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.

It's all about the gallbladder

What I love about Chinese medicine is the explicitly stated connection between the mind and the body. What's more important? The mind or the body? It's the age old chicken and egg conundrum. Who knows? Who cares? For the last month, I have been laboring over a decision regarding my daughter. It's not a life or death decision by any means. I'm just deciding if she should change schools. The truth is, whatever side of the decision I come out on, Lucia will be fine. She'll be great. It's me who is struggling to make the right decision (if there is such a thing).

I think this is the third time I've blogged about my acupuncturist (aka "the healer"). Last time I went, the healer told me that he thought I had a blockage in my gallbladder channel. O k a y. "In Chinese medicine," he explained, "The gallbladder is in charge of decision-making." So, it is possible that I am having some physical symptoms because I am struggling with this decision, or it is possible that my physical symptoms are making it hard for me to make this decision. The healer worked on me, gave me some Si Ni Wan (herbs) to take, and sent me on my way with an entirely new perspective.

In knowing that my gallbladder is involved in this decision I have to make about Lucia, I am strangely liberated. For me, getting through mental anguish is vastly more difficult than healing from a physical injury or illness. With this Chinese medicine approach, the physical and mental are deeply connected, and equally significant. This gives me renewed hope that my syndrome of indecision is curable.

The body-mind connection in acupuncture is not unlike yoga in that we strive in our practice to create a dialogue and ultimately harmony between the body and the mind. Sometimes this message resonates in yoga class when a teacher tells me to follow my breath. Most recently, it clicked into place when the healer told me that my gallbladder regulates decision-making. Same message, different voice. I'm grateful for them both.

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.

Loosen your grip on the sand

Being out of control is not my forte. I like to get things done, move them along. I've always done this. Senior year of high school, I forced my (then, and still) best friend Judy to stay home with me many consecutive Friday nights to work on our our college essays. I still take credit for her going to college. My mom talks about the time when I was seventeen that I planned for myself and five friends to spend spring break in Sanibel Island, Florida. I had no credit cards and no check book and really no money. Somehow, though, I arranged for all of us to fly from Chicago to Newark to Fort Meyers on People's Express Airlines. We stayed for eight nights at a retirement hotel and, unable to rent a car, walked everywhere or stole bikes into town. I even coordinated peach Schnapps and orange juice for the underaged Fuzzy Navels on our layovers. Those were the days when liquid on planes wasn't a homeland security issue.

My greatest strength turns out to also be my downfall. In the face of the unknown, the ambiguous, I am a disaster. My mind races, I obsessively go through every possible incarnation of every possible scenario for any given event. Years ago, while walking home from work, I spent 45-minutes imagining all the different ways it would play out if I dropped my keys through the grate on the University Bridge and jumped off to get them. And I hadn't even dropped them.

One of my yoga teachers once said that, if you are planning to know what the next thing is (in this context she was obviously speaking about yoga poses), then you miss out on so much. You miss the newness that comes from being surprised. You learn much less because your mind has already formulated what is coming. My therapist describes this uber-controlling behavior using sand as an analogy. He says having to be in charge of everything is like squeezing a handful of sand. The more you squeeze, the more sand seeps out through your fingers. If you just let the handful of sand rest in your cupped palm, it stays there, a soft, pretty little mountain. You lose only a few grains.

I struggle with letting go in almost every area of my life. I think this is why yoga for me has been so important. First it was just as a student. I don't know how many years it was before I even realized what I was getting from my practice. For the first few years, I think I just loved how my skin felt. I felt clean and perky, like someone from Alaska. Over time, I got more comfortable with my body and that felt good. I was more physically relaxed, less self-conscious. Then I quit my job. I quit my career. Of course I eventually became a teacher of yoga and I felt something new. I was at home, content, in the right place. I understood finally what yoga had been giving me all these years. I could see, because I was teaching it, preaching it, that the trick was, and had always been, to let go.

But control is still my default. It's who I am on a deep deep level. Growing up in childhood heavy with chaos probably bolstered my need for control. It is likely that being the oldest in a line of five gave my controlling tendencies a boost too. Even if I committed to daily therapy with Dr. Phil and weekly visits with the Dalai Lama himself, I'd still be controlling. But I'm okay. I have yoga. When I teach, I am the letting go messenger. I am responsible for getting 20, 30, 40 different bodies and minds through 90 minutes of rigor, challenge. Letting go is the only way. On days when I practice, my teachers remind me. The message is never the same. It comes in different words and configurations of silences. I just wait to hear what's coming, knowing something always will, to help me loosen my grip on the sand.

Bilateral Breathing

In my youth I was a big swimmer. That was my family's sport. Everyone did swim team and, in the summers my sisters and I would go to overnight swim camp for a week or two at various camps in nearby states, sometimes Wisconsin, sometimes Michigan. When I was nine, I came back with an arsenal of new tools to plug into my regular practice at the Hyde Park YMCA. The Y, as we called it, is where I practiced during the school year. Rip, a young, hip, 20-something coach, stood on the deck of the century-old, sub-standard 20-yard pool with no light and no ventilation, and barked his workout orders. Rip used to tease us when we complained about workouts. He'd hold the world's tiniest imaginary violin to his broad brown shoulder and play while beaming a big fake frown at whomever was whining.

The fall of fourth grade, after my revelatory swim camp summer, Rip told us to do a a 500-yard freestyle warm up. I pushed myself up on the lane rope and leaned toward Rip, "Do you want us to do bilateral breathing?" Silence. My ears started getting hot. Maybe that wasn't the term. Maybe it was bi-coastal or binary or collateral. Rip broke the silence with a huge guffaw, "Bilateral breathing. Yeah Shorty. Do bilateral breathing." I was right. But I was humiliated. This is one of my most indelible memories. It shows up all the time, at random moments.

Last week, in response to my mysterious back tenderness, I was swimming laps to try and move things around. I couldn't do flip turns because it hurt, but of course I did bilateral breathing. Since the summer of my ninth year, I always do bilateral breathing. As I swam, I watched my bilateral breathing episode replay like a video clip. And then my mind moved to another channel.

In 1991, before there were any Bikram studios in Seattle, a friend of mine taught Bikram Yoga, unheated, at the Olympic Health Club. She did it in a huge ball room with close to 60 people. I went periodically but didn't have any kind of regular practice. One day, while practicing in the very back row, I kicked out in standing-head-to-knee pose. As I kicked, I felt a little pop in my lower back. Without hesitation, I bent over, folded my mat and headed for the double doors behind me. The teacher, my friend, yelled over the five rows in front of me, "Laura, where are you going? Don't leave." "I'm leaving," I shouted back. And with that, I marched through the lobby into the dressing room and sat in the hot tub in my t-shirt and shorts until class was over. I waited until everyone from class had left. Again, I was humiliated.

I've heard it said that humiliation is the best teacher. We seldom forget what we've learned in moments of being humiliated. Our greatest lessons come from being snapped out of our safety zones. When we are in conflict with our own comfort and knowing, when we are embarrassed or humiliated, our egos are wounded and we stand at attention.

I learned from Rip's guffaw that grown-ups are supposed to be smarter than kids. While Rip's intention might not have been to silence me, I heard a strong clear message. I kept my smarty pants mouth closed in swim practice. Rip was the coach and I was the swimmer. When I abandoned a yoga class I knew very little about, I learned that I wasn't as smart as I thought I was. I've never left any class since that day.

My humiliation experiences, while not pleasant at the time, have helped me to be a good student and a good teacher. As a student of yoga, I trust that my teacher is guiding me, that he or she knows how to hold the form and get me where I need to go. As a yoga teacher, I recognize how important it is to do just this, to be confident in my teaching and lead my students through their process with sureness and strength. Like everyone, I'm still humiliated sometimes. My ego gets bruised and I feel like an idiot. Then the dust settles, the wound heals a little bit, and there it is, a little lesson.

I never knew I liked sequins.

Have you ever been shopping and out of the corner of your eye see something that you are immediately and compulsively desperate to have? This happened to me once with an Isabella Fiore purse. I was shopping for make up at Nordstrom and, as I short-cutted through accessories to the MAC counter, the purse caught my eye. It was marked down from $600 to $168 (which is my style). I never knew that I wanted a navy gingham purse with red and pink sequins flowers. Never knew. It was a fashion epiphany. I had to have that purse! Had to have it, so I bought it. That purse sits in my closet. I use it maybe once every three years.

Recently I had an emotional epiphany that hit me in much the same way as the perfectly ridiculous purse. I have high anxiety, particularly high anxiety among big crowds, and super-amplified anxiety when I'm having a party with lots of people in my own house. So, we had a party. I thought I would be fine. I thought I was good. I thought I was "over" this particular issue in my life. And then, there it was, the issue, from out of nowhere, like that Isabella Fiore purse. It niggled me. This issue. I've tried to overcompensate for it, being more social instead of less. I've tried to intellectualize myself out of having the anxiety--- "everything is under control," I repeat like a mantra during parties. It hasn't worked. The issue, the emotions attached to the issue are drawing me in, compelling me to look at it, deal with it.

An old friend once told me that if I didn't deal with my feelings directly, as they came, that they would eventually just come out sideways. Like when the coffee filter gets jammed with grounds and the coffee-ish water finds its way out anyway. It's messy and it's a pain in the ass, takes a good half hour to clean up the watery grounds and another ten minutes to remake the coffee.

Sometimes with feelings, we don't always know when they will come, or how they will present. I always tell my students to be open to emotions presenting themselves in class, during different postures. Yoga is one of the few places where, when we've trained our minds enough to really let go, feelings and thoughts can surface without the filter of judgement or control. It's great when that happens. There's no overflowing coffee grounds from this kind of expression. It comes up, it comes out. And we're ready for a second cup.

What a disappointment it was when this old stuff showed up. Initially, when I first recognized that damn, I gotta deal with this, it felt like a disaster. Coffee EVERYWHERE! Who knows why this happens. Maybe we are presented with emotions when we have enough room in our lives to listen. Maybe it happens when we practice enough yoga and our heads are sufficiently clear to notice the noise. Maybe it's a momentary interaction that, like a shock, jars our psyche to attention. It's likely a myriad combination, different for each of us.

My anxiety still shows up, but less frequently. It is still here, and like the purse, it might come out of the closet every three years. It will make a brief showing and go back into the closet. The disaster of it is over. I'm in clean up mode. Rinsing out the filter, adding new grounds. Starting from scratch.

I have an owwie.

Right now I have an owwwie. It's in my lower back. During Padahastana, it feels like a metal rod is being inserted into my spinal column. But only first set. Second set feels fine. And so does most of the rest of class.

Owwies are almost never just owwies.

The other night at dinner, Lucia was being a jerk, alternating between snappy and bratty and remote and aloof. Great dinner mate. At some point, Lucia started bawling. I didn't see it coming. It was seemingly out of nowhere, like spontaneous combustion. When I asked Lucia why she was crying, she said that she was upset about something her friend Ellen had done "when she [Lucia] was five" which means that this acute bout of crying was about an event that happened at least four months ago. At bedtime, Lucia finally told me that Ellen had given her a rejecting message that hurt her feelings. Ellen, a child with extreme, potentially fatal allergies, had said to Lucia, "My allergies are more important than your feelings." I told Lucia, "Honey, Ellen's allergies are really important. She could die if people don't pay attention to what she's allergic to."

"I knew you'd say that!" Lucia sobbed, "Nobody ever listens to meeeeee."

Lucia was sad, frustrated, exhausted, something. And she didn't know why. She needed something to attach her feelings to--an event, an experience. She needed something tangible that she could use to get love, comfort, support.

The body is the same way. Like my back owwie, my inexplicable owwie. Where did it come from? I didn't fall. I don't have degenerative disc disorder. I haven't picked up any bags of cement. I just have an owwie. My body needs comfort, support, love. A few months ago, my acupuncturist (aka "the healer") firmly advised me, "Laura, you expect too much of your body." Among other things, he told me to eat earlier in the day, to eat more meat, and to sleep more. "Every morning", the healer counseled, "instead of thinking about what you can get from your body, take a moment to resolve how you will take care of your body for the day."

I'm still not great at preempting my body's needs. I rarely take stock of what my body needs at the beginning of the day (or the week, or the month). So I periodically get a reminder in the form of an owwie. This time it is in my back. "Culberg", the owwie squeaks, "Pay attention to me. Comfort me. Support me. Love me."

Like Lucia who finds a way to get her big warm blanket of hugs and attention and love to comfort her inexplicable feelings, I too have found a way to take care of my mysterious owwie. I practice yoga and it makes my back feel better. I slow down because my back doesn't let me speed up. It's not a quick fix. I have to pay attention to what my body is telling me. I have to listen carefully and look more deeply because, y'know, owwies are never just owwies.