Dancing in the Dark
Last week the Facebook algorithm asked me if I cared to remember this post from four years ago.
Due to waking up too early in the morning I’ve started doing my practice in the dark, next to my bed. If you’ve never done yoga in the dark, try it! There’s something so peaceful, so restorative and refreshing and so challenging about moving and balancing in total darkness. Grateful for this experience.
I wrote this when I was eight, almost nine months pregnant and find it hilarious. And also true. With the exception of the few months out of the year when it’s light between 5:30 – 6:30am, most of my asana practice takes place in darkness.
Practicing before dawn presents several challenges. First is the monumental task of getting out of bed. Second, I’m not as limber that early in the morning so many of the advanced asanas are out of rotation. Third, balance poses are much more difficult in the dark.
Practicing in darkness also has its advantages. There is a lack of external stimuli. No light assaults the retinas; no sound assaults the ears. Because balancing is a challenge with no clear point of visual focus, I reach out for help – to my chair, the window, the lampshade. I am often too self-reliant. In the dark I have the opportunity, whether I take it or not, to surrender the need to look or move or be a certain way. Also, I get to stay in my pajamas.
In spite of its benefits, if I had my druthers I’d sleep until sunrise and practice in the light. Now that we are approaching Spring and moving into the time of year when my practice will be a in sync with daybreak. It will be a little easier to get out of bed. A little easier to move. A little easier to balance.
I’m curious how my body and soul will respond to the rhythm of Spring this year. March to early April, and Mid-May are “danger zones” for me. The return of light and life to the Earth, while delicious, can be too energizing. This is the time of year when I more prone to mania. When I sleep less, get wired, grow irritable, am really excited about life and all the things I can do in a day. It’s fun at first. Then the irritability grows; thoughts race faster and faster; songs play on repeat and grow louder and louder in my head until I cover my ears to block out the noise. I can’t sleep past 4 and I’m too tired but to “up” to come down. Until I do. And then I crash.
This March, I hope things will be different. I have finally found a medicine that works to keep this under control and which I can tweak as needed. I have a mid-month appointment with my acupuncturist who will help keep my nervous system in check. I have restorative asana, vigorous asana, and running. I have death meditation.
My Lenten death meditation has taken an interesting turn and become a mantra, “Everything that has a birth has a death, and I am no exception.”
This is such a relief. This is the peace of practicing yoga in darkness. This is the gift. To remember that all the worries and joys and trials, no matter how large, will pass. To know deep in the bones that everything that has a life has a rhythm. Everything that goes up will come down. Everything that is light will become dark; everything that is dark will one day become light. And we are no exception.
Photo by Alex Blăjan on Unsplash
Verbiage
“Give yourself a little Grace,” said my friend Callie.
Callie and I were sitting on the couches at the Y last week talking about our mutual insanity. I was feeling tired and depressed. She was feeling pregnant. I’d had a difficult week. I hadn’t found a rhythm to this new working-writing-contracting-teaching-mommying life, and the lack of structure was taking its toll. I was working after Cole went to bed – something I do my best to avoid – and couldn’t muster more than a handful of seated asanas. It was a bad week for yoga.
At least, that’s what I would have told myself a few years ago. Now, even though my first thought is one of judgement and failure, I change the narrative to remind myself that I have been practicing yoga for twenty years and am not about to abandon it. This is a life long gig. One week of scarcity does not a quitter make. And even if I do quit, so what?
“Give yourself a little Grace.”
Way back in the Anusara days I used the word “Grace” as a non-threatening, non-denominational, non-person term for God. God is so often used as personal noun; which has been troubling me of late because by calling out a God name I am forced into personification. And that personification is your typical old man with the white beard as painted by Michelangelo. Or, if I’m substituting “Our Father” with “Our Mother,” a glimmering, fierce, compassionate, wild woman.
I like both, but I can’t conceive of God as a person. Nor can I conceive of God as a nonperson.
I sit in church and wonder just what is this God we pray to? I wonder why I’m so comforted by liturgy and teaching when God as person or nonperson is far beyond my realm of comprehension.
Sometimes I’m not sure I believe in God. It isn’t a crisis of faith. It’s a crisis of concept.
It’s not a crisis of faith because I have had two distinct experiences that without question point beyond.
The first time was twelve years ago. I was sitting in Caribou coffee when a friend said, “God loves you just as you are.” I looked out the window at one of the duller sights in Cary, and for a nanosecond the drab tan bricks of the dry cleaners across the dirty street shimmered; became the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. For a nanosecond I could see and feel the world as animated by love and loving me right along with it.
The second time happened in a particularly deep meditation. All sorts of dark shit was going down when Kali – Hindu Goddess of Death (read – transformation) threw me into a turbulent sea. I tried to swim, she said to let go. Then, a brilliant Christ lifted me up into pure white light and I again felt the animation of love. I was loved. I am loved.
That is why, despite a crisis of concept, I can’t extract myself from a belief and relationship with this whatever God.
As I was writing the Householder’s Retreat I “stumbled” across this from womanist theologian Mary Daly, “Why indeed must ‘God’ be a noun? Why not a verb . . . the most active and dynamic of all?”
When Callie said, “Give yourself a little Grace,” she wasn’t saying give yourself a person or a thing. She was saying, give yourself something active. Something you can work with. Give yourself a state of being. Be gentle. Be loved.
Like my yoga practice, this crisis of concept may last a lifetime. I’m not sure it matters. The world will continue with or without me and my uncertainty.
Perhaps it doesn’t matter if I have a concept of God. Perhaps it doesn’t matter if God is a person or nonperson person or verb. Perhaps what matters is that I give myself, that we give each other, a little Grace.
Photo by John Reign Abarintos on Unsplash
Death Meditation
“Anything that has a birth has a death, and I am no exception.”
~ The Book of Joy
In Chapter 4 of the Rule, Benedict writes, “Day by day remind yourself that you are going to die.” Tomorrow is Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. I will go to church and the priest will mark my forehead with the burnt remains of palms waved in joy one year ago, and pray, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” On this day, which this year is also Valentine’s day, we enter a season of penitence and fasting. A time of mindfulness of the patterns of behavior and thought that keep us from living in full faith and companionship with God, and in loving communion with one another. It is a time to sharpen our awareness of the ways we resist life, and avoid the fire of transforming death for fear we will be burned beyond repair.
During Lent, I often fast from some of the ways I use food as an emotional crutch. I thought about giving up JP’s delectable gluten free brownies but that felt old and tired and not true to the work of the moment. This year, instead of giving something up, I am taking on a discipline and meditating on death.
I first discovered death meditation in The Book of Joy: Lasting Happiness in a Changing World. It is one of the Dalai Lama’s daily practices. My initial response was one of mild disgust. “That’s all well and good for His Holiness, but not for me.” A few weeks later I encountered a few paragraphs on impermanence in Benedict’s Dharma: Buddhists Reflect on the Rule of St. Benedict, and the notion of death meditation as a Lenten practice was born. (Word choice intentional.) It came with all the hallmarks of intuition that this is the next right thing: a sense of shimmer and excitement, the ability to breathe, and a healthy dose of fear.
In the past several years I have let go of a great many aspects of my life. Some tangible: relationships, careers, houses. Some intangible: long held, limiting beliefs about what I can and can’t do; a sense of certainty; some of the cherished visions and timelines for my life. With each letting go I have received opening, strength, and brilliance.
Now that I am working and Cole is in school fulltime, I am passed many of the major transitions that have been tossing me around like wild waves. Knowing that life is the unexpected, how can I better accept the transitory nature of existence? I wonder what else I cling to that can be released?
Hence, meditation on death and impermanence.
My idea is to do this in two ways. First, three times a week I will sit for a formal meditation in which I visualize my own death and ask myself a series of questions posed on page 328 in the The Book of Joy. Second, each night as I lie in bed I will breathe into the back of my heart and say a few thank you’s as I always do, then I’ll visualize my death before going to sleep. That’s the goal, anyway.
I tell you all of this so that I will be accountable. I’m afraid. I’m afraid I won’t have the energy or time or discipline. And I’m afraid that in meditating on death and impermanence I’m somehow calling in an unexpected wave of more transition, more difficult currents. Which is bad theology, but it’s how I feel.
Why wait until February 14th, Ash Wednesday, to begin? Because there’s a communal power to millions of people all over the world engaging with the 40 days of Lent. And what is Lent but a spiritual cleanse; a time to prepare for death and resurrection by stripping away even the tiniest bit of the non-essential so that truth of love can shimmer forth?
I don’t know what this practice will teach me. Which is kind of the point. Consistent Lenten discipline is, to borrow from Rolf Gates’ wisdom on consistent yoga practice, “ . . . not built on rigid self-discipline, [it is] built on the desire to know more.”*
For a detailed script of the meditation I’m using check out page 328 of The Book of Joy by His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, and Douglas Abrams
*Rolf Gates, Katrina Kenison, Meditations from the Mat: Daily Reflections on the Path of Yoga (New York: Anchor Books, 2002), 103.
Photo by Marc-Antoine Dépelteau on Unsplash
It’s All About Me . . . Sort Of . . . Not Really
Every now and again I bump up against the notion that my spiritual practice should not be for or about me. I bristle at this idea because I have been taught that self-care is essential and comes first. How can I help others if I don’t help myself?
I understand that when I take care of myself in mind, body, and spirit, when I stay connected to God, it has beneficial ripple effects that enable me to be more loving, present and responsive, and in turn inspire others to do the same.
But that is not what motivates me to get out of bed when it’s dark and I’m cozy. I don’t think, “I better get up and on the mat so the world will be a better place.” Or, “I better get up so I can praise God.” More often then I care to admit my thought is, “I better get up and move or my body will hurt, my mind will be all a jumble, my thighs will lose their muscle tone and I won’t prove to God – whatever that means – and the world that I’m sincere about this spirituality thing.”
I’m weary of my mind.
Upon reflection, however, I’ve noticed there are places where I do, perhaps, practice for reasons beyond my limiting self. First, I always do asana on days when I teach. It’s part of how I plan class and become available to you. I pray to get out of the way and allow class to be about God and you rather than my ego. I practice, to be present.
Second, I worry that Cole will grow up resenting yoga because when I’m on my mat I’m not playing with him. When he tries to climb on me or pull me away, I tell him I need to do this so I can be a better mommy. Which is true. I practice, to be present.
Last week my brother, Adam Thomas, preached a sermon called “Living Deep, Living Wide” in which he teaches that the symbolism of the cross is one of transformation. The vertical line drawing wisdom from a deep well – this is discipleship. The horizontal line widens our peripheral vision to encompass and serve the world around us (think of Jesus’s arms wide open on the cross) – this is apostleship. Transformation occurs in the relationship between committed study, and loving, inclusive action.
Relationship. Presence. Community. Words I find myself returning to over and over again.
As an experiment, I am taking this week to shift my motivation. When I peel myself out of bed and onto the mat I say, “May this benefit ____,” and name a friend, a loved, one, a group. Dedication is the only thing I can think to make my prayer and asana one of apostleship. To make it ever so slightly more like the cross – deep and wide.
Will you join me?
I’d love to hear from you. Leave your thoughts and experiences below.
Photo by Alexa Mazzarello on Unsplash
The HouseHolder's Path 