It's What I Know.

The school's absence policy is strict: two weeks of missed classes and you are out.  Armed with this reassurance from the dean, I walked into class, prepared to go to the mat on this issue.

"I've been recovering from surgery. I have a baby. I'm a veteran. If you drop me, I'll lose my stipend." The student stood in front of me as I prepared for class to begin, his arm wrapped in a cast. Persistently, he repeated his reasons for staying in the class as he washed a Percocet down with soda. My resolve buckled. I told him to sit down, and I caved to his every request for missed materials and laborious recounting of past lectures.

As I left class, I felt myself slip into a familiar pattern of thinking: trapped between my "take a hard line" self and my "Yes! Limitless compassion for all!" self. Fueling this vacillation was my old self-loathing, angry and ashamed that I had been unable to take the stand I'd committed to.

On my way home from work, a stanza from Ani Difranco's new album stuck out like a neon vacancy sign blinks at weary travelers:

"I walk past my own self-loathing
Like I walk past animals in the zoo
Trying not to really see them
And the prison they didn’t choose."

One of the reasons I love that stanza so much is because it pictures the self-criticism so aptly as a series of traps. It is like a prison, but, as a friend once told me, it's a prison with an open door; we can walk out at any time. "How frightening it could be out there!" we think, and cling desperately to the bars of our own cells. Because there's something familiar in those old negative patterns, isn't there? We grasp onto our suffering, afraid that if we let it go something new and more terrifying will replace it.

In the past few years, I've cultivated technique after technique for dealing with this, ah, problem. Yoga provides me with a baseline of strength and awareness from which to address this stuff directly. Meditation, prayer, and biofeedback training arm me with methods for interrupting these thoughts mid-stream. But sometimes I get too tired to fight, and let's face it: these techniques don't provide an easy 180 out of suffering. And fighting means facing the fact that those old patterns are still there.

So, fine, I'll say. Let the student stay in class. Let nepotism continue. Let me continue to lie awake at night, haunted by streams of self-criticism and doubt. I may not have chosen this prison, but it's what I know.

I've never been much of a gardener, but I imagine this is what folks mean when they say it's like getting stuck in a rut. It can be so easy, so comfortable, to keep pushing your wheelbarrow forward on that familiar path. But a rut is a rut; at some point, we've got to get the strength to heave our barrows up and out and to continue on, forging a new (if bumpy) path forward.

Wheelbarrow/ "So much depends..."

Scalpel Moments

When I was 18, I cut open a pig.

Small pig

I don't mean that I enjoyed a nice pork chop, or that I wrapped filet mignon in bacon. I literally took a baby pig, sliced it open with a knife, and poked and marveled its insides.

I guess the knife part gives it all away. It was a biology lab I took my first semester of college, and the one dissection we had to do was of a fetal pig.

I remember the first day of class, when the instructor announced that we'd be doing the fetal pig dissection. "No fucking way," I thought to myself.

I was young, high on Ani Difranco and burgeoning liberal beliefs, and there was no way I would let this injustice stand. I discussed this with my mother, who encouraged me to abstain and to bring a brochure from AAVS to the instructor. I put the brochure in my bag, and on the second day the class met, I had fortified myself, ready to broach the topic with the instructor.

"Don't trip," my lab partner (and former McDonald's coworker) said. "I'll dissect it when the day comes. And you get to miss one lab per semester; you can just be absent that day." My political standpoint crumpled in the face of this opportunity for laziness. Plus, the instructor was kind of scary, and I didn't want to get into it with an instructor my first semester of college.

Inevitably, the day to dissect the pig arrived. My lab partner's one absence coincided with D-Day. My last-minute protestations to the instructor fell on deaf ears, of course, and the pig was placed in front of me. Bigger, pinker, and waaay cuter than I expected, the pig lay tragically on the tray, scalpel neatly placed beside it. I didn't know what I was going to do. As the only person without a lab partner, I felt the victim of some great injustice. I was an English major, for Chrissakes. In what possible context would I need to know what the insides of a dead pig look like?

To say that making the first incision was the hardest part would be an understatement. I couldn't have felt more dread and disgust as I would walking toward a pile of writhing caterpillars (of which I am intensely afraid). I understood that I was most definitely not going to take a stand, that I was going to participate in what I thought was a strange and unnecessary process. But once the skin gave way to the blade, once it pulled away to reveal the tiny, compact organs, the resistance dropped away. There was the pale heart, the maroon liver; there were the daffodil-colored intestines that could be unraveled like a ball of yarn. Not only was it not as bad as I thought it would have been, it was actually kind of cool.

I thought of that pig yesterday as my mind mapped out brilliant excuses to skip out on yoga (these scalpel moments present themselves all the time, don't they?). This time, the pig was far too cute, and I talked myself out of a Bikram class. How many wonderful experiences do we miss out on because we resist and fight? As Jack Kornfield says, "This resistance is a pushing away or closing off to the experience, just the opposite of opening to it."

I'm not really sure what the "takeaway" for this piece is, exactly, but maybe we can take a page out of Kornfield's book and just keep opening to experience. Pick up that blade and get to work! :-)

Motherless? Never.

In the tiny black and white photo I keep in my mom's old jewelry box, Richard looks like a short Peter Sellers. Richard was a small man, my grandma confirms, smart as a whip and capable of handling any task, from cleaning a dove he'd shot to arguing both sides of a political issue at a party.

Peter Sellers, my grandpa's doppelganger

You could say my mom was fatherless at a young age. Richard, her father, died when she was ten. You could say I was motherless at a relatively young age, too. By the time I was 19, I knew my mom wouldn't be around to celebrate my buying my first home or being granted tenure. You could say that these things are tragedies.

But is it really true that those who have lost parents really motherless, fatherless? What does it mean when a parent dies?

I had dinner and a lovely walk with a friend of my mom's recently. As the sun began to set, the frogs by the river started croaking their rusty evening songs. We talked about getting older, teaching, and raising children (this includes pets, of course :-).

That night, I had one of those "Oh, now I get it!" dreams that shed light on one of those issues that has held you captive for years. In the dream, I was sitting at my grandmother's counter top, looking at the spot on the stove where my grandma usually stood as my brother and I ate our dinners. Instead of my grandma in the kitchen, though, it was Richard, the grandfather I never knew except for memories told and retold by my mother and grandmother, tied to the tiny black and white photo.

"It's OK your grandma got remarried," Richard said. From his quiet and sweet demeanor, I knew who he was immediately. "I'm glad she had a stepfather, someone to take care of her and give her brothers and a sister. And I'm glad you had a grandfather."

I awoke from the dream stunned. I am careful to write down dreams that seem like they might have something to offer, and this one was no exception.

I've been thinking a lot lately about what it means to be a mother, to be mothered. I think I've been working these past few years to understand that I'm OK without a mother. I'm trying to accept that it's OK that I've found ways to be mothered--and to mother--even without her lovely presence. I think one of the hardest parts about the healing process after someone dies is to begin to be alright with the fact that you're going to get that love elsewhere. But I don't think we should worry about that. The human heart is vast enough to preserve a space for those we've lost while making room for new opportunities for love.

So when a female friend pays for my glass of white wine and cheeseburger after an evening of laughter and tears, or when another friend envelops me in a random embrace after noticing my long face, I accept it: I'm still being mothered.

It is enough.

“What is the totality of life? Listen and attend carefully. The totality is simply the eye and sights, the ear and sounds, the nose and smells, the tongue and taste, the body and sensations, the mind and mind objects. Anyone who tried to describe a totality beyond this would not know of what they were speaking.” –the Buddha, the Totality Sutta

Surprise, surprise.

I've been surprised by a lot of what life's thrown at me. Relationships, births, deaths, adventurous travels--all of it, so unexpected.

I remember the globe my family kept in the living room when I was a child. At that point in my life, my world was pretty small. Nice parents, a silly brother, some family, and a smattering of friends and teachers. Before I was 10, I don't think I ever left Southern California. I'd look at the globe, spin it halfway around, and gaze at China. Halfway around the world. And yet, so tiny on the map.

When I was 20, my tiny world began unfolding at an exponential rate. As I grew up, I learned how distances actually could be compressed to the point of becoming inconsequential. With a bit of pluck and a few extra pennies, those distances could be traversed in a single plane flight. But standing on the Great Wall of China when I was 20 was only the beginning. Since then, there have been loves. There have been degrees and jobs earned. There have been trips taken and trips cancelled. There have been family members lost, and family members born.

Grove of Aspens

 But after reading Emily Rapp's lovely article over on The Rumpus, I'm reminded of the biggest surprise of all: Our hearts are vaster than I ever imagined it to be. Forget the Gap's infinitely forgiving stretch jeans; the human heart's capacity for love, like an ant capable of carrying ten times its own weight, is the real miracle.

What I notice as I've gotten older is the way the friendships I've made on the playground, on the yoga mat, and in the teachers' lounge have quietly guided our lives. We no longer happen to be friends. Our lives have been shaped by each other, and it's as if we are now inextricably linked. I think of the way Aspens grow--their roots are intertwined, as if they were a family. Chop one down and the whole colony could die.


Had you told the little girl with the globe about the experiences that lay before her, she would have said no one's heart would be big enough to bear them. And yet, it seems the heart grows like some magical oddity--Harry Potter and the Infinitely Expanding Heart!

Thanks to my dear friends for letting those roots mingle...

Be aware. Be VERY aware.

"I should have taken a shower before class. This top accentuates my collar bones nicely. Argh--why is it so humid today? I really wish I were eating a pomelo."

Is there any limit to the utter insanity of mental chatter? Sit down to meditate or practice yoga and you see the stuff that comes up is absurd. As Jack Kornfield likes to say, the mind has no shame. And usually, the thoughts that come up are one rerun after the next.

Isn't stopping the flow of chatter what we mean when we say we want to increase our awareness? We do yoga and meditation because we hope that our valiant efforts will eventually quiet our crazy monkey mind and that we'll go through life more engaged, focused, calm, and level-headed. But there are other ways in which we are not aware. Take me, for instance: I'm a dweller.

I am still dwelling on a conversation I had with a colleague last week. Well, obsessing is probably the right word.

I'm currently enrolled in a psychology class. Although it's not my area of expertise, psychology has always interested me, and as I've gotten older that interest has expanded into a full-on preoccupation. One of the things psych teachers will tell as you settle into the first day is that you're going to learn about lots of odd disorders. You're going to learn how psychologists diagnose people. And under no circumstances are you to attempt to apply these criteria to yourself or the people you know. It takes training, not an introductory course, to correctly diagnose patients, and what's more, you can't ever objectively diagnose yourself or people you're close to. So don't even try.

Got it! Makes perfect sense, right? I will never do that. Of course not.

Ha. Ha, ha.

In the aforementioned conversation with the colleague, he mentioned a behavioral tick that set off a little bell of recognition in my head. I eagerly asked my coworker a couple of followup questions, and before I could check myself, I sputtered, "Oh! That sounds like a symptom of ________!" I then followed up with, "do you also get X, Y, and Z?" before catching myself and apologizing profusely.

Despite my apology, the conversation ended awkwardly. And I don't blame the person. Ugh, imagine getting an armchair assessment from your coworker! (Especially if there's a grain of truth in their observations ;-)

So, on the one hand, that little scenario would indicate a lack of awareness on my part. I shouldn't have jumped to judge the guy. But also note my above statement: "I am still dwelling on a conversation I had with a colleague last week." Seriously? Last week? Is rumination essential to awareness? How many present moments am I skipping out on when I berate myself  for a) disobeying a teacher (I have this thing about disobeying perceived authority figures) and b) potentially causing distress to a coworker.

I guess this is why we practice yoga and meditate. Doing so rockets us out of our heads and back into our bodies, enabling us to be present.

Well, except for the pomelos and the collarbones ;-)

A tasty pomelo

Pomelo cat also enjoys pomelos

Something New

...And not just a new blog layout!

It's taken me a while to process the fact that it's a new year. I keep writing 2011 when I sign checks or write the dates on HW assignments. I'm not one who's big on making and then desperately trying to keep rigid resolutions, but I do like to take a moment to reflect on what changes I wouldn't mind coming my way ;-)

I think, if anything, I'm resolving to do more of the same. One is to keep settling into myself, allowing myself to be comfortable in my own skin rather than working so hard to fix every imperfection. The other is to be as open as possible to new experiences.

I started the new year with one of those: two weeks without a Bikram class--the longest it's been without being forced to due solely to travel! This wasn't by choice, though. The day I got back from Sedona, I got some sort of cold/sicky thing that hung around for at least a week. Since it's the new year and the room is packed, I figured I'd do my fellow yogis a favor and sit it out a few days. The anticipation--and the "I'm a bad absent yogi guilt"--mounted.

Breathing in

Finally, Friday a.m. came. With no morning classes to teach and no yucky symptoms to coddle, I confidently rolled out my mat. I breathed warm, humid air into my lungs during Pranyama and kicked my leg out proudly during Standing Head to Knee. And then.... I was just done. You ever work on a really tedious task, avoiding looking at the clock, thinking, surely, hours must be going by, only to find it's been about 13 minutes? That fun feeling hit me by Standing Bow.

I spent most of the class on the floor, trying to convince myself that I wasn't humiliating myself and that I shouldn't have stayed home. I tried to be a good yogi and just stay present, breathing the humid air into my desert-dry lungs. I slogged home, drank a bunch of juice, and spent the rest of the day in that occasional unpleasant post-yoga hangover: wrung out, headachey, unmotivated, yet unable to sleep. Ugh. It's not a fun combo.

Still, I dragged myself out to dinner, hoping that the warm glow of the pub and friends' faces (not to mention its greasy and delicious fried food) would snap me out of it. I wasn't halfway through a glass of wine when it hit: migraine! Crap. And I had been ignoring all the warning signs: post-illness, intense exercise, citrus, and now alcohol (both common migraine triggers). I excused myself early and dragged myself home.

Now, you migraine sufferers know that once it gets under way, it can feel like a full-blown attack in a war that lasts hours. I tried to resign myself to its course--fighting never seems to help much--and settled into bed, readying my iPhone to a Jack Kornfield talk should the need for his soothing words arise.

But not two hours later, I remembered seeing Deepak Chopra on TV not six months before, talking about a meditation-based/biofeedback-ish technique for easing the pain of migraines. The instructions are as follows:

"Put your hands out and then close your eyes. Watch your breath for a few seconds and bring all of your awareness into the middle of your chest. Listen to your heartbeat and tell it to slowdown. Now move your awareness into your fingertips, and focus on experiencing your heartbeat as a throbbing sensation that has moved there. This technique diverts blood from your brain into your limbs, reducing blood pressure and slowing your heart rate so your headache goes away."
From "A How-to Guide to Holistic Health"

I did this, more or less, in about five or ten minutes while lying in bed. And would you know, it worked! I actually fell asleep--something that doesn't happen for hours into the migraine cycle. I woke up a couple of hours later but simply tried it again and slept through the night. I woke up feeling relatively normal.

It could be a coincidence that I managed to interrupt the typical course of a migraine. But I'd rather chalk it up to being willing to try something new :-)