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ALL means YOU too

10/24/2015

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I've been spending a lot of time with my mother over the past month as she has had serious health problems that may have caused her death.  She fought to live.  Her conditions were painful and hard to endure yet she fought to stay here with us....and here, she is!

We, her children, have been at her side to support her as well as my father......  And as is usual in families we have "family dynamics".  Truthfully we are quite a well functioning family with underlying love and acceptance of one another with only occasional flare-ups.  Which I think is great.  There are 10 children; 3 girls and 7 boys.  My parents are hard working, honest, caring people and they did their best to raised us to be the same.  

Two nights ago, as I was helping her into bed, I got her all settled in and was holding her hand, she looked into my eyes and thanked me for helping her.  Then she asked me, "do you think all families have some dysfunction?"  Now I'm not sure which "flair up" she may have been thinking about or if there was a specific reference to her question at all but I sensed some reflection had been going on in her. 

I said to her emphatically: All families have plenty of dysfunction; we can't help it; it's the perfect design anyway.  Each of us has our own set of issues that we seem to be born with.  (Which we can see in our family....there are 10 of us and no 2 are alike in personality, propensity or issues) Then we get to live in a family with other people who love us .... unconditionally---to the best of all of our abilities.  It's our best opportunity to be supported in our journey!  It's nothing to feel bad about or think it could have been any other way.

The main key is to underscore everything or build everything upon a foundation of unconditional love, gentleness and friendliness with ALL.  And ALL means ourselves too. 

As I was going on about this she began to fall asleep; her eyes were fluttering open only every few seconds and I said good night to her.

She held on to my hand for a moment longer and said "thank you"

And I thought about the first time that I realized that ALL means ME too.....I remembered the relief and comfort I afforded myself on that first time and how inner gentleness and friendliness has become a basis for my journey and has allowed me to take risks, explore possibilities and calmed my fears.

I don't know how gentle she is or isn't with herself inside.  I know she was and is gentle and loving toward us.

She probably just needed a little reminder...as we all do from time to time....that

ALL means YOU too.


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unwind

10/23/2015

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Several times a day I open my mouth as wide as I can and un-clinch my jaw.  Periodically I become aware that it is tight again.  Life and living seems to wind it up in a kink.  It's not the only place that gets wound up either....shoulders and lower back are also common.

I'm happy today that It is noticeable enough for me to do something about it.  Before I started practicing yoga and awareness I didn't notice things like this......I didn't notice my body or my relationship to it.  I think this jaw must have been wound up so tightly for so   long that I didn't remember anything else.  With awareness and practice I began to let go of so much gripping....I began to understand what I was doing in the ways I move and hold my physical body and could, with awareness,  choose something different.....I could choose to unwind the tight places.

Just like the places in my body that tense and kink there are places in my mind that do the same thing.  A few years ago when this was first pointed out to me, I didn't get it.  The processes of my mind were hidden to me and the only things I could be aware of were content....

.......Content is easy to recognize in the brain.....its aalllll the stuff we think about wrapped up in our assessments and judgements of it.

Content may be proof of the state we are in.....anxious, unsatisfied, afraid, etc.  But knowing the content won't give us the insight we need to see how we are wound up in these things.  What we really need is access and understanding of the process

The real benefit of yoga practice for me is that the physical practice of unwinding my body began to educate my mind and spirit.  Just like it takes time, intuition, interest, awareness, patience and commitment to unwind and further my physical yoga practice; when I apply these to my inner life, things begin to unwind.

Trungpa Rimboche said that if you want to unwind you have to first see how you are wound up.

For me, starting on a physical level gave me time and space to enter slowly a place I wasn't sure I really wanted to go in
......  I had tried acquiring a meditation practice but it eluded me and I gave up.  It was quite by accident that I decided to try yoga as a fix for my aging posture. 

Most of us have tried finding a place of ease, or of unwound in the right relationship or or the right circumstances but no one can do this work for another.   I cannot practice yoga for my husband even though he is in dire need....I cannot have someone do my practice for me....  This stuff is an inside job. 

It's actually empowering to know that I am the only one who needs to understand me and I am the only one who can change anything about my inner life.  No one can come along and take over for me....telling me that I'm doing it wrong.  No one can undermine my journey. 

Eleanor Roosevelt said, "No one can make you feel inferior without your consent."

Each of us has unlimited opportunities to be engaged in this process of personal evolution and we can choose to do it or not; we can choose from an array of approaches and methods. 

Or we can stay wound up...... if that feels good.

Unwound feels better to me.









 

​





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Sparring

10/11/2015

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The constant contact of relationship can be exhausting. 

It often feels to me that each person in my life is here to challenge me to a match; a duel of them vs. me.  Some people are, of course, more confrontive or push my buttons more than others and some people seem to have targets painted on their foreheads inviting me to attack.

Nothing in my life experience makes me feel worse about myself that when I go on the offensive and attack another person.......yet I do it.  Whether to their faces or behind their backs, I criticize, blame, and condemn others.  Furthermore, when I see someone else on the offence attacking their fellow beings I am seriously bothered.....and condemn them for doing so.

What the heck is going on?

​It's
 like I'm wired to do this or something..... 

Maybe we are.  Maybe we are wired to relate to others in ways that are really attempts to draw each other out.

Here we are, all of us, pure consciousness, pure light, essential goodness, and yet we are in a situation of separateness.  We are now separated pieces of the same light housed in individual bodies....housed in bodies which are limiting and keeping boundaries on our energy and light that only want to shine and rejoin with itself.  

We have been born into a puzzle and have limited instructions about it.  

When I look at the reality of what we, in our current state, do with each other It kind of makes sense.  With only a faint sense that we are all connected and that we all hold a piece of each other within ourselves we would naturally be anxiously engaged in rejoining.....yet we are very confused and try all sorts of craziness to do it.  

One of my favorite teachers of awakening and expansion says that once we get a little instruction on the subject of who we are and that we can wake up, become fully human  and expand; the process is begun.   Then.....

" may we have long lives so that we can practice".

With some awareness that whether we are exasperated, angered or filled with love and compassion it's all the same intense desire to connect.  We can see each human engagement as a sparring match designed to wake all of us up.

 The kind of sparring partners we are will depend upon our commitments to mindfulness mutual benefit.

Today I aspire to be someone with whom you'd be willing to get in the ring.....

Today I am willing to get in the ring and practice.

After I meditate.....


 




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Survival

10/8/2015

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This morning my husband woke me at ten minutes to seven.  Another day.....

There is usually a small window of time, just after I awake, of openness; openness to possibility; openness to connection; when I can breathe in freely.  It's an easy time to feel this because nothing has happened yet.  My current meditation practices allow for me to let go of the past fairly easily so that I awake in this state.

               It was there today and I enjoyed it.  


I am practicing taking it with me as I begin the work and routine of the day...  It is my sincere aspiration that there will come a time when I feel open all the time....free of the contraction of survival. 

The contraction of survival is a place that I'm familiar with......It is wanting for enough while not even knowing what enough is..it is hoping for security and fearing the worst.  It leads to fear driven decisions that make my range of possibility smaller and smaller as I reach for the freedom of expanse.  It makes no sense, yet it seemed to be my only choice so much of the time.

I used to harshly criticize myself about this fact; criticize myself for not being able to stay out of this place.  I hoped to leave it behind and feared I would never be able to......adding the contraction of fear to the mix.

Today I stayed pretty open as the day unfolded with kids, shoes and socks, lunches, backpacks,etc.....  The openness allows me to observe from a vantage point that is not so in the front of my brain where the thinking is .  The openness allows me to observe more what is going and be interested in all of it  The openness allows an awareness which is more neutral than anything else.  

As I pulled up to the high school to drop off my daughter, I noticed all the young adults who were also arriving.  I felt a great connection to my daughter who was going out into that campus to have her experiences of the day as well as to all the others.  I observed their faces and could feel their energy....a mix of excitement and fear on multiple levels that added up to life.  I know as well as they do that life will be a mix of fun and hard, of interesting and boring, of happiness and sadness and I wanted to tell them all......

Just stay open to all of it. !!  

I wanted somehow to convince them now, at their young ages, that the contraction of survival and fear are not the safety that they seem to be.  I want them to know that they don't have to waste precious time in the small spaces like I have.  Ultimately, all I could do was tell my daughter that I love her and to enjoy her day and to flash my biggest smile to the boys inn the crosswalk in front of me.


"Success is not final, failure is not fatal, it is the courage to continue that counts."
                                                                               --Winston Churchill

In the openness we can all do more than survive....

In the openness we can connect on the heart level and help each other out.....

In the openness resides possibility.

I'm just going to keep saying it.






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    Lucy Facer Bernstein

    I am a committed yogi and community member. I believe in the goodness of humankind and that as we discover our ultimate connectedness we can all find peace....within and without.  

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