Happy Holidays... Okay, so Be Here Now!

During my first few years as a yoga teacher, I focused much of my time and energy on preparing themes and finding quotes to deliver in class. I have stacks of books and journals in my office filled with highlighted text, comments written in red, and ideas for future themes. I understand that all that work was necessary to bring me to the point where I am now. As I continue my personal journey inward, my studies and my teachings have been narrowed down to this simple message … Be Here Now.

Be Here Now is the title of a 1971 book on spirituality by Ram Dass. It was a revolutionary book bringing eastern studies and practices to American soil. Its title, now a coined phrase, has been repeated by spiritual teachers throughout the world.

Be here now. Show up fully. Pay attention to what you are doing. While growing up, we heard it from our parents and teachers. As adults, we are reminded of the importance of paying attention on our busy roads, at our fast-paced computers and on our yoga mats.

Woody Allen said, “80% of success is showing up”. Just show up! It is so simple yet so challenging with a list of things to-do a mile long and a calendar that is busting at the seams. Why can’t I drive to work, text my friend, look at my GPS and listen to the news at the same time. Why not?

The answer is painfully simple. Overdoing and over thinking creates stress in the mind and body. Paying attention and focusing on the moment as it arises, cultivates peace.

So over these next few days and into New Year's Eve and New Year's Day, start with the small (yet huge) reminder to “Be Here Now”. You can write the phrase on several sticky notes and put them on your steering wheel and on your computer screen. Over the next few months, in this blog, on our yoga mats and meditation cushions, in our cars and at our jobs, we will explore tools and techniques that will help us cultivate this simple message.

Free Play by Stephen Nachmanovitch

Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art by Stephen Nachmanovitch

This is one of my all time favorite books. I was just reminded about this delightful paragraph while taking a beautiful moonlit walk around Goose Pond in Keene, NH.

There is an old Sanskrit word, lila, which means play. Richer than our word, it means divine play, the play of creation, destruction, and re-creation, the folding and unfolding of the cosmos. Lila, free and deep, is both the delight and enjoyment of this moment, and the play of God. It also means love.

Lila may be the simplest thing there is - spontaneous, childish, disarming. But as we grow and experience the complexities of life, it may also be the most difficult and hard-won achievement imaginable, and its coming to fruition is a kind of homecoming to our true selves.

Cognitive Yoga by Tony Chase

"I believe that an experience is not even possible without reflection..."

- C. G. Jung, MD, Terry Lecture, New Haven, 1937

Is it easy? Yes.

Is it difficult? Yes.

Is it social? Yes.

Is it solitary? Yes

Is it sweaty and gross? Yes.

Is it cleansing and purifying? Yes.

Do the muscles contract? Yes.

Do the muscles stretch? Yes.

Is it spiritual? Yes.

Is it sensual? Yes.

Is it austere? Yes.

Is it aesthetically rich? Yes.

It is hard to think of another human activity which is such a whorl of contradiction...well, there is marriage, of course. And raising the tormented teen. And gardening. Politics. Reading ancient philosophical texts in a frozen hut.

Perhaps yoga's effectiveness has to do with the fact that it is grounded in reality. We are at once the scientist and the lab rat, the experiment and the researcher. We take nothing for granted because it happens to us.

Yoga is absolutely grounded in reality. It is one with the rest of the real world: the one with hot summers and frozen winters, drought and flood, aging parents and premature babies, war and peace, boom and bust.

The practitioner is toned, but also tuned, The deeper the practice, the more satisfying this world seems to be.

Verge Yoga students and writer, Tony Chase, has studied at Brown and Yale and the University of Paris and has taught at the Univesity of Delaware and Haverford College. As a nature and adventure writer for Conde Nast Traveler he's visited five continents and the Arctic Ocean and his work has been translated into several foreign languages.

Creating Space – Part 2

In order to create space in our lives, we need to learn to manage our clutter. Most of us have cluttered minds, bodies, homes and offices. Living with clutter, I believe, blocks our potential. According to Wikipedia, clutter is: a confusing or disorderly state of collection. We collect and store physical and emotional “stuff” and it weighs us down and holds us back.

I continue my thoughts on creating space from my last blog by looking at clutter.

Our physical space can be cluttered, i.e. office, home, car. Our physical being can be cluttered, i.e. toxic, imbalanced, stressed and/or tense. Our mental state can be cluttered, i.e. busy, frantic, distracted and our emotional state can be cluttered, i.e. nervous, worried, doubtful, fearful. There are, undoubtedly, many more parameters where can clutter set in. For this blog, we’ll stick with just four of the many: physical space, physical body, mental body, emotional body.

We have all experienced how clearing space in one area of our lives immediately affects us in another. I feel calmer and more relaxed when my home and office are clean. I feel mentally clearer after a vigorous yoga practice that has cleansed my body. I feel more emotionally accepting of myself after a meditation practice that stabilized my mind.

Clearing clutter and creating space is about throwing stuff away (mentally, physically and emotionally). Try taking baby steps for they will lead us to the big leaps.

Feeling crowded mentally? How about drinking a big glass of water to cleanse the body. Feeling disorganized at work? How about a ten-minute breathing meditation to clear and organize the mind. Feeling physically cluttered? How about cleaning up your car or desk?

I would like to call this Creating Space Therapy. It is simple, easy to do and best of all it’s free!

For more info on “de-stuffing” your life, check out the 100-Thing Challenge http://www.guynameddave.com/100-thing-challenge.html

Creating Space

Setting a seasonal intention can change one’s life. I have setting them for a few years now. Some of you may recall that my intention for this past summer was to try to Live More Simply. It was an eye opening process and I give myself a B+ for effort. As I now stand on the doorstep of the fall season, I offer myself a new challenge. My Fall intention is to create space.

I feel better when there is more space in me and around me. Having a clear and steady mindset, a strong and supple body and a clean house sounds like bliss to me. When I am in space, I feel lighter and happier and I want to cultivate living in this state more often in my daily life.

The yogis have been talking about this concept for thousands of year. They call my intention of creating space, aparigraha, or non-hoarding. This is the practice of letting go of old stuff, old habits and old thoughts.

There are many simple ways to practice aparigraha over the next few months. The easiest place to start is in one’s physical surroundings. De-cluttering is one of my most favorite pastimes and I have already set out two bins in my garage for Goodwill donations and library donations. Clutter be gone!

The physical body needs to be kept spacious as well. Yoga is the perfect tool and I feel extremely blessed to be able to practice yoga several times per week. By moving my body in many different ways, I am able to clean out pockets of tension and tightness, detoxify and basically de-clutter my vehicle. Ahhh!

Next and much more challenging, is the emotional house cleaning (I am due for some hardcore work here). Thankfully, I look to my daily meditation practice to help me with the huge process of letting go of thoughts and attachments that clutter my mind and drain me of energy.

Rolf Gates writes in Meditations from the Mat, Aparigraha applies to our own thinking as well. Aparigraha is about letting go of our most cherished pain-producing beliefs. It is about the end of all attachment: letting go of our fears, letting go of our desires, becoming free.

I recognize the scale of my Fall intention but I feel that I am ready for the challenge. I will keep you all posted on my progress and invite you all to comment and share your Fall intention or how you find ways to practice Creating Space. Namaste

The Art of Adapting

Adaptation: An alteration or adjustment in structure or habits by which a species or individual improves its condition in relationship to its environment.

I write this blog while sitting in a hot dorm room at Penn State. I am here for a few days as I chaperone a camp for my daughter’s soccer team. The scene is a step back in time for me. The rooms are small and stuffy and the dining hall smells the same way mine did over 25 years ago.

This experience has been a great practice for me as I observe how quickly my mind wants to whine and complain about my environment. As with most of you, I am used to living with the comforts of air conditioning, privacy and my own kitchen.

Stepping out of my comfort zone for a few days has tested my ability to adapt to the moment and the environment at hand. I have challenged myself to consciously rise above the discomfort of the situation and take a deep breath just as I have learned to do in my yoga practice.

This too shall pass of course and I know that I will soon be going home. Luckily, I don’t need to spend the semester here and I don’t need to take finals. I will soon be back in air conditioning and the comforts of my home.

This is, of course, “small potatoes” on the scale of discomfort. I recognize the size of the issue but I also acknowledge that it is an opportunity to practice mindfulness. As I have learned from my teachers, as we become more mindful we are able to adjust more gracefully to our environment. In other words, we become much more adaptable and much nicer to be around.

Play Simple

You may have heard me talk about my "summer intention" in one of my classes recently. If you haven't, I have firmly set an intention to "play simple" this summer. This means that I need to stay super mindful about slowing down and not doing. My plan is to discard what is non-essential, excessive and just plain ole busy.

"Play simple" is a command that I hear often and loud coming from soccer coaches standing on the side of the fields. "Don't complicate your play trying to be fancy." "One pass at a time". "Slow down and keep your head up". Does this sound familiar?

This process has been really fun I must say. There is definitely something to simplifying and I highly recommend it. As of late, this intention has been really coming out in my classes. I’ve been teaching simple breath with simple words with simple transitions. The atmosphere has been profoundly steady and calm. Wow.

I believe that simplicity creates the space from which we can create an extraordinary life. One step at a time. One chore. One class. One breath.