Ease – Generous Wisdom | Spacious Heart

Gravity: A Poem-Prompt

Below is the poem-prompt from yesterday. It now has a name 🙂

I wanted to share it again because I practiced with it after I posted, and I discovered some things.

It was late in the day, and the earth and sky were moving from evening into night.

As I was guiding myself, I noticed how deeply I had been in the practice during its writing, at my computer. I also noticed the familiarity of this gravity-awareness practice. It felt easy to sink myself into the earth, but difficult to stay present with it. My mind was busy offering me other things to pay attention to. I kept bringing myself back to the softness of my neck and the slope of my shoulders. The weight of my arms and hands pressing into my lap, my hips and legs pressing into the chair, my legs and feet pressing into the ground. Bringing myself back to these sensations. Gently. I invited myself to shift my body position when I needed to. After experiencing an insect bite during my meditation the day before, I allowed myself to brush a mosquito off my nose. When I noticed the change in air temperature, I allowed myself to pull my sleeves over my hands and tuck one inside the other.

In case I haven’t said this before (I don’t think I have), please remember that the meditations and prompts and practices are here to serve you. They are here as an invitation to self-discovery. They are not here to demand, control, or oppress you. They are gateways to freedom inside a frame of tenderness, loving-kindness, and care.

Only you can offer yourself these things: tenderness, loving-kindness, and care. Please try them out. Liberally and with joy, as you would praise a puppy for his sweetness and delight running through the grass after the white cabbage moth.

Gravity asks us what we want to set down and what we want to pick back up. When I arrived at these inquiries, happiness and kindness arose in my mind. I want to set down the weight of other people’s happiness. By this, I mean I want to set down the weight of thinking and feeling that I need to create, enhance, fix, and sustain everyone else’s happiness at all times. I’m not sure when or why I picked this up. But it’s real, and I need to set it down now.

Happiness comes and goes, just like overwhelm, just like sadness, just like tears, and just like giggles. When I attempt to fix or change someone else’s emotions, I’m making it about me. Instead, I want to pick up kindness and offer that. I want to offer the gift of sitting with someone in their despair. The gift of resting beside another person in their overwhelm. Without making it about me. And also, without looking away. To stay beside them by becoming porous enough to allow their emotional energy to swirl over, under, past, and through me, without it knocking me off balance. To have them know they don’t have to hide or fix or feel bad about their emotional experience in order to stay with me, physically present next to me, in the same room with me.

So, I’m going to try that today. Setting down the weight of other people’s happiness and picking up the ease of kindness. Kindness is being expansive enough, spacious enough to allow what is to be what is. Acknowledging the truth of the moment is a kindness deeper than almost anything else I know.

Please try out the body-scan meditation, the poem-prompt, Gravity, below. Even if you tried it yesterday. (Especially if you tried it yesterday?) As you open up to your inner knowing, see what wants set down and what wants picked up. And it’s okay if it doesn’t feel peaceful at first, or at all. Peacefulness comes and goes, too. What’s glorious is that we can create the circumstances that allow peacefulness to arise. We can create situations that invite peacefulness to bloom more often and hang out with us for longer and longer stretches of time.

Gravity

When you hold one hand in another
there is a heaviness
that is both light and solid

your hand, I mean,
I’m talking about when you
hold the weight of your own hand

resting one hand
inside the other
a nesting

Try it now ~

Cupping your hands
one inside the other
sense the weight of you

sense the weight of tenderness.

How tender is your care for your own sweet self?

Try resting your shoulders
and arms and let them be pulled
toward the earth…

Allow the gentle downward force of gravity
to be a soothing balm
like you’re setting down
every single thing you carry
every
single
day

the things you hold even in the night
in your sleep you’re carrying them ~

Just for now, just for this moment,
set down what you are carrying.

Try this ~

Notice the sensation of your feet
resting against the ground
the grass
the growing world.

Notice the sensation of your hips
resting in the seat of your chair
that’s resting against the ground
the grass
the growing world.

Notice the way the crown of your head
is floating into the sky
even as the the sides of your neck are softening
the tops of your shoulders sinking
and your arms
elbows
arms
wrists
hands
fingers are moving closer to the ground
the grass
the growing world.

Notice the sensation of being held by creation.

Even as your body stretches upward
with each of your breaths
your body relaxes downward
with each of your breaths

You are a growing being
resting against the ground
the grass
the growing world.

So as you nest your hand
inside your hand,
become the tender loving care of the creation that holds you
because you are what you have always longed for.
You belong to your own dear, sweet, and precious self,
a gift, from you to you.

Just for fun? Try this~

Notice if you’d like to switch the nest of your hands
allowing the other hand to be the cradle
of tenderness and loving care.

Feel the difference.
It is new. Awkward. Lighter Maybe?
It is similar. Odd. Fun Maybe?

Switch them back if you’d like.
Notice the ways you are opening into choice, ease, and freedom
inside the frame of this earth and sky,
this greening grounding
growing world.

You get to chose what your hands hold.
You get to chose which things you pick back up.
You get to chose to lift with your legs instead of your back.
You can allow the earth to lift you and all the things you choose to carry.

Remember that as much weight as presses down on her, the sweet, dear earth pushes back up just as much.

You are not alone.

How do you feel now?
What do you notice most?
What is resonating deep inside you?
What mysterious door have you walked through?

What is challenging you and what are the judgements your mind offers?

What kind of poem would you like to write now?

What kind of art would you like to create?

What kind of breath would you like to take?

xoxoxo,

Hurry Up (& Rest)

Hey there, Dear Yogi,

How are you feeling?

Close your eyes, breathe deep. What do you sense in your body?

For a long time I felt a sense of urgency. Do you ever feel this? Not the fun kind in which you’re excited to get all your ideas out on paper or when you’re bursting with news to share. I’m thinking about Time Urgency in which you have to get a certain amount of tasks (enormous, tiny, complex, and simple) completed before time is up! And that timer can be anything: the baby’s nap, the deadline, the reservation, the family’s dinner, the board meeting, the presentation, the teacher’s meeting, the test, the class change, the committee meeting, the bell, The Meeting, the clock.

Types of Clocks

I still feel it now, though not as intensely and not as often. And not because I’m evolved or enlightened, but because time has passed, and I have don’t have babies anymore. But if I did, I’d tell myself to hurry up and rest.

Back then I raced the “baby-clock” in Every Single Thing I Did: yoga asana, laundry, meditation, dinner prep, reading, tidying, writing, sweeping, posting, lesson planning, planting, grading, visiting, sending, gathering. The baby-clock looks like this: until the baby wakes, until the baby cries, until the baby wakes, until the baby cries, and on like this day after night after day after night.

Time passes and the toddler-clock looks like this: until the educational tv show is over, until the toys are boring, until someone gets hurts, until someone gets angry, until someone gets hungry, until someone screams, and on like this day after night after day after night. And all the urgent tasks are scattered throughout. Half done.

The little kid and big kid clocks look more like this: time for soccer, time for piano, time for games, time for a date with mom, time for violin, time for rehearsal, time for church, time for school, time for play, time for tv, time for silent reading. And also, time for breakfast, time for snack, time for lunch, time for snack, time for dinner, time for snack, time for bath, time for bed.

I answered all these clocks in the obvious and necessary ways for a long time. Then my answer to the kid-clock slowly grew (along with my children’s age, capability, and reason) into little bits of silence: “Mom’s not answering you because she’s meditating.” And this: “Mom, why are you upside down?”

Photo by eberhard grossgasteiger on Pexels.com

Cultural Expectation (?)

I did rest a lot. But I kinda wish I’d have rested more back then, and not just my body, but my mind. The sense of time urgency was largely in my mind. I wanted to get everything done everyday. The urgency to produce and do it efficiently was heavy and oppressive. Produce anything: a folded load of laundry, a meal, a clean room, a poem, a journal entry, a completed lesson plan, a smiling baby, a plate of cookies, an empty trash can, a graded stack of essays, a happy family, a successful class. All my worth was tied up in it, even when I told myself that simply growing and raising human beings was enough, that simply showing up was enough. Efficient Productivity Loomed.

I don’t know why this was such a part of my way of being, but my guess is that western culture saturates us with the idea that our worth is based on how much we can produce and whether or not we can produce it efficiently. Can we do it better, cheaper, faster? Try. Can you make your family happier? Try. Can you get more papers graded in less time? Try. Can you clean, cook, plan, and create at the same time? Try!

Hurry Up & Rest

If there’s a sense of urgency now, while I have big-kid-clocks and young-adult-clocks all around me, it’s this: sit down, rest, stand up, rest, turn upside down, rest, lie down, rest. Practicing ease, allowing, and unfolding helps me do this. I’m inviting you to find rest alongside me.

It’s good to remember that rest doesn’t necessarily mean sitting down, lying down, sleeping, napping, “doing nothing,” or “just being.” Play is really, really, really good rest. So, I’m inviting you to play, too. Play piano, play painting, play yoga, play ball, play games, play meditation, play climbing trees, play knitting, play visiting, play telling jokes, anything just for the fun of it.

To Experiment

To practice being restful rather than being productive every waking moment and even in your sleep, consider recommitting to your sabbath practice or your dedicated time-off. Or try pausing for a moment to consider what is necessary, then do that one thing and leave the rest. This section is not about time management. This section will invite you to notice how you value your time and how you value yourself. After a couple days of practice, you might begin to shift, just a little, the way you move through the world.

Your unique set of circumstances will affect how the details shake out for you, but here are a few ideas to get you started. Try one that seems supportive or interesting, or try them all over a couple of weeks.

When pressed for time with a lot to do, ask for help. (Crazy, right?)
If faced with a daunting to-do list (that might be partly self-imposed), decide in the morning what is necessary for today, and what can shift to tomorrow.
Ask yourself what you value most in any given day. Take 3-5 minutes to journal or sketch about this and allow your answers to inform your choices for the next 24 hours.
Notice if you experience a resistance to resting or if you crave it, or both. When you rest do you feel bored, unproductive, or worth less? Do you notice a sense of receiving, renewing, or ease? There’s no right answer. Any answer will supply you with interesting information.
Do you experience a sense of all or nothing, either work, work, work, or rest, rest, rest? What would it be like to work a bit then rest a bit? What do you allow yourself to do when you’re “on vacation” but not when you’re “at home?”
If you have an aversion to “being unproductive,” consider the perspective that resting will make you more productive in the long run. Not the purpose of this practice, of course, but it just might get you to experiment with resting and see what it’s like!
Find an accountability partner. Check in with each other to support adding a dose of restfulness to your days.

No matter how productive we want to be, no matter how much we want the to-do list checked off, there are just some things that have to unfold in their own time. So maybe consider allowing things to unfold. Remember, you can’t feed the kids breakfast before they’ve had dinner.

Happy Resting, Happy Playing,

Amy

The Universal Yogi

PS – I forgot the pet-clock! There’s a pet-clock, too, the puppy-clock, the aquarium clock, the list goes on!