselves and other people, which rarely invoke a feeling of all-inclusiveness.  My experience, in fact, is that these perceptions of self and other do more to isolate us and provide proof of the illusion that we are separate from one another.

One of my practices lately -- per a brilliant talk I listened to by Erich Schiffman -- has been to say audibly to myself, "Brother" or "Sister" when I find myself noticing a feeling that is distinctly not one of love or recognition toward another person.

Also, having recently picked up a favorite book that I read about 6 years ago (Going to Pieces Without Falling Apart, by Mark Epstein), it's noted that Buddhist psychology is built around the idea that the Western ideology of "self" is inherently flawed; that is, the Western perspective that to build self confidence -- thus finding happiness -- is by identifying who we are, what we believe/stand for/represent, etc.  But in the Buddhist perspective, it is by relinquishing these constructions of mind and self that we find not only happiness, but freedom.

This is what my Other voice was saying to me this morning in the in between, between the dream state and waking: Don't be a yoga teacher.  Don't be anything.  To put effort toward being is to lose the essence of being, is to lose the experience of experiencing.

You are it.  We are always it.  Right now.

Floetry.

You know what I love?  Yoga.  You know what I also love?  Poetry.  You know what I want to do: combine the two and teach a workshop called Floetry.  Bam.

Imitation.

A cascade of thoughts came down this morning, and it started with a woodpecker.

One (or several) have decided they like the taste of the wood my house is built of, and every week someone is up there pecking away on the roof.  At first, it startled me and Bodhi.  Now, I'm used to it, but Bodhi still isn't sure.  He barks every time.  It sounds like somone is knocking.

I reveled in the sound of nature taking its course on/around my house and then I noted something interesting: my bird, Puja (a male white faced cockatiel, who is prone to mimicking anyone and everything) started tapping on his cage.  He was mimicking the sound of the woodpecker on the roof.

It made me smile.  Puja and I have been in each other's lives for almost 4 years now.  We've been through a lot.  I still remember the first time he mimicked me vividly; I was brushing my teeth, he was sitting on my shoulder, just a baby, and he let out the monotone trilogy of chirps meant to sound like "peek-a-boo," which is the first thing I tried to teach him.  I made such a kerfuffle over it (mouth full of toothpaste) that he quickly picked up on the reward center of his brain that told him that mimicking the sounds I made led to me making a jubilee of noise. 

Now Puja mimicks everything, including dogs barking outside, the microwave, and, as it turns out, woodpeckers.

Just this tiny domino effect sent me down the rabbit hole of thinking about life as imitation, how we imitate one another and our environment; mirror neurons and Masaru Emoto's work on water.  Imitation is reality in the making.

The more I thought about it, the more connections I made, and I think I might try designing a test-run type class around this idea, the way I would if I had, you know, actual students to teach.  I'll post what I come up with.

A slight interruption.

After a lazy morning sleeping in, coffee and snuggles with Bodhi (my dog), I found myself with some time to kill. 

Which is weird.  On normal mornings I never feel like I have time to kill.  Maybe being away in Ojai this past weekend reset my internal prana-give-away-er, because I think I'd usually wake up, have a short morning meditation and immediately start browsing Facebook mindlessly until it's time to get in the shower, and mutter obscenities that I didn't do anything productive.

But I didn't get on Facebook this morning.  Instead, I went outside with Bodhi to sit on a rock and take in the warm(ish) mountain morning, and kept my eye on a robin that woke me up with its incessant flying toward/into my large living room window. 

This life isn't so bad; three days in Ojai and I come home to my forest dwelling, birds and my pup.  And sitting on my rock this morning with the sun on my face and spider webs sparkling in the morning light, I found myself drawn toward a dialogue with myself wherein I was guiding a meditation.

This is, I've realized, part of finding my voice as a teacher.  I don't have a class to teach, and although Josh is always interested in learning what I have to teach about yoga, the intimacy of a private lesson between lovers is far different than a class setting.  But when I hear myself speak out these ideas and messages of yoga -- even if it's just to myself on a rock behind my house -- I start to feel like I am getting to know myself as a teacher.

And then I get really excited.

So this morning after coffee, although I hadn't planned on practicing today (I thought I'd just relax and let the weekend seep into me), I found myself rolling out my crappy mat (the one I keep at home) to do a practice.  This, as it turns out, would prove really difficult as it so happened that the robin from earlier in the morning was back and beating itself against my window again.

A wee note about me: when I am trying to sleep/relax/do yoga/meditate I can become nearly irate if my sweet silence is interrupted.  It's gotten better over the years, and it's probably a little dramatic to use the word "irate," but I definitely noted the dark clouds of anger forming over my head when, over the weekend, I was in restorative yoga and there was a dog barking and an obnoxiously loud motorcycle just outside the studio.

P.S. Ojai: what the eff is up with your biker population??!

Anyway, I'm not proud of this.  I know that part of the challenge of the journey inward is finding ways to be okay when the world does not cooperate with things like your wish for silence.

But this robin dive bombing my window thing was different.  It was a precious little birdy!  Trying to attack its reflection in my window!  Surely death was near!  I could just not handle having robin's blood on my hands/window.  Eventually (per a suggestion from a friend that I should tape paper to the outside of the window) the bird's self-mutilation seemed to stop.

All this was happening, though, in the middle of what was supposed to be an uninterrupted hour of home practice.  Clearly, the Universe had other things in mind.

All the same, I practiced using my own voice to guide myself into poses, feeling them out myself, remembering what I learned in Ojai, and messages I've held onto over the last few years.  Things I wished teachers would say to me during class, things I say to myself.

I started with reading a guided/body scan meditation in The Art and Science of Mindfulness, and practiced reading/speaking the way I would to a class.  I started to see the weaknesses in my phrasing, and where my strengths are.  Weaknesses: anatomy.  Strengths: communicating the spirit of the teachings.

All this, of course, according to myself.  (Teaching an actual class and getting feedback would be optimal.)

Then I led myself into asana practice.

Seated virasana (hero pose) to identify intention/find alignment from the hips up, blooming through the heart, opening the throat/vocal cords to vulnerability, finding a position that the head feels fully supported in.  Fluffy lips.

Cat/cow pose (marjaryasana/bitilasana) to warm up the spine/shoulders.
Plank.
Downward dog.

High lunge hip flexor stretch, right and left.
Downward dog, bring knees down.
Cat/cow with a slither.  (I forget what one of my teachers called this once.  It opens the side ribs and allows for some playfulness/movement of the side body before beginning surya namaskara.)

Surya Namaskara B
*Here I realized this might not be great sequencing, and it just feels wrong to put B before A, but the truth is that I get them mixed up.  I also feel a bit indebted to the traditionalist in me and feel like I should start with A and then go to B if the spirit moves me.  But I love sura namaskara B, which is probably why I felt inclined to go there.  The question of moving spontaneously in the poses gets raised for me here, and I'm wondering if Patanjali would roll over in his grave if he knew that there is a part of me that doesn't really give a shit if A is supposed to come before B*

Right around here I got distracted with the birdy suicide happening outside my living room window and had to tend to things to ensure no birds died while I was doing yoga.  When I came back I realized I was running out of time and still needed to allow time for Savasana, so I began to wrap things up.

Pigeon pose (Eka Pada Kapotasana [seriously?  this is the sanskrit for this pose?  holy shit!])
*Here I realized that this pose truly is becoming less and less uncomfortable for me, I think in part due to the fact that I've been putting my attention into this pose precisely because I panic when going into it.  I made a special point to forgive myself for being so hard on myself with this pose in times past, as well as thanking my gorgeous hips for easing me into it all those times.*

Savasana/body scan meditation


Oh, and I found a pretty great series of photos for Surya Namaskara B, which came in handy when I was trying to figure out exactly what I was doing this morning:



And because I mentioned Bodhi, here's a cute picture of him hanging out with my yoga block a while back:

And another one of him hanging out behind our house one sunny day:

And one more of us (plus my friend, Kate) on a hike a couple months ago:

I really do love my puppy.





Note: No birds died a horrible bloody death in the making of this blog post.

An open letter.

Dear yoga,

It's hard, you know, to always find the time for you.  The movement, I mean, because in my way, I'm doing yoga every minute.  Every breath, every moment of awareness, you are there.


Thank you for that,
Morgan

So you want to be a yoga teacher.

Reading up on the teacher training I'll be attending this summer (!!!), some of my hidden, inner thoughts on the manner are this:  I'm having to look up A LOT of the sanskrit names for poses I think I know.  (Judgement.)

crescent pose = anjaneyasana
bound angle pose = baddha konasana
mountain pose = tadasana
chair pose = utkatasana
standing forward bend = uttanasana

Yeesh!

I used to think that I would do yoga teacher training (YTT) when I had, at the very least, mastered hand stand (adho mukha vrksasana).  Then, upon realizing that I wasn't "mastering" anything (much less adho mukha vrksasana), I figured I'd just wait it out and know when it was time.

But now I'm roughly three months from starting formal training, and I feel like I should know ALL THE NAMES OF ALL THE POSES.  It reminds me of this comic from this blog that I love so dearly:

Right.  Because the brain works like that.



Being Nobody, Going Nowhere.

Finishing my yoga practice last night with sitting meditation, trying to find a place inside me that felt like home, trying to have an optimistic heart, I felt the familiarity of messages, loud and clear, from my body:  a tightening in my upper right shoulder, tight chest, pulling in, protecting.  And here I realized (if I hadn't already): I am terribly afraid. 

It seems opening up to the feelings and preparing the body to feel them don't make them any less difficult to feel.

This is about everything: What am I doing with my life?  Where am I going?  Who will be there with me?  Starting yesterday morning, I could feel the previous night's pillow talk wearing on me, my patience waning, my trigger finger heart shooting off all over the place.  My whole life I've been desperate for meaning, and even more so: desperate for love.

Maybe it's only now that I'm allowing myself to be aware of it do I realize: I am grasping the shit out of life.  My fears of not having what I want almost certainly prevent me from being able to notice if or when I have it, even for fleeting moments.  And what tells me is this: my body.  Even writing this, my brow is furrowing, my shoulders are tightening, my breath is shallow. 

What are we doing?

I'm looking at a dusty book shelf full of words, of bound sets of ideas.  At my desk with wilted flowers.  At clean clothes piled, folded, yet to be put away.  These are the things I've built around me.  Is this what I protect?  I sit with my hands drawn into fists, placed at my mouth; no words.  We're one place in our minds, and then the world happens, and it's only glancing at a small carved wooden sculpture of a man and woman in embrace that I remember the tiny gift shop in Assisi where I bought it five years ago; and those earrings that broke, and the incense that has been burned up.

Where does all of it go?

In four months the person I've built yet another life around will leave, go to school, to another city, go find the first few steps of a new path, and I'll be here, with the dust settling around what were weekends spent in silence or basking in the sun coming through the skylight.  My life will go on, regenerate itself around an absence.  I want to go with him.  But I want to go with me, too, and I don't know if the two fall in line with one another.  But is my life here?  In the mountains?  In a quiet house that no one visits, with nature that I am sometimes too afraid to be a part of in its immensity.

In four months that will turn into two, which will turn into hours on some teary night, some beginning of some end and some start to some beginning we can't see or touch or plan for, and I wonder: What are we fighting for?  Why don't we fight more?  How do people ever belong to each other when they never really do?  Why do we act like we have a choice when clearly, we do not.

When it seems so obvious on some days that we are all just trudging through sorrow and suffering, trying to release ourselves from the pain, and not be too attached to the joy, how is the world not full of lunatics?  How are there ever moments of respite, of laughter.  If it all just goes -- all of it, every moment dissolving into another -- how do we not just disappear, and dissolve into one another in our madness.