How Do You Fill Your Moments?

Flipping through a recent issue of Yoga Journal magazine, I spotted an article about meditation that resonated with me so I thought I'd share it in class this past Friday.

The gist of the article was that meditation, while a beautiful and ancient practice, does not necessarily have to happen while sitting in silence on a meditation cushion, chanting mantras and handling mala beads. I am a true and passionate believer in the power of a daily seated, silent meditation practice and I am here to say that it works wonderfully.  

That being said, meditation and stillness can happen wherever we happen to be at any given moment.  Everyday we find ourselves with free minutes while "waiting" for something to happen.  This waiting provides many opportunities for personal transformation.  Whether we're stuck in traffic or at a red light, standing in line at the bank, or waiting for an appointment, we have the choice to either fill our moments with the simplicity of stillness or we can fill the still moments by chatting on the cell phone, sending text messages, logging onto Facebook or turning on the TV.  Not to say that any of these things are wrong in and of themselves, but taking a look at the need to fill space is where we begin to move closer to transformation.

By setting an intention, we can transform our free moments into stillness or relaxation and experience the qualities of meditation.  The Yoga Journal article suggested some ways to cultivate stillness in your free moments.  Here are a few:

1) Stand more firmly on your feet or settle into your sitting bones and hips.  Breathe deeply.

2) Soften your facial muscles!

3) Free your hands - rest them by your sides or place them gently on your lap.

I'd also like to add a few of my own:

4) Take a moment to close your eyes and deeply inhale then slowly exhale (not while driving of course!).  Notice how it feels to be present with yourself.

5) Rather than getting in the car and turning on the radio first thing, roll down the window(s) and feel the breeze in your hair.  Breathe!

6) Standing in line at the grocery store?  Use it as an opportunity to inhale/exhale then pause for 5 seconds before drawing in another inhale.  Repeat until the line begins to move.  Instant stillness!

Asana practice can also be a moving meditation. At home and have a few free minutes?  Roll out your yoga mat or find a quiet space to stand and practice the following flow:

Be sure to match your movements to the length of your breath which is ideally long, slow and deep.  Let your mind, body and breath move together as one.

Start out standing in mountain pose (Tadasana).  Root yourself.  

Inhale, slowly raise your arms over your head.

Exhale, slowly release your hands to your sides and clasp them behind your back.

Inhale, draw the clasped hands away from your back, open you chest/heart, lift your gaze towards the sky!

Exhale, fold forward from the creases of your hips with your hands still clasped behind your back.

Inhale, lift the chest, sweep the arms over head

Repeat 5 times or more.  

This flow is a wonderful way to not only root yourself in your body, but it also opens your heart, your chest, and your shoulders.  It increases your lung capacity (more breath=more energy!). It helps to connect you to the meditative power of linking breath with movement (also known as Vinyasa).

How do you fill your moments? The choice is yours!

Until next time!

Kimberley

What To Remember When Waking

by David Whyte

In that first hardly noticed moment in which you wake,

coming back to this life from the other

more secret, moveable and frighteningly honest world

where everything began,

there is a small opening into the new day

which closes the moment you begin your plans.

What you can plan is too small for you to live.

What you can live wholeheartedly will make plans enough

for the vitality hidden in your sleep.

To be human is to become visible

while carrying what is hidden as a gift to others.

To remember the other world in this world

is to live in your true inheritance.

You are not a troubled guest on this earth,

you are not an accident amidst other accidents

you were invited from another and greater night

than the one from which you have just emerged.

Now, looking through the slanting light of the morning window

toward the mountain presence of everything that can be

what urgency calls you to your one love?

What shape waits in the seed of you

to grow and spread its branches

against a future sky?

Is it waiting in the fertile sea?

In the trees beyond the house?

In the life you can imagine for yourself?

In the open and lovely white page on the writing desk?

"To Tea or Not To Tea": The Meditation of Medicine

As I sit here typing, a mug of steaming Ayurvedic herb tea sits to the left of the keyboard.  Prescribed to me by my Ayurvedic doctor, these herbs are meant to boost my immune system and reduce the amount of inflammation my body seems to be producing.  They are to be taken as a sort of "tea" mixed with hot water three times a day.  Doesn't seem too egregious, right?  So why am I so resistant to drinking the tea? The obvious issue is that the herbs taste bad.  Well, not so much bad, as bitter, as if I were sipping bile.  I've actually gotten used to the taste so I can't claim this as the cause of my resistance.  The tea works.  It makes me feel better, keeps the chronic hives and swelling that I've been experiencing since late summer at bay, and is even helping with a skin condition I've had since birth.  So why does the tea sit cooling next to my keyboard, untouched as yet?  The answer is probably too complex to be articulated or perhaps too simple to define.  The point, I suppose, is that I am acutely aware of this resistance/aversion.  The goal is not to know the answer but to "live the question", as the poet Rainer Maria Rilke says.

And so I climb on to my yoga mat and close my eyes.  I take a deep breath and then another and another, absorbing it like a sponge, and begin to move in connection with its rhythm.  Each breath, each posture and stretch draw me into a deeper, quieter place from which to look out upon the world from. I lose myself in the sound and feel and sensation of my breathing. I allow my ego self to get washed clean by its tides and when I am done the questions, the need for answers, the attachments and aversions have started to dissolve and I find myself quite still.  I allow myself to sit in the stillness following my practice and  as I settle myself onto my zafu (meditation cushion) I allow myself to become unselfconsciously present - like the air.

Meditation shines a bright light on our questions, likes and dislikes.   The practice of yoga holds a mirror up to them and invites us to open our eyes to look upon ourselves with clarity.  As we practice sitting with and moving with these self-observations, we begin to gradually increase our sense of self-understanding.  We become intimately acquainted with our strong likes and dislikes.  Then, slowly (or sometimes with a resounding BOOM!) we become aware of the origins of those tendencies.  With time, practice and patience, we are able to halt the behaviors that turn the volume up on such obstacles, and we free ourselves - opening ourselves to new ways of seeing and being in the world.  We start to align ourselves with something deeper and more profound.  We are able to look both inward and outward with greater care and clarity.

When I finally find myself rising out of the depths of this meditation, I slowly open my eyes and sit  silently for a moment before mindfully making my way over to where the now cold tea sits.  I take the earthenware cup in my hands and slowly drink down every bitter drop.

"...Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue.  Do not now seek the answers. which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them.  And the point is, to live everything.  Live the questions now.  Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer. "
-Rainer Maria Rilke
From: Letters to a Young Poet

365 Journal Project: The Entries

Note about the entries: The images come together first.  The words are the last things to be added.

Entry #2: January 1, 2011 "Love More"  

New Year's Day brought up a desire to love more in 2011.  To let my Buddha nature shine through.  "Love More" is my mantra for the year.

"Love and be bold;

for he that dies hath these for wings

to rise from earth to heaven."

-Michelangelo Buonarroti

Entry #3: January 2, 2011 "The Sweetness is Inside"

Sweet, sweet meditation!  

"What is the way out?

I believe, to put oneself completely

in the hands of higher powers,

to be happy to be silent."

Entry #4 January 3, 2011 "Who are You?" 

"Will you never perceive what you are,
or for what you were born,
or for what purpose you are admitted
to behold this spectacle?"

Entry #5  January 4, 2011 "Letting Go"
"Sometimes, by letting go we allow
some grace to enter by another channel,
which all our mental efforts have 
hitherto kept out."
-Rodney Collin

Entry #6  January 5, 2011 "Rooted"
This is where the journal process started to change a bit.  More layers, less drawing and writing.  The images are starting to speak to my heart, and I am listening.


"Accept what the present brings and live in that.
If one is not established in the present 
then one is nowhere and 
nothing is possible."
-Rodney Collin

Entry #7 January 6, 2011 "Duality"
This entry started with the image on the right.  A photo taken in 1968 that appeared in National Geographic magazine.  It's a woman in a beautiful saffron colored burqa carrying two caged birds on her head.  The birds in the cage almost forms an odd smiley face.  The image has hope.


"And so the mystery remains
that we have sorrow so we can understand joy;
failure so we can recognize success;
pain so we can relish pleasure.


Somehow, built into the mystery
of this duality in life
is a blueprint for growth that has the potential
for shaping us into the people
who God wants us to be."
-Antoinette Bosco

Entry #8  January 7, 2011 "Consciousness"


"When you then take a deep breath
and rise above the cares
of the world in an hour of leisure, you will
surely win the right frame of mind
to face devoutly
what is above us, with reverence,
seeing in all events the manifestations
of a higher guidance."
-J.W. Von Goethe

Entry #9 January 8, 2011 "Interconnected"

Entry #10 January 9, 2011"Zen"
I've been practicing zazen (Zen meditation) for about four years now  It has,  without a doubt, transformed my life.  Different meditation practices work for different people. Find one that works for you.  Do it daily for three months and see how you feel.  You won't stop :) Zen and I go together like peanut butter and honey-so delicious!

"One must find something in himself
that longs above everything to grow,
to struggle,
to wake up."
-Rodney Collin

Entry #11  January 10, 2011 "Snow Day"
Ahhh, delicious snow day!  A treat in these parts.  As the snow fell softly outside and the day lay open before me, I enjoyed a day of total freedom.  This is one of my favorites for the warm and fuzzy feelings it produces.

"Nowhere, my love, can there be a world
but within us.
Our life passes through changing
and ever fainter dwindles
the external."
-Rainer Maria Rilke

Entry #12  January "Letter To Myself"
Lots of stuff came up my meditation on this day.  It unfolded itself like a letter.

"We are not to lead a life that is not tested."
-Epictetus

Entry #13 January 12, 2011 "Insist on Yourself"

"To be nobody
but yourself in a world
that's doing its best to make you
somebody else,
is to fight the hardest battle
you are ever going to fight.
Never stop fighting."
-e.e. cummings

Entry #14 January 13, 2011 "Comfort"
Being rooted, stable, grounded and comfortable keeps coming up (first chakra anyone?).  Must be all this cold weather!

"It is not for show that our soul
must enact its part;
it is at home, within us,
where no eyes penetrate
but our own."
-Michel Montaigne

Entry #15 "This Physical Body"

"The physical body was given man by
Nature.
Somewhere exists the original Divine spark
launched from God
and which, re-found,
will be his conscious spirit."
-Rodney Collin

Entry #16 "Impermanence"
All things must pass. This moment.  This thought.  This fear.  This.

"Night is drawing nigh.
For all that has been-Thanks!
To all that shall be-Yes!"
-Dag Hammarskjold

365 Journal Project: The Beginning

So, this past New Year's Eve, in the quiet closing hours of 2010, I sat in silence and for a long while reflected back on the year that had past.  It was a challenging year on many fronts to be sure; at times scary, tiring, and soul searching.  But it was also a year of love, light, prosperity, amazing personal growth, change and clarity (talk about Yin and Yang!).

2010 started out with uncertainty.  Someone I love more than anything suffered from complete mental exhaustion and mental breakdown.  I don't know if you've ever experienced such a thing, but all I can say is that other than the loss of my parents, it was perhaps one of the saddest, scariest and most challenging things I have ever come up against.  The months that followed consisted of a slow process of healing, rebuilding and awakening to a new way of life (an ongoing process we are told).  Much has changed as a result-in the best of ways-and out of the darkness of those first few months came incredible, transformation and light (in yoga we call this "tapas", the burning away of impurities, baby!)  I am truly thankful for it.  

Just as things were beginning to settle down, I had a major health crisis that took the wind out of my sails physically, mentally and spiritually.  With the help of John (my wonderful husband), my friends and an amazing Ayurvedic practitioner (Vishnu rocks!), my condition stabilized.  Thanks to my yoga practice I am strengthening my body and getting my stamina back.  It's been a slow, humbling process, but I'm feeling better and stronger every day.  Because of my meditation practice I have refreshed my mind and renewed my spirit.  Taking the time to sit and meditate each day will change your life!

What really astounded me was watching how the support of my meditation and yoga practices continued on without pause.  Even during the most difficult moments, even during the times when it felt as though I were getting kicked while I was down, the inner stillness was felt with profound clarity.  Daily practice kept me afloat and present with what was happening. Yoga and meditation saves me everyday and enriches my life in more ways than I can possibly articulate.  This isn't to say that I didn't have my moments of despair or self-pity, I'm human!  But daily practice allowed me to see and observe that those not-so-nice thoughts were impermanent.

When I started to get back on my feet towards the end of autumn, a little light started to flicker in me and grow brighter and brighter. In my life "B.Y." (Before Yoga) I worked as an artist and jewelry designer.  From the time I was small I was always creating something: paper dolls with my mother, castles made of cardboard, "cars" for our cats made out of discarded boxes, you name it.  When I got older the medium of collage resonated with me and it took off from there.

The 365 Journal Project is a project born out of my meditations.  I set an intention in my journal on New Year's Eve to work on some sort of artwork everyday.  This is what emerged:

 The next day I found myself pulling out my paper bits, glue, etc and turning the page in the journal for the next entry, and here I am 16 days later and still going!  It is my intention to document a full 365 days of visual mediations.  I don't start out with an idea or theme.  I simply let the images choose me.  I weave them together and when I'm through, the images reveal to me a deeper meaning, a doorway into my inner world, a mirror.

It is my hope to share with you what manifests.

In the meantime, I encourage you to get on your yoga mat and stretch, move, and breathe!  Sit in silence for 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 minutes a day.  Ask questions of your spirit but don't wait for an answer.  Just listen with your heart.

Namaste :)

Love,
k

We Have Not Come To Take Prisoners

"For we have not come to take prisoners or to confine our wondrous spirits, but to experience ever and ever more deeply our divine courage, freedom, and light!"

 (Hafiz-The Great Sufi Master)

I am often baffled by our ability as modern humans to live our lives as if there were a great war being waged against us.  So many of us often seem defensive and out to protect what's ours (our beliefs, ideas, possessions, our politics).  Perhaps most perplexing of all, we often treat ourselves or our bodies as if they were the enemy-something to be punished.  We punish ourselves for the weekend's overindulgence, for not being tall enough, thin enough, for our past mistakes or current insecurities, or _______(fill in the blank).   We may become obsessive over our style/method of yoga, have "killer" workouts or "punishing classes" all in an attempt to desperately sweat away our problems or our demons.  We may walk away from such grueling pursuits or obsessions with a sense of "high and mightiness"; stunning arm balances, kick ass abs, or buns of steel.  But are we happy?  Are we at peace?

 I have spent more years than I care to recall at war with myself via my body.  In reality I was punishing my body for the lack of clarity in my mind.  In hindsight, I believed that  if I could trick my mind into focusing on something completely innocent, it would forget what the REAL issue was and perhaps that issue would magically go away if I ignored it long enough.  The result was usually an unhealthy and unsustainable way of life and a mind that was weary from trying to outrun itself.

Enter: the practice of yoga!  As our yoga and meditation practice matures and deepens it leads us away from the combative and competitive notions that mislead us.  It opens us to approach not only our practice, ourselves, and the world, but life in general from a place of peace, compassion, and acceptance.  Breath by breath we begin to sort through the muck and mire of the psyche and the reasons for our inner combat become clearer and clearer.  We begin to see WHY we're punishing ourselves with "killer" classes that leave us wobbly, running or walking obsessively, eating too many Cheetos, drinking too much wine, smoking too many cigarettes, _____(fill in the blank).  Once the "why" becomes clear, the unraveling can begin and a truce can be called.  The inner skirmish is resolved and peace presides (at least until the next battle cry is heard).

It is not our purpose to punish, beat-up or belittle ourselves or others, but rather to experience our time with courage, light and freedom.

Try this:
The next time you come to your mat, take a few moments before you begin to investigate what you've brought with you to your practice.  Take a seat or lie on your back, settle into the rhythm of your breath and the sensations in your body.  Sit with what is present without labeling it as "good" or "bad".  Get quietly centered on the breath.  Listen.  Then set an intention to practice-to move and breathe with mindful awareness of what your body, your heart, and your soul needs.  Practice from a place of clarity, stability, and mindfulness, rather than with the intent to fuel the ego or slavishly burn calories to punish yourself over the fact that you ate an extra donut in the break room this morning.

We Have Not Come To Take Prisoners

by Hafiz

We have not come here to take prisoners,

But to surrender ever more deeply

To freedom and joy.

We have not come into this exquisite world

To hold ourselves hostage from love.

Run my dear,

From anything

That may not strengthen your wings.

Run like hell my dear,

From anyone likely

To put a sharp knife

Into the sacred, tender vision

Of your beautiful heart.

We have a duty to befriend

Those aspects of obedience

That stand outside of our house

And shout to our reason

"O please, O please,

Come out and play."

For we have not come here to take prisoners

Or to confine our wondrous spirits,

But to experience ever and ever more deeply

Our divine courage, freedom, and 

Light!

The Sea, The Sea...

Between dusk and dawn the weather is constantly changing,Bathing mountain and lake alike in radiant sunlight.

This radiant sunlight filled me with such joy,

That lost in delight I quite forgot to go home. 

When I left my valley the day had scarcely broken,

When I stepped into my boat the light was growing dim.

Forest and gorge were veiled in sombre colours,

Gay panoply of water-chestnuts, lotus,

Rushes and cattails growing side by side,

I swept them aside with my hands as I hastened 

southwards.

How glad I was to reach my house in the east!

Once the mind stops striving the world loses

importance,

Once the heart is content it does not swerve from the

truth.

I send these words to those who would nurture their

lives:

Try using this method if you want the truth.
(Xie Lingyun)

From the time I can first remember being near the ocean (Cape Cod, MA when I was three or four years old), I have been afraid of it, and rightly so I suppose.  The ocean is immense and powerful beyond measure.  It is also full of strange and otherworldly life forms.  It's depths are mysterious and dark.  There is something primal and ancient about the way it smells and moves.  In hindsight, perhaps I was just afraid; unable or unwilling to see what an apt metaphor for life it is: constantly changing, unimaginably beautiful, inconceivably unforgiving, calm and bright, and at times rough and stormy. 
I recently spent a transformative week at the beach.  Renting a house on the Outer Banks of North Carolina with friends, I fell in love with the ocean.  It ignited something deep inside of me, and I felt a profound spiritual shift take place.  Each morning my dear friend (and kindred spirit!), Andrea and I would get up just before sun-up, drink some tea (or coffee in her case-Andrea can't speak before she's had her coffee), pack up our yoga mats and blankets and walk quietly to the beach.  Silently spreading out our blankets and setting down our mats, we would fall right into our deep breathing and begin our separate yoga practices.  For me, asana practice (yoga postures) involves deep listening and movement from a place of inner wisdom and intuition.  Letting go of what each posture should "feel like" or "look like" and opening to what "is" and what my body, mind, and spirit need in this moment. Somehow, practicing near the ocean deepens this connection to intuition.
Each morning I would finish my asana practice and begin my zazen (seated meditation) practice with the feel of the warm wind on my face and the sound of the breathing surf in my ears.  A feeling of openness and contentment would radiate through me.  Often, at the end of my meditation I would be prompted to get up and stand in the surf, to feel the water and its movement and coolness on my skin, and to experience my connection to it all.
There was something about being there at the edge of the sea in those early morning hours with the smell and feel of the ocean breeze: the motion of my body, my breath, the soft, shifting sand beneath my feet and hands, and the pounding surf that awakened something within me.   Although that feeling is largely unexplainable, it was a feeling of pure freedom, a sensation of pure contentment, the notion of being a part of something complete and whole, like I had finally awoken.  I distinctly felt and understood that I am not in control, I never have been, I never will be, and that it was okay not to be.  Everything I am, everything that I have been, and everything that I will be is part of this amazing cycle of birth and death, rising and falling, earth and sky, day and night, beauty and ugliness.  Each one of us is connected to all that is, has been, and ever will be.  We are part of something so much bigger than ourselves.  This realization filled me with joy and a sense of awakening ("There are more things in heaven and earth, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." -Shakespeare's "Hamlet"). 
As the tide came in, I would stand in the churning surf, my body soft and yielding as the water swirled and waves crashed against my legs.  Rooting my bare feet into the sand I would feel the strong pull of the waves being drawn out with the tide.  There is a moment as the tide is being drawn back into the sea when the sand gives way beneath your feet.  If you panic, or react to that shift without mindfulness you may fall on your butt. However, if you notice the shift and softly stand your ground you start to be aware that although the ground is giving way beneath you, there is a new level of ground beneath it and you are supported.  
This is the essence of zazen practice.  It is truly the practice of freedom.  When you can just sit, having the experience you have, whatever it is, without comparing it to what it should be, you begin to have true ease and contentment (santosha in sanskrit) on your cushion/yoga mat or off.  Practicing asana in the the presence of the mighty sea, such awesome power and beauty, helped me to connect to this ease.  Practicing yoga and sitting in meditation roots us deeply into the truth and this truth is available at all times.  The ocean is indeed an apt metaphor for life.  I am grateful to say that I am no longer afraid...
"Once the mind stops striving the world loses importance,

Once the heart is content it does not swerve from the truth..."

Be and Do

To what shall I compare this life of ours?

Even before I can say

It is like a lightning flash or a dewdrop

It is no more. (Sengai)

I’ve spent much of my 41 years caught in the web of conditioning that most of us find ourselves stuck in at one time or another. It starts when we’re very young and find ourselves wishing to be older. I can remember watching my older sister, Robyn reap the rewards of being a teenager: the freedom of being able to stay up later, being able to go out with friends on a Friday or Saturday night, wearing make-up, getting her first car, and I would think, “Wow, my life will start when I’m 16”. Then, when I was 16 thinking, “When I graduate from high school, that’s when life begins!”. Upon graduating high school, the thought was that once I finished college, THAT’S when life would start. And so it goes, thinking that the next big event (marriage, having kids, getting that promotion, buying that big house) will mark the day when our lives will start and we’ll be perfectly happy and content. Isn’t that what we’re led to believe by the media, by those slick commercials on TV?

I lived this way until the day my mother passed away after a short battle with cancer in 2003. Something shifted deep within me when I saw and felt her exhale for the last time. Something beyond explanation. I realized that life was happening...right now, right here. Indeed it has always been happening, and I had been wrapped so blindly in the belief that life was waiting for me just beyond the next bend in the road.

When I started to practice yoga and meditation, I started to see, breath by breath and pose by pose, those old beliefs slowly begin to unravel. The knots and entanglements of those old conditionings began to undo themselves and I began to see life as a gift to be present for in this and every moment, that only being (here) and doing (this) are real. Be and do, here and now.

The realization comes when, while meditating or practicing yoga, you can let go of the idea that you are in control. What happens from moment to moment is something to experience, not to push away or grasp onto with all your might. When you just follow the breath, just know that you are breathing you become rooted in your life as it’s happening. All the bulls*#t drops away. All the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves and the world drop away and we’re left with life as it is honestly happening. Powerful stuff.

Of course, this is easy to say and hard to do. It takes practice and patience and lovingkindness towards yourself and others and the world. It involves accepting all that is as neither “good” nor “bad”. Be and do. Here and now.

I can’t say it enough: the discipline one gains through a yoga practice or through a daily meditation practice is priceless. You learn that by stripping away the non-essential, you find the essential. You find the truth and an unshakable sense of peace. Life is happening and you are a part of it. This isn’t to say that what’s happening here and now is always going to be pleasant or comfortable. It may be downright painful or full of sorrow. The point is that what’s happening now is life. It’s truth. To be present for that truth is a great and powerful gift. “Peace doesn’t mean to be in a place where there is no noise, trouble or hard work. It means to be in the midst of those things and still be calm in your heart.” (Unknown) Be and do. Here and now.

(By the way, you DO have time to squeeze yoga and meditation into your daily life. Yoga and meditation, by stripping away all of the “filler” in our lives, creates time, it doesn’t “take” time.)

Here’s a quick way to find your center:

Find a quiet place out of the way of foot traffic in your home or office. Lock the dog/cat out of the room. Take a moment when the toddler is napping (instead of surfing the net or watching the boob-tube!). Sit on the edge of a cushion or pillow so that your pelvis is tilting forward and your spine is straight (it helps if your knees are below your hips).

Begin by watching your breath. Don’t try to do anything to it at first. Just watch. Feel the length of the breath enter your body as you inhale, and the length of the breath leave your body as you exhale. As you inhale say to yourself: “be here” as you exhale say to yourself: doing this. Do this 10-20 times.

Then slowly deepen your breath, inhale silently count “1” to your self, then slowly, completely exhale.

Inhale deeply count “2” then slowly, completely exhale.

Repeat this until you get to “10”

When you get to 10, do the same thing but count backwards to 1.

Slowly open your eyes. Feel better? Be and do. Right here, right now.

Peace.