Ricochet Rabbit Learns to Flow Like Water
February 2nd, 2010
I know, curious title.
Let me explain…
Along with 11 other unshrinking souls, I’ve committed to practice 40 days of vinyasa yoga, meditation, and conscious eating.
Today is day 15. And I’m entering new territory.
The steady practice part is not an unknown. I’ve practiced 3 days a week, for years. And I have experience with meditation. And I’m also mindful, most of the time, of what and how I eat.
What’s new then?
It’s this hard-to-explain surrendering to, and accessing of a deeper energy. I mean, way-down-in-the-energy-well-deep.
I have oodles upon oodles of surface energy. Energy, that without some kind of outlet, starts looking (and feeling) high-strung, jumpy, and v-e-r-y restless.
Lack of movement transforms me into a less cute version of Sheriff “Bing-bing-bing!” Richochet rabbit. Bouncing off walls. (But without the redeeming heroics.)
And so, I find ways to move.
Typically, I arrive on my yoga mat brimming with copious, swirly-whirling, spiraling energy. And then, bounded by the borders of my mat, and open to the spaciousness in the studio, I flow, and ground, and surf my physical edge, long enough for the whirls to both dissipate and settle.
…that is until the swhirlies build up again.
I run on most days I don’t practice yoga. But still, the energy persistently rises, and spirals and hums.
I know I’m not alone here. And I’m positively certain there are lots of people who are born with a wired, restless energy that far, far exceeds mine. I imagine they are the human-mountain-goats who climb Mt. Everest, the ultra-marathoners who really can’t stop running, the explorers who are endlessly roaming and expanding their reach, the Olympians.
Maybe they are the dedicated meditators too.
Anyway, the point. Or the place this is going.
The part where the rabbit learns how to chill.
The type of yoga I do is very physically demanding. Like, #*&-kickingly so. And although I’ve practiced heavily during weekend retreats, I’ve never practiced days upon days in a row.
Every part of me is sore. Achingly, ow-ingly, sore. And my energy is settling. Or more like, past-tense, settled. And it’s staying that way between classes.
So, instead of arriving on my mat with superabundant surface energy to burn, my body feels quieter, steadier.
Every single pose feels foreign in some way or another.
I’ve figured out that resistance makes the edge of the poses harder. So I practice relaxing, and breathing, and finding space.
Every now and then, the instinct to struggle pops up and hijacks my attention, and again, I breathe through the opposition. I soften and lengthen, and then here’s the surprise, the “wall” gives. It moves and shifts.
I think what I’m doing (or not doing) is a kind of surrendering, a yielding. It’s most definitely not a crumpling or caving. Because a different energy is there — floating upward from a deeper source. Buoying me. Helping me stay.
And so I trust, and the “edge” of the pose moves, just like that. Gently, ease-ily, like water.
*Internal note to self: No bing-y bounding necessary to make stuff move.
And this has got me thinking…how many times do we come up against obstacles off of our mats, in our real-world lives and fight, freeze or flee?
Maybe we force and flail our way through a challenge, flinging ourselves into our future. Or we resist, holding on for dear-life, clinging to our past. Or maybe some us just run for the hills.
(Me? Flailer and flinger, more than I’d like to admit.)
Or, how many times do we just assume the situation will be the same as it was the day before? Our commute will suck, our kids won’t cooperate, the tasks ahead of us will be insurmountable, and that person at work will be the same old grump. So, we enter the situations in the same way as before. We don’t allow the space around our hearts for things to be different.
What would it be like to drop the way we always do things? To flow with what is happening now. To be like water, and press on with ease and grace — over, around, above, and through. I think they call it the path of least resistance. Or flowing downstream.
And I wonder, how can this experience be translated into life off-the-mat?
It would mean less internal freaking out when challenged. Not worrying so much about what’s next. Trusting that I’ve got what it takes. Less force, more grace. Dropping predictions and overly thought-out schemes. Allowing for fluidity and surprise.
And for all that to be possible, I’ll need to trust in that deep, buoying, fluent energy.
I’m not sure how this is going to go yet. Especially the allowing for fluidity and surprise part. That involves a whole lot of letting go. But I think this is the whole point of the 40 day challenge — to open us up to new ways of doing (or undoing) and being.
I’m curious — what is your experience with letting go of struggle? With graceful persistence? With dropping your certainty to make room for surprise?
Are you able as Rumi exhorts, to “feel the motions of tenderness around you, the buoyancy” ?
Tell me! I’d love to know!
In Praise of Emptiness and Smiles
January 14th, 2010
I meant to post something here last week. Some friends had asked questions about my last post on rituals, and it seemed a good idea to answer them here. So, I planned, I prepared, and I crafted my thoughtful replies. I came up with good answers.
Yawn. Getting all ready for life can be so boring.
It was time to un-do the drone, empty, and begin again.
My yoga practice continues to teach me the benefits of arriving empty-handed but aware, light-hearted, and open to receive whatever arises.
I didn’t really get Lao Tzu’s teaching, “Empty yourself of everything,” until I practiced it in meditation, and in my yoga classes. Dropping everything, allows whatever is there, in the present moment, to be discovered.
Sometimes, while practicing, I receive delightful and unexpected gifts — a great big love, or a teary-eyed gratitude whooshes upward. Sometimes, old shadowy griefs rise to the surface, pause a while, and then, are exhaled along with my breath. (Making room for something fresh.)
It’s so different than thinking up the right answer, planning my way through a pose just-in-case, or anticipating what comes next so I’ll be ready. When I do that, I miss all the possibility in the present.
I will not be writing up my crafted reply today. Because it was scripted, dull, and unimaginative. And I’d rather write about smiling. Because that’s where things went when I stopped planning.
The other day, I was in Barnes and Noble with my boys. While they were occupied with Japanese manga, the Winter 2009 issue of The Buddhist Review Tricyle threw itself off the shelf and hit me in the head. (Ok, not really, but metaphorically.) On the bottom of the cover, it said, “DOING NOTHING CAN MAKE YOU WISE.” And since, lately, I have been doing a whole lot of something, I was intrigued. You’ve got to admit, that sounds pretty promising, hmm?
I flipped it open, and landed on a full page quote from the Dalai Lama about smiles. Smiling ensued. And, I’ve been smiling since. (No, not 24/7, that might be a little trippy. But, a whole lot more.)
I’m noticing smiles, appreciating smiles, practicing smiles, and generally receiving all sorts of weird-unexplained smiley gifts. So, I thought I’d share said quote, along with a favorite poem, which although I’ve read dozens of times, never fails to produce a genuine smile. My hope is to engender more smiling.
Here’s the quote:
“I love friends, I want more friends. I love smiles. That is a fact. How to develop smiles? There are a variety of smiles. Some smiles are sarcastic. Some smiles are artificial–diplomatic smiles. These smiles do not produce satisfaction, but rather fear or suspicion. But a genuine smile gives us hope, freshness. If we want a genuine smile, then first we must produce the basis for a smile to come. On every level of human life, compassion is the key thing.” –His Holiness the Dalai Lama
And here’s a poem by Billy Collins, who as a poet, never seems to lose his sense of wonder. It’s kind of long, but totally worth it. Promise.
Shoveling Snow With the Buddha, by Billy Collins
In the usual iconography of the temple or the local Wok
you would never see him doing such a thing,
tossing the dry snow over a mountain
of his bare, round shoulder,
his hair tied in a knot,
a model of concentration.
Sitting is more his speed, if that is the word
for what he does, or does not do.
Even the season is wrong for him.
In all his manifestations, is it not warm or slightly humid?
Is this not implied by his serene expression,
that smile so wide it wraps itself around the waist of the universe?
But here we are, working our way down the driveway,
one shovelful at a time.
We toss the light powder into the clear air.
We feel the cold mist on our faces.
And with every heave we disappear
and become lost to each other
in these sudden clouds of our own making,
these fountain-bursts of snow.
This is so much better than a sermon in church,
I say out loud, but Buddha keeps on shoveling.
This is the true religion, the religion of snow,
and sunlight and winter geese barking in the sky,
I say, but he is too busy to hear me.
He has thrown himself into shoveling snow
as if it were the purpose of existence,
as if the sign of a perfect life were a clear driveway
you could back the car down easily
and drive off into the vanities of the world
with a broken heater fan and a song on the radio.
All morning long we work side by side,
me with my commentary
and he inside his generous pocket of silence,
until the hour is nearly noon
and the snow is piled high all around us;
then, I hear him speak.
After this, he asks,
can we go inside and play cards?
Certainly, I reply, and I will heat some milk
and bring cups of hot chocolate to the table
while you shuffle the deck.
and our boots stand dripping by the door.
Aaah, says the Buddha, lifting his eyes
and leaning for a moment on his shovel
before he drives the thin blade again
deep into the glittering white snow.
Did you smile?
I hope so.
Today, I’m going to fold a small mountain of laundry with the Buddha. I know, perhaps not quite as poetic as shoveling snow, but we’ll make it work.
And my intention for now (until something more urgent hits me in the head) is to be ready to go wherever things are going. To trust what comes up. To allow for unanticipated gifts.
What comes up for you when trust your imagination? When you show up empty-handed and awake? When you allow yourself to be surprised?
How to Create a Healthy Ritual in Three Steps
January 1st, 2010
I used to be a big proponent of self-discipline. Grin and bear it. Suck it up. Just do it. Get it done. No pain, no gain. I could grit my way through early-morning runs, study medical textbooks for hours without budging, and eat virtuously healthy foods in between. Running, studying, and eating “clean” were all items on the to-do list. And yes, I got them done.
Even with this discipline, I refused to be “captive” to some kind of schedule. So I would run one day at 6:30 a.m., another at 8:30 p.m., and another mid-day crunched between classes. It was all very haphazard. And you know what? It wasn’t much fun. So much wasted energy went into figuring out each day I was already in.
I didn’t see this at the time. My inner free-wheeling hellion insisted that a schedule would be confining. (I know, this kind of goes against the discipline-thing, but that’s how it works — rein yourself in too tight, and some part of you is going to want to rebel against something.)
This attempt at spontaneity “worked” until three-quarters of the way through my primary care residency, I had my first son. Suddenly, all of the hours were taken. I was mothering or working. I wasn’t running much nor was I comfortably enveloped in the expansive silence of the library for hours on end.
I hadn’t lost my discipline. It was just too busy tending to other things. After a short while, without those regular doses of air and mind-space, I got a little raggedy around the edges. Scattered.
My husband, sensing I might start sawing through things, suggested something DUH, totally obvious. “Why don’t you schedule your runs and gym workouts, and get a sitter for the times I’m not around to take over?”
Garumphf. Scheduling workouts? So not-spontaneous. But, I listened to his advice, sort of. I started planning a tiny bit ahead. It was all very nonchalant. I might plan out a few days before me, but never more, because a regular schedule would cramp-my-style. And then all that nonchalant planning got really annoying. Days would go by with no sneaker-action. No quiet air. No open space.
Oh-why-do-we-have-to-learn-things-the-hard-way?
Somewhere along the way, I got smart. I set up four regular times to exercise. Four times that occurred on the same planned day at the same planned time, week after week, and month after month.
And what I discovered surprised me. The ritual gave me a greater sense of clarity and focus. I felt freer and less under siege. I loved knowing when I was going to get my slice of spaciousness. And no willpower or discipline was necessary. At the scheduled time, my job was to show up.
And then something really cool happened. I started getting intentional about how I spent that time. Did I want to cultivate playfulness? Connection? Focus? Gratitude? Creativity? I brought that intention to my workouts. And you know what? It was fun! It lit me up! I wasn’t just checking something off my list. My runs took on meaning. I used the time to connect purposefully with the values I cared about — and then I brought that energy back home, to the people in my life.
My love of ritual was born.
Since then, I have introduced dozens more rituals into my life — all aimed at living out, in a specific way, what I value most. There is the bedtime ritual I have with my kids, the date-night ritual, friend-rituals, the 3x weekly yoga ritual, the morning breakfast ritual, the way-I-prepare-to-work-with-a-client ritual. I have daily rituals, and rituals I engage in weekly, monthly, or to mark celebrations.
Save yourself the white knuckles. The secret to lasting change isn’t willpower.
As you think about the changes you want to manifest in your life in 2010, instead of focusing on cultivating self-discipline as a means toward change, maybe you begin to introduce one or two rituals at at time. You know, try it out, and see how it feels for you.
Inititating a ritual requires focus and commitment, but maintaining it is relatively easy. In contrast to discipline, which requires willing and pushing, a ritual, after a short time, pulls at you.
You are probably used to performing small rituals already, whether you realize it or not. Most of us brush our teeth at least twice a day, and in a certain way, without thinking about it. (We value clean teeth.) Top athletes show up at the field, the pool, or the court without fretting about it too much. (They value performing their best.)
Rituals, once set up, don’t require a lot of mental oomph. And the cool part is, you can redirect that freed-up energy to use in creative, more fulfilling ways.
In their book, The Power of Full Engagement, Jim Loehr and Tony Schwartz explain, “Building rituals requires defining very precise behaviors and performing them at very specific times–motivated by deeply held values.”
If you eat in a healthy way, it is likely because you have built rituals around shopping and preparing food. If you are deeply connected with your kids, your friends, or your spouse, you have probably created rituals around spending connecting-time with them. Artists likely have rituals around noticing and appreciating beauty.
Liking this ritual idea? Here’s how you can create your own ritual in three steps:
Step One: Come up with a ritual you believe is consisent with a value you deem worthy. (You get to decide what you value!) It could be going on a 20 minute walk on Monday and Wednesday mornings, taking a guitar lesson every Tuesday evening, pleasure reading for an hour every other day, or playing a board or card game with your kids each Saturday afternoon.
Step Two: Enter your ritual into your planner and start doing it! It might be awkward at first to keep your new ritual. Your planned yoga class might coincide with a time you are on a major roll at work. It might be challenging to walk away. Try it out anyway. After about 4 – 6 weeks, your ritual will very likely start pulling at you.
Step Three: Monitor your progress. If you are trying to create more connection with your kids, it’s key to have rituals that support connection, but also to measure at the end of the day or week how well you’ve followed your plan. This isn’t a a time to judge or punish yourself. Go in with a light heart and some self-kindness. Your aim here is to live out your values in a specific way. If you are not following through, you may need to modify your ritual. It may be that the ritual isn’t grounded in a value or vision that is compelling to you. Or it may be because the goal you set is too daunting and needs to be broken down into smaller, more workable steps. Often times, we resist a new behavior because there is still something about the old way of doing things that is comforting or familiar, and we resist the awkwardness of the new. Whatever it is, take a tender look, and modify where necessary. And always celebrate your progress!
It’s best to introduce no more than one or two rituals at a time, and be sure they are feeling relatively easy on the mind before you introduce new ones. Over time, notice how the rituals you have built are bringing to life the values you hold most dear.
“There isn’t anything that isn’t made easier through constant familiarity and training. Through training, we can change; we can transform ourselves.” — the Dalai Lama
If you’d like, please leave a comment, especially if you’ve created a healthy ritual you would like to share, if you’ve come up with a new one to introduce, or if you just want to say “rituals rock,” (or something like that).
Happy New Year!
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