yoga – 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,

Good Morning, Lovely: Opening Into Self

I have many teachers who invite me to see myself as worthy of love. Do you want to meet some of them?

My dog, Daisy. She always used to come to me when I was crying. Reminding me I don’t have to hide or perform anything for anyone in order to be loved. I can feel everything I need to feel. And she will check on me. She will stay with me. I practice remembering to stay with myself, even when it feels unbearable.

A friend in my community, KC. Every single time she sees me, whether at work or at our kids’ events, I hear her voice: “Hey, Gorgeous!” or “Hello, Beautiful!” with a huge smile and bright eyes. Every single time no matter what. It’s at such odds with my experience in society that it takes me by surprise every time. Eventually, I hope to not be surprised. I hope to just know. I say it back to her, “Hey, Beautiful.” It’s good practice.

One of my yoga teachers, MV. She tells us the story of tucking her kids in at night and telling them, “You are so lovable.” And she exhorts us to tell ourselves the same thing. And so now I end a lot of my yoga, resilience, and social-emotional-learning classes with these affirmations for my students to repeat if they’d like: I am awesome. I am amazing. I am soooooooooooo loveable.

Insight meditation teacher, Sylvia Boorstein, encourages self-compassion through terms of endearment in place of self-criticism and self-loathing. Among other invitations, she offers herself these words, “Sweetheart, you are in pain. Relax. Breathe. Let’s pay attention to what’s happening and figure things out.” I practice calling myself Sweetheart.

Another friend in my community, ST. Every singe time she sees me, whether at the grocery store or our kids’ activities, she literally yells, “Heeeeeey, Gorgeous Woman!” It doesn’t matter if I’ve just rolled out of bed or not. It doesn’t matter where we are or how far away she is from where I’m standing. It takes me a minute. I have to process. She also likes my hair? I say it back to her, “Hello, Gorgeous.” It’s good practice.

My restorative yoga teacher, Judith Hanson Lasater, shares her practice of self-compassion: Whenever she has moments of frustration or discontent, she says, “Oh, how human of me.” I love this. It reminds me to ask myself why I ever thought I needed to be something I am not.

Our rescue foster pup, Bruno. After months of living unabashedly as himself, growing and blossoming every single night and every single day, Bruno showed us who he was. He showed us who he is, who he wants to be, who he needs to be, who he must be. He taught me that there is absolutely no thing more freeing on this earth than being fully and unabashedly one’s truest self.

My sweet kids. They read my face. They ask me if I need hugs or help. When they are in the throes of their own brain-restructuring and hormone spikes and drops, they forget I’m human, just like I do. And then they remember, just like I do. They also honor their impulses to love. They say I love you when we part; they say I love you when we’re together; they say I love you when we’re nowhere close – whenever they feel it. I don’t do anything to win or earn their affection. I just am and they just are and love just is.

All the friends I text when I’m trying to figure out Life: CS, JS, KS, SD, SR, MD, JM, CC. They text me back. They are essential to my joy and my growth.

My husband. He shows up. When everything is terrible. When everything is pleasant. When everything is boring. When everything is tenuous. When everything is shit. When everything is sweet. He is: Constant. True. Consistent. Unflinching. Honorable. Considerate. Honest. Open. Willing. Integral. He is essential to my growth, my successes, my contentment, my ease, my mission, my vocation, and to fulfilling my heart’s desire, my sankalpa. His qualities and actions remind me that there is nothing I need to prove or attain. I am lovable simply because I am alive. Simply because I am me. Simply because I am.

Our new permanent pup, Bodhi. He is named for the tree of Buddha’s enlightenment. He is also named after surfers and gods, oceans, and air. Bodhi sits. Bodhi watches. Bodhi waits. Bodhi pays attention. Bodhi looks, at first glance, as if he has no thoughts – like he’s not thinking anything. And do you know what happens when you have no thoughts, when you are not thinking anything? The possibilities are endless. That kind of nothing is fully pregnant with everything. So when you look back at Bodhi long enough, all of a sudden you are full. He is comfort magnified. You can’t feel anything but love when he runs to you. I am practicing drinking this in.

Silence.
A silence that is planted and cared for.
A communal silence ushered into being.
A retreat space structured with ritual,
ceremony, gentleness, and support
so carefully curated it creates a circle
unspeakably spacious
and infinitely deep
the well
of unconditional love
pours over you from the inside –
from
the
INside (!)
And when I looked at her, wordless,
my yoga teacher cracked open
the silence and cradled my gaze,
my tears, my life
with her whisper,
The silence, she is so generous, isn’t she?

My invitation to you now is to open into your fullest self by acknowledging what is already true – so full that you break open into every color, every shade, every line, every texture, every curve, every spiral, every sound, every silence that you hold inside. Please, please write yourself a poem today. At some point before midnight, before morning, write yourself into being – with words or images – with letters or sketches – with lyrics or pictures teach yourself how to love you. Love yourself the way you’ve always wanted to be loved. Because you ARE.

Good morning, Lovely,
You are precious
golden and radiant,
You are gorgeous
kind and loving,
You are more than anything
I could have ever hoped for.
Please, please keep being
because I couldn’t
wouldn’t
won’t live without you.

P.S. Please keep your eyes and ears out for your teachers, all those beings who teach you the fullness of your worth.

Being at Home in Your Body, Laughing

One moment during a yoga workshop, my teacher said, “Buddha is laughing because there’s nowhere to go.” I don’t remember the context of this proclamation. Were we practicing asana? Was it a dharma talk? Was this in her answer to a student’s inquiry? I have no idea. But this quote is now handwritten, in cursive, on a piece of paper I have placed in the back of my bathroom cabinet. I see it multiple times a day.

Laughing feels like bubbles. And it’s one of the features of my Inner Sanctuary.

When I teach my preschool, kindergarten, elementary, middle, and high school students whole-being-resilience, I often begin by helping them create a happy place. There are lots of names for this whole-being-restorative mind-body practice: Safe Space, Inner Resource, Inner Sanctuary. Most students stick with the classic: Happy Place.

I explain why I’m spending our precious time on this practice. This explanation is essential: to create sensations of peace, safety, and security in their body no matter where in the world they happen to be, or where in the universe (or multiverse) they end up. This way, they will always have access to their prefrontal cortex and abide in thriving mode rather than survival mode. Because of this they will not be controlled by their thoughts, emotions, or fear-based reactions. They will be able to step into freedom, making wise choices about what to think, say, and do – as well as what not to think, say or do – in any given moment. It is also to create consistent and ongoing opportunities for their nervous system to rest, repair, and renew itself. Repetition will then create greater ease of access to this space in the future thanks to neuroplasticity, neurogenesis, and synaptic strengthening. The main reason they are willing to experiment, however, is because I also explain that it feels like sleep, and is often much better than sleep, to be honest.

Photo by Enric Cruz Lu00f3pez on Pexels.com

There are many ways to practice creating and being in your inner sanctuary. One way I guide practice is by inviting students to rest back in their chair or forward onto the table, eyes open or closed, notice the places their body makes contact with what’s beneath it, and allow the breath to come and go. Then I lead them through their five senses and invite them to use their imagination to create the safest, coziest, most favorite place they can in as much detail as humanly possible. They choose all the locations, structures, landscapes, shapes, lines, colors, textures, sounds, scents, and flavors that make them feel safe, cozy, and happy. Anything and everything about their happy place can be real or imagined, true or fantasy, from the past, present, future, or all of the above. They can invite images of people they see everyday who make them feel safe, as well as spiritual beings, ancestors, or animals into their happy place. They can also choose to be sweetly, beautifully alone.

Before we begin, I explain that it’s okay if they can’t think of anything at first, if their mind is blank. It’s also okay if the images change during the practice. And they don’t even have to do the practice themselves; they can just listen and observe. Lastly, they can always come out of the practice at any time.

Happy Places change as we change. They never have to stay the same unless we want them to. To offer an example from my own life, I share that one of the fixtures of my inner resource is the sound of my children GIGGLING. When they were younger (and I was younger), it was
the sensation and scent
of their little bodies
sleeping against mine.
But now it is the giggling
rupture-ous kind of laughter,
the kind that spills
up and out
fountain-ous
upside down
sideways
waterfalls.

Photo by Oliver Sju00f6stru00f6m on Pexels.com

Buddha laughing because there’s nowhere to go is one of the most precious permission structures I’ve ever encountered. I love it: Do nothing. Go nowhere. Are you imagining this?
Stop striving.
Rest where you are.
Be at ease.
Be peace.

The Happy-Place-Inner-Sanctuary-Safe-Space-Inner-Resource practice is like this:
Here you are.
You have already arrived.
Abide in peacefulness.
Abide as Peace.

I also introduce my school-aged students to the concept of dignity, being worthy of love and respect simply because we are alive, alive in these bodies! There is sacredness to us. We are sacred. That’s it. There’s nothing to earn or prove. There is nowhere to go. We are the proof of our own worthiness. We are our own evidence of pricelessness. All of us can stop everything we’re doing and be breathed by the animating force within all things.

My meditation teachers sometimes invite us to sit with a tall spine, to extend through the back of the skull and crown of the head, dipping the chin just an inch. A posture of inherent dignity. This is one way of honoring our sacredness. My other meditation teachers invite us to lie down, reclined and bolstered by cushions, pillows, blankets, and weighted sand bags shaped like hearts. A posture of inherent royalty. This is another way of honoring our preciousness.

Photo by Hiu1ebfu Hou00e0ng on Pexels.com

I invite my students into these spaces of dignity, self-love, safety, comfort, and security. I give them space to decline. I smile when they appear shocked that I am allowing them sleep during class. “If your body falls asleep, no worries, I’ll wake you up when it’s time.” I laugh when they open their eyes and say, “Yeah, I’d do that again.” I thrill when they tell me the next day they used their Happy Place Imagination Practice to fall asleep – and it worked.

Buddha’s laughter reminds me to keep practicing levity.

I used to be SUPER serious All The Time. (Some people don’t believe me when I share that fact.) So much so that I’ve been working on laughter as a spiritual practice for YEARS. One day a while back the universe gifted me with someone who is good at this laughing-in-the-face-of-difficulty-thing. Then the universe gave me ANOTHER someone who is also good at this laughter! I continue to learn from them daily.

One of the things that makes me laugh the most is my children’s laughter. When they belly-laugh and can’t breathe in and their faces turn red, or contort, or expand in utter surprise at the unbelievable ridiculousness of a situation, I just can’t get enough. And I love it when this happens to me. I love it when I think something is so funny that I can’t tell the story because I’m literally crying-laughing. Sometimes I can’t finish telling the story, and sometimes I can’t even start telling the story. The words won’t come out and every time I even think about it I burst out laughing. I love this so much. But I can’t create it, as much as I try, I cannot create this experience. It is a sheer gift. But I’m going to keep trying. I’m going to keep taking myself less seriously. I’m going to shift my perspectives. I’m going to turn myself upside down and create opportunities for laughter to bubble up from the depths of me – you know, where all the joy lives 😉

Laughing is the epitome of homecoming. When we are belly-laughing we are in the moment in our bodies and it feels good to be there.

I was going to say that when we’re laughing we are the least self-conscious we ever are, but that is definitely not true for a lot of us adult women. A ton of us end up covering our mouth or our face to hide the contortions, stifle the sound of our giggle, cross our legs and hobble to the bathroom to pee, or all of those. And some of us don’t. I’ve been letting myself laugh in whatever ways that laughter wants to come out, and that feels magical. There are many, many reasons laughter is considered the best medicine. There’s tons of research proving that now, but I don’t need any more proof than my own direct experience.

Try it out:

Create Your Happy Place
Fill it with Laughter
Experience it
Notice How Your Body Feels
Repeat Daily

Being at home in your body doesn’t mean you have to love everything about it, or love everything it is or everything it isn’t. Being at home in your body simply means you feel safe there. You know how to care for it. You allow it to live and move and have its being. You feel like your body takes care of you and you take care of it to the best of your abilities. It means you forgive your body like you forgive the most dear, sweet little child. It means that you don’t even have to considering forgiving because your body has done nothing it needs forgiveness for. Being at home in your body means you listen to it like an elder, you sit at its feet and honor its ancestral wisdom. Being at home in your body means you are comfortable there, for the most part, not every second of every day, but you can find a way to drop into easiness. It’s worth the effort and it’s worth the practice and it’s worth the curiosity and it’s worth the love and it’s worth the work.

It doesn’t feel good to be uncomfortable in my own skin, to feel trapped in my own body. It doesn’t feel good to compare myself to others and wish I was them. It doesn’t feel good to be a puppy and wish I was a polar bear.

Realizing that there is nowhere to go means we understand that all we need is within us. Here. Abiding in our true nature. We wait. We allow ourselves to be moved. To be breathed. And then we open the portal to all the wisdom of the cosmos. She comes to us in the great silence, bubbles up from the never ending well of sweetness and is sooooooooo generous.

Being at home in your body is the most beautiful, precious, priceless gift you can give yourself. And really, no one can give you this gift but YOU.

XOXOX,