Water on the Brain

The day the tsunami from the Japanese earthquake reached San Francisco, I found myself running in Golden Gate Park thinking about my relationship with water. Sadly, at times, my relationship with my family is better than my relationship with water (and my family and I aren’t exactly close).

After absorbing the headlines about the devastating earthquake, I drove toward Ocean Beach, engulfed by sadness. I knew some endorphins would help me feel better. To my chagrin, however, Highway 1, which runs the length of California and beyond, was blocked at every approach by circling police cars. More and more, it felt like my run on September 11^th, when I’d watched the horror on TV and then similarly sought the familiar refuge of my practice. Back then, I worried about a military attack on Ocean Beach.

This day, perhaps a little late, I began wondering about the wisdom of being near a tsunami zone, even though a part of me said, “Don’t worry. It won’t reach us here.” I became irritated when my parking attempts were thwarted at every turn by police cars. Finally, at the edge of their cordon, I ditched the car on Lincoln Ave. Grumbling as I tottered toward Beach Chalet, I noted with a wry smile that while cars were forbidden near the beach, there were plenty of people there, looking out to sea. I entered the park and wondered if the air raid siren went off, whether I’d be able to get back to my car. Foolishly, I‘d left my cell phone in the trunk. Again, I shook off the worry as being unneccesary, and plodded on.

Deeper in the park, I saw more and more runners, and felt safer and safer from the impending tidal wave that could travel . . . how far inland? A mile? No. I raced downhill by the little waterway that appears to flow uphill, and thought about my relationship with water. At first glance, it wasn’t a very successful one. During most of my adult life, I’ve been angry at possessing too much of it in my body, with my system’s heroic ability to retain water.

When I moved to California in 1992, the locals were paranoid about water shortages, earthquakes, and other seemingly ridiculous worries. In my home state of Massachusetts, water was always plentiful, and the only thing that shook us regularly was the occasional hurricane; usually gasping its last after ravaging some Caribbean island.

I’ve always been afraid of deep water. Not deep water as in trouble, but me, deep in the drink.I attribute this to a past life where my current life mother drowned me. (Yes, really. We were both priestesses in an Egyptian temple and in love with the same priest. She was the more powerful one, and as I was undergoing my “swimming with the crocodiles” initiation, she blocked my exit. This led to an untimely demise.) That’s my story and I’m sticking with it . . .

I do love sailing, however, and skimming across a glassy surface on water skis. Snorkeling is up there among my favorite things too. In college, my initial major was Marine Biology, although, had I stayed with it, my deep-water fear would have placed me on the career path of an intertidal/littoral zone biologist, instead of the pelagic, tank-wearing type.

I’ve connected with Mother Ocean, Tiamat, Mama Qocha—name your goddess—in many rituals, and have been gifted with her dance to perform when aspecting her. I’ve cleaned my energy field with her assistance regularly, for years now.

In my hometown, Westport, I’ve slipped into her rivery embrace and felt her womblike peace, as I drifted in her brackish bliss. In my late twenties, I sat by her shores at Horseneck Beach one moonlit night, gazing at her incoming waves, and fell into an inner vastness I never knew I possessed. One of my first numinous experiences.

In Peru, I journeyed with the spirit of the Urubamba River. She took me on a wild ride; flying above the Sacred Valley, Machu Picchu, and other amazing sights.

In Hawaii, I was thrilled to arrive at the end of a hurricane, where her moist gusts blew in and out of my room at the Kalanai all night, as if I were on a boat. I loved to run at the start of hurricanes in Boston, where the pelting rain felt like little shards of glass, and I’d entrain with the power of the churning wind, riding the big blowy high.

In general, we humans don’t have a very good relationship with water. We dump and drain, siphon and dam, leach and leak. We’re growing in awareness, but perhaps not fast enough. And like all the other geological forces of an angry Earth, Water is saying “enough”. Enough of the sirens and blasting by the Navy; disrupting the whales’ migratory paths. Driving them to suicide. Enough of the mercury fouling all the fish, so that soon, nothing from the ocean will be edible. That gets our attention. The dwindling supply of my favorite protein in Trader Joes, and the increase of disclaimers over every bin of tuna, swordfish and salmon. Would you prefer memory loss or mackerel?

Here in San Francisco, right now she’s being madly driven by Wind and Storm; coldly pelting the doors to the deck. This Perfect Storm that she’s played a starring role in quite a bit lately is not my favorites. I long for balmy Balinese showers, her thunderous heralding in the summer storms of August in Massachusetts . . . I really want to love her again, as something other than the maker of mud.

And I will. Perhaps an offering is due? Perhaps a little more gratitude, that this year we all will have enough drinking water in California, thanks to this year’s ginormous snowpack. Too soon the shamrock-green hills of Marin will bald and bake in the summer’s dry season. The newts that you can find in abundance on a walk to Tennessee Valley Beach today will be hidden and desiccated again. The heady pollen that is just starting to be released will be a memory. So I am grateful for the flowering, slithering, greening life that is fed by stormy showers. Tlaloc, Aztec god of water and rain . . . Welcome! Ometeotl. (And so it is!)

Santosa

“Contentment is a dynamic and constructive attitude that brings us to look at things in a new way.” – Bouchard

“A woman needs to feel good to do good.” –Anonymous

Over the seven years they have been in my care, my cats have been my gurus. One of their primary teachings is santosa or contentment. They gaze at me with blinky, half-closed eyes, trusting that I won’t step on a tail or accidently kick them during my mad morning dash through the kitchen and out to work. In spite of myself, I am calmed by their implicit faith in a kind and loving universe.

Of course they have a stable home, save for the sporadic kibble-munching, muddy lunching raccoon. Their job is to be well fed, frequently stroked, worshipped, and carried from room to room in mostly-tolerated snuggles. All of this results in a generally cheerful temperament, contrasting with that of their mother, as she hurtles about her life, usually seeking santosa outside herself. Glimpsing it for a nanosecond on the mat. Grasping at it. Grieving its loss.

My opinion has always been that I need my life to be like my cats’ in order to be happy—no worries about money, no need to dash off to a job that seals me into a fluorescent-klieged, germ-riddled environment for 40 hours a week.

Much to my surprise, my life hasn’t turned out to be that of a lady of leisure. Which brings up this other concept of sourcing santosa within oneself, and then living it in your life. Sort of like being solar powered from within.

I am having a particularly difficult time with that concept this winter, as I arrive at the not-so-blessed place of midlife. Having just experienced reverse-puberty, characterized by extreme teenage behavior, my hormones are now just crabby and wonky. My body wants to rest and recover from the strangeness roiling within.

I always want to take time out and contemplate each winter, but the urge for hibernation or just plain doing my own thing is striking particularly strong right now. My screenplay screams to be worked on. My novel niggles for attention. All the craft projects I have done with my hands over the years—and long to do again—languor; their materials tucked away and stored out of sight, mind, and inspiration, in our cramped starter home. Paint is packed. Fabric is stacked. I am making money. Money that flows in slowly and gets sucked out of my bank account so quickly, it always feels like low tide in the Bay of Fundy.

Yet all is not so bleak . . . shortly I’ll be taking a pilgrimage to Mexico for Toltec inspiration, shamanic training, and even sacred Aztec yoga with some of that money, so the glass isn’t really half empty. I just have a lot on my plate.

~

We live in a culture of complaint. From an early age, we’re taught the squeaky wheel wins. It is often only when I travel that I realize just how fortunate I am. Travel takes me out of my chitta vrittis.

I journeyed to Bali in 2008, with a group of spiritual friends, to immerse myself in the nuance of ritual at Hindu temples, the grace and beauty of legong dance, the clang and clatter of gamelon, the wonder and complexity of a two-years-in-the-making ikat textile, and the pervading peace of a gentle culture. We’d arranged for a stopover/sleepover in Tokyo en route, to break up the otherwise insanely long flight. Festively attired for a tropical climate, many of the ladies wore bright, thin cotton sarongs and flip flops on the plane, and didn’t bring a change of clothes in their carry on.

A freak snow storm hit Tokyo prior to our arrival. For some reason, the airport didn’t have de-icing equipment or snow plows. We emerged from the airport in summer garb, marveling at the drifting, unplowed whiteness, and boarded the bus to our hotel. Once there, we were informed that our rooms had been given away, because we were late. Some were told to take a voucher to redeem for a room at another, local hotel. This piece of information never reached me. I exited the hotel, voucherless, with my dejected group. At the second hotel, we were told there were only a couple rooms for those with vouchers. The alpha gals in our group began to seize entire rooms just for themselves until they turned around and remembered that we were indeed a spiritual community, and would have to double up. My turn came and the attendant told me there was no room for me without a voucher. Period. With a sinking feeling, I gazed out at the swirling flakes. I felt like crying.

A woman behind me from our group started yelling at the desk clerk in English, in a very unsettling and racist way. I intervened, as this was going nowhere, and luckily, my roommate-to-be in Bali offered to share her closet-sized room with me. By then it was 2 a.m.

The walls of the room were metal, with cheesy steel closets that reminded me of a military bunker. Susan and I slept briefly, spooning each other, out of necessity, on the twin bed.

In the morning, grumbling and cold, we returned to the airport, and only then realized just how lucky we had been. All the vast, terminal floor space was covered with blanketed bodies. Those who had been unable to get a room, and who had delayed or cancelled flights, had spent the night right here where we now stepped over and past them.

Griping changed to gratitude. Reframed, the incident created a sense of santosa. Contentment with what I did have. I’d worn warm traveling clothes. I’d slept in a relatively proper bed the previous night.

We take our everyday luxuries so for granted in our first world culture. It’s good to be reminded of our abundance from time to time.

Is santosa an attitude we bring to our activities, or is it an effect of our actions? It can obviously be both. And of course, proactive, rather than reactive or retroactive santosa would seem to contribute to a more peaceful life. In general, I’ve often practiced the reactive kind, as evidenced in my second quote at the start of this piece—or at least that’s how I’ve always understood that saying.

I’m awakening to the empowerment a temporal shift in serenity might bring. And I intend to practice more proactive santosa in my life. After all, a woman needs to feel good to do good.

Toward a Sattvic Life - How the Gunas and Kleshas affect my Asana Practice

I love elegant words and ideas. It delights me to find a new language that, in just a word or two, encapsulates a concept that would take many in English.

Words like yanantin in Quechua—harmony between two different things (a man and a woman, for example). Or l’esprit de l’escalier in French (thinking of a clever comeback too late). Or kleshas and gunas in Sanskrit.

Kleshas, as Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra 2.3 tells us, are obstacles to growth (ignorance, fear of death, ego, attachment, and aversion). Gunas (Sutra 2.15) are qualities of nature or mind: rajas (fire), tamas (sluggishness), and sattva (balance).

With each discovery, a door opens in my mind at the depth, the cleverness, and the opportunity to explore, reflect, and practice svadhyaya (self-study) with each new wisdom stream.

For example, ignorance of a deeper understanding of yoga kept me repeating a very simple hatha yoga sequence for 18 years; never venturing to discover more. I prided myself at the time on all the money I was saving. From this little set of asanas, I had all I needed to know to take care of my scoliosis and remain pain-free in my home practice. Or so I thought.

Then, propelled by a mid-life crisis, I moved to LA and began taking yoga classes again. How much yoga had changed! It couldn’t possibly be me who had changed. Could it? Apparently I was ready for transformation.

I opened to new teachings. To new ways of seeing and doing things, because my life had become a tamasic quagmire prior to my move.

I turned a page of my life, chucked 18 years of living in the Bay Area, a partner of 15 years, and all else that was suddenly suffocating. A new self beckoned . . . one I could sustain, be proud of, and reenergized by as I entered my second 50 years.

And so I rebirthed a new me. If I was going to flash hot with my new rajasic hormonal superpowers, then I wanted my outer self to reflect the freshly forged 50-year-old I was capable of being. I had taken workshops with 70 and 80-year-old yogis and dancers. I knew it was possible to remain alive and inspired for a very long time. I wanted that future for myself.

I embarked on a sampling of the various yoga studios on LA’s West Side. I became attached to one teacher’s sweet, candlelit classes at YogaCo on the Promenade in Santa Monica, where—at the end of a gentle evening sequence—he serenaded us in savasana with his guitar.

Ego grew proud of mastering the choreography without mastering the inner workings of the poses. In my rajasic LA state, I became attached to power yoga classes. Digging the entrained ride of 75 lithe, 30-something bodies (plus me!) soldiering through Surya Namaskara B, mats ½” apart. Denying the growing aggravation I felt in my lower back. My ignorance of how to take care of my body in a yoga class, possible careless instruction, externally rotated poses not being introduced before neutrals . . . all this contributed to the aggravation of my scoliosis and the cultivation of a chronic SI joint injury.

~

I learned proper hand alignment for headstand. I’d been a gymnast as a pre-teen, blithely performing back handsprings, walkovers, and somersaults. But with age and office work, I found the occasional adult attempt to revisit my limber past resulting in pain and injury.

Still, muscle memory kept reminding me of the exhilaration of a backlfip. An exuberant, spontaneous cartwheel at thirty, however, taught me a good lesson in humility, as I hobbled away from my attempt holding my aching lower back.

This fantastic, gymnastic realm still beckoned whenever I saw Cirque du Soleil or contact improv dance. Sadly, even by the time I was 30, it remained the realm of others—the young and flexible. A mindset of fragility was threatening me; and was reinforced by my peers. At my 30-year high school reunion I was shocked to find most of my former classmates stiff, decrepit, and gray—having already suffered cancer, major surgery to correct lifelong eating and drinking disorders, or worse—dead, from alcoholism, cancer, anorexia and a host of other modern ailments. What if I did a flip or a headstand at my age? I might break my neck. Or die.

With the headstand advice I nonetheless felt more reconnected to the joy I’d felt as a young flipper. The thrill of possessing a body that was a magnificent instrument, of being a “fine animal” (in the words of late runner/author George Sheehan) called to me. I wanted that feeling and confidence back.

I tried contact improv dance. At the invitation of a patient, strong partner, who was also my age, I rediscovered freedom in movement from all the protection I’d practiced for years because of my scoliosis. Flow and trust in my body’s inner wisdom returned.

My year in LA ended. I’d learned much about sadhana, screenplay writing, and love. Spirit called me back to the Bay Area to regroup and reconsider.

At first happily settling in, I soon found myself rattled by an odd and repetitive energetic occurrence. My hackles rose regularly upon encountering a certain person in a yoga class I take frequently. One morning, when this phenomenon began again, I decided to plant in my mind an idea I’ve been working with quite a bit lately. Sometimes what we resent most in someone else is something we have marginalized and need to look at in ourselves. An hour or so later, while in an inversion, point of view askew, my gaze rested on this puzzling person. I had an “aha” moment, where I realized exactly what part of myself I’d been pushing away upon my return to the Bay Area, and which this stranger personified. Aversion became a teacher. And transformed into gratitude toward this completely oblivious stranger who had taught me so much about myself without consciously doing anything on their part. The power of projection, guided with redirection, became insight.

I’d like to say that moving back “home” created sattva. At best, and perhaps this is true for most seekers—it is a state I visit from time to time. I wish to bask on the sattvic shores of life more often. With intention, renewed devotion, and discipline, the many aspects of my life—what I ingest, who I spend my time with, what I turn my attention to at the end of the day—will continue to evolve to embrace this balance. And not only will rajas and tamas become my lifelong friends, as they are beginning to, but so will my sattvic self.

Winter, January 1981, Boston - Lennon is Dead

The harsh winter winds whipped through an icy city that I had decided was the epicenter of the universe.

Anything.

Anything was better than home. John Lennon had just died and his music suddenly gripped me like the warm clutch of a lover's promise that first winter in Boston. He, and Bowie, and all that New Wave music sang to me of a life worth living . . . far from the one I left behind in my little lobster fishing town on Cape Cod.

Promises to his baby, promises to Yoko . . . these were all foreign things to someone who had never known love.

But still they pulled me. Called to me from radio airwaves and created cravings of . . . what? I didn't even know. But I felt embraced. Heard. Loved.

Of all the times to move to a new home . . . dead of winter. The worst one Boston had seen in years. I couldn't even afford the warmth of boots to cover my frozen feet as I waited for the T that was on strike and took hours to show up in absolutely frostbitten weather. Something pushed me beyond my comfort level.

I knew there was warmth and love and a life worth living there.

I stayed for ten years.

Inner Slate

Lately I find myself journaling virtually, within the matrix of my body.

Pen to paper feels too removed from felt experience.

The story unspools, with iPod set to shuffle . . . as unpredictable as life.

Each song, each asana, triggers an inner scribing of sadness, wonder and joy on an internal slate.

Shaken clean by savasana.

Zen and the Art of Merkaba Maintenance

As we surf these Maverick waves of bliss that are arriving to carry us forward (and that I have been feeling since July 2009), know that our "family" is also alongside us on similar waves, as we all steer our cosmic surf boards towards cocreating our own Heaven on Earth . . .

I like the alliteration of Merkaba Maintenance, but maybe I should backtrack so I don't lose people! The Merkaba is an energetic "ascension vehicle" that goes back to the Egyptian Mysteries.

The expercises do with participants at my Creating Sacred Space Within workshop start slow, and gradually build to expanding and enhancing our personal and group energy fields. Such a field, when it is built properly and set in motion, becomes an "ascension vehicle" or a "stairway to heaven" (as my teacher Juan Nunez del Prado jokingly calls it--he being a former flower-power child [as HE describes it!]). Just one of many ways to expand our awareness and state, and push the evolution of our consciousness . . . with my own personal spin on the process.

Hello 2012!

Anger

Sometimes when people feel strong feelings, they might choose to react with anger—the easiest , seemingly face-saving, seemingly justifiable reaction. Sadly, there’s usually an unmet need behind most bad behavior. Just under the anger might be a whole lot of sadness, or disappointment, or some other issue that keeps coming up in their lives. Allowing themselves to feel what might be under the anger makes them feel vulnerable. So, in a nanosecond, mind diverts them from feeling that pain.

It takes a pause to consider what they’re feeling and consider the range of reactions they might choose. So, especially if alcohol is involved, they reach for the lowest vibrating energy, like a weapon; not thinking it through that this won’t get their very vulnerable, human needs met in the long run. But reacting in anger only hurts everyone involved. There’s always a better choice.

More and more I’m trying to be the observer of my journey through humanness, and trying for more compassion and understanding of myself and others . . . a work in progress! (And sometimes, it’s entirely right to release someone from our lives, when they are repeatedly disrespectful.)