Take your seat

This is one of my favorite photographs. It was taken near the end of my trip to India last year, looking out over the sea in Kerala. My friend Sri had taken me boating on a lake of lotuses on his birthday, and then to an open air temple, for the deity Murugan. We sat on a huge rock overlooking the temple and the sea. The rock was warm from the day's sun, and the sun was now setting. I saw a Sadhu walking around the temple and heard him chanting, "Soham, Shivoham" ("I am that, I am Shiva, pure"). He climbed up the rock and sat near us, and started to practice kapalabhati pranayama ("skull-shining" breath). I felt, in a childlike way, "Wow, this is real—people do really practice yoga in this way I've been taught back in America". I felt touched to my soul, honestly. I closed my eyes, because. And then... it was like I let go of everything, except that there was no conscious letting go. I did not want anything. Everything was... here.

I don't know how long I sat there like that for, probably just a few moments. But it is an experience that I am profoundly grateful for; to have touched a moment of peace like that, even for just a second. And I find, to my massive relief, that I don't need to be in India in a beautiful sunset to touch these moments, even in a tiny way. I practiced yoga asana in the spring sun outside at the weekend for the first time since the winter came, having brought with it so much sorrow. It felt wonderful to be moving outside. As I sat quietly at the end I saw the shadow of daffodils on the patio as the sunlight shone on them, through them. I had a sense of, "I cannot deny this beauty any more than I can deny the singing joy in my soul to see this; and I do not want to!" It was lovely.

So, suffice to say... I wrote recently about the art of finding one's seat (you can think of it as an art or a habit or maybe both). The piece is about finding your seat when you're sitting down or standing on your head and even in everyday life. You can read it, here, and below...

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Take Your Seat

More than likely in a yoga class you will have heard the word asana—which is generally translated from the Sanskrit to mean “pose”. So, balasana; child’s pose. Halasana; plow pose. Trikonasana; triangle pose.

And it can also be understood as "seat". I love this translation and find it very helpful both in my physical practice on the mat and in my efforts to live well in the world at large. Here is why.

Most of us bring a lot of stuff to our physical practice. When you find Virabadrasana 1—Warrior 1 pose—there's a lot going on. You’re standing there on your mat, maybe first checking your feet are aligned okay and wishing your mat was less slippy; maybe squaring your hips and letting your tailbone sink towards the ground and noticing how that affects your  calves; lifting the chest, bringing your shoulderblades together on your back as you spin your upper arm bones outwards; then you’re refining, softening the gaze, dropping the shoulders… and then you factor in whatever internal narrative happens to be going on—it’s a lot!

And within that, how do we find the balance between effort and ease, readiness and relaxation? For me, often, it's about finding my seat.

We usually begin a class in sukhasana, easy seat (sukha, easy, asana, seat). We are sitting quietly and comfortably, if we're supported properly, and in such a way that breathing comes easily. Like this, we naturally begin to contact a more subtle awareness, simply noticing whatever is going on in the mind and body.

A good teacher will help you find your seat here with careful, calm instructions. A favorite of mine comes from meditation teacher and author Susan Piver. She suggests that while sitting and rooting down, you imagine that a very kind person has their palm held just above the crowd of your head and you want to bring your head up to touch it; very likely your spine will elongate beautifully and your attention will brighten.

The yoga guru B.K.S. Iyengar offers wonderful direction on how to relax into awareness in his book, Light on Life. “In every pose, there should be repose,” he says. “If you keep the back skin of the neck passive and the tongue soft, there is no tension in the brain.” Maybe you’d like to try that now, just closing your eyes and letting your throat and tongue and jaw be really soft. How does that affect how your mind feels? As Mr. Iyengar notes, “The brain can learn only when it begins to relax.”

So, we sit quietly, upright, shoulders relaxed, and there's a certain quiet dignity here.

When I'm caught up in emotions or storylines or simply hard work in a pose later in the class, I find it helpful to come back to this point. “Ah, here we are. In my seat.” Remembering this same sense of peace and rootedness can transform any pose, and take a lot of the drama out of challenging or seemingly fancy postures; can you find your seat in a handstand? It’s certainly interesting to try!

This same sense of coming back to one’s seat can apply to daily life—this is why it makes sense to me that yoga is referred to as a practice. We practice, practice, practice on the mat and maybe, maybe, maybe we notice little shifts and thinking gaps and opportunities to grow and wriggle out of habits and re-center ourselves in our day-to-day. I try to keep returning to my seat—when I'm in conversation, making decisions, tackling the subway—really anytime where I feel my anchor becoming a bit detached.

So I offer this suggestion anytime you’re feeling overwhelmed or caught up in something, to just take a moment, slow down and reconnect with your body. In finding our foundation we establish connection with the earth, and in relaxing and opening, we’re filled with light. Mr. Iyengar offers this beautiful encouragement: “Do not think of yourself as a small, compressed, suffering thing.” he says. “Think of yourself as graceful and expanding, no matter how unlikely it may seem at the time.”

Take your seat. And take it from there.

Letting it be

“How much can it be about letting go and not trying to have a particular experience?”

My friend, the yoga teacher Seth Lieberman, asked this question at the weekend as he closed his class with savasana, corpse pose. And for me, laying on the ground, it was like a cartoon lightbulb lit up above my head; my whole body responded with a big Yes. “That's what I need.”


And I wonder, What does this question mean to you?


To me, it has everything to do with the vrittis. In the ancient yoga sutras, Master Patanjali states, Yoga chitta vritti nirodha, which can be translated as, Yoga is the cessation (nirodha) of the fluctuations (vritti) of the mind (chitta). To me, it’s about finding a quieting of the mind’s chatter and the body’s agitation.


You've doubtless experienced this powerful effect in your physical practice. Mostly we do feel calmer and clearer after a well-taught class. Our minds are so focused on the breath and movement that its usual shifts and stories start to settle down—and perhaps we even feel a deeper truth emerging.


Savasana can simply be a welcome rest at the end of class. It can also be challenging. The late yoga guru B.K.S. Iyengar considers it among the most advanced of all poses. He writes, “By remaining motionless for some time and keeping the mind still while you are fully conscious, you learn to relax. This conscious relaxation invigorates and refreshes both body and mind. But it is much harder to keep the mind than the body still. Therefore, this apparently easy posture is one of the most difficult to master.”


Often, the more "advanced" out physical practice gets, the more our expectations come into play: We want savasana to be a profound experience. And the wanting can get so in the way of the actual having, in terms of the experience. Wanting something that isn't present can only take us out of the present.


So it is in everyday life. Can we simply let go, and not try to have a particular experience, to try to make things be a certain way? And if we practice this in small ways—taking the train, talking with a friend—can we edge towards trying and pushing less when times are tough, and we feel anything but cool as a cucumber? Can we breathe and let go, when our reactive self starts to panic and wish us somewhere else, to wish our feelings were something else?


As hard as it can feel to do this—and even to remember to do this—you may just find that when you let go, you feel relief, and a childlike curiosity. When we truly let go, we surrender the ego, even if it is just for a second.

The next line in the Yoga Sutras continues, Tada drashtuh svarupe avasthanam. Meaning, Then (tada) the seer (drashtuh) abides (avasthanam) in its true nature (svarupe); when we stop pushing and pulling and identifying with our “small” self, we get to rest, perhaps in something far more expansive.


So... Today I am consciously trying this in little ways. Today I will see what happens.

Transformation

“You can pick all the flowers but you can’t stop the spring.”—Pablo Neruda

I love this quote for its signaling not only of the return of spring, but of the irrepressibility of spring; and for its deft summation of the human spirit and our capacity to live.


I came to Prospect Park when my friend died in December, and I remember walking along the path and seeing the landscape; so open, and so utterly bleak. The sky was grey, the scrubby grass was grey, and everything felt black.


I stood at the top of a hill and looked out and wanted to talk to my friend and couldn’t say his name out loud without crying. I remember it felt like I was bleeding into a river. As strange as it may sound, that’s how I felt.


At the same time, as I looked out, I had a clear, very plain sense that I knew that the world would renew and that spring would come; even as everything felt so very sad and lost.


I went back to the park many times over the winter. It snowed a lot. Everything felt very cold and I hoped that the buried things were germinating and that the unasked for, uncontrollable pause of winter was somehow necessary—to my recovery, just as I knew it was essential to nature’s health.


And then I went to the park today. A couple of days after the spring equinox and the new moon; a couple of days into a new season. And my God did it feel that way. The grass still scrubby but willing to straighten itself out—like a person with hat-hair. The birds beginning to cheep. Humans sitting on benches with their eyes shut and the sun on their faces.


And I felt… nice. The cells in my body felt good with the warm sun shining on them. My cheeks felt good to feel the wind brushing them, all freshness and new chill. My heart felt peaceful, and stirring with the beginnings of curiosity—like a little crocus pushing its head up through the cold earth.


Looking out at the same wide open scene and feeling these things, I thought, What’s changed? What imperceptible tiny things have moved and shifted to found something new? What has cracked to allow for a dazzling, slender chink of possibility to shine through?


You can use time-lapse photography to see precisely what goes on in nature, through the seasons’ transitions. But even though you can observe the action unfolding, the mystery of it all remains intact. We even have time lapse photography to watch the development of embryos in utero. We can watch the growth of a new life, stage by stage—and its mystery is totally undiminished, its miraculousness is even magnified.


So, I don’t seek an explanation for these transformations, right now. It is simply reassuring to feel myself a part of nature. To grieve and rest and breathe; and come out into the sun again.




I am grateful to the Buddhist monk Jack Kornfield for the Pablo Neruda quote, as cited in his excellent book A Lamp in the Darkness.