Soul Scrub Anyone?
March 25th, 2010
Lately, I’ve been taking time to get more conscious about time.
I’m thinking not only about what I long to spend time doing, but how I want to be in that time.
By being in time, I mean what qualities I want to bring to what I do, when I’m doing it. I’m wanting qualities like presence, receptivity, love, acceptance, clarity, openness.
Amidst contemplating what helps me cultivate those inner states, a memory surged up from when I was nine years old. (*Which I know, has to be relevant or it wouldn’t have popped up so randomly and insistently.)
Must-be-related memory: It was the first day of sailing lessons, and my friends and I are clamoring into the sailing-room, waiting to find out which of the yacht club’s Blue Jays we would get to sail.
I am excited, anxious and really, really hoping they are going to tell us what we’re supposed to do if we capsize. Because I want to know what to do. And the instructors are smiling suspiciously, an inside joke written all over their faces. I feel hurt. I want to know what they are smiling about.
And then, surprise! From behind the instructor’s back comes a sponge, and a bottle of Soft Scrub.
Ohhhh, I get it…Instead of finding out which Blue Jay we were going to sail, we were waiting to find out which Blue Jay we would get to clean.
“Here you go,” grinned my instructor, “Now make it sea-worthy.”
Yes, relevance! Those sailing instructors were on to something!
Because for me, a colossal cleaning effort is like a massive soul scrub. Get the sailboat ship-shape, and you get the sailor ready for voyage.
When I clean out clutter, and open up space, my lungs seem to fill with more air, my mind has more openness and ease, and my heart is shinier.
House and garden-work, when I perform it in a big and intentional way, clears out inner gunk and cobwebs, moves stagnant energy, and helps me let go of no-longer-necessary-stuff.
After a good inner rinse, I seem to have more time. I can bring more clarity and meaning to the time I am in. (Note: This does NOT work when I approach housework begrudgingly, detachedly, or act all holier than it.)
Thank-you, memory! You made my mission clear.
It was time for a massive and mindful soul scrub, starting with my favorite de-cluttering tool-of-all-time, the Felco #7 garden pruner.
Two weeks later, my garden is ship-shape (pruned, weeded and poised to pop with spring growth), my closet is full of air and ease, and drawer by drawer, I’m properly stowing what’s left.
I’ve delivered 4 hefty bags to Good Will, recycled about 6 shopping bags worth of old papers, and…I sang sea-shanties all the while. (Nope, not kidding. ) And I’m not done yet. Note to self: Learn more sea shanties.
Inside, I am feeling readier and steadier for voyage. I am feeling more open, clear, and grounded. (Like my plants! Pruned, weeded and poised to pop with spring growth.)
I’d really like to maintain this refreshing glowy-glow. So, inspired by Kelly, I made a list.
Here are some other things that give my soul a good scrub and open up time:
- Taking an intense yoga class with backbends, inversions and lots of core work (mmmm)
- Running in warm rain
- Cuddling my sons
- Sharpening an odd number of pencils with my electric pencil sharpener and arranging them just so in my pretty pencil cup
- Reading just about any poem by Mary Oliver
- Making a teary-happy connection with another human being
- Singing glam rock songs in my car
I’d bet you have your own list of soul-scrubbing, time-opening, invite-in-some-ease kinds of things.
I’m curious, what’s on your list? And is it time to get a sponge, a sloshy bucket, and give yourself a good inner rinse? (Singing sea shanties while scrub-a-dubbing highly recommended.)
Go to the Limits of Your Longing…(And Um, Hang On to Your Center?)
March 11th, 2010
Big loooooong out-breath, my 40 days of yoga, meditation and conscious eating is over.
And now I can do whatever I want.
I can sit still every morning, and open to what arises in my mind and body, with curiosity, and my best in-the-moment go at acceptance. Or not.
I can eat beautiful, fresh, whole foods. Or not.
I can consistently show up on my mat, and breathe and flow, and connect internally. Or not.
I can seek connection with yoga friends, giving them love and smiles, and receiving their love and smiles. Or not.
I have so many options before me that I can choose. Or not
And I see, ever more clearly, how these choices determine the quality of my lived experience.
Which brings me to the question I have been asked by friends:
“Oooooh, tell me Lauren, what did you get out of your 40 day experience?”
Oh, you mean, why was taking on the 20+ hours per week adventure of yogini/meditator/mindful eater worth every particle of space and moment of time it occupied?” I’m happy to share!
Because maintaining this 40-day commitment forced gently reminded me about choice. Discernment. And longing. And it invited me, again, to be willing to trust my own intuition. To captain my ship. And to trust my own answers to the big questions.
Questions like: How do I long to spend my time? What qualities do I long to bring into my life? What qualities do I long to give to the people in my life?
What allows me to flare up like flame and make big shadows that love can move in? (*Paraphrasing a Rilke poem)
And how the heck can I do all I yearn to do in a way that is sustainable, self-loving, and other-loving?
Because I tend to overextend. I’m scary-good at gritting my teeth and pushing through. Moremoremore is added until I have to start throwing things overboard. And I don’t want to be all gogogo if it means I’ll find my center has careened off to the left, or hurtled off to the right. If it means I’ll find my mind all tightly-wound, and my feet walking as if on slippery fishes. And I’d rather not hold my breath without reprieve.
I want to exhale. I’d like more yin to balance out the yang.
I’d like to create emotional balance and a deep sense of well-being. Consistently, resolutely. And to do that, I’ll need harbors to anchor in after long days out in the wind and the weather.
During this 40 day endeavor, I was squeezed by a giant time crunch. I said yes to many things: new clients, speaking engagements, copywriting projects, teaching opportunities, cool collaborations. Yes, yes, yes, I said.
And I’m a mom too, and a wife. A loving, fun, engaged mom and wife. Which involves saying yes every day. Because I like being there for my family. And this means being there-there, because when I’m not there-there, they notice. And I notice. And sometimes that’s o.k., but most of the time I would rather have containers around when I’m there-there for my family, and when I’m somewhere else. Half-way presence feels disconcerting.
And I want to say yes to other things too: my head-clearing runs, my yoga practice, my garden, living in a peaceful de-cluttered space, and occasionally being social with friends.
All those yes-es have been packed into not enough time and space. I’ve kept every commitment, by mapping them all out on a calendar, and summoning up energy from the deep. And by asking for help, and forgoing beloved sleep. And surrendering. Some good lessons in there. But I’ve also felt that dark sludge of resentment building.
And I came face-to-face with an embarrassing truth
Saying yes to all that stuff didn’t come from the most aligned place inside. I was saying yes because it was exciting to be wanted, all at once, in lots of different places. So I followed the calls – here, there, and everywhere.
And then, on the yoga mat, I noticed my flame was making piddly shadows, leaving little space for love to move in. And the resentment was oozing its way in. (Oh, yoga, I love you so, for all you invite me to notice.)
Resentment sludge? ICK. Big wake-up call. Time to step back.
It’s still a new thing for me to step back and say, hang on, what do I want? I am so grateful to be practicing this, but there’s no denying it feels awkward. I’m stepping up to a new place and I feel more responsible, more vulnerable.
But now that the wisdom is there, there’s no turning back. And the resentment-gunk must go.
So, I’m asking myself: How can I grow Basic Goodness (the business) in a way that honors my needs? How can I do the work I feel I was meant to do without overextending? How can I create containers around my life-life and my work-life so everything ignites bright and makes big shadows for love to inhabit? All the while, heading in a valued direction?
Synchronicity
And as I was asking these questions, (synchronicity alert!) my new friend, Eileen, was building a sailboat. The sailboat is her metaphor for a way to manage time — a schedule that holds things, but not too tightly. It’s a way to intentionally choose how to spend time, but in a way that is not pant-pant-pant overextending or soul-squishing.
And well, this metaphor works for me. I know sailboats. I spent every childhood summer on a 30 foot sailboat with my family, sailing to pretty ports on the East Coast. So, I’m going to build one too. A metaphorical one, that is. I am going to practice (and practice some more) intentionally deciding how to spend my time in a way that sustains me and helps me love big.
Once I build my sailboat, and set sail, I’ll blog about it. And yes! I get to decide what I bring on my sailboat (my rituals will board first)….And oh, what I love about this metaphor too, is my sailboat will only sail so far before it’ll throw down an anchor in a lovely, tranquil harbor. I’m feeling more seaworthy already…
Please, tell me about you. Do you interact with time in an intentional way? Do you rebel against structure, or do you love it? How do you find freedom and meaning in time? Where do you take refuge from the wind and the weather?
Lizard-Pacifying Ninja Mind-moves #1 and #2
February 15th, 2010
Pema told me I should expect some tough stuff in the middle. But I didn’t think her little bit of wisdom applied to me. Not me, I said, I like middles. And I thought I could get all that rich, succulent, in-the-middle-stuff without any of the pain.
Pema Chodron says that the middle of a retreat—whether it’s a 7-day retreat or a 3-year retreat — when it seems like it’s going on forever and it will never, ever, EVER, be over, and you’re in the sticky muck of it — that’s where the treasures lie.
Hmmm, maybe when I was feeling all fond about middles, I was thinking about the middle of a slightly underbaked brownie. Or the middle of a beach vacation, mid-day, in the middle of a page-turning novel. Or someone else’s middle. Because Pema is a bonafide smarty-pants. And as she predicted, smack in the middle of this 40 day endeavor, things got sticky.
For three days, (day 23, 24 and 25 to be exact), in all the in-between spaces — when I wasn’t directly “getting stuff done,” — I was seized by a vague and looming sense of dread. And since there was no hatchet hanging over my head, this dread felt all wrong.
It was time to do some inner research. I started my investigation by tuning into the goings-on of my mind. And what I heard wasn’t the regular old mind-chatter. Instead, my brain was sending out dire warnings, as if my life depended on obeying them. “THERE’S NOT ENOUGH TIME!” It implored. “The sand is slipping through!” “Time is running out!” “You’ll never finish!” “And you’ll disappoint EVERYONE!” “You’ll be ALL ALONE!”
Ah. Gotcha. My reptilian bodyguard had slithered in and hijacked my mind.
Luckily, I know this guy well. And I know he’s just a big scaredy-lizard who gets all skittery and insistent when he senses my life might be in danger. (And he’s way-way-overprotective by design, so really, he can’t help it.)
We’ve all got our own version of the scaredy-lizard. It’s located in the deepest layer of our brain, wrapped around the base of our brainstem. Our lizard is our primitive reptilian brain — named so, because this neural structure first evolved in in early vertebrates. And it exists solely to govern our survival behaviors. As humans evolved, other parts of the brain were formed, such as the limbic system which deals with emotions, and the cerebral part which controls logical thinking and reasoning.During a state of fear or stress, our reptilian brain overrides our more evolved thinking mind, and broadcasts a barrage of fear signals. Our brain activity is diverted away from the conscious thinking and feeling brain toward our subconscious lizard brain.
What this means is when we are experiencing fear, our ability for creative or logical thought declines. Our brain messages are now all about survival: fight or flight, right or wrong, good or bad. There’s not enough time.
The signs that scaly guy had taken up his protective stance were right there, in front of my nose! Because when he’s busy puffing up his chest, I start misplacing things. This time, It started when I misplaced my black Manduka yoga mat, which is pretty hard to do. (Have you ever seen one of those? They are thick, and bulky, and weigh a whopping 6.5 pounds.)
Oh, and the list grew. Water bottle, check! New water bottle that replaced lost one, check! Cell-phone, check! iPod shuffle, check! It was as if I was following some kind of reverse-productivity un-do list.
Huh? Isn’t all this mindfulness stuff supposed to help me be more mindful in the spaces in-between? Not if puffed-up scaredy-lizard has anything to say about it. Fortunately, I’ve learned how to pacify him with a couple of ninja-like mind-moves.
Ninja mind-move #1: Just the facts, ma’am.
I’ve learned to give the lizard the observable facts. Most of our lizards are tamed by veritable facts — sans the jump to assumptions, stories, or conclusions about what those facts mean. Just. The. Facts.
My time commitments and to-do’s were growing, and going with the flow apparently wasn’t cool by the little lizard in charge of keeping me alive. He wanted to see the week’s schedule — every to-do item — laid out. So, I added up the hours I’d spend this week on my 40 day endeavor. There would be time spent in yoga, meditation, reading the weekly assignment, journaling, attending the group meeting, traveling to and fro, and taking the mandatory post-sweat-fest shower. All tallied up, 21 hours. Then I showed him where the hours would fit on the schedule.
21 hours! You’d think that would freak him out. But his eyes were getting glaze-y.
On top of that, I had 10 client appointments for the week. And my Thursday class to teach. And my sweet boys to pick up from school every day at 3 PM. And the Valentines project. So I showed him where all those things would fit too. And as I was droning on, it got awfully quiet.
Turns out facts are like I.V. valium for my lizard, because he was, for the time being, sedated. And I had my mind back. I was feeling mighty triumphant. Free. Motivated. It was 9:33 a.m., and I had a full morning planned, starting with “write blog post.”
And then, the phone rang. And ninja mind-move #2 was soon to be revealed.
“Hello, this is Anna. Owen is here, and he says he’s not feeling well. And honestly, he doesn’t look well…Could you come pick him up?”
My work day had just started. I had a lot of “getting stuff done” on the schedule.
But in that moment, I wasn’t thinking about that. I was imagining my Owen, on the couch in the school office, pale and icky-feeling, waiting for ME.
And all-at-once, I was deluged with love. The love was so big, so immediate, so whole. When I looked around for the lizard, he was gone. GONE. Vanished.
Lizard-pacifying ninja mind-move #2: Love.
Turns out my lizard can’t hijack my mind when it’s flooded with love. Because at that moment, time was not lacking. Nothing was lacking. I was tugged into the here and now by the clear, sweet love I have for my son.
And, wow, who knew? Cool-lizard vanishing trick! Just immerse the scaly guy in love. POOF!
Yes! I unearthed some treasures in the muck of the middle…
For one, when my to-do’s and commitments grow, and my overprotective friend gets worried, I can help him (and free up my mind) by mapping out the course. You know, just a bit. It doesn’t have to be all hairpin-uncertainty when facts are there for the taking. And when the course suddenly changes, I can grab the eraser, and map it out again.
And perhaps the loveliest treasure: in a great, powerful lizard-vanishing hi-ya to fear, I can draw my mind’s attention to love, anytime. It’s right here.
Oh, sure, I know the lizard will wriggle his way in and hijack my thinking mind again and again, because he takes his job seriously. Ensuring my survival is no small thing. But maybe, the next time, I can greet him a day or two sooner, with a few less items on my un-do list. And maybe, through experimentation, I could learn a couple more lizard-pacifying techniques.
Please, tell me, what are your lizard-pacifying moves? I want to try them out!
And please share, what treasures have you unearthed in the muck of the middle? I love hearing about found treasure!
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