Mommy, why you so busy?

Today I woke up at 4am. I knew immediately that I wouldn't be going back to sleep. Brutal, I thought as I ticked off the 18 hours ahead of me. It was one of those days. Too much to do. Too much to think about. Too much. Put the mail on hold. Find the birth certificate. Finish health care paperwork. Update financials for work. Find something to wear for the concert. Pack for trip. Hang new blinds. Package toffee for the neighbors. Change Lucia's sheets. Might as well change my sheets......

I thought that once Lucia started Kindergarten I'd be like a suburban house-Frau. I'd play tennis (or start playing), have luncheons, go shopping, create a pristine garden, live in a clean house. I have had a few good rounds at Goodwill, but none of the other parts of my fantasy have been realized.

I must get something from existing in this busy state, because once I have a moment of time, before I know it, the moment is filled, like water in a sand castle moat. Zzzjooop. The time is gone. I'm volunteering in Lucia's school or planning a party or writing a blog.

I proposed my too-busy dilemma to my on-again-off-again therapist. I imagined that he would have time management tips for me or some analysis of how I was escaping into busy-ness or instructions for extracting X or Y or Z activities from my life. But he didn't. He said that as long as he's known me, this is my resting state. He said that my busy-ness would be less stressful if I simply accepted it. Essentially, he was telling me to not judge it, to just be in it and take away the added energy of trying to change it. "Basically," he said, "you are going to be this way until you are someway else." What!? I have to live like this?

The truth is that, outside of paying bills and doing laundry, there is nothing in my life I want to give up. But I'm tired. So how do I reconcile this? Surprisingly, the same way I deal with my feelings. I just let my busy-ness be. I stop detaching myself from my busy-ness, stop treating it like some sort of plague that's ruining my life, and ride the wave. So what if I end up going into work on my day off or wearing the same socks two days in a row. It happens. The more I stress out about being busy, the less I enjoy the things that create the busy. I get to go to The Nutcracker with my daughter for the third year in a row. I get to run a yoga studio that I adore. I get to see my 92-year-old neighbor Lois smile when Lucia delivers a bag of treats. I get to start 12,000 craft projects that maybe I'll never finish, but while I'm working on them, give me moments of ecstatic joy.

Let's do nothing

This morning I heard the same story on KUOW for the third time in three days. The odds of this made me think that there must be a reason behind it. Why was I hearing the repeated weeping of the surviving mother of an Iraqi war casualty three times in three days? Maybe I was hearing it because my 6-year-old is pushing every button in my body and I feel unmotherly feelings of less than love for her! Maybe there was a message for me in this woman's tragedy being aired on public radio?

I'm always surprised by what I hear. So often the radio or a conversation at a party can be white noise for me, with just snippets becoming audible. This happens for me constantly in yoga. Last night I practiced in a state of exhaustion, which is often the most relaxing kind of class for me. I love it. Mostly Kristen's voice was background music, but periodically I heard, "Let it go" or "Let your muscles relax." Different instructions that began with "Let." It was the perfect combination for me in my fatigued state. I didn't have to do anything, I just had to let myself be some way.

It was kind of epiphanic for me. Instead of telling myself to relax or release the tension in my neck or my toes, I just had to let myself do nothing to get to this natural state. We all have this capacity. It's like a baby sleeping. Their shoulders and hips and knees seem almost double-jointed in their relaxed state. It's because they aren't doing anything with their bodies. They are void of all the repeated movements, traumas, stressors that we adults have quietly absorbed in our years of development.

So, when Kristen told us last night to "Let our jaws be slack" or "Let our brows soften", I heard it anew. "Don't do anything" I told myself. Do the opposite and see what happens. So far so good.

"I'm sorry I'm so emotional......."

My partner Nancy said to me the other day, "I'm sorry I'm so emotional, I just got my period." Being one of a cluster of sisters and a gaggle of great women friends, I have heard this sentiment thousands of times in my lifetime. For some reason, on this occasion, I heard the words differently. I got indignant, borderline angry! "You don't have to have a reason for being emotional!" I snapped. "Maybe it's hormones, maybe it's the holidays. Maybe there is no explanation for why you are emotional." Clearly a personal button had been pushed.

In the land of emotional indulgence-- therapy, self-help books, 'find yourself' workshops-- it is natural to want to understand the origin of our feelings, to want to dissect our emotional patterns and find "a cure." Full disclosure-- I am a big fat fan of therapy and self-help books but, I think there is another way to navigate emotional terrain, a (dare I say it) better way.

It's exactly what we learn in yoga every day. Let go. Be in the moment. Find your present self. Be in that experience. Blah blah blah. Only it's not blah blah blah. It's brilliant. The phrase that catalyzed the writing of this blog, "All feelings pass" explains it. The problem is, most of us are impatient or over-analytical, or just simply too uncomfortable to wait it out.

What yoga teaches us is to wait in a different way, not like waiting for a plane to land or waiting for GRE scores. It is a totally different kind of waiting. We learn to wait for the unknown. It sounds crazy-making, but the truth is, it's the easiest thing in the world, and really the most logical. If I spin my wheels and wonder why I am emotional and belabor the topic with everyone in my wake, I am still waiting to get out of whatever emotional gridlock I am in, I am just doing it way more spastically.

If, on the other hand, I refrain for labeling or judging or explaining my feelings, if I just give them a break and let them live in peace for a while, eventually they will change. They will move. It's a choice. Hunker down, get comfy with your feelings and know that they're going to stay for as long as they're going to stay or run around like a rabid squirrel.

I'm not a pro. It's way easier for me to preach this stuff than to actually practice it myself. What I do know is that practicing yoga is my every day reminder. For example, I struggle mightily with Standing Head to Knee Pose. Progress is slow. I worry about my left knee. My right hip is perpetually tight. On the contrary, I adore Standing Bow Pulling Pose. I know that I can't race through Standing Head to Knee to get to Standing Bow Pulling. I have to wait for it. I trust that eventually my sad posture will end and my happy posture will arrive.

Mean Mommy

Lately, Lucia has been saying, "you're the meanest Mommy in the world." At first it kind of smarted when she said that. Lately though, (like tonight when she chanted it naked from her bathtub while I, like a maidservant searched for the bedtime book she wanted) the words bounced off of me with barely a sting. After Lucia's raging tantrum and full-on tirade declaring me "the meanest Mommy in the world", we talked in bed. "Lucia", I said, "just because you are mad or sad or tired, does not give you permission to be unkind to me. It is my job to make rules for you and sometimes you won't like them. Sometimes it will seem like I am mean but I love you all the time, even when I'm mean." Now, calm and sweet and irresistible with her eau de Johnson & Johnson's baby shampoo, Lucia explained emphatically, "Mommy, I know you're not really mean. Sometimes I just need to cry it out. But I always know you love me." Whatever. Maybe I'll crack the code to parenting and maybe I won't, but in the meantime, I'll still make rules.

Lucia knows that I will always be her mom. She knows that when she pours water in her gym shoes and puts glitter all over her scalp I will still love her. She knows that she can roll her eyes at me and slam the door in my face and I will still love her. She knows that she can hate me and be ragingly frustrated with the rules I impose on her and that I'll still be here. I'll still be her mom. Like all moms, I am her touchstone. She'll go away from me and come back, sometimes staying for a long time, calm and content and then she'll run from me, stifled and needing independence. Just like I did with my mom. Some days it feels thankless. "I birthed you and this is how you treat me?!" I know that, just like me, Lucia is in a process, feeling her feelings, finding her way with Mean Mommy.

For me, Mean Mommy comes in the form of my yoga practice. Anyone who has read my blog knows that I often go to yoga feeling resistant. I make myself go because I know I will always always always feel better after I practice. In the time I have been doing yoga I have gone through great times, good times, mediocre times and don't- want-to-get-out-of-bed-can't-eat-a-thing-don't-want-to-brush-my-teeth bad times. No matter where on the emotional continuum I start my practice for the day, I am invariably better after practice. My better feelings might last for an hour or a week or a month. When I go on vacation and eat crap and don't exercise for a week, I know what will make me feel better. Yoga. When I forget to pay my gas bill for three months and feel like a loser. Yoga. It's like Visa. Yoga is priceless. For me, it can make me feel better about almost anything.

My job as Lucia's mom is to keep her safe, teach her the rules, guide her so she is equipped to navigate through her world. My yoga practice does the same thing for me. When I am a spinning out of control maniac trying to manage a business, parenting, friendships, emotions, Yoga keeps me sane. Just like Lucia knows I will always love her, always be there, I know that about my practice. I might resent it, push away from it, even avoid it, but I know my yoga practice is always there. It will always love me.

It's inside.

Last month I witnessed a group of people practicing yoga every day for thirty days. This means these people spent over 45 hours yogastudio. They committed to doing this challenge for a range of personal reasons. Private reasons. They were not graded nor judged nor paid. The rewards came from within. These 30-Dayers reported feeling happier, more energetic, calmer. They told me they slept better, ate better, smiled more. I received so much joy from teaching the 30-Dayers. They were (and are) strong, radiating energy and strength from within. Amazingly, though very few factors in their lives changed during their challenge (stress at work, relationship challenges, financial woes), they were happier, inside out, bones to the skin.

I've always been an over-achiever. If a teacher told me to do it, I’d do it. No shortcuts. The more tedious the assignment, the better. If I struggled more, I felt more accomplished because there was always the reward at the end of the task in the form of a grade or a compliment. I was forever competing with my twin sister or my classmates. When my partying high school girlfriends opted for a free period junior and senior years, I balked, signing up instead for the non-required Physics and Chemistry. When my swim coach gave us a ball-busting workout, I joined in the moaning and groaning of my teammates, but inside I was thrilled. I could work harder, show my coach that I was stronger. Then he’d pat me on the back and say, “Good work today Culberg.”

But what reward was I getting internally? Was I feeding my own sense of accomplishment or was I just ticking off achievements to tally at the end of each day? It was not until I was years into my yoga practice that I started to move away from being mostly externally motivated in my actions. Yoga is personal. It is a process of seeking the divinity within. In my yoga practice, I began to recognize the satisfaction of approving myself. It was enough to be proud of myself in standing head to knee pose. I stopped worrying (and even noticing) if I needed to take more breaks than the 75 year old woman practicing next to me. I practiced because I wanted to, because it was a gift I could give to myself.

Understanding the power of self-satisfaction has affected almost every part of my life. Of course I still struggle. I find myself in petty emotional predicaments with friends and family. The trouble is almost always rooted in some kind of disconnect I am having internally. I’m trying to be the most popular friend or the number one daughter. The difference is that now I can see when I am playing that old game. I can step back and say to myself, “What do you want? What do you need? And how are you going to get it?” And, like the 30-Dayers, in my process of finding what I need inside, I am exponentially happier, calmer, and more satisfied with the world outside.

It's chronic......

For the past four months I've had a cough or a cold or asthma. I'm not sure what it is. It rotates. Finally, after teaching yoga with the voice of a pack-a-day Parliament smoking granny, I decided to take care of my "condition." Convinced I had allergies, I very resistantly went to the allergist to get myself figured out. They tested me for everything. The good news, I don't have allergies. The bad news, if I don't have allergies, what the hell is wrong with me? The allergist referred me to an Ear-Nose-Throat doctor. While reading my chart, this ENT peeked over the file and said, "I see from your chart that you are medication-resistant." So awesome, I thought, "This doctor gets me." "I am too" he said, "That's why I'm a surgeon." He then proceeded to tell me that, while he had no idea what was wrong with me, he was sure that I had given myself a chronic condition, one that needed to be dealt with seriously. In the short ten-minute appointment, the ENT seemed to forget about my resistance to medications. He prescribed me three different drugs and threw in a referral for a CT scan of my sinuses. I thanked the good doctor, took the prescriptions I would never fill and ran from the building.

A week later I found myself in the office of an acupuncturist. I spent an hour in his dimly lit office talking about all the parts of my life, my respiratory system, my diet, my exercise habits, my love life, my own ideas about what might be wrong with me. After listening to me, he did his treatment and then we talked. "Based on the information I have about your lifestyle", he said, "I think you have created something chronic." Great, I thought to myself, this guy is just like the last doctor. "Because you created it", he continued, "you can un-create it." I agreed to eat a lot more red meat, committed to practicing some exercises, and made another appointment.

Like so many experiences in my life outside of the studio, the acupuncturist's approach made me think about yoga, how nothing is permanent. A physical ailment, a state of mind, feelings of the heart can change. What's more, they are all related and interactive. The heart affects the mind affects the body affects the heart affects the mind affects the body. When I wake up and my congestion seems worse than the day before, I remember the words of the acupuncturist. I can un-create this. Everyday students tell me about things that are wrong, or hard, or bad. Knee injury, break up, allergies. I don't believe that we necessarily create these conditions but I do believe that things can and do change. All feelings pass. The pain in knee. The ache in the heart. Nothing is static.

In dealing with my new "chronic" life condition, I understand this idea of change more clearly. "Chronic"- never-ending, constant, persistent, unremitting- means something else to me now. "Chronic" is a state that may be constant, but it is not without change. I'm still congested, coughing, slightly asthmatic. I'm still seeking a cure, an answer, but my chronic state feels better now. I'm in a persistent process, not stuck in a state. Like in yoga, every day is different. Every posture, every moment, every breath.

Cougar of the month

Last week, my daughter, who is three-weeks into kindergarten, won "Cougar of the Month" at her school. Cougars are her school mascot. Lucia was bestowed the honor, her teacher said, "because 99.999 percent of the time, Lucia is doing what she is supposed to be doing in kindergarten." Was I proud? Extremely!!! The teacher also said other things like, "Lucia is friendly to everyone, she helps without being asked...." But, nestled within my radiant pride, I also carried a smidge of concern that Lucia might be a super-conformer. Is she a kindergarten automaton? Or, is she just good at following directions? I've been thinking a lot about this.

Here's what I figured out. Lucia loves school. She asked on Saturday why she had to have such a long vacation from school. "I wish Sunday was Monday," she whined. Like me, Lucia relaxes in structure. If I know the plan, I'm open to anything. If it is wide and vast and unformulated, I'm not my best self. Maybe this is why I stuck with competitive swimming for fourteen years and yoga for almost twenty. It's comfortable, familiar. Lucia in school. Me in my yoga practice. Sameness, structure, expectations. These things create and hold a form that allows each of us to relax into the experience and find newness, excitement, and ultimately joy.

I've experienced the gamut of physical sensations and emotional hills and valleys in my yoga practice, but I've never been bored. Really. Every practice I experience differently. For example, last night, I was worried about practicing because my class the day before had been really difficult. So last night, I set my intention to focus on that practice and try not to bring the previous practice baggage with me. I stood somewhere new in the room, really close to the teacher (Kristen). Her fabulous turquoise outfit was surely a distraction, but I managed to focus and work hard in spite of it. I followed every single thing she said. I always try to do this, but, like everyone, sometimes I get distracted. Last night was different. Word by word, step by step, I let myself be carried through the 90 minutes. I learned so much! Like Lucia and kindergarten, I could hardly wait to do it again.