Covered in colorful Mexican blankets I use in yoga classes, I keep an old couch in our dining room. When we moved into this house fifteen years ago, Don's friend and co-worker donated the couch to us. She'd had it for some years, and since then, we, our kids and the cats have sat on it regularly. One evening Don gave it a good once-over and suggested it was long past due a cleaning.
"We can't do that!" I exclaimed. "It's the dirt that's holding it together!"
Sometimes I feel that way about my life. It's the dirt and gunk of my tensions holding me together. If I were to let them go, I would disintegrate. Who and where would I be without my anxieties, opinions and controversies?
The yoga center where I learn yoga and how to teach it offers a technique called tension release Swami Rudrananda developed. It's very simple, like most of the teachings, and very effective when done regularly and sincerely. Sit down on a meditation cushion or a chair. Close your eyes and release your fingertips to or toward the floor. Inhale, drawing air in through the nose around your heart. As you exhale, release the breath through your nose and say to yourself, "I consciously wish to release all negative psychic tension." As you say this, you may feel your fingertips tingle. Imagine that you're draining away your accumulated tensions through your fingertips. For more on the subtleties of tension release practice, I recommend "Sacred Journey: A Guide to Meditation in the Shambhava School of Yoga," by Swami Kripananda.
I have been doing this exercise regularly for the past four years, and I'm happy to report that not only have I not disintegrated, I'm happier than I've ever been in my life. Many of the tensions I'd been carrying around are released or releasing. The anxiety that I'm not good enough. The resentment about sharing life and the world with a bunch of assholes. Vague and specific fear. I can simply sit down and let my breath and intention remove them through my fingers. Or if not remove them all at once, begin to move them.
Being freer from the inside has a positive effect on the externals of my life. Strangers smile at me. I don't waste energy I don't have chasing after those things I can't control. The people in my life are nearly always happy to see me, because they sense my happiness.
Jesus asked the man who had been an invalid for 38 years, "Do you want to be healed?" That's as pertinent a question as it was when he asked it 2,000 years ago. Making ourselves whole is within our power. Healing does not mean that all wounds are healed or all missing parts restored. One image of wholeness is the china plate that split into several pieces and is lovingly put back together. It may be missing a few slivers of porcelain, with clearly visible fracture lines. But it is whole enough to serve your dinner on it.
Today I went to teach yoga to my neighbors, a couple in their eighties, for our regularly scheduled session, only to find that L had taken a terrible fall in a parking lot late last week. She landed on her face, and though she is healing quite nicely, she was in no shape to do even the gentle class we typically do. She has balance issues and has taken several less serious falls in the two years we've done yoga together. I suggested that she needs to make sure she's not putting herself in situations where there is only a narrow space to walk in, because a wider stance improves balance. I also suggested that they consider having at least some of their groceries delivered, to avoid icy parking lots. L is a sweet, soft-spoken woman, but my innocent recommendation touched a nerve. She launched into a tirade about how she'll never have groceries delivered, because she isn't ready to be chained to an armchair for the rest of her life.
When I came home from our visit, I started thinking how grateful I am that I have an established meditation practice. I am thankful to my teachers, especially Sri Shambhavananda, for so generously sharing the gift of silence. Twice a day I practice sitting, doing nothing other than opening my intention to the Divine Guide. If I am forced to sit in a chair or stay in a bed because of some catastrophe, I feel confident my practice has prepared me to deal with these restrictions as gracefully as I can.
The cultivation of silence and stillness is totally countercultural. Students have told me they won't or can't do pranayama because their minds race and it makes them feel bad. They believe they need a more active practice that allows them to escape the menace of their thoughts. This complete connection to doing at all costs, linked with a fundamental inability to be with oneself, is to me totally sad. Because what happens when they get to the place in their lives where they can't do an active practice of any kind, when perhaps even going about doing their daily chores is too big a challenge? Because if they're lucky enough to live a long life, they're going to get to that between a rock and a hard place.
If you've successfully set up your life to avoid facing and taming the rollercoaster of your own mind, you're going to be ill-prepared when you can no longer hop onto all the carnival rides the world offers you. Even then, there's time to begin to meditate and learn to understand and calm the mind's fluctuations.
But why wait? It's as simple as sitting in a chair, closing your eyes and paying attention to your breathing. Start with at least ten breaths, because that is the minimum needed to reduce the circulation of stress hormones. The goal of meditation is not to cease all thought. Thoughts are inevitable. Let them pass by as if you're watching clouds float past your window.
This will likely be so welcome you'll want to continue. When you open your eyes, you might find that five to ten minutes have passed. For one month, commit to practicing every day in this way, first thing every morning. Over time, it's best to build up to thirty minutes of sitting. I guarantee you'll feel more open, relaxed and able to face the world, receptive to all its joys and challenges.
Once you get a taste of the pleasure that comes from being better acquainted with the rhythms of your mind and breath, you may want to consider joining a meditation group. I find it enormously helpful to meditate with the yogis at Eldorado Mountain Yoga Ashram and with my yoga students. It's like linking train cars to a mighty engine--the shared momentum allows everyone to roll along with ease. If you're lucky enough to live near a yoga center, you can receive instruction from experienced teachers there. Some recreation centers offer meditation classes. Most also offer yoga classes. Not all yoga teachers are meditators, but ask if any of them also teach meditation.
There are no failures in meditation. Even if you stop for a while, it's always there for you. The worst that can happen is that you get to know yourself better.
I recently unfriended a Facebook friend who persisted in posting hateful articles and comments about the latest war in Gaza between Hamas and Israel. I don't unfriend people lightly. After six years on Facebook, I have unfriended three people out of more than 350 friends. This particular person is someone I've known as another serious yoga student for close to a decade and who lives in the same community as I do. I have known her to be a kind, caring, compassionate person. I once witnessed her speak soothingly to an emotionally disturbed woman who attended our meditation group, and her words made a big difference to the woman. But what I saw her post on Facebook over a four-day period confused and ultimately alienated me.
Here's where I draw the line--if a friend posts something hateful, I call them on it. If they respond with more hate and vitriol, I unfriend them. There is enough hate in the world. I don't want it on my Facebook page.
I was attracted to tai chi, yoga and meditation because I was seeking balance in my life. I believe the same is true for my yoga buddy. I know she cares about politics, having grown up in a country rife with racial and political problems. Over the years, I've noticed her take a few extreme positions. But because I've been known to do the same, until someone or something reels me back in, I didn't think much of it.
Our trouble began when she posted without comment an article from the Hollywood Reporter that featured Jon Voight calling Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz anti-Semites for denouncing what they called Israel's genocide against the Palestinian people in the lastest war in the Gaza Strip. I wrote back, "Does it make me anti-Semitic to question Israel's tactics?"
"No," she wrote back, "but it does make you uninformed."
Uninformed? I make an effort to read news from a variety of sources, so that wasn't computing. So I asked her what news sources she read. She volleyed back with excoriation of how the news organizations unfairly cover the Israeli government. The Israelis wouldn't be the first to complain about unfair news coverage. So I tried again, asking her to forward me some news sources she trusted and telling her some of mine. She offered no sources, but more of what felt to me like condescension, as well as a critique of how The Guardian has never run a pro-Israel article. After my next request, she sent me a link to a blog post. In the first paragraph, the author referred to Hamas fighters as "Hamassholes." I didn't see much point in continuing to read it.
She also sent along a Tablet article by Matti Friedman, a former AP reporter, criticizing the AP and other news organizations for getting it wrong on Israel. He makes a legitimate point when he writes that the press overemphasizes the Israel-Hamas conflict, while Syria and Iraq burn. It is also a diversion. And condescending. Is everything we read about the Israeli military's tactics, which the U.N. is calling war crimes, all wrong? The U.N. is also looking into hauling Hamas before the War Tribunal in the Hague. The U.S. gives Israel $3 million a day in defense aid. As far as this American taxpayer is concerned, the recent bombings that killed more than 2,000 Palestinians, a quarter of them children, are not what the aid is intended for. Dropping mortars on twelve-year-olds playing soccer on the beach and on schools is not self-defense.
Later my yoga buddy posted that Palestinians are ultimately responsible for the deaths of their children as they place them in harm's way. This echoes a statement attributed in 1957 to Golda Meir. "We can forgive Arabs for killing our children. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill their children. We will only have peace with them when they love their children more than they hate us."
It is an understatement to say these remarks are problematic. The assumptions Prime Minister Meir made are insulting and condescending. Responding to an ad that appeared in the Hollywood Reporter featuring PM Meir's image and the words above, Wallace Shawn responds more effectively than I can.
I am no political expert. But here's where I come down on this issue. I use the words of my friend Carol Mickelson: "I'm not pro-Israeli or pro-Palestinian. I'm anti-killing."
Kris Kristofferson's song "In the News" articulates my view on what he calls "billion-dollar bombings of a nation on its knees."
In the context of this argument with my yoga buddy, I've been wondering if there's a point to having a spiritual practice, or even worshipping regularly in a spiritual community, other than it being an end unto itself.
I am convinced there is. I do not accept that meditation practice and regular worship are a means to justify me in my prejudices. It is not about me having power over others, having more privileges and more gifts, or worse, believing I'm better than others by virtue of my meditation practice. Someone like my husband doesn't have a formal spiritual practice, unless hiking, beekeeping and gardening count. He is already one of the kindest, most emotionally balanced people I know. Someone like me, whose emotional underpinnings are less stable, NEEDS a daily practice. It's no accident I was drawn to it as a 20-year-old!
If done sincerely and consistently, my practice destroys my preferences and replaces them with what the world and I need most. I have practiced meditation for more than 30 years. It is doing what it promised, transforming my life, slowly but surely. And its work isn't done. As my teacher Sri Shambhavananda said in a recent interview, "I feel like I've come a million miles, and I still have a million to go." A spiritual practice is only as effective as the fruit it bears in your life. For a chronic overreactor, consistent practice has slowed my reaction time. I am more deliberate about what I say and do and allow myself to think. I am less concerned about being right and more with doing right. I'm more apt to put my ego in timeout like the demanding child it is.
A spiritual practice with meditation at the center is about practicing daily, whether you're sitting on a cushion, interacting with your family, friends and co-workers, and standing in line at the supermarket. It's about putting the virtues meditation reveals into practice. In the yoga classes I teach I speak about the value of using pranayama to circulate all the good stuff you glean during the course of an asana practice. The same is true of a meditation practice. It's of no use to anyone to keep all the good stuff to myself. I share, probably less than I might, with an eye toward giving more.
Young Central Americans traveling north on train top
Jewish kids traveling to England by Kindertransport during World War II
When news broke of the Central American kids showing up at the U.S.' southern border, I thought immediately of a friend's mother, who escaped Nazi Germany at age six with her slightly older sister and younger brother. Their parents had seen the certainty of their family's persecution and decided to give their kids a chance to survive. Several European countries passed on taking them in. Eventually they got on a ship in northern Africa headed for the United States. All three lived to old age, because people in New York state agreed to take in three children fleeing from violence and certain death. Their parents' assessment of the political situation was correct. They died, likely in a Nazi death camp, along with a younger son.
The kids from Central America are facing similarly bleak odds, as the drug cartels who de facto run these countries are recruiting elementary school-aged children to deliver and sell drugs and to do other criminal activities. It's horrifying to put myself in the place of their parents, many of whom are living in the U.S. without legal immigration documentation. They left their kids behind with grandparents and other relatives, hoping to provide from afar a better life for their kids. These parents have assessed the deteriorating political situation in their home countries and scraped together enough money to send their kids north. Having made their own way north via coyotes, likely enduring egregious indignities, these parents clearly decided that their kids stood a better chance with human smugglers than staying in their home countries.
Surely even the hardest-line anti-immigration supporter would be hard-pressed to ignore these childrens' plights. It turns out, they can. There have been ugly protests along the border as some of the kids were transported by bus to detention centers. Aided and abetted by elected U.S. officials and demagogues posing as journalists, anti-immigration protesters have greeted busloads of these kids with angry faces, chants and signs.
"They have to come here through legal channels," a neighbor told me on the Fourth of July. Uh-huh. Such high-minded rhetoric ignores the reality that these kids are living in war zones. If my friend's mom and siblings had waited to go into other countries legally, they likely wouldn't have survived.
People who otherwise call themselves Christians are demanding that the Central American kids be deported immediately. They came here illegally, so they don't deserve the benefit of American due process. I get the logic here. But the question is, how do these people square their mercilessness with their Christian beliefs?
I don't know the answer to this question, because I struggle with it myself. This situation is very complicated. Clearly something needs to be done, and quickly. Immediate deportation is not the answer, as many of these kids say they will return to the U.S.
I've heard people say that Jesus was not interested in social justice. His concern was in salvation. I believe that helping others is part of my salvation. Jesus didn't just sit on a mountaintop to pray for his own salvation and for those he loved. He got his hands dirty touching lepers and bleeding sores. He healed the sick and fed the hungry. He hated injustice so much he got violently angry with moneychangers in the temple who were ripping off their neighbors. Jesus didn't say to those who came to him in need of healing, "Sorry, you'll need to pay cash in advance before I do my thing." Nor did he say to the wedding party in Cana, who ran out of wine, "Sorry, poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine. Besides, don't you know that drinking wine is bad for you?"
You might rightly say, Jesus performed miracles. Mere humans don't. But are miracles only the province of Jesus and enlightened masters? Maybe. But should that let the rest of us off the hook? Time and time again people have pooled their talents and their hopes to do things that benefit others.
Being a good Christian isn't just about helping those we already know and love. A truly saving love includes helping those we don't know, much less particularly love. Sometimes it's a miracle just to do the right thing. I don't know the answer to this question. But I do know that helping these young people who are escaping violence and political and economic instability is the right thing to do.
It's officially summer! With plenty of fresh fruit available, it's a great time to make pie. My favorites are rhubarb and sour cherry, both of which my family hate, so I make them when I'm having a party or taking something to a potluck.
Pies aren't just for summer. Homemade chicken pot pie on a cold January night has lifted my family's spirits by hitting the comfort food spot--besides providing great leftovers for the next day. When our sour cherry tree was alive I would freeze some of the fruit and make a pie or cobbler for a winter potluck.
Many a pie-loving friend laments their lack of crust-making prowess. As a result, they won't make pie, or worse, they'll resort to buying those crappy, cardboardy crusts available in the freezer section. NO! Friends don't let friends buy crappy pie crust! I don't believe people when they say the crusts are better than they were before. They may be better, but they're not better than making your own. I don't care how good your filling is--a mediocre crust ruins the whole works. It's like putting the Hope Diamond in a plastic Target bag.
I've been mulling teaching a course at my church called "Dough Demystified." It would teach people to make all kinds of dough--bread, pizza, dumplings, pasta, and of course, pie crust.
My great-uncle Gilbert was a mechanical genius. I once asked him if he planned to write down all his secrets. He looked at me as if I was crazy. "Well, hell," he said. "I suppose anyone could figure out all that stuff if they just fooled around with for awhile. That's all I ever did." My point is that people who can make pie crust do not have special powers. They have a high tolerance for trial and error. You can build that resilience, too, with a little practice. In the spirit of public service, I offer a pie crust tutorial. You had a bad experience in your pie-crust-making adventures. You went to roll out the crust and it kept crumbling into asymmetrical pieces that crumbled when you lifted them into the pie plate. Set those memories aside. You can do this.
Assemble your ingredients: a sifter, a bowl, a tablespoon, a knife, a pastry cutter, a fork, 2 cups flour, 1 tsp. salt, 2/3 cup plus two tablespoons of COLD unsalted butter, a 2-cup measure with ice water, extra flour, a rolling pin, and most importantly, a can-do attitude, patience, love in your heart, and a song on your lips (this last is optional, but it helps me). Sift the flour and salt into the bowl. Divide the butter into equal parts, cutting the first 1/3 cup plus 1 tablespoon portion into tiny cubes, about the size of baby peas. You can put the other portion in the fridge to keep it cold. Cut the first butter portion into the flour with the pastry cutter. More important than your technique is your resolve to stay with it until the mixture resembles cornmeal. It might help you to use a cup of cornmeal as a visual aid. I rotate my bowl as I use the pastry cutter. This part of the process may take a minute or two, maybe longer. Use your best judgment.
Cut up the second portion of butter and start to mix it with the pastry cutter. This time you will work with the same amount of commitment, can-do-ness, patience and love of self and others. After all, pie is meant for sharing. This time you will cut the butter until it is the size of baby peas, all of the butter, not just some. If you've got a few marble-sized pieces in there, keep working it.
This is what my pie crust looked like right before I began adding the ice water. I love my pastry cutter, about $7.99 at Target.
Then add the water. Here in the super-dry Rocky Mountain region, I add more water than the recipe calls for. When I lived in coastal California and humid Vermont, I used less. Wherever you live, this step is as subject to your use of judgment as cutting the butter is. Most recipes call for 4-6 tablespoons of water. Anne Waugaman, my sister in pie-making, swears by cold vodka. I haven't tried that. Seems like a waste of good vodka. First I add five tablespoons (keep in mind what the local climate is and add accordingly), fluff it in with a fork, and pick up a pinch and see if it holds together in a tidy little ball, not too wet or too dry. If it's still crumbly, I add another tablespoon of ice water and pick up another pinch. Careful how much you handle the dough with your fingers. You don't want to get the butter too warm, because then rolling out the dough becomes more difficult.
Rolling the dough is the part of the process that requires the best of you. Replace the tape that tells you your mission is doomed with a vision of success--pie crust that crumbles in your mouth. My mother-in-law swore by her pie-crust guide, a plastic mat with concentric circles that gave your crust rolling parameters. I found it annoying. It slipped around underneath the crust as I rolled the dough. Instead I use my kitchen table. I sprinkle a little flour on the table and spread it around to roughly the size I want to roll it. Again, use your judgment with the amount of flour--too much and you get the crumbles, too little and it sticks. It's that judgment thing again. You can add more as you roll. Butter a pie plate. Divide the dough and flatten the first lump into a disk a little smaller than a corn tortilla. Rub some flour on your rolling pin and roll evenly across the dough. Turn the dough a quarter turn and roll again. Turn the dough over and roll again. Continue this process, turning the dough a quarter turn and turning it over, adding more flour if necessary. Before you know it you'll have rolled your dough into the bottom layer of crust. If you're not satisfied, there's no crime in starting over. Roll it back up into a ball, wrap it in plastic wrap and put it in the fridge for ten minutes before rolling it out again. Remember, you want it cold. In the meantime, you can work the second lump of dough in the same way as above and line your buttered pie plate with it. It's better to roll it out bigger than the pie plate. You can use a pair of kitchen shears to cut off the excess. It's really great sprinkled with sugar and cinnamon and baked until golden brown.
Some cooks always prick their bottom crusts with a fork, but I recommend reading the recipe you're using to see if that's indicated. I've found that cutting vents in the top crust is sufficient. Place your filling in the crust, and roll out the top, again, making it a little bigger than the pie plate. Artfully crimp the edges with your fingers or use a fork. This is all I ever do. Other pie makers swear by pie crust crimpers, but that seems like a waste of money to me. I found this video helpful.
It's best to view making pie crust as an adventure. When you first start out, the results are uncertain. It's not enough to use the proper ingredients. There's art and science involved in the process, but no magic. It's following all the steps, one at a time. There are no shortcuts. There are do-overs.
I'm with my uncle Gilbert on this: making pie crust is something anyone can do, if you're willing to play around with it and to risk not getting it right the first few times. It's worth the time and trouble. People are always so impressed when you make your own pie, from crust to filling. That's because you can taste the trust, compassion, love and a successful process.
When I was a kid, my mother often told me how super-sensitive I was. I took almost everything personally and totally to heart, and I sometimes reacted with outrageous tantrums that embarrassed me and everyone around me.
Looking back, I believe I was someone whose nervous system had outgrown my physical body. I had no practice, as I do now in yoga, to show me how to wind the coils of my nervous system in ways that would reduce my hypersensitivity. For many years I walked around with a lot of metaphorically, and probably literally, exposed nerves that were constantly triggered.
Sports helped a lot. Talking to friends helped, too. But it wasn't until I started meditating at age 21, as part of my tai chi practice, that I began to learn how to soothe myself. I say began, because it has taken years of dedicated practice to feel at the core of my being that I am in fact calming myself. I was kind of like Bob in the Bill Murray-Richard Dreyfuss movie, "What About Bob."
Dreyfuss plays the in-control psychiatrist, and Murray plays Bob, his out-of-control patient, who follows his doctor and family to their Lake Winnipesaukee getaway. In the clip above you see Bob's face close up, with a determinedly and tentatively joyous expression, saying, "I'm sailing! I'm sailing!" The camera pans away, and you see that he's tied to the mast. I could have just as easily repeated, "I'm calming myself! I'm calming myself!" So many times my wild nervous system got the better of me.
There are numerous scientific resources describing the mechanism of the nervous system, and plenty of drugs to address disorders arising from its disruption. I'm not a scientist. I'm a writer. I'm much better at speaking metaphorically. Spiritually most of us are like teenagers whose nervous systems expand at a faster rate than we can embody them. It's absolutely exhausting to live feeling that you're going to burst out of your own skin. Like babies and teenagers, a common response to overstimulation is to sleep more. When I'm going through a tough time, which is rarer and rarer, I often feel that my nerves are so tangled up that they're hissing and sizzling. Sometimes the most immediate remedy is to simply lie down. Rest is a time when I can relax enough to allow the tangled superhighway-like nervous system to find its sustainable length and breadth.
Mostly, though, I find I don't need to sleep my way out of it. All the practices of yoga are beneficial, most especially meditation, for soothing my mood fluctuations. My nervous system will always send out crazy runners, but meditation and its ongoing effects prune them. Now, more often than not, my natural sensitivity works for me. Yoga keeps me sensitive in productive ways.
It is possible to be sensitive without being overstimulated. With practice, you can choose what you respond to, and how. Even if you haven't yet begun a meditation practice, you can practice calming your nervous system in yoga class. Many of my students fall asleep during Savasana, the relaxation pose done at the end of class. In our sleep-deprived and overcaffeinated culture, that's understandable. It's also very seductive. You've just completed an asana practice, you're feeling great, and you're lying on your back under a warm blanket. It's important to resist the temptation to fall asleep in Savasana. Besides lying perfectly still, your work is to maintain a slender thread of awareness. Focusing on your inhale and exhale helps. Think of it as tending the dying embers of a fire. You want them to be live long enough to burn fresh firewood in the near future. Even if your attention to your breathing turns into a snore, see if you can extend the length of time you concentrate on your breathing and reduce the time you sleep in Savasana. Your nervous system will be immensely strengthened when you suspend your awareness to just this side of sleep.
The word beekeeper implies that in keeping bees people are saving
them, almost as if they’re taking in orphaned babies who can’t care for
themselves. It seems to me that bees are not really kept. They certainly
keep me in honey, and they mostly keep themselves. This has been
apparent during the cold winter we’re having here. We’ve had two long
spells of below-zero weather in December and February. Both times, Don
said, “Well, I think the bees are going to die this week.” (Have we told
you that he worries too much?) As soon as the weather warmed up above
50 degrees, the bees were flying and doing their housekeeping.
They clearly know how to survive without much help from us. We people
persist in believing our interventions are necessary to the well-being
of everything we care for and about, despite some evidence to the
contrary.
This compulsion has been very much in evidence as Don and I have
raised our children, who by now are not children anymore. Geoff is 22,
Patrick is 16. For years Don and I behaved as if the kids could do
nothing without our support and guidance. That was true when our boys
were infants, but they began taking responsibility for their survival
and well-being as soon as they learned to suckle, more when they grew
large enough to sleep through the night, and more as they learned to
walk and talk. As a mother, I evolved more slowly. With Geoff in
particular I had a hard time recognizing when he was transitioning into
new phases of responsibility and power. He would fuss when I resisted
his frequent calls to “Do it myself, Mom.” I’ve very recently realized
that is is I who has trouble with transitions.
Geoff has proven time and again that he is capable of meeting all the
situations and challenges that come his way. He graduates from the
University of Northern Colorado in May in four years, a feat I did not
manage. He has balanced his studies with part-time jobs as he pays rent
and learns how to live with roommates. He’s happy. I’m happy for him.
Last year we could have harvested more honey, but Don elected to
leave 13 frames for the bees’ winter feed. He also made some bee fondant
which he recently discovered they haven’t even touched, despite the
sub-zero temperatures. Some beekeepers decide to do the opposite,
harvesting the lion’s share of the honey and feeding their bees sugar
water during winter. This is very much like the decision about whether
to breast-feed my kids or not. For me, it came down to this question:
Why formula feed, when my body has already provided the perfect food for
my babies?
This past weekend I went to a meditation intensive at Shoshoni Yoga
Retreat Center in Rollinsville. It happened right before the center
closes to the public for three weeks. I like to imagine the yogis and
yoginis who stay there during this time as bees nestling into their
winter hive, feeding on the sweetness they have created during the
active months. It reminds me that life isn’t all about flurries of
activity and productivity. Dormancy has its place, too.
I explain this to students who complain that the way I teach yoga is
too slow, or too gentle, or puts too much emphasis on breathing, and not
enough flowing from one pose to another, that relaxation is an
important component of fitness. The culture we live in has conditioned
us to believe that the more effort we expend quickly the better off we
will be physically, emotionally, spiritually and economically. This is
an unbalanced view of what human beings need to live well. So many
people know they need to incorporate more rest periods into their lives,
yet they have all kinds of excuses for why it can’t happen. Far from
taking time away from your productivity, periods of decompression, like
what yogic breathing can provide, are reinvigorating, allow you to think
more clearly, to respond to surprises with confidence and competence,
and to be more content with what you produce and receive.
Most of my yoga students love Savasana, the relaxation pose
traditionally done at the end of asana practice. A few do not see its
point. I have been to yoga classes where teachers don’t see the point of
Savasana, either. It’s an afterthought for them. I view this in the
same way I view the difference between quickies and lovemaking. You may
think you’re making love, but it’s really slam-bam-thank-you-ma’am. Now
I’ve got nothing against quickies. They’re the angel food cake of sex.
Tasty, light, fun, but not as a steady diet.
Savasana is the perfect way to gather in all that you’ve gleaned
after an active yoga class. Imagine yourself as a bee, busy gathering
nectar and pollen as you move from the blossom of one posture to the
next. Savasana is the time when you return to the hive to deposit what
you have gathered. You begin to convert it into the sweetness of honey,
which bathes your being. Giving into the dormancy of Savasana is a
beautiful way to end class and move into a world that desperately needs
more people who take the time to gather and appreciate the sweetness and
balance of a regular yoga practice.
Savasana is also called the pose of the corpse. Ideally you remain
still in the pose. In my own experience it takes me a couple of minutes
to shift and shimmy before I melt into the dormancy of the pose. I
compare it to what happens after you turn off a car engine. For several
minutes afterward, the engine pings and hisses as it adjusts to
non-movement. I once has a car that bucked and jolted for a few minutes
after I had turned off the ignition. It can be this way in Savasana. If
the teacher allows less than five minutes for the posture, you may have
just stilled your own pinging and jolting before being asked to sit up
and leave class. This simply defeats the purpose of yoga, which balances
doing and dormancy, effort and surrender.
As you rest in Savasana, you also have the opportunity to practice
the experience of dying while you are still very much alive. You
practice dissolving the tensions that pull you away from receiving gifts
of bliss and equanimity Savasana’s stillness offers. You practice the
art of being something other than what you do to earn a living, where
you went to school, who people tell you you are, and how much you
believe them.
I prefer to think our beautiful honeybees are doing Savasana right
now, just as Don and I practice it in relation to the bees. The bees’
work is done for now, and they are sustaining themselves with the honey
they worked so hard to make. They are resting deeply before arising to
meet the warmth, abundance and promise of spring.
