Goo Goo Gaa Gaa

I've just finished listening to Esther Perel's new podcast, "Where Should We Begin." It's seven episodes of couples therapy, each episode a different couple. In one episode, Perel has one member of the couple blindfold herself and the other member speak only in French. Perel reminds the couple, and all of us listening to the podcast, that most humans are non-verbal for at least the first 18 months of our lives. Prior to speaking, we communicated through our bodies. Our first language is non-verbal;  body language. When we were pre-verbal, we could tell our parents if we were happy, sad, curious, hungry, in pain, constipated, hot or cold with our bodies.

As a hyper-verbal person, this is an important reminder. I often get caught up in the intellectualization of an experience because I am quick to attach words to it. How would I describe that?, I often find myself thinking in the middle of a feeling.

As a yoga student and teacher, I am in the unique position to reconnect and more deeply connect with my first language, the body. The other day before class, I shared this idea-- try to notice what language you are using to experience your yoga practice. To be able to be in a posture and just feel it instead of attaching words is a gift. The words usually come with judgement or analysis, thoughts that take us off the path to becoming more connected with our true selves. Feeling, through the body, on the other hand, is where true healing and liberation can happen.

When I was twenty I lived in Spain for a year. I flew home from Madrid via Kennedy Airport. I remember, as I waited in the terminal for my connection to O'Hare, how disoriented I felt.  It had been so long since I'd spoken English regularly that I couldn't remember certain words. So when I think about the 20 or 30 or 50 years we live speaking a language other than the one we were born with, it makes sense that rediscovering our body language would be challenging. It might feel at times impossible.

The couple who wore the blindfold and spoke French were trying to reconnect with one another by experiencing each other as different people with the idea that, seeing each other in this new way would enable them to see each other more completely. They were opening the door to that idea that we are never just one way. How we act most of the time is not who we are all of the time.

Yoga opens that door too. I'm shy and guarded and a little bit worried all the time, but that's not all I am.  Yoga gives me the opportunity to take a break from seeing only that, from being only that. The experience of yoga is hard to put into words. Right, because it's in the body.

You're the best!

In my little family, we have a frequent saying around the house. "You're the best!", I will say to Lucia when, in search for her black leggings in the dryer, unsolicited, she brings the whole load of laundry up from the basement. When either Nancy or I bring the other coffee in bed, the act is always met with "You're the best."  Sometimes when we're hurrying out the door to school,  Nancy will yell, "Lu, you're the best!" giving some props and support for another hard day of sixth grade.

This morning Lucia had three tests before fourth period and was losing it a little bit. Nancy was mediating a very difficult case that would likely go well into the evening hours. As I ran around the kitchen doing breakfast things, they sat at opposite ends of the kitchen counter with their laptops open, scrawling notes-- Lucia for her science test and Nancy for her case.

My day ahead involved a tapestry of lots of little things all over town--- I had to go deal with a heat glitch at the studio; I needed to go down to the Seattle Department of Transportation to get a truck permit for an upcoming project; I had to meet the landscaper at the rental house; I wanted to get the first draft of the newsletter written; and I was on a mission to replace two evergreen clematis that recently died. I was a little stressed about getting it all done.

About a year ago, I started writing daily messages on a little kitchen chalkboard. I try to get Nancy and Lu to come up with ideas, and sometimes they are good sports, but usually it's me. As I looked across as these two dear souls, working hard, stressing hard, as I scurried to get all the ducks in a row for my own day, the message of the day popped into my head clear as rain. "Your best is the best." I scratched it onto the board and propped it on the counter so they could both see. "Your best is the BEST!" I screamed, rejoicing at the pure truth of it, hoping it would bring some ease to the furrowed brows hovering over the four eyes across from me.

"Good one," Nancy said, "did you make that up?"
"Yes!" I exclaimed.
"Mom, if I get an JS [that's an F] on my health test, it's not the best, it's a JS" Lucia groaned, punctuating her sentence with a grand roll of her eyes.

Needless to say, Lucia didn't get an JS, but if she had, and if she'd done her best, I would still have given her the house standard, "You're the best!" because I believe it. It sounds simple because it is simple. Doing our own personal best is all we have in each of our little galaxies. Finding it--our personal best-- is the journey every day. It's trying our hardest and being present to whatever it is we are doing, whether it's being a lawyer, memorizing sixth grade geology, or making time for all the moving pieces of life. Try hard. Engage. Face the challenge. Do your best.

The Middle Ground

I practice yoga every day because it makes me feel good. Oh, and it keeps me sane. I often struggle when I practice. Sometimes it's really hard physically, other times mentally, oftentimes both. The usual pattern: I start in a resistant, amped state of mind and by the time I land in Savasana, I'm in that glorious end zone of tranquility. But between these polarized places, there is the space in between, the peanut butter and jelly that I live in the majority of the time I'm practicing. The magic of yoga is the union of the physical and the mental, the body and the breath. This energetic tandem play creates a magical state---perfect and beautiful, though temporary and fleeting.

I've been trying to think of a term for this enchanted space. It's a real thing, this space in between the angst and the grace. I visualize it as a something invisible but with form. It pushes and it pulls, it moves around the body, kind of like the slime in Ghostbusters, only very friendly, very loving, and very gentle.  It's the opposite of destructive. It's integration, happening even without me knowing or trying. It comes through me, takes over, becomes the strongest sensation. It's not the amped up starting point, nor is it the blissed out end point. It's the space between the two, created only because the other states exist. Its the Middle Ground.

For my lifestyle-- parenting, running a business, managing a household-- I recognize that I can't stay in the Middle Ground all the time. But I think that because I have had a daily yoga practice for many years, there is resonance when other Middle Ground moments show up throughout my day when I am not doing yoga. It's during morning coffee in bed talking to my sweetheart about nothing and everything, floating in those moments between being asleep and brushing my teeth to start the clock on the beginning of another long, usually harried day. I find it driving my daughter to school, between rushing out the door and saying a hasty goodbye "do you have your lunch?" at the crosswalk. I experience the Middle Ground when I take the time to walk instead of drive the two miles to the community center where I volunteer on Tuesday nights.

It's a relief and a reward. I don't imagine that I would ever stop practicing yoga, but if for some reason I had to, I would know that the magic slime shows up in other ways. And a reward because, hot damn, all those years of in the yoga room have seriously paid off!