Letting the Pendulum Swing

Pendulum

“It’s easy to fall into the trap of thinking the holidays are about giving and receiving presents or attending parties, but it’s really small, quiet acts of gratitude that cultivate connection.” –Brené Brown

pen·du·lum

ˈpenjələm,ˈpendyə-/

noun

1.     
a weight hung from a fixed point so that it can swing freely backward and forward.

Traditionally, and, by that I mean over the last few thousand years, this time of year represents a season of turning in, quieting, as the pendulum swings freely from the brightest, virile days of summer to the darkest, quietest days of winter.  Our ancestors relied on this rhythm to ensure the continuation of life: plant, grow, harvest, rest. We still need this rhythm to enable health in our bodies, in our families, and in our communities.

What I often observe, in my yoga circles, in my friends’ and family’s lives, really rides to the other end of the pendulum. What I see, even more than the physical doing, doing, doing of gift buying, decorating, parties, recitals, increased work load etc, etc, is the mental equivalent: “If I just give the perfect gift, throw the perfect party, have the perfect outfit, make the perfect cookie, have the most meaningful encounter with a salvation army bell ringer, then I will feel happy/satisfied/blessed/enough.”  This is not necessarily something to change outside of our selves, although that may follow, but rather an internal downshifting.

Recently, it seems I’m having a recurring conversation with students and potential students around their experiences with “hot yoga” or “power yoga” or P90x yoga – it seems this lack of balance is even creeping into the realm of yoga exercise. One reviewer noted that in the P90x version of yoga exercise, “savasana (the deep relaxation and integration that seals each yoga practice) is included, but only lasts one minute, possibly because that is the longest (the instructor) can bear to stop talking.”

My hope is that we can free the pendulum again to swing in the direction of balance: in our yoga offerings, in our families, and in our minds. Can we allow the momentary discomfort of shifting to neutral while we give our bodies a chance to breathe, our minds a chance to quiet, and our hearts a chance to rest? This so that we can turn ever inwards towards the small, tenacious shard of light which is our soul.

“Travel light, live light, spread the light, be the light.” –Yogi tea bag

On Birth

Some of the most amazing mavens of birth in my life are women who have not gestated actual human beings. One brave friend gave birth – a kind of phoenix-from-the-ashes-birth/re-birth of self kind of thing. Breast Cancer. Another friend has been laboring for what seems like ever to birth herself from the bonds of a marriage that isn’t ending so peacefully. Yet another friend did a twin birth: breast cancer and divorce all in one. Birth, of any kind, is not always pretty or tidy, but it is sacred.

Some friends birth a new business or vocation, a book, a project, a new state of consciousness, a new relationship. I wonder about honoring the birth of young ladies into womanhood, the birth of older ladies into wisdomhood. Where are our rights of passage, our midwives, our support for these births?

This week, I am blessed to begin a new adventure at Authentic Birth Center. Authentic is a place where pregnant mommas can sit in circle and hold space for each other. Authentic is a place for babies to come safely, sacredly, beautifully into the world.  And, it’s a place for honoring the births that happen throughout our lives as women.

Please find more about Authentic Birth Center here

Find out more about the Sacred Pregnancy circles here

And, please, share here your own “birth” stories.  What would it feel like for you to be midwifed through these births? How could this time and space be honored for you?

Namaste,

Amy

Mamaste

Mamaste

"My theory on housework is, if the item doesn't multiply, smell, catch fire, or block the refrigerator door, let it be. No one else cares. Why should you?"

Erma Bombeck

I brought my kids over to my friend’s house to play and carry on and so that my friend and I could seek solace in this heavy business of momming. Walking in, I felt right at home. Toys strewn wildly, shoes (some match!) in smallish piles a short distance from the shoe storage place, the most random randomness and fullness sprinkled, piled, spilled everywhere. This place is lived in.  I take a deep, easy breath and sigh.

“Mamaste”

I see your messy, busy, lived-in house and it reminds me of my messy, busy, lived-in house. We are one.

 

But, more than that, I see under the mess – the lived-in house, and also the at times untidy heart. You yelled at your kid that time. You forgot to bring a snack to share. You flubbed a social situation. You laughed, you grieved, you loved, you raged, you worried, you celebrated, you rested.  I see it all, I recognize it, I AM it.

Deeper, I see a good Momma. I see pure intention. I see the Great Mother in a tiny altar in your heart. And I recognize that, too.

Mamaste,

Amy

Sweet non-attachment

19 July, 2001

I’m blowing bubbles for him this morning in the faint and foggy light of his eastern window. We both learn (or re-learn) lessons in these quiet moments. I am charged again with remembering just how new this world is to him. He learns of the mortality of a bubble. Even though the moment has passed, he still looks up with blue and eager eyes, not desperate, just wondering if Mommy will spin magic for him again. That’s one great thing about moms and sons – each is magic to the other.

26 July, 2013

Oh the sweetness of early childhood! One of the foundation stones of the path of Yoga is Vairagya, literally “transparent”, but usually rendered as non-attachment. Looking back on this sweet journal entry from 12 years (!) ago, I feel the ache of attachment. Is it true, still? Are we still magic to each other? Now that we’ve come to that murky land of tweendom, now that there seem to be days of gross and wrenching vascillation from indignation to silence and back.  It takes more to settle back into magic some days. But, then there is that sweet moment, when a smile is given freely, when a darling, 12-yr-old boy lets his momma kiss him on the lips before going to bed.  And, I’m working on not being attached to that, either.

Namaste,

Amy

Everything and Nothing

 

 

And so we come to this point in the year. Just beyond the turning point, the autumnal equinox. This is one of two annual junctures at which the day and the night hold equal sway. And, it is also a threshold time. After this point, we begin an inward spiral which has the potential to bring us on a deep, quite descent into sacred space: a place in which we prepare ourselves to gestate. This quarter of the year from the autumnal equinox through the winter solstice signifies a reaping on the one hand, a dying on the other.

 

Enter the harried mother.

 

There is often talk of spring cleaning and the impulse to clear away what is stored and messy in preparation for freshness and new birth of all sorts. But, the autumnal sweep is spring cleaning’s shadow. Now, we take time to cleanse internally. We do this to release the heat of summer (in Ayurveda, the sister science of Yoga, we call this “Pitta.” Pitta is characterized not only by physical heat, but also by symptoms such as inflammation, excess acid, heart burn, or mental states such as anger or being hypercritical.) as well as to step into a deep, contemplative silence. The release can happen through a nutritional fall detox http://www.yogajournal.com/detox/?utm_source=MyYogaMentor&utm_medium=newsletter&utm_campaign=MyYogaMentor, time spent preserving the harvest http://www.himalayaninstitute.org/yoga-international-magazine/lifestyle-articles/saving-summer/, or through individual or communal celebrations of gratitude. For the harried mother, the work of cleaning is energetic.

 

Now is a time when we can begin to ponder bringing solitude into our lives. I know, I know. I can hear you all out there crying out that “There IS no time for solitude! I don’t even go to the bathroom alone!” The beginning of finding the time is 1. deciding if you truly need it and 2. allowing a deep feeling of worthiness to support that need. For this, we need breath.

 

Settle into a comfortable seated position in which the spine is straight and supported. Closing the eyes lightly, loosen the shoulders down away from the ears and begin to focus on the breath.

 

Deepen your interaction with the breath by drawing the inhale fully into the whole torso – to the front, the sides, the back and all the way down to the tailbone. Let the exhale release its way up the spine. Feel the crown of the head draw up and the spine lengthen. Continuing this way as each breath lengthens the spine, creating space between the vertebra. It’s as if you are growing taller with each breath.

 

Keeping the breath nice and smooth, let it become natural and turn your awareness even deeper by centering on the feeling at your heart center (anahata chakra). It is good to imagine this space as fully 360 degrees, a disc of energy around the center of the chest, including but not limited to the actual physical heart.

 

Now, allow your mind to savor the words of Sri Nasargadatta:

 

As you exhale: “I realize I am nothing”

As you inhale: “I realize I am everything”

 

As you exhale: “I realize I am nothing, and that is wisdom”

As you inhale: “I realize I am everything, and that is compassion”

 

As you exhale: “I realize I am nothing, and that is wisdom”

Feel spacious and open….

As you inhale: “I realize I am everything, and that is compassion”

Feel filled and vibrant…

 

Release the breath work and move back into the steady inhale and smooth exhale. Notice the change in the quality of your breath and your energy (prana). Return gently to your body, your environment, your life.

 

xoxoxom,

Amy

Solitude

“If one sets aside time for a business appointment, a trip to the hairdresser, a social engagement, or a shopping expedition, that time is accepted as inviolable. But if one says: I cannot come because that it my hour to be alone, one is considered rude, egotistical or strange.” – Anne Morrow Lindbergh

 

 

For all the gifts of motherhood, one of its greatest poverties is the lack of solitude. Originally, in an ancient text called the Hatha Yoga Pradapika, there were just a handful of yoga postures, all of which were either seated postures or other ways in which to prepare the body to sit in meditation. These were created to assist a life of solitude, a life in which the journey inward far exceeded in time and commitment to external demands, a life in meditation.

 

The conversation on meditation can be divisive. From some camps, there is the dogmatic insistence on taking your seat on a cushion once daily or more. Contrast this to our fearful plea “I can’t meditate!” usually after attempting to jump fully from the chaos of a fully lived life right into the thimble of Samadhi and wondering why we didn’t land right.

 

Most of the mothers I know are tired. They are tired because they have nursing babies that need them in the night. They are tired because they are working outside the home and then coming home to put dinner on the table, clean up afterwards, assist with homework, pay bills and faint into bed each night, while to-do lists continue to gallop through synapses and muscle tissue. They are tired because they want to be alone or exercise or pray or sing or draw or work their knitting needles or read that good book but they have passed another day not able to fit it in. I have to yawn and sigh just to write about it.

 

So, we can imagine a spectrum in our minds. On one end, we see the ascetic yogi of yore, sinewy and folded in lotus in a cave in the Himalayas – most every moment devoted to solitude. On the other end is the harried mother, as the ancient Hindu goddesses are portrayed with millions of arms and heads, each serving another cause in our lives as women, mothers, partners, professionals.

 

More in the next post…