Reading by Ryuuto-kawaii on Photobucket

This is my entry for Jenny Matlock’s AlphabeThursday.

“How do you ‘narcotize’?” Fischer-Hoffman facilitator Ellen Margron asked my group that question a number of times. She felt that everyone has ways in which they hide out and/or numb out from facing their deepest pain and anger and sadness. We think of drugs and alcohol as the main ways people check out, but really there are myriad means of staying numb and removed. She wanted us to work on it deeply.

From TV to eating to over-scheduling to reading to obsessing over a hobby most of us has some tool(s) for hiding out. I think the current addiction to Facebook and Twitter, etc. is just the latest form of narcotizing. Very few people survive to adulthood without collecting some issues and/or unresolved pain and/or some repressed memories. And most of us in this society don’t really want to look at those unpleasant things and feel those feelings. In quiet, in silence, we open a space that allows those memories or wounds to rise into consciousness. So we fill the quiet spaces with something that narcotizes so that feelings stay down.

If you’re drunk or eating or watching TV or constantly on the run you fill your days with substances or activities that keep all the pain out of your awareness. For me TV and reading are the two main ways I fill in the empty spaces. That’s not to say it’s not fine to sometimes just zone out or do things you enjoy. The key is to be aware when the down time or the fun time expands to fill so much space and time that it keeps the feelings from arising.

Do you have habits or addictions or obsessions that you (often unconsciously) use to stay numb? How much of your time is spent numbed out? What do you not want to remember?

microsoft clipart mp900448360

Another re-blog from the past:

Sometimes I think the greatest source of resistance I have to becoming enlightened is the secret fear that I’ll have to live a life to which I don’t aspire.  Some sort of ascetic life possibly involving no shoes and/or a begging bowl.  And a lot of religious doctrine tells me that upon enlightenment I’ll be happy to have nothing and indeed that I won’t achieve it unless I give up material pursuits first.

I don’t really have a desire to hoard billions or wear Versace but I like houses and cars and computers and WEARING SHOES and on some level I’m uneasy as to what enlightenment means relative to life as I’ve known it.  Of course life as I’ve known it seemed fairly sucky when I started this journey, hence the journey.  Quite a puzzle…

Twenty-five years into the journey I’ve experienced a lot and changed a lot and, from the perspective of now, it’s been pretty great.  But if you’d told me when I started all that I would face and some of the changes I would make, I’m not sure that I’d have kept going.  For me it’s one of the hardest parts of a transformational journey:  not knowing what the transformed life will look like.  And it isn’t as hard on the surface as it is hard in those deep dark places that catch me unaware and lead me into self-sabotage and resistance.

Related articles

• A Longing to Evolve ~ Andrew Cohen (evolutionarymystic.wordpress.com)

Reblogged from Heroes Not Zombies:

Excellent post on the School of Life site about the three stories circulating at present – the first one is “business as usual” ie no need to change what we do or how we live; the second one is “the great unraveling” – it’s all falling to pieces. And the third? The third story is held and embodied by those who know the first story is leading us to catastrophe and who refuse to let the second story have the last word. Involving the emergence of new and creative human responses, it is about the epochal …

I like the idea of putting our energies behind “The Great Turning”

The most fundamental principle of hatha yoga for me is balance. Ha and tha are the sun and moon channels that crisscross down the spine creating the circles of energy we call chakras. The word yoga means yoke or balance. So hatha yoga is balancing (or yoking) the sun and moon channels. In a well-designed practice, all the chakras are brought into a greater state of balance.  But yoga addresses balance in many ways.

I organize my hatha classes to begin at the root chakra and work upward, addressing all the chakras in every class. Beyond chakra energy, the need for balance is also physical and a good practice addresses strength and flexibility, forward and backward bends, inversion, and balance postures, so I also design my classes to provide a mix of those (depending on the abilities of students).

If you observe your reactions to the various elements of practice, according to my teacher, you can learn about yourself and what’s out of balance. Forward bends and stretches reflect ability to look within and flexibility, Backward bends tell the story of openness in the world or being extroverted. Strength postures literally reflect inner strength. Balance poses, inner balance and so on. Ask yourself as you practice which postures do you like to do and which do you dread or avoid? Which postures are easy for you to do and which are hard? You’ll find clues to your inner map.

When I started yoga I was very introverted and incredibly shy (make that pathologically); so lacking in confidence that I was weak emotionally and also already struggling with chronic fatigue so that I was physically weak as well. I excelled at doing forward bends and many stretches. I could do strength postures well enough but I rarely put them in my own practice and I didn’t like them. In back bends such as cobra I could barely lift an inch off the floor. Balance poses have always been variable for me, both how often and how well I do them. I like inverted poses.

I addressed the back bend issue first. It took years to work up to pretty good back bends. I still can’t get my foot to the back of my head (I tell my students that’s for next lifetime) but I can turn out a good camel or bow pose. Over the years of increasing my ability to open into these poses I have been increasing my openness in the world. Inner work and body work have contributed but I think the progression from shy and tongue-tied to outgoing and glib has a lot to do with the decision to practice back bends.

In recent years I turned to the strength postures as part of the process of improving health. I’ve found it helpful to keep videos around that contain practice segments with emphasis on postures I tend not to do on my own. It gives me some variety that keeps me from getting stuck in the same routine and helps me work on my weak areas.

Awareness of your relationship with the different aspects of yoga and your willingness to do a well-balanced practice can give y ou valuable insight into the state of balance of your being. If you practice yoga, do you know how to deal with forward bends, backward bends, strength postures, etc.? In life do you know what you embrace and what you avoid, what you do with ease and what challenges you? Do you know what it is within you that drives those attractions and aversions?

When you know the state of balance within among the elements of yoga or of life you can do what is needed to restore balance or equanimity.

Related articles

• The joys and limits of yoga (bluegrassnotes.wordpress.com)
• Yoga – At Home and Classes – a Balancing Act (joyofspa.com)
• 77 Things You Never Knew About Yoga (tripbase.com)
• At the Heart of Yoga, Trust Blooms (embodimentchronicle.wordpress.com)
• New Book Reveals Why Flexibility is Not Indicative of Good Yoga Practice (prweb.com)
• Yoga Is My Prayer (lindalulong.wordpress.com)
• Yoga at home (beyondmeds.com)

Image via Wikipedia

Just started participating in Jennie Matlock’s Alphabe-Thursday and already I gave a link that didn’t go to the post on Mindfulness (actually an older post). So click back there on the word to see the post.

Yoga by luv2vault on Photobucket

When I decided to try yoga in 1986 I was living in Chicago. Although there were a number of studios there wasn’t the plethora that now exists and I quickly realized that the long travel times to many studios would lead to skipping lots of classes. As soon as I decided I wanted to find someplace closer I parked across the alley from my apartment building and when I stepped up on the curb I found myself staring at a sign on the door in front of me: “Hatha Yoga, Tuesdays 6:30 p.m.”

Well, that was close enough! I didn’t know enough about yoga to know that there are different styles (less then than now) or how to distinguish whether one might suit me more than another and it didn’t occur to me to research the teacher (for you young ones, I couldn’t have googled it, most people didn’t even have a computer then and the internet barely existed).  It just felt right and I showed up the next Tuesday and began my love affair with yoga.

The teacher was Bill Hunt, who’d practiced for about a dozen years at the time and taught on the side from another job. He was studying with Goswami Kriyananda (Temple of Kriya Yoga) and became a swami while I studied with him.  I’ve taken other classes—including a then-famous Yoga Journal teacher (my least favorite ever)–and followed various TV teachers like Lilias and picked up many tapes and DVDs. Bill Hunt has remained the best yoga teacher I ever encountered.

I attended his classes faithfully for five years, even twice a week whenever he offered a second class, including through the nine months of teacher training at the Temple of Kriya Yoga (he taught some of that too).  If I hadn’t moved away I’d still be taking his classes. Bill is now the director of Oak Park Yoga in Oak Park, IL.

I feel the universe sent me the perfect teacher at the perfect time and place and it changed my life.  My instinct, when I saw that sign on the door was that I’d found the right class.  If I’d second-guessed myself and searched for more classes or hesitated I might have turned off to yoga or have never started.  When instinct and all the elements come together, magic happens if you pay attention and say yes.

Related articles

• Yoga Journal Magazine: $3.99 per Year! (livingrichwithcoupons.com)
• Kriya Yoga: Supercharge Your Spirituality. ~ Auren Kaplan (elephantjournal.com)
• An Introduction to Kriya Yoga (moonladyyoga.wordpress.com)

Clipart MP900446423 by iCLIPART

I like to think of Valentine’s Day as a day when we can find lovingkindness in our hearts rather than an opportunity for fantasies of romantic love. So I’d like to say Happy Valentine’s Day to all of you. May you have a day that’s filled with lovingkindness.

Emotions by moochybabe at http://i66.photobucket.com/albums/h243/moochybabe/da-emotions.jpg

I used to think that emotions arose within and passed away of their own accord and I was just along for the ride. After I went through the Fischer-Hoffman process with the late Ellen Margron I took her Emotional Mastery* class and learned that the opposite is true. It was really just a few simple ideas that are life changing.

Many of us live as if our emotions arise on their own and last as long as they choose but according to Ellen emotions are ours to choose as we wish. The entire array belong to us and are part of the gift of being human. We can decide which mode to be in at any given moment. We can also decide to change emotions at any time.

A lot of the class time was spent with her running through lists of the many nuances of emotions while we sat, eyes closed, and put ourselves in each emotional state as she named it. Practice at home included things like staying aware of sounds and movements in the room and in the world and in the universe while moving through emotions (playing a tape that guided us from one to another).

Emotions by dramaqueen45645 at http://i62.photobucket.com/albums/h92/dramaqueen45645/emotions.jpg

I’m greatly oversimplifying the process, but it had a great effect on me. All that practice at shifting from one emotion to another made it clear to me that I can never again claim to be in the grip of melancholy or caught up in a rage; if I find myself feeling melancholy I can choose to be happy or content or serene instead.

On a deeper level,, emotions are often triggered by underlying issues or trauma or learned behavior. If you have issues about abandonment you may jump to panic or tears any time you feel you’ve been left. If your family mode was to start crashing around yelling and stomping every time something went wrong, then that’s likely to be your reaction until you choose to react another way. So it helps to release the old stuff, but even if you haven’t, in any given moment you can choose to react a different way, to respond with a different feeling.

If I find myself feeling cranky I can go inside and think, “Joy” and observe myself moving into a happy space. No emotional state can ever grab me and hold me in its thrall unless I let it. What freedom there is in being the one to choose how I feel instead of letting the feelings choose me.

* Ellen began teaching this in the late 1980′s.  If you Google emotional mastery there are now a number of people offering teachings they’re calling emotional mastery but none seem to be the same as Ellen’s work.

Magical Fairy by msparrie, http://i612.photobucket.com/albums/tt209/msparrie/FANTASY/00155.gif

I’ve been reading through some of my earliest posts, trying to see what I’ve already covered.  And I realized that back in the first months when no one was reading I posted some things that I hoped to hear opinions about.  So I’ve decided here and there to delve into those old posts and re-blog them.  Plus now that I know more, I get to add pictures and stuff to click!

I’ve been looking back at the beginning of my journey a lot lately.  I feel like I’m approaching the end of the physical healing part of the journey and peeling away more layers.  Seems to bring up thoughts of “then” compared to “now”.

I started the journey with great excitement.  Two friends and I explored together and were giddy with our new discoveries.  “Can you believe the synchronicity?”  “The one who channels Ramtha is coming!”  “I see now why I do that!”  You get the idea.  As I look back I think we also had a lot of hubris about the degree to which we’d succeeded and how quickly we assumed we’d be done.

Eventually I learned that one of the signs of maturing along the journey is ceasing the expectation that there’s a final “doneness” or that the road to enlightenment is swiftly travelled.  I do miss that sense of great excitement though.

Somewhere along the way my journey lost that sense of magic and became more about constant practice and delving and releasing with progress that became ever more slow.  I think the excitement at the beginning is what draws a lot of initial success at manifesting and generally feeling better.  Then a lot of people run into the walls of their own issues and progress becomes more sporadic.  It sure happened to me.

I’ve been wondering whether part of the idea of keeping what the Buddhists call “beginner’s mind” is the ability to maintain that initial sense of delight.  Previously I related it to just trying not to be jaded or to ever think that I’ve become so advanced that I couldn’t learn something new from an introductory class or someone who’s new to the journey.  Perhaps one of the greatest gifts of the beginner is the joy of new discovery and that’s one of the more difficult things to hang onto; at least it is for me.

Related articles

• Getting Back to Beginner’s Mind (livemindfully.blogspot.com)
• Beginner’s Mind (martialartsliving.wordpress.com)
• Beginnings…… (artistoftheeveryday.wordpress.com)

Sabotage by elwislaczo at Photobucket. http://i380.photobucket.com/albums/oo244/elwislaczo/sabotage.jpg

When I talk about self-sabotage or mention something like resistance to getting over chronic fatigue a lot of people assume I’m talking about a conscious decision to miss a goal or stay sick. But I think most self-sabotage happens far more subtly and is driven by the subconscious mind.

Like many things, it’s easier to see self-sabotage in other people. I watched a friend of mine embark on diet after diet and one alternative health path after another. Every time she got five or six weeks into a diet or appointments with a bodyworker (usually about the time it started to have an effect) she would announce that this wasn’t working for her and she would drop it.

I know enough about how we serve as mirrors for one another to realize that if I could see a pattern of self-sabotage in her I should be looking for it in me. It didn’t take long to see that I didn’t make as clear a decision to drop things as she did. But often when I started—or restarted—my meditation practice or some exercise regimens (yoga always stuck for some reason) that clearly left me feeling better, I would wander away from it. It usually began with something like the flu or a vacation that threw me off schedule. I’d be slow to start again and I’d practice less often. Then I’d leave more and more time in between and suddenly I’d realize it had been months since my last practice.

I never consciously thought, “Oh, this makes me feel better and I don’t really want to be well so I’m going to stop.” I just wandered off the program. It was only when I explored the process and asked myself why that I had to acknowledge on some level I didn’t want to be well even though a lot of my time and effort were devoted to getting well.  The ins and outs of why that worked for me can be the subject of another post or three.  It’s the same for many people I know, whether it’s creating chaos or procrastinating or sidetracking or bailing, their sabotaging doesn’t arise from a conscious thought of “How can I screw this up?”

Whatever you hold within that fears success or doesn’t want to change or wants to keep you isolated, etc. will guide you to sabotage your progress. And unless you’re staying very aware of what you’re doing and why, you’ll keep sabotaging yourself and not even realize you’re doing it.

Do you know what you do to get in your own way? Do you know whether you have beliefs that say you’re better off sick or you shouldn’t succeed or you can’t do a good job, etc.?

Related articles

• Self Sabotage (darrenstehle.com)
• The Self Sabotaging Spirit (soulxposed2u.com)