He began this piece with the following observation about his very early work as a yoga instructor:
For a number of years in the late 1970s, Larry Rosenberg and I taught back-to-back classes in a church in Harvard Square. He would teach vipassana meditation (a Buddhist practice of mindfulness) from six to eight p.m. on Thursday evenings, and I followed with mindful hatha yoga from eight to ten. These were big classes–upwards of 50 to 100 people–and the idea was that everyone would take both.
But Larry and I were always bemused by the fact that most of the people in the meditation class didn’t want to do the hatha yoga, and most of the “yogis” didn’t come for the meditation class.
For the purposes of transparency, I must confess that when I first read this article in 2016 as part of the assigned reading for a MBSR teaching training course, I had to laugh out loud because I am totally one of those people who puts her meditation in the meditation box and yoga (asana) in the yoga box.
As a life-long compartmentalizer, I know all too well how I put my various spiritual practices neatly in to their respective boxes: yoga is for the body, meditation is for the mind, church is for the soul.
Yes, I love my boxes. Preferably with a bright pink bow on top.
For this reason, I remember clearly when these nice neat boxes began to unpack.
I was first introduced to the idea of yoga as a "moving meditation" practice when I did my first Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course in 2014, but the idea of fluid lines between these practices did not really hit home until my first 5-day Silent Mindfulness Meditation Retreat when, 2-3 days in, I realized that my sitting meditation practice was feeling more like a body practice as opposed to a mind practice.
Though probably logical for some, for me these were actually really big shifts in my thinking about both yoga and meditation.
You see, I had been holding onto these rather naïve, though unconscious, manufactured rules and ideas about what spiritual need could be met by what spiritual practice, and this narrow belief was greatly limiting and restricting the spiritual intentions I would set or aspire to when I began each respective practice.
Ironically, having said that, lately, my main spiritual practice has looked more like this:
And it does not feel like "just" yoga.
I suppose if I shared this story with Mr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, he would not be at all surprised as he goes on in the same Yoga International article that in those same two classes, he and his colleague:
Saw the hatha and meditation as different but complementary doors into what is ultimately the same room–namely learning how to live wisely. Only the view from the doorways was different. We had a definite sense that the meditators would have benefited from paying more attention to their bodies (they tended to dismiss the body as a low-level preoccupation). And the hatha yogis, we felt, would have benefited from dropping into stillness for longer stretches of time and observing the arising and passing away from moment to moment of mind/body experience in one sitting posture–interspersed with periods of walking meditation.
For me, the lines I had unknowingly drawn between mind, body and spirit had manifested themselves in extremely concrete (and rigid) ways.
Yet, interestingly, and for sure not by a conscious decision, I found myself dropping to my knees and bowing my forehead to the floor for anywhere from 5 - 15 minutes- as if that is what I needed most right now.
It is amazing how easy it is to say that: "change is the only constant" and "we need to push ourselves in order to grow," but when the rubber meets the road, how willing am I really to change up (or shake up) my daily practices?
It reminds me of this model I was once given to consider how I relate to my spiritual practices:
I really like this model, and find it so helpful that I share it with patients I work with too because I think it can be applied to many aspects of our lives.
But in terms of the spiritual life, I can see how sometimes I try to keep myself safe and sound in that inner circle--the Comfort Zone--which on a day-to-day basis looks like me doing the same 'ol, same 'ol spiritual practices day in and day out.
For this reason, this time, when I noticed this rather organic change--which has extended for several weeks now--I decided to ask myself two questions:
1.) What spiritual need am I trying to address by making this shift in posture? And,
2.) What is my intention when I move my body into this new posture?
Yoga postures, or asana, is not new to me as a whole. In fact, I began yoga a good 10 years before I began a sitting meditation practice.
However, in 2016 I hit a brick wall in my yoga practice (that I actually wrote about here in this blog) when I realized that my yoga had distorted itself into an effort to indulge my many negative body image beliefs that I was still clinging to from my early teens.
As a woman about to turn 40 at the time, this realization was incredibly disappointing, and sadly, my practice of asana still has not been the same since.
So imagine my surprise when, in lieu of sitting my butt on my cushion, I instead shifted into what some call puppy pose or melting heart pose.
The thing is though, it felt different than the yoga I was used to.
First of all, the posture felt more like a prayer than a movement of the body because I felt a spiritual need to embody my statement of surrender to god.
This realization led me to do a little Google Search of the magazine Yoga Journal to see if I could find some larger context for these shifts and transformations I was experiencing in my practice, and this led me to Shiva Rea.
Shiva Rea is a internationally known western yoga teacher who has written about her understanding of a pranam or prostration in yoga.
In 2016, in a Yoga Journal article titled: "Welcome Summer with Shiva Rea's Solstice Prostration Practice," Shiva Rea writes:
A prostration, also known as a pranam (to nam, or bow, to the life force, prana), is known in Sanskrit as a Dandavat...
A pranam brings about a natural letting go that anyone can experience, from the beginner to the most practiced yogi. It represents the power of renewal that is inherent in life, a humble strength hat we can give to the earth while receiving from a deeper ground of energy that is greater than one's individual self...
This embodied ritual movement instinctually transforms us, releasing tensions and awakening us.
Reading this article was so helpful to contextualize recent events in my life and how they had been impacting my spiritual practices (and vice versa).
I understood that it had been a recent series of humbling events that had (again) reminded me of the fact that I do not have control over my small universe.
(It's like I have to just repeat it over and over like a mantra...)
As is common with these moments of humility, it was a perfect storm when all at the same time I very suddenly lost my childcare, my 4 year-old got pneumonia, and my employer decreased my paid time off benefits.
(If you are a working parent, you can appreciate the gravity of this situation: Meltdown City.)
During this time, sitting in a cross legged position on my meditation cushion just did not feel right.
Yoga as prayer is a concept I was first introduced to in the work of another internationally recognized Western yoga instructor Seane Corn,
but I had never really experienced it myself- possibly because of all of those negative body image barriers that I just mentioned.
Yet, I still really liked the idea of taking a spiritual practice out of it's usual box, and trying it on in a different way, and I remembered Seane Corn's phrase "Body Prayer" one morning as I knelt down onto the floor, placing my forehead to the blanket I had placed underneath my head.
I realized then, "Body Prayer" was the best description of what I was doing. It was both my need and my intention.
And it was liberating.
So going forward, on a concrete level, moving outside of my Spiritual Comfort Zone means I might intentionally try to:
-Get needs of the soul or spirit met from yoga rather than church,
-Quiet the mind through asana instead of meditation, or
-Embody my body in a church service rather than yoga.
Though I still always want to respect and honor when and how I can get overwhelmed because it is still not easy for me to draw outside of the lines, I'd like to aspire for more of this in the future.
Perhaps you might too.
May it be.
No comments:
Post a Comment