Reading in bed

This morning I found myself confounded by my situation. Unlike most other mornings in my life, today I had the rare experience of having nowhere to be. Nothing I had to do. No child to manage. This morning the plan was to relax. It is so amazing to me that a good portion of my life involves teaching, practicing, writing or thinking about yoga, and still relaxing for me is like committing some kind of white-collar crime.

My milieu this morning was perfect for relaxing. I'm mid-way through a book that I love (A Pocket History of Sex in the Twentieth Century, by Jane Vandenburgh). It's my favorite kind of read-- tragic memoir with a heavy dose of cynicism and hilarity. My coffee maker had brewed me another fantastic pot. My house was actually clean. My laundry was done. When I woke up, I decided that I would let myself stay in bed drinking coffee and reading for as long as I wanted. About an hour in, I started thinking, I should go to 10am yoga. I have to teach this afternoon, so that would mean two trips to the studio on my "relaxed" day. So, I let it pass. While I poured my second cup of coffee and let go of 10am yoga, I decided I'd walk to work later. Somehow this decision made it okay not to go to yoga. After about another half hour of my decadent read-a-thon, I got a text. While on my phone, I looked up the pool schedule. "I'll walk to work and on the way, go for a swim" I thought.

It's like some sort of weird trading card system I've got going in my head. "You can read in bed for two hours, but you have to walk 4 miles and swim 1600 yards." In my mind, relaxing is some kind of an earned status. The other day I had just finished teaching the 5pm class. Gary, the teacher who was waiting in the lobby to teach the 7pm is from Alabama. While I, like usual, frenetically finished my teaching duties so I could gather my things and get to the PTA meeting (late), I said to Gary, "I'm really bad at doing nothing" to which he replied in his laid-back, subtle, southern drawl, "I'm really, really good at doing nothing. I'm actually great at doing nothing." And he was completely serious. He doesn't have the thing I have. I imagine some people would say it's guilt.

I've thought about this character trait of mine a lot, why I'm a multi-tasking, crazy, nutbag. But the answer is that I really don't know why. Once in a moment of pure appreciation and gratitude for my students and the existence of yoga in my life, I told the class, "If not for yoga, I'd be a chain-smoking, road-raging, alcoholic homeland security agent." I like to think that's an exaggeration, but who knows. Even though I fought my plan to relax in bed this morning, employing weird trading card games to justify my decadent morning, I did it. What yoga's given me is the ability to move through the resistance to relax a little bit more easily. Today, I stayed in bed for three hours. Three long hours, an eighth of a whole day. I drank my coffee. I read my book. I relaxed. And, while writing this post didn't bring me the answer to why I'm a relaxaphobe, it did keep me in bed a little bit longer. I'm getting up now to walk to work. And I'm skipping swimming.

Relaxing is hard work

During a recent treatment, my acupuncturist told me to relax my leg. He was doing a crazy manipulation. I was on my stomach and he had my leg in the air. It was like I was doing one leg of locust pose without the arms under my body. He bent my leg at the knee and told me to relax. I couldn't!!!! I tried every relaxation technique I know. The more I tried to relax, the more my hip contracted, my toes flexed, my quads bulged. "I'm trying to relax" I mumbled into the massage table with embarrassment. Being a skilled professional, the acupuncturist was kind and supportive and told me to just do the best I could.

On Fridays I teach yoga at Lucia's school. The kids are 5, 6 and 7 years old. Alexander is the youngest in the class. He's just five, having barely made the cut-off for kindergarten. The first day of class I taught the kids Savasana. I dimmed the lights, put on Deva Premal, and guided the kids into relaxation. Everyone tried. And of course they fidgeted. Even adults fidget. But Alexander was like a little rolled up sleeping bag. His eyes were clenched shut like a scary movie was playing. His little tiny palms were squeezed into fists, and his toes curled under in pre-high dive formation. Every Friday now, I try to help Alexander relax. I peel his fingers open and massage his hands. "Ow" he says. I rub his arms "Ow." And his toes "Ow". Each week he's a little better, a little more relaxed, but he struggles. It's a lot of work for Alexander to relax.

Last night at Prayer Square*, like always, we started with a five-minute silent meditation. Only five minutes. Usually I at least go through the motions-- be quiet, focused, still-- but last night, I just gave into my distractions. I yawned. I played with the pockets on my new pants, I even opened my eyes and spied on the other people a few times. But then, when the bell chimed signifying that our five minutes was over, I snapped into attention from a deep deep deeply relaxed place. I'd never been to a place like that while meditating, especially in five minutes.

There is something to this whole idea of being where we are, giving in to the experience of being okay not being okay. We are where we are and oftentimes that's not okay, or appropriate, or perfect. I spend a lot of time trying to do exactly the right thing. Put the right amount of money into savings each month, eat enough fiber, send thank you notes. Yoga for me is the time in my life when just doing what I am doing is exactly right, even if it is not exactly right. Yoga gets me to relaxation because there is no "supposed to be". Sure a practice exists. We hold to a physical form, but internally, mentally, emotionally, there is wide open space. While not always applicable in the general operating expectations of daily life, this is a good lesson. When you're all jacked up like Alexander in Savasana or me at the acupuncturist, try being okay with that. Maybe, like my unexpected surprise in Prayer Square, you'll find yourself relaxed anyway.

*Prayer Square is group of women friends I've been meeting with on a monthly basis for close to ten years. We meet monthly and have intentional conversations, sometimes about specific topics, sometimes based on what is going on in our lives.

Free falling

The other day during Savasana, I told the class as I always do to "let go." About 30 seconds into Savasana as I sipped my tea and scanned the room, I saw clenched fists, jaw bones pulsing, eyelashes fluttering, toes curled. Seeing the collective struggle, I tried to push them a little bit, "Holding on is easy people. Letting go is hard." Some slight changes were evident. Slight. Bodies shifted, big breaths were breathed, brows intermittently softened, but the struggle continued. Tight muscles, scattered focus.

This idea of "letting go" has been a prevailing theme in my life forever. Why is letting go so difficult? And why is holding on, the act of gritting through change, physically, mentally and emotionally, an easier place to be? Because staying tethered to things and ideas that are known, while not necessarily more comfortable, is so much safer. "I hate my job." Instead of quitting (stepping into the abyss that is the unknown) we keep the crappy, energy-sucking, life-draining, dead-end job. "I'm unhappy in my relationship." We plug away, staying in the mediocrity instead of listening to the heart.

The idea of stepping into the unknown is scary. Things might get worse before they get better. They might not ever get better. But we don't know if we hang out on the edge of the diving board day after day, week after week, year after year. If we never step off the edge and tread the waters of fear, we can never know what letting go feels like.

The times in I my life when I have been the most frightened, the most confused, the most devastated, have been the times in my life when I have had let go-- letting go of a marriage, a career, a city. At the time these decisions felt like I had no choice. I know now that I needed to some part of me deep down knew I had to make those choices. Not letting go, not moving on, for me was impossible. Each time I have been faced with big change, I have held on tight, pushed against it with Olympic heavy-weight force, before finally taking the leap.

The first time I consciously let go in a big way, I existed in a state of free-fall that I can still remember as the most horrifying experience of my life. Now each time I do it (which is not a lot), it gets easier. Taking a relationship risk I never would have made ten years ago or making a business decision that feels right but makes no sense on paper. There are moments in these times when I feel like I am ruining my life or throwing so much to chance that I am literally petrified, paralyzed like in a scary dream. And then, I am out of the free fall. The fear is gone and I am on solid ground, hardly able to remember that the fear existed.

Whether you are lying in Savasana wishing the person to your left would stop nose-whistling or sitting in your idling car at 2am pondering the meaning of your life, the act of letting go is the same. It is trusting that letting go will take you somewhere different. Letting go makes room for new feelings, ideas, sensations, pushing aside what would usually fill that mental, emotional and physical space. Angst, anticipation, analysis, anger. For most of us, these experiences are familiar, comfortable. Instead of staying there, try something different. Soften your jaw, relax your toes, let your fingertips curl. You'll be scared, uneasy, for a few seconds, maybe a minute, maybe a week or a month. But then you're there--in the land of the unknown. And that's just the beginning.