Yoke: A Triangle of Awareness

I recently heard someone say that they named their depression “Francis.” The person speaking was a Lutheran preacher named Nadia Bolz Weber and she apparently describes how she came to name Francis in her book “Pastrix: the Cranky, Beautiful Faith of a Sinner & Saint.” Ms. Bolz Weber says her image of Francis is circa early 1990’s Courtney Love in a torn up baby-doll dress with a pale face and smeared lipstick, and like the nightmare roommate who will just not move out.

First off, I found this idea hilarious, and I think a little laughter and humor is sorely missing from my spiritual practice. So, thank you Ms. Bolz Weber for that! But beside the lighter side of things, I have to say, I found the suggestion of naming something inside of you that feels kind of ethereal and even slippery at times, to be quite helpful, and I began to apply it to my triangle of awareness.

I’ve been posting lately about my experiences in my Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction class, and my teacher, Kate, recently talked to us about the three components of awareness which she drew on a large piece of paper as a triangle.  Each corner of the triangle of awareness was labeled including: Body Sensations, Thoughts and Emotions. At first glance of the triangle I thought to myself, “okay, nothing really new here for me.” But then when I moved in deeper, I saw how challenging this awareness-thing really is because what we’re talking about is not holding each area of awareness separately, but rather integrating the three parts in to a greater sum of integration and wholeness, and for me, that’s the challenge.

           Elizabeth Gilbert, author of "Eat, Pray, Love," recently spoke of this intentional effort
           toward integrated cohesion recently on Super Soul Sunday with Oprah Winfrey.
           She described a retreat several years ago in which she stayed on a largely uninhibited island
           and spoke out loud to all her various internal voices. She talked to the voice of shame
           and self loathing and guilt, and asked each one respectfully: how can we all live together
           in this head of mine more peacefully? An important question for us all to ask. Whether on
           the micro level of our own internal world, or on the macro level of world nations.

So where do I begin? Well, even though my ultimate spiritual goal is to live in a cohesive state of awareness, I generally start by compartmentalizing.  I’m actually very, very good at compartmentalizing as I’ve been doing it for most of my life. It probably was a survival technique. And when you practice something over and over again, you get pretty good at it.  But a word of caution, look out of for over-generalizing the usage of your own personal survival techniques, you must be selective.  Here though, I will compartmentalize each corner of my triangle of awareness as a means to understand each part in more detail but knowing in the end I seek for all three to integrate as a whole. I will do this by naming each aspect of awareness, just as Ms. Bolz Weber named her depression Francis.

Over this past summer, in my work as a psychotherapist, I saw a teenage girl who was a triplet, all girls.  This patient described to me how difficult life can be at times as a triplet with identical looking sisters, who’s personalities are all quite different and unique.  In the process of naming now my triangle of awareness, I’m drawing upon my experience with this patient, and imagining the 3 corners of my awareness as all teenage triplets who are my daughters; girls all born at the same time of the same mother, me. But also like my patient, though on a physical level looking exactly alike, each is in fact very distinctive in her own right.

Let’s start with Body Sensations. If body sensations were my teenage daughter I would call her “Wallflower.” She would be the girl who has her bangs hanging long over her eyes, incredible shy in school, often found looking down at her feet.  I would have to work at getting any information out of her about how things were going in school, with friends, etc.

Now Thoughts. Thoughts I would name “Chatty Kathy.” If my thoughts were a girl going through adolescence she would be the one who is talking non-stop.  The one who just rambles on and on. Can go on tangents and not even notice if people are engaged or not in what she is saying. The one who you just want to say to sometimes, “would you please just shut-up,” but in a really nice way of course.

And lastly, Emotions.  My depiction of emotions would be “Goth Girl.” She would be this kind of gloomy, Eeyore-like moody teenager who had a melancholy about her.  When she spoke she might be a little irritable or grumpy.  She’d be smart. Insightful. Observant of others. But mainly a loner.

I now imagine sitting down to a family dinner with these 3 girls, Wallflower, Chatty Kathy, and Goth-girl, my triangle of awareness. These 3 daughters who I am trying desperately to coexist with living in the same house, me.  These 3 girls who can really give me a hard time at times.  I contemplate the family dinner as analogous to the movie "Soul Food” in which all the family members sit down to an abundant spread of comfort foods provided at the home of the Grandmother matriarch each Sunday.  A ritualized coming together regardless of how well everyone in the family is getting along or how good or bad the Monday through Friday week was. In this analogy, I would be the Grandmother matriarch, and the 3 teenager daughters representing my triangle of awareness (body sensations, thoughts and feelings) would be the squabbling family members who reluctantly show up to my table each week.

Kind of like how we show up to our yoga mat.  Consider for a moment, the word “yoga.” As most of you know, the word stems from the word yoke which means union. The purpose of this union is to purposefully bring the parts of yourself including your body, your mind and your emotions all into alignment- everybody being at the same table (or mat) at the same time. Intentionally integrating the various facets of our humanity because so often each individual aspect can feel quite separate as we move through our very busy days of work, parenting and personal growth.

But on the mat, who is to take care of all these moving parts? Who acts as Grandmother matriarch orchestrating the whole thing? The soul of course. My Buddha nature. My true self. Saying compassionately to Wallflower, or my body,:“Try and relax a little. Open up. Life your gaze. Smile.” Saying to Chatty Kathy, or my thoughts: “Okay, I heard what you have to say. Now let’s try and bring our attention back to this moment and give someone else a turn.” And to my Goth-girl, my emotions, while putting an arm around her: “I got you. You’re okay. You’re safe. Don’t push me away. “

Yes, on the yoga mat is where the potential for the sum to be greater than each part truly can be realized. But it must be done with self-compassion.  With kindness. Giving space for the idiosyncrasies and temper tantrums and struggles of each girl so that she will know her experience is valid.  And by demonstrating that validation, in my experience, yoke, or union becomes a reality.