My Qigong journey continues. On Epiphany I drove to Winslow Maine, experiencing my first snow fall behind the wheel of my new gas sipping Prius. My light listening on the drive was “Courting Difficulties”, a suspenseful murder mystery on just enough CDs to get me all the way to my exit in Maine. I was so engaged by the concluding disk that I drove right past Augusta, my dinner destination. I stopped instead in Waterville where I ate spicy Chinese food with brown rice, or rather, white rice in a gooey brown sauce. I should have know better. Anyway, I was determined to be over the flu that had flattened me earlier in the week, to clear my sinuses, and to get on with my adventure.

Paul Weiss, from Bar Harbor, was teaching an introductory evening and day session of qigong at the Living Water Spiritual Center in Winslow. I drove into the snowy driveway of the retreat center and parked behind the building in the snow. A smiling, round faced nun greeted me inside. Lynn gave me the key to my darling single room on the third floor and directed me to the snack/ dining room where I could help myself to tea and look for others attending the retreat. The meeting space for our group was a large room with a circle of wooden rocker/glider chairs at one end and open space with an area carpet on the other.

Little by little our group of about ten students wandered in and began to rock on the chairs and to introduce ourselves. Some of us came because the Living Water Spiritual Center is scheduled to close this year and they wanted to savor the nurturing atmosphere again, while others were previous students of Paul Weiss or simply curious about qigong. There were couples as well as individual seekers, older and younger participants. Most were from Maine. I had read Danna’s memoir in which she describes attending several workshops with Paul and mentions his qigong interest. Danna is a friend, a poet, and long time member of the Kripalu community. If Danna thinks a teacher has a talent for creating safe spaces for transformational introspection, that is a strong recommendation.

As soon as Paul opened the workshop I recognized his emphasis on careful listening and supportive communication from other Kripalu experiences. As we introduced ourselves he encouraged us to take all the time we needed in silence to plan what we wanted to say so that we could really listen to each of our neighbors in turn as they spoke. Already we were making time for ourselves and each other, practicing being present. The meditation that followed was also a practice of being in the moment, in our bodies. If energy follows our thoughts and intentions, taking a moment to feel and bring our thoughts into our most immediate here and now concentrates our energy as well. How interesting to really notice mouth breathing as my nostrils were useless. How could I position my tongue so as not to overly dry my mouth?

Paul explained the proper pronunciation of qigong, “chi gong” with the voice rising on the last syllable. Each time he repeated the word the corners of his eyebrows shot up and he had to grin. This is significant, because all qigong should be practiced with a smile. The following day we even practiced a smiling meditation, visualizing big smiley faces on all our foreheads that lifted the corners of our own brows, softened our eye sockets, and left a faint smile on our lips. After the evening session, a text exchange with Terry, a steamy shower, and some self massage that finally cleared my nostrils, I repeated “qigong” to myself about three times while lying in bed, noting the accompanying smile. I slept instantly!

Paul has an interesting theory about flinch patterns. Worries, anger, joy, frustration, and emotions in general are held in our bodies. Notice when you furrow your brow or make an involuntary gesture with your lips. It is easy to see our friends’ involuntary emotional tics, but we have them too. Some are less visible: a tensing in the gut, a nagging headache, a strain in the neck and shoulders, and so forth. Paul suggests that a lifetime of emotion creates a flinch pattern in our bodies to the extent that we begin to tense involuntarily without recognizing the original trigger. Sitting, standing, lying down, and moving meditation -  bringing our attention, love, and breath into every part of our body – can release and open our flinch architecture. Intention is that powerful.

In this brief workshop, Paul introduced imagery and led physical practices to help sensitize us to our energy drawing from and expanding vertically into the deepest earth and the highest heavens as well as horizontally to expand our field of energy wider and wider from our three energy centers and to push apart mountains. Every movement is an opportunity to visualize our presence in the universal energy field and to interact with it. Paul also incorporated the water element. Lifting our arms was effortless, for example, if we imagined them resting on water that gradually rose or fell like the tides.

Stepping our feet apart to begin a form took on mythic dimensions. In every creation story, in the beginning there is an undifferentiated void. The vibrational word of the creator or initial energetic event begins to seperate the light from the dark, the depths from the heavens, masculine from feminine, yang from yin. So we stepped out to begin our practice with reverence. Lying on the floor afterwards, we imagined our breaths washing up cool, moist and yin from below our feet to our kidneys. As the breath rose higher towards the warm, dry heart, the yin energy met and was balanced by the yang. We visualized breath washing up and down, balancing cool and wet with warm and dry. We flexed our feet, pointing our toes upwards to bring the flow of breath up and into our bodies. Relaxing our feet, the exhalation ebbed back down our bodies.

In the last few years I have learned a variety of animal frolics and qigong forms, but Paul’s language and imagery helped me see how I could enrich all my movements with intention for an even more powerfully healing practice. I began to see how I will be able to teach qigong with confidence, incorporating the felt experiences of my years as a yogi and sharing my new journey with students with an attitude of exploration.

For some time I have been offering to lead a complementary introductory qigong class for the stylists at Beyond Waves, where Sandy cuts my hair. There is a wonderful wood floor, a few mirrors, and a wonderful group of women that listen to clients all day while standing on their feet. Yesterday the owner brought up my suggestion and we made a date in March. When the teacher is ready, the students appear?

P.S. – The Lighthouse photo is from Cape Elizabeth, taken on my return trip.

Hello Ladies! I wish I could have torn myself away from our practice sooner to take pictures in better light…

Here are a few examples of Xi Xi Hu. Can you tell which is which? The day after my return home I took a hike with my husband and practiced the whole cycle for Lungs, Heart, Spleen, Kidneys, and LIver on a rock outcrop by “Lost Lake” on state land in Guilford, CT. I thought of you all as I exchanged energy with the rock, trees, sky, and water. My husband was amused by my eccentric behavior, but not entirely surprised. I felt full of fresh air and joy! I can incorporate the qigong we learned together at home. The struggle for me is to get up with the sunrise for my own practice before I go out to teach my yoga classes. I need to make Dai Mai and Nourishing Women Qigong my own before I can incorporate elements of them in my work at the women’s prison.

For my own benefit, I put together a series of qigong and yoga options that align with qigong intentions for Fall. I didn’t include a stance. Practice whichever one calls to you to build up your stamina. I hope you find my summary of many of the self massage techniques Deborah Davis uses in her centering practices helpful. I was particularly struck that both the Dai Mai and the Nourishing Women Qigong called on celestial energy. The qigong color for Fall is White and the element, Metal. Did Deborah purposely chose these forms for Autumn? If I visualize the silvery white light of the night sky, or the pale glow of the early morning sunlight, a focus on the heavenly, metallic orbs seems seasonally appropriate. During my walk along the shore this afternoon, I was almost blinded by the white light of the sun, sparkling off Long Island sound. This week I added moon and star visualizations to my version of the Moon Salutation. My students were noticeably more focused and I hardly needed to make any alignment suggestions.

The Tiger is the animal associated with Fall Qigong. The short White Tiger form is an energizing breath practice in a single stance. There are a variety of tiger frolic walks and Deborah Davis created a more extensive Jade Tiger form, specifically for women. The Jade tiger form mimics the tiger waking up, cleansing herself, and moving through her daily activities. The form is almost a complete practice, warming up slowly and then including a balance of energetic and relaxing movements.

Please check out my Fall Qigong/Yoga and let me know if I left out something important.

This September, Terry and I biked with Backroads in Tuscany. The sunflower fields were bare as most of the field crops had been harvested, but the grapes were plump on the vines. Each of our meals was evidence of the bounty of the local region. The autumn is a time to appreciate the fruits of the summer growing season and to nourish ourselves with fresh, local food. In Italy we ate figs, tomatoes, mushrooms, and eggplant along with fresh mozzarella and ricotta cheeses. The famous Florentine beef, lamb, and rabbit we consumed were local as well.

In a qigong practice, the golden harvest season or Indian summer is an additional season of the year, between summer and fall. In this season of bounty, Qigong students cultivate the emotional energy of gratitude to balance worries and over thinking. It is a time to focus on the earth and nutrition in all its aspects. How can we feed ourselves in a way that supports our health and that of our environment? I support the American Farmland Trust because it wrestles with the questions of maintaining farmland and open spaces in our communities, promoting local farmers’ markets, and right livelihood for farmers. One of the ways AFT raises awareness and funds is by bringing together chefs, farmers, and donors to enjoy harvest dinners. These meals nourish the farmland cause and help build supportive communities.

While the golden afterglow of summer is still with us, what practices can nourish us and prepare our bodies for the colder, darker days to come? What images fill us with gratitude and nurture our spirits? Qigong standing (or sitting) practices for this season help to ground us. The healing sound and gestures for the Earth, the element for this season, remind us of the bounty in our lives and give us a practice to give thanks to the earth and the heavens. The monkey frolic brings us on an imaginary journey through the trees, reaching and grasping branches, eating, and offering fruit.

See my Qigong – Earth post for more practical details.

When I walked outside this morning I was struck by how beautiful and dangerous the ice appeared on the trees and on my walking paths and driveway, the glassy surfaces causing my emotions to slip back and forth from delight to fear. Our daily life is a constant tug of war between pleasure and distaste. How do we maintain equanimity with reality? The word awesome denotes this ambiguity. When we are struck with awe, we are witnessing or feeling something overwhelmingly powerful and find ourselves in a conflicting state of admiration and anxiety. Nature often awes us – with majestic mountains, crashing waves, starlit skies – and today with sheets of ice. We are thrilled, yet feel humbled.

Arjuna, the warrior hero of the Bhagavad Gita, demands to see his charioteer, Krishna, in his full divine splendor and is awed by his wonderful and terrible form. Arjuna is both happy and afraid as he views his teacher and friend, yet Krishna urges him to be calm and returns to his gentle four-armed form. When we remain calm we can walk across the ice, whereas if we are tense and awkward we slip. Let us relax this winter season, admiring the cold, the snow, and the ice. Enjoy the cold clear night skies and the sculptured snow banks. Be grateful for the snow removal equipment  and operators that work through the night to clear our streets and parking lots. Balance delight and caution with compassion. Slow down, breathe, and the snow will melt!

Where there is Space there is Possibility. This has been my mantra since the July morning when I first heard this intention in a yoga class at Kripalu in Lenox, Mass. I was at Kripalu  to deepen my study of Qigong with Deborah Davis and had just completed a short weekend workshop with her focusing on healing Qigong for women. This Chinese energy practice, associated with the energy meridians used in acupuncture, is also about creating space: in joints, muscles, organs, spine, heart, and mind. In principle, where there is openness, energy can flow and healing occurs. I recommend Deborah’s DVD and book:

Women’s Qigong for Health and Longevity: a Practical Guide for Women Forty and Older (July, 2008 Shambhala Publications).

In my yoga classes for August I have repeated the intention to create space and allow for possibilities. Each of us has different needs for space, yet everyone seems to relate to this concept. Chronic illnesses or pain trap us in our physical sensations. When we experience strong emotions we may feel stuck in time. From asthma to anger  management, slow spacious breaths and movements help us explore our bodies and minds and to release our judgments. More rapid, repetitive activity energizes us to act. Combining space with energy invites us to flow from our inner wisdom. As we notice that our sensations, emotions, and thoughts shift and begin to view them with some distance, we learn that we are more than the sum of our discomfort and fears.

In the Bhagavad Gita, the warrior Arjuna completes his full conversation of spiritual education with the embodied god, Krishna, in the instant before a great battle against his cousins. The present moment seems stretched out and the warrior’s despair shifts to confidence. Arjuna is ready to follow his duty, sacred path, or dharma after this spacious moment.

Meanwhile, I have taken my a break from blogging to practice a new qigong form, return to the Gita for inspiration, and to integrate my experiences before sharing them. This gift of time has helped me give form to my thoughts. Deborah Davis’s Dynamic Woman Series intrigues me as the sequence moves back and forth between stillness and activity. As I imagine one would do before any energy form, it begins with a simple stance with the hands on the low belly, taking inventory of one’s current level of energy and inviting prana, qi or life force into the energy center that resides there, called the hara in yoga or dantien in qigong. As the form continues, the alternation of holding stances with gentle repetitive movements both concentrates my attention, building stamina, strength, balance, and energy, and then serves to spread that energy around and within my body, creating flow and a sense of well being. The final posture is a releasing pose to let go of any physical, emotional, or mental energy that I don’t need.

At this early stage of practice, my experience of the postures and my own energy is constantly shifting. I’ve tried holding the balancing postures outside in the moonlight, listening to the early Katydids, and gazing at the trees and sky, and been surprised by how unstable I am. First thing in the morning, after watering the container pots, moss, herb, and step-able gardens, my balance is steady and sure. Today is hot and muggy, so I practiced in an air conditioned room where I felt stable, but the flow was less nourishing. The qigong vsualization of a ball of energy like a beach ball inspired the photo above.

Time to rest and renew. The weather isn’t calling me to be active and I have an unexpected break in my schedule. Yes! Where can you create space in your body, mind, or schedule? What arises?

May you observe your true, compassionate and eternal self!

Where were you when you first learned of the attacks of 9/11? What did you do next? Did you call friends or family to find out if they were OK? As the days and weeks past, did you exchange stories with acquaintances and friends? For many of us, simply talking about the tragedy helped us process the loss. Tales of bravery and selflessness helped to balance the  inhumanity of the suicide attacks. The more we shared our stories, the more connected we felt.

Unfortunately our culture doesn’t seem as comfortable with the tales of warriors. There seems to be a split between those that sacrifice for their nation and those of us that stay home. How can we bridge that divide? When I first volunteered at the Errera Center I had to go to the VA hospital in West Haven for my PPD test and to fill out forms. The hospital is the size of a small town, in a parallel universe alongside New Haven. Many of the clients at the Errera Center, down the hill from the hospital complex, live nearby for easy access to medical treatment and housing opportunities. Coming from a Shoreline community where there is no evident military presence, I was shocked by this large community devoted to the rehabilitation of our armed forces. In addition to helping individual veterans through the practice of yoga mindfulness and relaxation, I began to see the importance of acting as a witness to this hidden community of patriots.

Please read the comment I received on my Anxiety Among Veterans post from the child of a German WW II veteran. PTSD leaves its mark on generations and the sooner we recognize this stress pervading our globe and deal with it mindfully, perhaps the more humanely we can welcome our current warriors home and the more carefully we will consider entering armed conflicts in the future.

Recently the city of New Haven hosted The International Festival of Arts and Ideas. Veterans and mental-health experts shared their perspectives and research on post-traumatic stress disorder, resilience, and the human experience of war in a heart warming and heart breaking 4 person panel on June 22nd. One of the presenters, Col. Charles W. Hoge, is a national expert on war-related mental health issues who was deployed to Iraq in 2004 to improve combat stress care. His book, Once a Warrior Always a Warrior, Hoge incorporates the personal stories of veterans to describe PTSD, Combat Stress, and mTBI and to suggest pathways to navigate the journey home. Reading down the first page of the  table of contents, a majority of topics could be headers in a mindfulness text: Become more aware of your reactions ; Learn to accept your reactions without judgment or anger; Improve physical conditioning and relax muscle tension; Improve sleep; Learn to pay attention to your physiological reactions and anxiety level; Learn to pay attention to your feelings and emotions; Create space between your reactions to stressful events and behaviors; Learn to monitor and eliminate “should” and related words or phrases; Notice your breathing; Improve your focus and attention through meditation and mindfulness.

Anthony Dozier, pictured above, a former veteran himself and a Peer Specialist at the Errera Center where I teach yoga, was also a member of the panel. Tony has become a touchstone for me to make sure that my services are as helpful as possible to my students. His most helpful reminder is that the more I learn about PTSD, the easier it is to assume I know what is going on for a student. Stop right there! Listen! Each veteran knows their own concerns better than I ever will! Each person has personal priorities and goals and tuning in to their needs is the only way to proceed. One gentleman needs to get a license and access to a car so he can visit his mother, another wants to sleep more peacefully, and so on.

Yoga can help rewire our brains and counteract the floods of cortisol that put a well trained warrior on permanent alert. Anger is a useful emotion in battle and we train our soldiers to cultivate their righteous wrath. This isn’t as useful in daily civilian life and mindfulness training can make us more aware of when the emotion arises, how it feels (and injures our physical bodies), and give us time and mental space to choose how to react to it. The adrenaline rush of saving one’s comrades from danger every day makes civilian life pale in worthiness. The pettiness of civilian complaints may seem absurd, while the sense of danger, or arousal at loud noises, in crowds, or in traffic may be heightened. Individuals have multiple ways of coping with this transition, retraining themselves for civilian existence. Some fill their days with multiple jobs and obligations to recreate the sense of worthiness they may have felt over seas. Others self medicate with alcohol or drugs (effective in the short run, but obviously not a healthy solution).

My role, however, is to see beyond these stereotypes to the individuals in my classes. Letting go of the clinical descriptions liberates me to help my students view their own issues with more clarity and to find creative coping skills. They usually know what helps them, if I take the time to listen. Sometimes a safe place to be quiet and listen to their own soft, knowing voice is what is most needed. My role is to provide safety and compassion. The warrior has the intelligence and self knowledge to make a mentally sound transition to civilian life once his or her difficulty is acknowledged and accepted. It’s not easy and no one should have to go it alone, but I’m sure it is possible.

One of the most striking emotions veterans, and I believe civilians as well, suffer in the aftermath of conflict is survivor’s guilt. Combat soldiers regret they couldn’t have done more to protect their peers. Veterans in support roles feel shame that they weren’t in harm’s way. I spoke to a Vietnam volunteer who was sent over to join a ship. When he arrived, the ship was instructed to bring the men back to the US. The volunteer felt guilty that he was sailing away from harm with a boatload of drafted men that had risked their lives. I teach at the Errera Center because I feel a moral responsibility to participate in truly supporting the troops, my fellow Americans, even if I am averse to combat.

Please, if you are a veteran or a family member of a veteran, help me by sharing your story as a comment. This blog is read primarily by yoga people, participating in the community in a variety of roles. Help them understand how they can act on their compassion towards their relatives, friends, and neighbors who have served in the military. Please help me bring awareness of your unique personal experiences of re-entry to a broader, concerned community. If there are internet links that you find helpful, please share them as well.

The enthusiastic yoga students above just completed their chair yoga session at the Hearth, an independent living facility where my mother-in-law lives. She is more likely to attend the class if I accompany her, so I have been able to enjoy and learn from instructor Karen Suppies’s yoga flow. She has tailored her class beautifully around her students’ interests and memories. To provide a focus each week she brings in a tangible item: a vase of yellow flowers or a bowl of red raspberries, for example. The class has a conversation about the item to center and then begin to breathe and move together. YInyasa flows include rowing their boats, leaning back in recliners, squeezing lemons between their shoulder blades, and marching to Yankee Doodle Dandy. There are lots of smiles and we really move, adding ties and light weights for additional stability and strength. Thank you Karen for sharing your ideas so freely with me! Some of her ideas have seeped into my classes…

After nine months of teaching chair yoga at the West Haven Veterans Center, I have finally created a default lesson plan as well. My students are eager to learn a consistent series of postures so they can practice more easily on their own. I know I will keep bringing in a variety of readings and music and tinker with the centering and breathing practices. As I continue to experiment with props and postures (and borrow ideas from Karen) the asanas will evolve. I’m always curious to see what arises in the moment, and I hope my students appreciate a few surprises.

We have be focusing on using our senses as tools  to bring our attention back to the present moment. In the lesson plan below I recommend two meditations. In the first, a visual meditation, we rub our hands together until we feel warmth and energy in our palms and fingers and then cover our eyes.  The objective is to soothe and  still the eyes, gazing through the darkness at an imaginary point in the far distance. Fixing our gaze often stills the wanderings of our minds as well. Do you unconsciously tense up when you focus? Relax all the muscles of your face, especially all the muscles around your eyes, cheeks, and jaw. After a few breaths we close our eyes and remove our hands, adjusting to the light behind our lids before blinking our eyes open.

Chanting A-O-U-M, the second meditation, focuses our senses of touch and hearing on the healing vibrations of the sacred Sanskrit syllable, OM. The vowel “a” vibrates in the back of our throat and the rear portions of our brain. “O” and “u” vibrate further forward across the upper palate of our mouths and up into  more regions of our brains. “M” buzzes our lips and into our cerebrum, the thinking portion of brains.  Chant in a relaxed manner, listening to the OM resonating in your head without straining either to make the sound or to listen to the sound. This isn’t singing. Let go of judgment! Can you feel the vibrations sweeping across your scull, relaxing your mind?

All chanting serves as a pranayama as well. With each long exhalation, we empty our lungs of stale air. The deep inhalation between repetitions replenishes our oxygen supply and energy. Long, smooth exhalations also soothe the nervous system, inviting our bodies to heal and function properly. Relaxation practices bring our hormonal, digestive,  circulatory, and immune systems back into balance.

Once in a while a gentle, relaxing posture flow is very restorative, even if you normally prefer a more vigorous practice.. Regularly teaching chair yoga has helped me recognize the benefits of short sensory meditations and simple, repetitive movements on my own nervous system. Print the following  Chair Yoga PDF and take it to work for a refreshing practice at your desk. Yoga really can be practiced almost anywhere!

Click here: Chair Yoga PDF

This lesson plan is two pages long, but I thought the attention to detail might be helpful. Volunteer to pose for my camera and I’d be delighted to illustrate the class!

Terry and I drove to Kent, CT for a day of chanting and exploring the town. We listened and chanted along with three groups, two new to us and Eddy Nataraj and his band. Eddy and his band keep exploring rich new harmonies and instrumental solos to enrich their repertoire and they were jamming yesterday! Each member is an accomplished musician in his own right and they listen and play off one another skillfully. The juicy sound of the cello, plucked, bowed, and lightly stroked to produce whistling sounds by Nathan (in the plaid shirt below) complement the sweet melodies of Eddy’s chants and his delicate guitar style.

(Sits’s Light and Harnam Singh)

The new group that tickled my fancy, Sita’s Light, included a flutist, Suan Armstrong who also teaches Qi Gong. Her Bodhi Musica Retreat Center in New Hartford sounds intriguing as I have injured my lower back while stacking chairs on two different occasions at the prison and found Qi Gong to be tremendously healing. I also play the flute as a form of pranayama and associate the instrument with Krishna, but it was the first time I had heard the flute in a Kirtan. Suan’s pure sounds weaving over the reverberations of the harmonium were a pleasure. Sita’s Light offered beautifully inviting chants that encouraged the festival participants to enter in and get lost in the melodies along with the performers. One of the women would sing the call and another would sing the response to help guide the audience. For beginners or those new to their chants, this is very helpful!

Nina Rao, an assistant to Krishna Das, was just starting her set when we left and there was still more to come. Bret DuBack organized a wonderful event, bringing great talent. Next year we hope to see even more faces. Markus Sieber, of Mirabai Ceiba, whom we weren’t able to stay and watch, commented on Kirtan’s great popularity in Germany. He and his lovely Mexican/German wife have lots of CDs with English, Spanish, and Sanskrit Mantra tracks. The practice hasn’t quite caught on in the North East, but perhaps Kirtan’s time is coming? Terry and I also chatted with Terri Mason who was scheduled to perform on Sunday. She is a relatively new voice in CT, but is rapidly gaining recognition on the sacred music circuit. Her Om Gaia website is gorgeous and we look forward to crossing paths with Terri again soon.

Clapping or wiggling our toes, the audience was engaged…..

Please click on the links of any of these performers to learn more about their music and concert schedules.

How does our Yoga practice make us feel better when we are blue? At both the Veterans Center and the Women’s Prison I was forced to ask this question this week. In my last post I wrote about the veterans, while in this I will focus on bereavement  in the women’s prison in Niantic, CT. Both situations address universal spiritual/emotional issues, so I hope you will reflect on how they might apply to your life and share the practices that have helped you with this on-line community. I would be deeply grateful to read your comments and suggestions.

On Tuesday, my York CI day, I knew something was up when I saw tears in the eyes of one of my students as we were assembling to be clicked through the locked doorway between their unit and the community room where we have our class. Another student seemed to understand her grief and was tearing up as well. I have to admit, pride reared its ugly head, and I was impressed that one of my students was willing to come to yoga at all when there was a problem, rather than hiding out in her room. I have heard so many excuses for not coming to class! I should not congratulate myself in this instance, however, as this poised inmate has been using every program and opportunity the prison offers to grow and develop her own inner strength as well as to mentor those who reach out to her.

I’ll call her K. With difficulty, K confided that her most beloved brother was killed in a car accident the previous evening. What was I to do?

I babbled the appropriate platitudes as I considered how I needed to adapt my plan of grooving Sun Salutations and some of their variations. Perfect! What could be better for churning strong emotions through the body and digesting them? When my mind is agitated I’ve found that a vigorous practice demands all my attention and gives me an emotional break. Tapas, the fire or discipline of practice, does seem to burn away emotional confusion.

I couldn’t resist centering with a Loving Kindness meditation in which we began by holding her brother or someone we cared deeply for in our minds. (See the previous post, Anxiety Among Veterans for more details on Loving Kindness Meditations.) I asked K if Sun Salutations appealed to her and with her approval we began to churn through gentle Swan Dives and Squats followed by more vigorous Sun Salutations.  Some of my less athletic students had to take breaks during the vinyasa flows, but I sensed that they were content to watch K and to silently encourage her to keep moving through her sadness. I hope they felt that the class would accommodate them when or if the need arises.

After Sivasana, K stayed after class with another sympathetic friend to speak calmly about her brother and her extended family. Although unmarried and childless, K is a devoted sister and aunt. Her family lives out of state and the prison gauges the inmates with its long distance phone rates, $32.00 for 13 minutes, further isolating the women from family support. Her brother used to drive three hours to spend one hour with his sister and then to drive home almost every other week, sacrificing precious time with his spouse and two daughters. None the less, K spoke gratefully of the community she has forged at York, a circle of women within which she feels safe and nurtured.

I am honored to bare witness to the emotional needs and strengths of the women at York. Sometimes they feel invisible and I believe that by writing about the healthy manner in which some of them are nurturing themselves, building trust and community, I can enable their lights to shine outside the prison walls.

How does our Yoga practice make us feel better when we are blue? At both the Veterans Center and the Women’s Prison I was forced to ask this question this week. In this post I will write about the veterans and in the following I will continue with a different situation in the prison. Both address universal spiritual/emotional issues, so I hope you will reflect on how they might apply to your life and share the practices that have helped you by commenting on this post.

Last Friday in the Spirituality meeting at the Veterans Center the question posed by the visiting Rabi was whether hope or courage were more necessary in the recovery process. As the veterans grappled with the semantics of hope versus faith, the conversation turned to a darker question. Many of the men, more so than the women, felt they needed hope or faith that God would forgive them in order to summon the courage to continue their struggles. So many of these men worry that they are unforgivable and are discouraged. Although they show up for programs, many have to find a way to feel deserving of success. Otherwise they sabotage their own progress.

I can’t say that many of the men left the meeting well enough reassured, but a few followed me to yoga. How could I use this precious time to rekindle their hearts? As humans we continuously forget the divinity within ourselves and The practice of Loving Kindness can serve as a reminder. How can I be unforgivable if divinity lives within me? In Genesis, Man is created in God’s image. In the Acts of the Apostles, the Holy Spirit enters the apostles and metaphorically all the children of God. Hindus believe that every being contains a spark or facet of divine nature. I decided to begin class with a version of the Buddhist Loving Kindness meditation that I learned in my yoga teacher training based on Jack Kornfield’s spiritual guide, A Path with Heart.

The practice involves visualizing oneself and others while reciting to oneself the following mantra: “May I be filled with Loving Kindness, May I be well, May I be peaceful and at ease, May I be Happy”. Traditionally the meditation begins by focusing on a personal deity, mentor, teacher, family member or friend whom we already hold in high esteem and holding their image or memory in our mind and heart. As we recite the loving kindness mantra it is helpful to notice how our bodies respond to the well wishing. Does our breath change? We then each focus the meditation towards ourself. Does this feel different from wishing another well? Does our breath feel different? We continue this practice of reciting the mantra, multiple times if we choose, and feeling it resonate in our physical bodies as we focus on a neutral person, a troublesome person, and then all beings. A neutral being is someone we see regularly. He or she could be our mail carrier, a checkout person at Big Y, or a fellow classmate. We know little about this person and feel neither great attraction nor discomfort in their presence. The troublesome being should be someone we know (not a politician or abstract media personage). As we wish them well it may help to remember the divinity that lives in them that they may have forgotten.

Today the Rabi led Spirituality again. He seemed to have reflected on the practice of loving oneself in the process of following the directives of the prophet Mica who taught that all men should live with justice and mercy and walk humbly with God. We must be just and merciful towards ourselves as well as towards others. In the last phrase the Rabi suggested that we put the emphasis on the with and to consider God our constant companion. In yoga, every interpersonal interaction is an opportunity to practice communing with divinity. This is why the greeting Namaste (I recognize and honor the divinity within you) is such a powerful salutation, both as Hello and as Goodbye. Curiously, I have heard that Good Bye comes from the phrase, God be with you.

In my class I discussed some of these parallels between the Judeo-Christian tradition and Hindu-Buddhist philosophy. We practiced Loving Kindness again in the same form as last week, as I’m still interested in building default practices. There are many other beautiful phrases that can be used to wish ourselves and others well, including some that take the form of affirmations, and I will lead them after the basic practice becomes more established. I may have my students write down the phrases that they most wish they could hear from their God and encourage them to use this language in their personal meditations.