Yep, my time at Yoga Teacher Training was indeed transformative, and I am now a certified Kripalu Yoga Teacher - yay! Throughout the process was laid bare and vulnerable in ways beyond what thought was tolerable. Thanks to a skillful trainer and assistant, and some people outside of the Kripalu program I could reach out to who are part of my recovery community, I was able to walk through some triggering events, and now on the other side, feel confident I can teach the kind of yoga I want to teach: gentle, compassionate and meditative for anyBody, especially those who feel disqualified from yoga because not young, thin or bendy. This is what drew me to Kripalu Yoga in the first place. I realized this month that I also want to reach out to rehabs and detoxes to offer this type of yoga, since it can be very helpful for the difficult physical transitions of the body as it attempts to let go of drugs and alcohol, which is in my wheelhouse.
However, there were moments when I was not sure I would make it because this training makes you have to come into touch with the core of your being, including the traumatized bits. Not that anyone was traumatizing per se, but if you have been scared out of your body from a very young age, and then not only need to be in it to do yoga but then be in it enough to teach others to do the same While Others Are Watching You Do This...is another thing altogether.
In savasana (a meditative, restful time lying on floor at end of most yoga classes), I had a felt sense of how challenging this would be for me and began to cry. Afterwards, I went to talk about this to the trainer I had a feeling would get it and they did (NB: I am going to use 'they' as a gender neutral way of discussing people here, because I want this to be about principles rather than personalities, and if you know where I studied and with whom gender designations would give it away). Even though this person did not have a complete understanding, they did have the ability to understand there was something large going on and convey both an ability to hold space for that while also conveying faith in me that I would get through it. This was done not by using fake psychology, but simply reminders to breathe and stay in the present. Conveying both that I was seen and also—importantly—was not a broken toy who needed to be fixed or somehow pitied.
This is the key to accepting someone else's PTSD response.
What is a PTSD response, you might ask, and how would I know it?
Basically it's this: whatever form it takes, it does not track with what you can see in front of you as a person. If that person is generally confident and then is in a puddle of tears, definitely a good possibility they have been triggered. The reason this kind of seemingly atypical response is different than some kind of pathology is because PTSD is a manifestation of what is/was actually a Very Skillful response to what was an impossible situation that kept that person alive. So if someone dissociates or melts down in some obvious way, that is not a sign of a pathological breakdown but instead defense at what appears to be like the original trauma. Yes, it may seem out of line with the situation at hand, and YES, please for the love of all that is holy trust me on this, THE PERSON KNOWS THIS.
So, examples of less than skillful responses include telling a person who is crying after a disappointing-to-them practice teach in part due to the fact someone they have never met has been watching them while writing stuff down with what appeared like a grimace on their face, that they need to "deal with their negative self-talk."
Sigh.
Let's break this down as to all the reasons this is a bad idea.
1) As above, the person crying knows they are having a disproportionate response. This is not news. This person has been triggered, and if that person is trying to tell you that and all you say is "you have to deal with your negative self-talk" you know that (a) the person is not seeing you and (b) that person has decided that you Are a broken toy and worse—since clearly they do not have a clue what is happening—they can somehow Fix you.
2) Even if you were right and it was only an issue of "negative self-talk" to keep pointing that out is judgmental and therefore would make this syndrome worse.
but
3) If it is a PTSD response, this insistence amounts to blaming the victim and has the effect of not being useful information at all, but instead can have the effect of feeling humiliating.
SO...
What would be more useful in that scenario?
Something like the more skillful trainer did on numerous occasions:
1. Saw me for where I was and acknowledged it.
2. Made it clear that my vulnerability was not frightening to them, nor was it somehow off the charts or pathological in any way.
3. Reminded me of yogic principles (for instance Kripalu yoga has a wonderful system for "riding the wave" of seemingly overwhelming emotions: Breathe, Relax, Feel, Watch, Allow). When reminded of this, and assured by the presence of this person that I was Not a broken toy, I could then use these tools on my own and Find My Own Way Out of the PTSD Response. In other words, this is empowering. It is not either pathologizing or condescending, nor is it fixing, which is problematic because it makes the person feel they are incapable of finding their own way out.
Is this hard to pull off? You betcha. Have I met lots of people capable of this? No. But is it something that can be cultivated in oneself? Yes, I believe it is.
The key issue, however, is this: You Must Be OK with Your Own Vulnerability. If you are afraid of parts of yourself that are vulnerable or that perhaps you judge as "weak" or "unseemly", then you will not be able to hold space for someone who is truly melting down in front of you. Because the part of you that is scared of your own vulnerability will recoil and feel the need to label or pathologize or fix the person in front of you.
***
So, what I learned in my 26 days of Yoga Teacher Training is that I can survive my own worst meltdowns and fears. That I could find a way, after the first major one with the less than skillful mentor, to protect my own space and energy field (thanks to a friend who offered me a QiGong protection mudra with movement, and also remembering some of my own tools from my 32+ years of recovery). That I can distinguish between what is mine (aka baggage bringing to an interaction) and the less than ideal responses of some people. That when I feel humiliated in many cases this is because I have allowed someone to see a vulnerability in me they are not themselves prepared to cope with so feel the need to shut me down by labeling it or trying to fix me. That even so, that person or people are doing their best and that their vulnerability is manifesting as a fear of mine. So that in no case–and I want to emphasize this—do I think anyone was ever trying to hurt me in any way, and that at all times even these people who inadvertently hurt me did have my best interests at heart. However, there is this deep work one learns to do if having spent a long time in life recovering from trauma/s and various ways of coping with said trauma/s, and if one has not done this work or maybe even if one has not had to do this work, there is a certain lack of understanding brought to the spaces I ended up inhabiting at a few key phases during my training.
Having said that, there was the skilled trainer and also an assistant who had an instinctive understanding of what was happening and offered useful tools at key times. And the trainer was able to help me process some of the more difficult interactions.
But the main thing I want to convey here is this: even if you find yourself as someone in a situation with someone having a PTSD episode and you don't understand it: (a) hold space as much as possible, (b) listen to what the person is saying, (c) affirm their strength for being there in that moment, even if in a somewhat disheveled or perhaps dissociated state, and tell them both verbally and non-verbally, that you have confidence they can endure whatever they are going through at the moment and encourage them back to the present moment where—assuming you have done all of the above—it is safe. Also, and this is key, do not assume you know why or what has triggered this or what their background is or is not. If they want you to know, they will tell you. If you talk to them, however seemingly compassionately about their "rough life" when you don't even know what it was, again the person will feel singled out and pitied. If they want you to know the details, you will find out.
You can Always say: wow, I don't have this experience and am not sure what to do, how to offer help, and ASK the person is there something I can do? And then believe their answer. Finally, if nothing helps, consider reaching out to someone else you know who you think may be better suited to the task. In other words: be humble, don't assume you have to know how to deal with it, but be ready to find out you do not, and admit to where you are. Then you, too, are showing vulnerability, and become safer.
***
I hope this is useful information. Finally, if you have a friend or loved one who deals with PTSD on the regular (or you yourself do), I cannot recommend The Body Keeps the Score highly enough. This will give you the information you need to understand what that person is dealing with on a physiological level, even aside from the obvious emotional distress. When I read this book a couple years ago, it marked the first time I did not in my heart of hearts feel broken or beyond repair. I saw what made up the symptoms in my brain and body, and had a compassion for myself and others who similarly suffer. I saw we were not beyond redemption, we were skillful survivors of impossible situations, either in childhood or as adults or both, domestic or in war or both, and that given this knowledge and self-awareness we can find how to navigate the world in a way which is less fractured. Perfect? No. At times triggered? You bet. But with compassion.
"The highest form of spiritual practice is self-observation without judgment" said Swami Kripalu.
I agree.
Peace out.
Showing posts with label Kripalu. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kripalu. Show all posts
Sunday, June 23, 2019
Monday, May 27, 2019
Waiting in limbo for transformation most likely
This is my: yes I am in the cafe at Kripalu waiting for my room post, but this time before yoga teacher training. So instead of waiting for 3-5 days of being here, I am waiting to find out where I will stay for 26 days, which seems not dissimilar to a rehab stay in terms of time. Never been to rehab, but this seems like a voluntary version of it.
Because I take the bus from NYC, I get here before they have rooms available. But there is a lovely cafe and I get quite a view while waiting.
I have never been here before when it is this warm. Even the first time I came here - in 2003 before there was coffee or locks on the doors - it was early May so not this lusciously green and as mentioned no coffee. Or WiFi. In fact at that time I didn't even have a laptop. So here I am now for better or for worse with a computer, WiFi, and coffee in a plastic mug (reusable - don't freak out).
Met a lovely woman on the bus then spent a lot of time looking at the trees and the lake as we passed by it, and also parts of Connecticut I know personally or from researching my grandmother's life. Seymour, Waterbury, the Housatonic River...It's a sweet, gentle day here. I know it's hot in NYC, though was even lucky enough to leave before that hit.
I have some idea and then No idea what to expect. It's the exciting, stomach churning feeling. What will this be like? Will the other kids like me?
I spent my childhood in New England, moving from place to place, school to school, and sometimes camps and summer schools, staying with different relatives in summers and for a couple years, everything shifting, and every change, I remember thinking: maybe this time it will be better! Where I got that optimism from is beyond me, but kids are kind of amazing. Perhaps needless to say it was not always better, though sometimes it was. But the idea was: This time I will get it Right. I will finally figure out the right clothes, attitude or whatever (I never did - you just have to trust me on that one - sometimes I accidentally got it right, but usually a day late and dollar short).
And so even though I am 55 and should "know better" (drum roll please...) I find there is still some of that. Though also and equally based on prior experience at Kripalu, knowing I can eventually lay all that at the door.
This is why I am here for yoga teacher training and not somewhere else, because this is the place I come to Lay it All at the Door. Sometimes I do and sometimes I don't, but usually there is at least one moment this happens, and that moment is transformative. It's like a sober acid trip (without the acid, natch). A view into the soul, somewhere new, unguarded, unseen until that moment, and it's such a gift...
And amazingly that gives me a segue into writing about something I am kind of obsessed with but was not sure how to write about until typing the above paragraph:
Season 2 of Fleabag. If you have not watched Fleabag, do, and maybe read this after. This is full of spoilers and meant for people who like me have watched it and can't shake it...
Because season 1 was satire, very good satire, about how whack we get over grieving intense loss. Sounds unpromising but the young British actress/comedienne pulls it off.
But Season 2 is another thing altogether, because while it is incredibly funny, there are a bunch of set ups that make you think: oh OK I know where we are going, this person is like this and that like that but instead, in each case, even the most unlikely, that person, including our protagonist, finds themselves laid bare, vulnerable in a way as funny as it is heartbreaking and from there a big change happens in their lives.
I think this may be why we who have watched it were all riveted. I won't go into details in case you are still reading and have not watched it yet, but the larger point remains: grief makes you demented, but when you are grieving, you can also find parts of yourself hitherto unknown, and if it's not grief, maybe it is love or attraction or Something Outside of Your Control.
And the only way transformation is possible is by allowing yourself to unattach from your little stories about who you are, which are ultimately not only limiting but also to some degree or other delusional.
As anyone who knows me will understand, I am not saying this from a mountaintop (well OK I sort of am since I am in the Berkshires but not a figurative one) but as someone who has experienced and experiences this, because we are meaning making machines and so we create and dismantle and reconstruct ourselves all the time, minute to minute. And maybe the older we get the challenges to the story are a little harder to come by, or maybe sometimes when you just keep fucking losing people and things and ideas and etc, it gets easier when you get older.
But I am here now, and I am not the same person who came here in early May 2003. And I doubt I will be the same person who typed this when June 21 rolls around. I mean I will be of course, but have a feeling some things will have shifted, but here's the funny scary great - did I mention scary? - part: I don't know what this.a
Time to go check to see if my room is available yet.
***
And it was/is. Unpacking now, to shower and yoga! Posting now and if typos will fix later...
***
OK so it's a day later, and now posting because no WiFi in room. Which means I have kept my laptop until now in a safe. Yay me, and on our first day we were teaching each other a basic pose. So...I'm on the way and by afternoon taking a yoga class I would not have dreamed two days ago I could have survived. Even with shoulder issue, it turns out, once again, I am way stronger than I know - but also in some bits, so out of shape, but here I am. Still alive.
Favorite little snippet from today, Kripalu yoga teacher training leading us to be "a guide on the side, not a sage on the stage." This remains my favorite kind of yoga by a mile and one of my favorite places on earth to be. It's Day 1, though, so stay tuned...as they assured us, some days we will wonder why we are here. I imagine that is true.
But for now I live in a jigsaw puzzle photo...check out this view from outdoor dining area. I saw lilacs on the drive in, so hoping to find some of them, too.
Because I take the bus from NYC, I get here before they have rooms available. But there is a lovely cafe and I get quite a view while waiting.
Met a lovely woman on the bus then spent a lot of time looking at the trees and the lake as we passed by it, and also parts of Connecticut I know personally or from researching my grandmother's life. Seymour, Waterbury, the Housatonic River...It's a sweet, gentle day here. I know it's hot in NYC, though was even lucky enough to leave before that hit.
I have some idea and then No idea what to expect. It's the exciting, stomach churning feeling. What will this be like? Will the other kids like me?
I spent my childhood in New England, moving from place to place, school to school, and sometimes camps and summer schools, staying with different relatives in summers and for a couple years, everything shifting, and every change, I remember thinking: maybe this time it will be better! Where I got that optimism from is beyond me, but kids are kind of amazing. Perhaps needless to say it was not always better, though sometimes it was. But the idea was: This time I will get it Right. I will finally figure out the right clothes, attitude or whatever (I never did - you just have to trust me on that one - sometimes I accidentally got it right, but usually a day late and dollar short).
And so even though I am 55 and should "know better" (drum roll please...) I find there is still some of that. Though also and equally based on prior experience at Kripalu, knowing I can eventually lay all that at the door.
This is why I am here for yoga teacher training and not somewhere else, because this is the place I come to Lay it All at the Door. Sometimes I do and sometimes I don't, but usually there is at least one moment this happens, and that moment is transformative. It's like a sober acid trip (without the acid, natch). A view into the soul, somewhere new, unguarded, unseen until that moment, and it's such a gift...
And amazingly that gives me a segue into writing about something I am kind of obsessed with but was not sure how to write about until typing the above paragraph:
Season 2 of Fleabag. If you have not watched Fleabag, do, and maybe read this after. This is full of spoilers and meant for people who like me have watched it and can't shake it...
Because season 1 was satire, very good satire, about how whack we get over grieving intense loss. Sounds unpromising but the young British actress/comedienne pulls it off.
But Season 2 is another thing altogether, because while it is incredibly funny, there are a bunch of set ups that make you think: oh OK I know where we are going, this person is like this and that like that but instead, in each case, even the most unlikely, that person, including our protagonist, finds themselves laid bare, vulnerable in a way as funny as it is heartbreaking and from there a big change happens in their lives.
I think this may be why we who have watched it were all riveted. I won't go into details in case you are still reading and have not watched it yet, but the larger point remains: grief makes you demented, but when you are grieving, you can also find parts of yourself hitherto unknown, and if it's not grief, maybe it is love or attraction or Something Outside of Your Control.
And the only way transformation is possible is by allowing yourself to unattach from your little stories about who you are, which are ultimately not only limiting but also to some degree or other delusional.
As anyone who knows me will understand, I am not saying this from a mountaintop (well OK I sort of am since I am in the Berkshires but not a figurative one) but as someone who has experienced and experiences this, because we are meaning making machines and so we create and dismantle and reconstruct ourselves all the time, minute to minute. And maybe the older we get the challenges to the story are a little harder to come by, or maybe sometimes when you just keep fucking losing people and things and ideas and etc, it gets easier when you get older.
But I am here now, and I am not the same person who came here in early May 2003. And I doubt I will be the same person who typed this when June 21 rolls around. I mean I will be of course, but have a feeling some things will have shifted, but here's the funny scary great - did I mention scary? - part: I don't know what this.a
Time to go check to see if my room is available yet.
***
And it was/is. Unpacking now, to shower and yoga! Posting now and if typos will fix later...
***
OK so it's a day later, and now posting because no WiFi in room. Which means I have kept my laptop until now in a safe. Yay me, and on our first day we were teaching each other a basic pose. So...I'm on the way and by afternoon taking a yoga class I would not have dreamed two days ago I could have survived. Even with shoulder issue, it turns out, once again, I am way stronger than I know - but also in some bits, so out of shape, but here I am. Still alive.
Favorite little snippet from today, Kripalu yoga teacher training leading us to be "a guide on the side, not a sage on the stage." This remains my favorite kind of yoga by a mile and one of my favorite places on earth to be. It's Day 1, though, so stay tuned...as they assured us, some days we will wonder why we are here. I imagine that is true.
But for now I live in a jigsaw puzzle photo...check out this view from outdoor dining area. I saw lilacs on the drive in, so hoping to find some of them, too.
Tuesday, August 14, 2018
Another healing journey...
A lot has happened since my last blog post, all the events listed were performed, and had a wonderful retreat to Westray in Orkney Islands. In fact, so good, that I have booked three more - for April, July and September. So, if you want to spend some time in a beautiful place, getting a lot of writing done, surrounded by serious writers who are super supportive, then get in touch.
But what I want to write about now is my near-future plan for October of this year...which involves spending the month at Kripalu - a yoga center in the Berkshires that I love - for intensive yoga teacher training. I will be there for a month.
Aside from the fact that the training itself will be transformational, and I will be certified to teach after over 17 years of practicing Kripalu yoga, this is also happening precisely 17 years after I was meant to spend a month at Kripalu doing a seva program. I had just begun practicing yoga and wanted to immerse myself in it. I was excited and nervous about the prospect of spending a month someplace I had never been, but I had been assured it was a great place. I was ready for an adventure after what had been a challenging year getting over a difficult breakup of a 13 year relationship, which had the effect of making me question Everything. I was ready for this new life, this new world.
Then less than a month before I was meant to go up to Lenox, September 11, 2001 happened, in my city. I have written about this many times, and if you want my best description, you can read it here.
But what happened after is, I could not leave the city. I was afraid it would disappear. Many were fleeing, but I was holding on for dear life. NYC was my home, the only place on earth that I had ever felt at home, and now all I could smell was burning plastic, metal and bodies - even up in Yorkville where I lived at the time. The smell made it up the East River. The smoke was visible, even though I was miles north of the attack. I had many friends who had been closer, some who lost people, and all of us saw the missing signs everywhere. People had tacked up photocopies of smiling pictures of friends and relatives, every fire house had at least eight photos up it seemed. There were candles under some of the photos in little planters, near trees, on steps up to brownstones. None of them were missing. They were all dead, incinerated.
I could not move. Would not move. Was not afraid, as far as I could tell, but of course I was. In yoga class, I felt the terror, but mostly was in a dissociated fugue state, that I arguably lived in for years, and to some degree even exist in to this day.
I cancelled the trip to Kripalu. I ended up doing a lot of other things, including moving to the UK in 2003 for what I thought was temporary stay that ended up lasting 8 years. I left in August 2003, right after the blackout, which ended the morning I flew out, I remember seeing a guy - probably drunk - stagger in front of our Super Shuttle Van at 4 am in Times Square. The driver swerved to avoid him, but it was eerie. My cats had looked at me bereft when I walked out the door. Everything was deeply weird.
I won't go into those eight years, because that's a novel in its own right, but the fact is I missed all the 9/11 anniversaries after the first one in 2002. And because of the way it was being used politically, I refused to participate even then in any event that showed my grief publicly. I was enraged that our grief was being used as an excuse to ramp up a war. So, I shoved it down. Then I was in the UK where no one wanted to know and most were cynical about 9/11. Individually some people wanted to know my actual human scale story but most decided to launch into diatribes about how it was an inside job and/or how Americans now know how it feels, etc. So, I learned to shut the fuck about it.
Then I shut it down into a tiny, hidden part of myself. Hidden even to me.
This part would emerge when I visited NYC and sometimes was near downtown and would see building going on and feel nauseous or start shaking, and I would have to leave.
I shut. it. down.
So, when I was back here in September 2011, realizing I was going to move back to NYC, and the 10th anniversary rolled around, I was kind of shocked by how moving it was to me, how emotional I got. I was wary now of saying this to my New York friends, because they had now been through Years of this grieving or ignoring it, depending on their mood or capability. So, once again, I kept it to myself.
I have begun to realize over the years of being back in NYC that some part of me is still damaged from that day, some part of me I have not allowed out somehow, a wound I have protected.
One of the original ways of shielding that wound was to Not go to Kripalu in October 2001.
So, when I realized I could go up in October 2018 for teacher training if I received a scholarship (which happily I did), I decided it was time to finally do this thing. While this won't heal everything, it's a start. I will finally allow myself the immersion I so craved then, but then somehow feared.
I don't know if the buried emotions will come up or not. There has been a lot of trauma in my life since then, including difficult losses, and there is one right now on the horizon. I have no idea what will happen.
But I am dedicating the training and any yoga teaching I do to people who were like me when I started yoga in my late 30s: scared and kind of suspicious and sure I could not do it. I want to work with people who suffer from PTSD or just plain old bad body image or a sense of being "bad" at physical things. And maybe people like me, too, who just can't shake certain wounds.
I want to embrace vulnerability, my own and others'. I don't know if I can actually do this or am just talking trash. In reality I hate vulnerability. My own that is. Total loss of control. It sucks. But it's also the only place life can become, well, life. So there's that.
We shall see what happens.
But this is a baby step towards healing. I was torn asunder on 9/11/01. More than I knew. I don't think I will necessarily get put back together, because not sure that's possible, but maybe, if I'm lucky, I can at least find the bits and pieces that were lost, even if they are in shards and make into some kind of whack collage.
There are worse fates.
But what I want to write about now is my near-future plan for October of this year...which involves spending the month at Kripalu - a yoga center in the Berkshires that I love - for intensive yoga teacher training. I will be there for a month.
Aside from the fact that the training itself will be transformational, and I will be certified to teach after over 17 years of practicing Kripalu yoga, this is also happening precisely 17 years after I was meant to spend a month at Kripalu doing a seva program. I had just begun practicing yoga and wanted to immerse myself in it. I was excited and nervous about the prospect of spending a month someplace I had never been, but I had been assured it was a great place. I was ready for an adventure after what had been a challenging year getting over a difficult breakup of a 13 year relationship, which had the effect of making me question Everything. I was ready for this new life, this new world.
Then less than a month before I was meant to go up to Lenox, September 11, 2001 happened, in my city. I have written about this many times, and if you want my best description, you can read it here.
But what happened after is, I could not leave the city. I was afraid it would disappear. Many were fleeing, but I was holding on for dear life. NYC was my home, the only place on earth that I had ever felt at home, and now all I could smell was burning plastic, metal and bodies - even up in Yorkville where I lived at the time. The smell made it up the East River. The smoke was visible, even though I was miles north of the attack. I had many friends who had been closer, some who lost people, and all of us saw the missing signs everywhere. People had tacked up photocopies of smiling pictures of friends and relatives, every fire house had at least eight photos up it seemed. There were candles under some of the photos in little planters, near trees, on steps up to brownstones. None of them were missing. They were all dead, incinerated.
I could not move. Would not move. Was not afraid, as far as I could tell, but of course I was. In yoga class, I felt the terror, but mostly was in a dissociated fugue state, that I arguably lived in for years, and to some degree even exist in to this day.
I cancelled the trip to Kripalu. I ended up doing a lot of other things, including moving to the UK in 2003 for what I thought was temporary stay that ended up lasting 8 years. I left in August 2003, right after the blackout, which ended the morning I flew out, I remember seeing a guy - probably drunk - stagger in front of our Super Shuttle Van at 4 am in Times Square. The driver swerved to avoid him, but it was eerie. My cats had looked at me bereft when I walked out the door. Everything was deeply weird.
I won't go into those eight years, because that's a novel in its own right, but the fact is I missed all the 9/11 anniversaries after the first one in 2002. And because of the way it was being used politically, I refused to participate even then in any event that showed my grief publicly. I was enraged that our grief was being used as an excuse to ramp up a war. So, I shoved it down. Then I was in the UK where no one wanted to know and most were cynical about 9/11. Individually some people wanted to know my actual human scale story but most decided to launch into diatribes about how it was an inside job and/or how Americans now know how it feels, etc. So, I learned to shut the fuck about it.
Then I shut it down into a tiny, hidden part of myself. Hidden even to me.
This part would emerge when I visited NYC and sometimes was near downtown and would see building going on and feel nauseous or start shaking, and I would have to leave.
I shut. it. down.
So, when I was back here in September 2011, realizing I was going to move back to NYC, and the 10th anniversary rolled around, I was kind of shocked by how moving it was to me, how emotional I got. I was wary now of saying this to my New York friends, because they had now been through Years of this grieving or ignoring it, depending on their mood or capability. So, once again, I kept it to myself.
I have begun to realize over the years of being back in NYC that some part of me is still damaged from that day, some part of me I have not allowed out somehow, a wound I have protected.
One of the original ways of shielding that wound was to Not go to Kripalu in October 2001.
So, when I realized I could go up in October 2018 for teacher training if I received a scholarship (which happily I did), I decided it was time to finally do this thing. While this won't heal everything, it's a start. I will finally allow myself the immersion I so craved then, but then somehow feared.
I don't know if the buried emotions will come up or not. There has been a lot of trauma in my life since then, including difficult losses, and there is one right now on the horizon. I have no idea what will happen.
But I am dedicating the training and any yoga teaching I do to people who were like me when I started yoga in my late 30s: scared and kind of suspicious and sure I could not do it. I want to work with people who suffer from PTSD or just plain old bad body image or a sense of being "bad" at physical things. And maybe people like me, too, who just can't shake certain wounds.
I want to embrace vulnerability, my own and others'. I don't know if I can actually do this or am just talking trash. In reality I hate vulnerability. My own that is. Total loss of control. It sucks. But it's also the only place life can become, well, life. So there's that.
We shall see what happens.
But this is a baby step towards healing. I was torn asunder on 9/11/01. More than I knew. I don't think I will necessarily get put back together, because not sure that's possible, but maybe, if I'm lucky, I can at least find the bits and pieces that were lost, even if they are in shards and make into some kind of whack collage.
There are worse fates.
Monday, January 11, 2016
Hilarious meditation moments
Yeah, so like, I usually meditate by myself in my study in Inwood, which means a lot of times I am meditating through loud salsa music, screaming children, sirens, fights on the street, etc.
So, now I'm at Kripalu, right? I have a view of a lake and the Berkshires outside my window. Yep. And I'm typing right here, sun shining on the water, creating light diamonds on the lake, the whole bit.
I go to the meditation room, which has the same stellar view.
I see shoes outside. Oh, no, I think Someone Else is In There!
I had the place to myself last time I was here...interloper, etc. I do know this is insane, just FYI, but these thoughts continue apace.
I also want to smuggle in my coffee and am afraid there will be a nitpicky meditator in there who may take umbrage. Worse, they might have An Electronic Device...
So, when I go in there is a smiling young woman taking photos with her phone of beautiful view. She scurries out when she sees me - because I am there to ya know Meditate. I feel slightly smug and smile graciously. I am in fact relieved. Room to myself again. Sanctuary. Mind you, as of now, I don't even have a roommate in my own room so could have meditated here, but nooooo, I need the Meditation Room...damn it. So I can practice Loving Kindness meditation....bwahahahaha.
But OK, so I read my daily books that remind me how to live and not act like an asshole - which I sometimes remember to do every once in a while. Then I sip my contraband coffee...oh and please note any Kripalu alums, they now serve coffee In The Dining Hall for breakfast. In the Dining Hall!
(This is radical if you ever came here back in the day when there was No Coffee, and if you needed it, like I did, you had to bring it yourself. The first morning I was here, I walked into dining hall with my own filter with ground coffee in it, so could get the hot water. I felt like I was bringing heroin into a rehab. One woman was smiling at me like she was on acid. Because breakfast is silent I couldn't ask her why. I felt a silent shunning from others. This may have been in my head...Later on, when we were in a sharing circle, I met this woman, Anne, and she told me she was smiling because she had smuggled her coffee in as instant in a bag that looked like tea whereas I had walked in with coffee For All to See. She thought I had been brave. We became fast friends...So...fast forward from 2003 to 2016 and they are serving coffee in this same dining hall. Times they do change...and of course now coffee is good for you again...)
So, back to meditation room...I have begun meditating - after getting all the pillows Exactly Right. I am happy to be back in this sacred room, which was the site of some profound and healing insights in December 2014, when Someone Else Walks Into the Room. I feel myself bristle inside (while attempting loving kindness meditation....bwahahahahahaha). I wonder how long will the rustling continue. When will this person Settle Down? Of course it takes about 5-10 whole seconds and she is still. I know she is a she because I sneak a look.
All is well, and I notice that it can be easier when someone else is meditating, too, because I am less figidity. I wonder if she is doing the loving kindness meditation, too. I am feeling happy with myself that I am So Tolerant of Another Person meditating in My Meditation Room...when...she starts Breathing. Loudly.
Not loudly, loudly.. but audibly. I realize she is doing some kind of pranayama (yogic breathing). I think hey yo this is a Silent Meditation Room Homie, what up?? I do not say this of course. I sneak another look - alternate nostril breathing - obviously to settle her down. I do that sometimes. But I'm Not Doing That Now! Because it's Silent Meditation...etc...
I then almost burst out laughing when I remember the amount of disruption I'm used to meditating through. But I notice that comparison doesn't help because I can't stop thinking Silent it's Supposed to be Silent here. Don't mess up my Vibe man...
If you were there and heard how not incredibly loud her breathing was, you would have laughed at me. Hard. ... I keep breathing and attempting to Let It Go, using Loving kindness mantras such as "Let me be free from enmity" - which I am saying pretty non-stop actually...then remember even more helpful things like: this too shall pass, which pretty much as soon as I thought that, it did. She had just done this breathing for about 2-3 minutes max.
Silence ensued. I was still irritated because felt I couldn't reach for my coffee, which I'm not supposed to have in that room anyway, but finished out meditation relatively happily, then noticed the lovely birdsong, and birds, watched the clouds go by slowly and watched the light change on the lake as the clouds moved across the sun. I wanted to have the room to myself again, but I was done so left it to her. Even though she is an interloper!
Then I came back into my room - after having taken 6:30 yoga and had breakfast before meditating - and took a sort of nap.
The message that comes to me over and over again here right now is: do less. Do Less. Do Less.
Which is why instead of racing around to every little workshop I've spent the late morning just looking out this window to a gorgeous view and remember how grateful I am to be here.
Also for great luck in not having a roommate at least so far.
Peace out from the Berkshires...what a gift.
So, now I'm at Kripalu, right? I have a view of a lake and the Berkshires outside my window. Yep. And I'm typing right here, sun shining on the water, creating light diamonds on the lake, the whole bit.
I go to the meditation room, which has the same stellar view.
I see shoes outside. Oh, no, I think Someone Else is In There!
I had the place to myself last time I was here...interloper, etc. I do know this is insane, just FYI, but these thoughts continue apace.
I also want to smuggle in my coffee and am afraid there will be a nitpicky meditator in there who may take umbrage. Worse, they might have An Electronic Device...
So, when I go in there is a smiling young woman taking photos with her phone of beautiful view. She scurries out when she sees me - because I am there to ya know Meditate. I feel slightly smug and smile graciously. I am in fact relieved. Room to myself again. Sanctuary. Mind you, as of now, I don't even have a roommate in my own room so could have meditated here, but nooooo, I need the Meditation Room...damn it. So I can practice Loving Kindness meditation....bwahahahaha.
But OK, so I read my daily books that remind me how to live and not act like an asshole - which I sometimes remember to do every once in a while. Then I sip my contraband coffee...oh and please note any Kripalu alums, they now serve coffee In The Dining Hall for breakfast. In the Dining Hall!
(This is radical if you ever came here back in the day when there was No Coffee, and if you needed it, like I did, you had to bring it yourself. The first morning I was here, I walked into dining hall with my own filter with ground coffee in it, so could get the hot water. I felt like I was bringing heroin into a rehab. One woman was smiling at me like she was on acid. Because breakfast is silent I couldn't ask her why. I felt a silent shunning from others. This may have been in my head...Later on, when we were in a sharing circle, I met this woman, Anne, and she told me she was smiling because she had smuggled her coffee in as instant in a bag that looked like tea whereas I had walked in with coffee For All to See. She thought I had been brave. We became fast friends...So...fast forward from 2003 to 2016 and they are serving coffee in this same dining hall. Times they do change...and of course now coffee is good for you again...)
So, back to meditation room...I have begun meditating - after getting all the pillows Exactly Right. I am happy to be back in this sacred room, which was the site of some profound and healing insights in December 2014, when Someone Else Walks Into the Room. I feel myself bristle inside (while attempting loving kindness meditation....bwahahahahahaha). I wonder how long will the rustling continue. When will this person Settle Down? Of course it takes about 5-10 whole seconds and she is still. I know she is a she because I sneak a look.
All is well, and I notice that it can be easier when someone else is meditating, too, because I am less figidity. I wonder if she is doing the loving kindness meditation, too. I am feeling happy with myself that I am So Tolerant of Another Person meditating in My Meditation Room...when...she starts Breathing. Loudly.
Not loudly, loudly.. but audibly. I realize she is doing some kind of pranayama (yogic breathing). I think hey yo this is a Silent Meditation Room Homie, what up?? I do not say this of course. I sneak another look - alternate nostril breathing - obviously to settle her down. I do that sometimes. But I'm Not Doing That Now! Because it's Silent Meditation...etc...
I then almost burst out laughing when I remember the amount of disruption I'm used to meditating through. But I notice that comparison doesn't help because I can't stop thinking Silent it's Supposed to be Silent here. Don't mess up my Vibe man...
If you were there and heard how not incredibly loud her breathing was, you would have laughed at me. Hard. ... I keep breathing and attempting to Let It Go, using Loving kindness mantras such as "Let me be free from enmity" - which I am saying pretty non-stop actually...then remember even more helpful things like: this too shall pass, which pretty much as soon as I thought that, it did. She had just done this breathing for about 2-3 minutes max.
Silence ensued. I was still irritated because felt I couldn't reach for my coffee, which I'm not supposed to have in that room anyway, but finished out meditation relatively happily, then noticed the lovely birdsong, and birds, watched the clouds go by slowly and watched the light change on the lake as the clouds moved across the sun. I wanted to have the room to myself again, but I was done so left it to her. Even though she is an interloper!
Then I came back into my room - after having taken 6:30 yoga and had breakfast before meditating - and took a sort of nap.
The message that comes to me over and over again here right now is: do less. Do Less. Do Less.
Which is why instead of racing around to every little workshop I've spent the late morning just looking out this window to a gorgeous view and remember how grateful I am to be here.
Also for great luck in not having a roommate at least so far.
Peace out from the Berkshires...what a gift.
Sunday, January 10, 2016
Notes from Retreat Limbo
I've arrived at Kripalu, a place I find wonderful to be at to restore myself, and usually arrive in mid-week, but have arrived on a Sunday, when it's All Change and The World Does Yoga (apparently)...so, while usually a room is available when I arrive, this time: no.
So, I am at the cafe waiting for my room, sipping coffee, looking over a lake in the Berkshires. Even this site isn't working properly to write this post.
Mercury in retrograde anyone? Yikes!
So, here I am, listening to people who work here gossip (nicely) in the cafe...and wondering whether I should be attempting to look in or look out for the last minutes before my room becomes available.
I think I need to stop starting paragraphs with 'so'. And perhaps this would be a good moment to meditate on Expectations...
I Expected my room to be available. (Even though it's not officially available until 4pm). I Expect to have a time as special as my last one...I may or may not.
So, (there's So again!), I think I'd best consider surrendering my preconceived idea of how this 'should' go and roll with however it does go. In my experience so far in life, when I do that, things go better. Within reason.
Plus: there is coffee. My brain is returning.
Plus: bus ride was fun and I met a young woman named Rachel who lives near me in NYC and goes to the same yoga studio I do in Washington Heights.
Plus: I'm looking at freaking Lake in the Mountains and have a few days to do Whatever I Want...that is a luxury no matter what.
Plus: I don't have to make food or do dishes!
Plus: I'm inside where it's warm when it's raining and cold outside.
Plus: did I mention: there is coffee?!
So, I think I'll be just fine thank you very much. I think there is a new moon tonight, too, so I can take that as a good sign as well (ok so new moon was yesterday, but close enough for jazz?) New beginnings of all kinds. Apparently Mercury in retrograde isn't All Bad if you're not trying to get a lot of detail shit done. It's a good time to think more deeply and recalibrate. So, perhaps, it would be good to get off of the computer - once I have a room - and do that.
Note to self: Do Not Communicate with Agents or Publishers for the next few days. Allow yourself Not to worry about all the freaking details. This is a Really Bad Time for that.
Maybe: celebrate the fact - finally - that I finished draft of book and now can relax, maybe even breathe...and allow in the next stage...this is a time to be attenuated andnot muscling through to Get to the End of something...
This may be a good time to consciously unwind. However, I wish I wasn't sitting next to this conversation between two sweet-seeming but very young 20-somethings talking about best practice spirituality...
I am definitely 52.
I am definitely not in my 20s.
The 50s are not the new 20s. And for that - let me put this on record - I am extremely grateful.
I was kind of a mess in my 20s. I'm not perfect now, but at least I'm not in my 20s.
If you are reading this and you are in your 20s, don't worry. You are probably way more together than I was. You also have the benefit of a shit ton of energy. I hope you use it well. I hope you don't surrender your will and your life over to some other person who you think for Whatever reason is better than you, more spiritually evolved, smarter, Whatever. They aren't. Trust me. They are not better than you. (Also, I am allowed to say 'they' now even though I said other person singular, because even the Washington Post says that's ok, so there.)
Also, do What you Want - you people in your 20s - this is the time to do that. Don't compromise. Yes, be responsible but include in that sense of responsibility, responsibility to your own damn deeper Self. Again - see above - don't take Anyone Else's word for what that should look like. Preferably: don't get married. Wait. Believe me. Just try to wait. Unless you really want to get married, then don't listen to me, because who the fuck am I? Just some 52 year old waiting for her room at a yoga retreat in the Berkshires...
My cursor marker is behind the cursor...that's a metaphor for something...you decide.
OK, gonna go check and see if my room is available again...and it's not...so you're stuck with me for a bit longer.
I will begin to discuss another subject close to my heart - this study about how traumatic childhood experiences can impact your health - not just mental but also physical - throughout your life. While it was hard to read, it also resonates with my recent experiences with a weird series of health things popping up and my inner sense I've had for ages of being a ticking time bomb, which is the phrase used in this article to explain the bodies of adults who had these kinds of childhood experiences whose bodies then suddenly implode on them - usually in their 40s or 50s - including with heart disease and many other more minor things. So, I'm not crazy or a hypochondriac, I was just sensitive to some deep, internal stuff. Good to know. I won't go into the details because the article is so comprehensive.
However, I qualify, and my body and life experiences have acted accordingly. Apparently the best antidotes include meditation and EMDR. I have been meditating for 20 years and have to assume that plus the intense therapy and other things I have done to address core issues is the reason I'm not batshit crazy and my heart seems OK so far. The amazing thing is no matter whether people are alcoholics, addicts or clean living, these Same health effects happen to people who experienced difficult childhoods, especially if the issues were ongoing, even if not the overtly terrible. So, if you either had that kind of childhood or know someone who has, I would highly recommend reading the article. My husband was really grateful to read it, because he said it made a lot of ways I respond to things make more sense to him. This is a huge relief to me.
I didn't even know about the childhood traumas as biologically manifesting was a thing until I went to a GI doctor for first time a couple months ago and he asked me point blank, without drama, so were abused as a child? I said yes, and we talked a bit about that. He asked if I had this or that symptom and how bad. He looked perplexed. I then happened to mention that I meditated. He smiled and nodded and said, Oh, that's it! I asked, what? He said, that's why your symptoms aren't as bad as they should be. I had been a riddle to him until I mentioned the meditation.
My joke has always been 'meditate or medicate' - and now I know - it ain't no joke.
So, to whatever power/s that led me to meditate that first morning, imperfectly, for 20 minutes, with a cigarette and coffee in 1995 or 1996...and then led me to the same sofa corner again the next day and the next and the next...every day since, I am so grateful. I don't know how I've managed to be so self-disciplined about this, but it has grooved into my life like taking a shower or brushing my teeth. I don't leave home without it, as we used to say back in the day about some stupid credit card...[a moment to reflect on how fucking weird the 1970s were...again.]
The reason I think the study about physical health effects is so important, is it Finally gives the lie to the mind-body dualism and gives Western cred to the need to address the Whole patient. That GI doctor is the First doctor in my Whole life that ever asked about my childhood. Ever.
Sometimes doctors ask you about symptoms: are you depressed? Which to me is like asking how long is a length of string. I answer no because I do not intend to take antidepressants. I meditate, do yoga, take walks, make art. I don't take drugs or drink and don't intend to become a client of the pharmaceutical state. If anyone is suicidal, of course, by all means, take Whatever will get you through the night. Whatever. Because the next day will be different...somehow. But I have rarely been suicidal, and the times were brief - and solved by either getting off certain medications or changing up things in my life or calling someone I trust implicitly or - as happened in the mid-90s - meditating.
By meditate btw I don't mean esoteric woo-woo. I mean just fucking sitting there, with eyes closed or soft-focused and Not Doing Anything. That's it. Your thoughts can go anywhere they like. Just Don't Do Anything About it...and eventually they slow down, or make you sad and you cry or make you mad and you steam or make you want to jump out of your chair but you don't and... eventually... something shifts. And you feel calmer, even if for a fraction of a second - for that fraction of a second, you see that you aren't held hostage by your thoughts or feelings, but they are like clouds or weather systems...just passing by. You are the atmosphere...or sometimes, on really good days, the whole freaking cosmos (I Rarely have those days)...
And as a spiritual mentor of mine wisely told me back in the day when Reagan was still prez, "Sometimes when you have what you think of as a 'bad' meditation - meaning mind racing, etc. - you have a calm day, and after you've had a serene meditation, you can have a crappy day." Truer words were never uttered. (This same person also told me when I called her all blissed out because I'd said a prayer to some inchoate higher power and thought that had taken my menstrual pains away - "Sometimes your Higher Power doesn't take the pain away." - like I said WISE - because I remembered those words and they saved me from some pretty dire places much later in life.)
So, if you are reading this and think, I can't meditate. Oh, yes, you can. If I can meditate, trust me, so can you. I am the world's Least Likely Meditator. But I do it. Every day. I meditated in NYC on 9/11. After the Towers had come down. You can always sit for 20-25 minutes...and if you can't, try 10 minutes, and if you can't, try 5 minutes...you get the picture.
Or, don't listen to me and find what works for you - dancing, walking, drawing, writing, Whatever...but do it every day and let it allow you to hear where you are and sit with it long enough to know it won't kill you and you don't have to keep running from yourself, your emotions, your nattering voices filled with self-hatred or resentment or rage or fear...nor do you have to run from beauty and love and good feelings. It's all OK and - you don't own a damn thing.
That's the beauty part.
Am I at a yoga retreat much?
Bwahahahahaha!
Do I act on all of the above? yes and no. I do meditate every day, but I most certainly do not carry the wisdom of that one action into my whole day. If I did, I'd probably have blown off the planet in a puff of smoke by now. I'm just another bozo on the bus as they say...
I just sit sometime during every day...and let myself become aware of who and what I am and am not.
Apparently, according the article mentioned above, this has probably saved my life.
The rain has stopped - no I didn't make that up I swear. The clouds are whisping by the mountains, green close up, blue-grey as they recede into the near horizon.
Is my room ready?
Ah, before checking, last thing - and this is going to seem hilarious as a segue - but if you know me, you'll know this is a kind of signature wheel of fortune thought process that I share with some other Gemini friends. You know who you are...
And the subject is: (drum roll please) Bernie Sanders.
What?? Politics?!
Yes. Politics. because that matters, too. Oh yes it does.
Because Bernie Sanders supporters, journalists report, say to them a lot, when gathered in rallies, "Now I know I'm not alone." This is huge, because this means for the first time since probably the 1930s (during the Depression that ushered in FDR - as most of you probably know), people in This Country (USA) are beginning to understand that their financial struggles are Not Indicative of a Personal Failing!
This horse hockey - that anyone who is poor or struggling is somehow personally deficient and should just Get Their Shit Together - has been the bread and butter propaganda - spread with the advent of the Age of Reagan in 1980 by the 1% to hold the 99% in a kind of eternal Stockholm Syndrome of Shame. So that everyone believes they can Somehow Get Rich and if they aren't, They have Failed...
I think the Sanders revolution is the beginning - well in some sense the culmination of Occupy but in terms of mainstream politics the beginning - of a real shift in awareness here. That the system is rigged in a small portion of rich folks' favor and Only Group Action can undo that.
As soon as individual Americans really begin to understand that we are not alone and shed the Shame of Struggling/Poverty/Bankruptcy because of Health Issues or Going to College - there are a gonna be a lot of Really Angry People, who will be Just as Angry as Bernie...and maybe, maybe, even in or book, bought and sold electoral system, we can Vote in a change.
I won't go negative about everyone else, except to point out at that Donald Trump will get a lot of the angry people if Sanders isn't on the ballot, because people are really, really, really sick of politicians who are bought and sold by banks and other people's money. Trump is a racist, dangerous asshat, but he's a self-funded racist, dangerous (bordering on fascist) asshat, so he says whatever he wants.
Yes, I said that, too...I could go on more, but I'm checking about my room again...Hope for your sake, it is here.
Room still not here, but will end this anyway...This is what comes of a room not being available right away, and actually, I've enjoyed finally writing all this...
So, am gonna say goodbye because room will be available in 15 minutes at the latest...and I hope to begin the Nothing Doing bit...
So, I am at the cafe waiting for my room, sipping coffee, looking over a lake in the Berkshires. Even this site isn't working properly to write this post.
Mercury in retrograde anyone? Yikes!
So, here I am, listening to people who work here gossip (nicely) in the cafe...and wondering whether I should be attempting to look in or look out for the last minutes before my room becomes available.
I think I need to stop starting paragraphs with 'so'. And perhaps this would be a good moment to meditate on Expectations...
I Expected my room to be available. (Even though it's not officially available until 4pm). I Expect to have a time as special as my last one...I may or may not.
So, (there's So again!), I think I'd best consider surrendering my preconceived idea of how this 'should' go and roll with however it does go. In my experience so far in life, when I do that, things go better. Within reason.
Plus: there is coffee. My brain is returning.
Plus: bus ride was fun and I met a young woman named Rachel who lives near me in NYC and goes to the same yoga studio I do in Washington Heights.
Plus: I'm looking at freaking Lake in the Mountains and have a few days to do Whatever I Want...that is a luxury no matter what.
Plus: I don't have to make food or do dishes!
Plus: I'm inside where it's warm when it's raining and cold outside.
Plus: did I mention: there is coffee?!
So, I think I'll be just fine thank you very much. I think there is a new moon tonight, too, so I can take that as a good sign as well (ok so new moon was yesterday, but close enough for jazz?) New beginnings of all kinds. Apparently Mercury in retrograde isn't All Bad if you're not trying to get a lot of detail shit done. It's a good time to think more deeply and recalibrate. So, perhaps, it would be good to get off of the computer - once I have a room - and do that.
Note to self: Do Not Communicate with Agents or Publishers for the next few days. Allow yourself Not to worry about all the freaking details. This is a Really Bad Time for that.
Maybe: celebrate the fact - finally - that I finished draft of book and now can relax, maybe even breathe...and allow in the next stage...this is a time to be attenuated andnot muscling through to Get to the End of something...
This may be a good time to consciously unwind. However, I wish I wasn't sitting next to this conversation between two sweet-seeming but very young 20-somethings talking about best practice spirituality...
I am definitely 52.
I am definitely not in my 20s.
The 50s are not the new 20s. And for that - let me put this on record - I am extremely grateful.
I was kind of a mess in my 20s. I'm not perfect now, but at least I'm not in my 20s.
If you are reading this and you are in your 20s, don't worry. You are probably way more together than I was. You also have the benefit of a shit ton of energy. I hope you use it well. I hope you don't surrender your will and your life over to some other person who you think for Whatever reason is better than you, more spiritually evolved, smarter, Whatever. They aren't. Trust me. They are not better than you. (Also, I am allowed to say 'they' now even though I said other person singular, because even the Washington Post says that's ok, so there.)
Also, do What you Want - you people in your 20s - this is the time to do that. Don't compromise. Yes, be responsible but include in that sense of responsibility, responsibility to your own damn deeper Self. Again - see above - don't take Anyone Else's word for what that should look like. Preferably: don't get married. Wait. Believe me. Just try to wait. Unless you really want to get married, then don't listen to me, because who the fuck am I? Just some 52 year old waiting for her room at a yoga retreat in the Berkshires...
My cursor marker is behind the cursor...that's a metaphor for something...you decide.
OK, gonna go check and see if my room is available again...and it's not...so you're stuck with me for a bit longer.
I will begin to discuss another subject close to my heart - this study about how traumatic childhood experiences can impact your health - not just mental but also physical - throughout your life. While it was hard to read, it also resonates with my recent experiences with a weird series of health things popping up and my inner sense I've had for ages of being a ticking time bomb, which is the phrase used in this article to explain the bodies of adults who had these kinds of childhood experiences whose bodies then suddenly implode on them - usually in their 40s or 50s - including with heart disease and many other more minor things. So, I'm not crazy or a hypochondriac, I was just sensitive to some deep, internal stuff. Good to know. I won't go into the details because the article is so comprehensive.
However, I qualify, and my body and life experiences have acted accordingly. Apparently the best antidotes include meditation and EMDR. I have been meditating for 20 years and have to assume that plus the intense therapy and other things I have done to address core issues is the reason I'm not batshit crazy and my heart seems OK so far. The amazing thing is no matter whether people are alcoholics, addicts or clean living, these Same health effects happen to people who experienced difficult childhoods, especially if the issues were ongoing, even if not the overtly terrible. So, if you either had that kind of childhood or know someone who has, I would highly recommend reading the article. My husband was really grateful to read it, because he said it made a lot of ways I respond to things make more sense to him. This is a huge relief to me.
I didn't even know about the childhood traumas as biologically manifesting was a thing until I went to a GI doctor for first time a couple months ago and he asked me point blank, without drama, so were abused as a child? I said yes, and we talked a bit about that. He asked if I had this or that symptom and how bad. He looked perplexed. I then happened to mention that I meditated. He smiled and nodded and said, Oh, that's it! I asked, what? He said, that's why your symptoms aren't as bad as they should be. I had been a riddle to him until I mentioned the meditation.
My joke has always been 'meditate or medicate' - and now I know - it ain't no joke.
So, to whatever power/s that led me to meditate that first morning, imperfectly, for 20 minutes, with a cigarette and coffee in 1995 or 1996...and then led me to the same sofa corner again the next day and the next and the next...every day since, I am so grateful. I don't know how I've managed to be so self-disciplined about this, but it has grooved into my life like taking a shower or brushing my teeth. I don't leave home without it, as we used to say back in the day about some stupid credit card...[a moment to reflect on how fucking weird the 1970s were...again.]
The reason I think the study about physical health effects is so important, is it Finally gives the lie to the mind-body dualism and gives Western cred to the need to address the Whole patient. That GI doctor is the First doctor in my Whole life that ever asked about my childhood. Ever.
Sometimes doctors ask you about symptoms: are you depressed? Which to me is like asking how long is a length of string. I answer no because I do not intend to take antidepressants. I meditate, do yoga, take walks, make art. I don't take drugs or drink and don't intend to become a client of the pharmaceutical state. If anyone is suicidal, of course, by all means, take Whatever will get you through the night. Whatever. Because the next day will be different...somehow. But I have rarely been suicidal, and the times were brief - and solved by either getting off certain medications or changing up things in my life or calling someone I trust implicitly or - as happened in the mid-90s - meditating.
By meditate btw I don't mean esoteric woo-woo. I mean just fucking sitting there, with eyes closed or soft-focused and Not Doing Anything. That's it. Your thoughts can go anywhere they like. Just Don't Do Anything About it...and eventually they slow down, or make you sad and you cry or make you mad and you steam or make you want to jump out of your chair but you don't and... eventually... something shifts. And you feel calmer, even if for a fraction of a second - for that fraction of a second, you see that you aren't held hostage by your thoughts or feelings, but they are like clouds or weather systems...just passing by. You are the atmosphere...or sometimes, on really good days, the whole freaking cosmos (I Rarely have those days)...
And as a spiritual mentor of mine wisely told me back in the day when Reagan was still prez, "Sometimes when you have what you think of as a 'bad' meditation - meaning mind racing, etc. - you have a calm day, and after you've had a serene meditation, you can have a crappy day." Truer words were never uttered. (This same person also told me when I called her all blissed out because I'd said a prayer to some inchoate higher power and thought that had taken my menstrual pains away - "Sometimes your Higher Power doesn't take the pain away." - like I said WISE - because I remembered those words and they saved me from some pretty dire places much later in life.)
So, if you are reading this and think, I can't meditate. Oh, yes, you can. If I can meditate, trust me, so can you. I am the world's Least Likely Meditator. But I do it. Every day. I meditated in NYC on 9/11. After the Towers had come down. You can always sit for 20-25 minutes...and if you can't, try 10 minutes, and if you can't, try 5 minutes...you get the picture.
Or, don't listen to me and find what works for you - dancing, walking, drawing, writing, Whatever...but do it every day and let it allow you to hear where you are and sit with it long enough to know it won't kill you and you don't have to keep running from yourself, your emotions, your nattering voices filled with self-hatred or resentment or rage or fear...nor do you have to run from beauty and love and good feelings. It's all OK and - you don't own a damn thing.
That's the beauty part.
Am I at a yoga retreat much?
Bwahahahahaha!
Do I act on all of the above? yes and no. I do meditate every day, but I most certainly do not carry the wisdom of that one action into my whole day. If I did, I'd probably have blown off the planet in a puff of smoke by now. I'm just another bozo on the bus as they say...
I just sit sometime during every day...and let myself become aware of who and what I am and am not.
Apparently, according the article mentioned above, this has probably saved my life.
The rain has stopped - no I didn't make that up I swear. The clouds are whisping by the mountains, green close up, blue-grey as they recede into the near horizon.
Is my room ready?
Ah, before checking, last thing - and this is going to seem hilarious as a segue - but if you know me, you'll know this is a kind of signature wheel of fortune thought process that I share with some other Gemini friends. You know who you are...
And the subject is: (drum roll please) Bernie Sanders.
What?? Politics?!
Yes. Politics. because that matters, too. Oh yes it does.
Because Bernie Sanders supporters, journalists report, say to them a lot, when gathered in rallies, "Now I know I'm not alone." This is huge, because this means for the first time since probably the 1930s (during the Depression that ushered in FDR - as most of you probably know), people in This Country (USA) are beginning to understand that their financial struggles are Not Indicative of a Personal Failing!
This horse hockey - that anyone who is poor or struggling is somehow personally deficient and should just Get Their Shit Together - has been the bread and butter propaganda - spread with the advent of the Age of Reagan in 1980 by the 1% to hold the 99% in a kind of eternal Stockholm Syndrome of Shame. So that everyone believes they can Somehow Get Rich and if they aren't, They have Failed...
I think the Sanders revolution is the beginning - well in some sense the culmination of Occupy but in terms of mainstream politics the beginning - of a real shift in awareness here. That the system is rigged in a small portion of rich folks' favor and Only Group Action can undo that.
As soon as individual Americans really begin to understand that we are not alone and shed the Shame of Struggling/Poverty/Bankruptcy because of Health Issues or Going to College - there are a gonna be a lot of Really Angry People, who will be Just as Angry as Bernie...and maybe, maybe, even in or book, bought and sold electoral system, we can Vote in a change.
I won't go negative about everyone else, except to point out at that Donald Trump will get a lot of the angry people if Sanders isn't on the ballot, because people are really, really, really sick of politicians who are bought and sold by banks and other people's money. Trump is a racist, dangerous asshat, but he's a self-funded racist, dangerous (bordering on fascist) asshat, so he says whatever he wants.
Yes, I said that, too...I could go on more, but I'm checking about my room again...Hope for your sake, it is here.
Room still not here, but will end this anyway...This is what comes of a room not being available right away, and actually, I've enjoyed finally writing all this...
So, am gonna say goodbye because room will be available in 15 minutes at the latest...and I hope to begin the Nothing Doing bit...
Sunday, March 29, 2015
Reading book draft, Yoga & Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
Since my last post, I have continued taking the wonderful Sunday night Kripalu yoga class for which I remain extraordinarily grateful.
Today, during a restorative fish pose (blocks holding up chest and head), I felt the weight of the world fall off of me and a sense of instead being buoyed up by the earth. Hard to describe what created that sensation, but it involved - oddly enough - the fleeting thought that at 51 years old, there are now many more people younger than me than are older than me on this earth. I felt an accompanying lightness, realizing that I've done my bit to try to change things, etc. and now there are all these younger people who have their chance to make their mark. I'm free now to write and do what I want to do. That might sound selfish, I don't know, but to me - who's spent so much time trying to hold up the world (not that anyone asked me to do so, mind you, but nonetheless I heeded some kind of sense of call...), this is a huge relief.
At another point during relaxation, I felt another weight being taken off of me - that of shame and the fear that shame engenders - the fear of being seen, of being violated, or violence being done to me - physical mostly. There are more prosaic fears of being embarrassed and such, but the haunting quote from Margaret Atwood comes to mind whenever I am writing about certain subjects. "Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them."
If you happen to have the fun role of being a female writer and are writing about certain issues that are close to home, these fears can gain purchase on your soul. But underneath those fears, far more corrosive, is the shame - especially if you grow up in the largest special interest group in the world: women. Does it start with Genesis if you grow up Judeo-Christian? The rap of being the one who started the fall? Patriarchal laws/culture, etc.? I don't know. I know there's a lot of personal crap that plays into this for me, too - along with an intergenerational shame wave - for lack of a better way of putting it.
Nonetheless, while reading the draft of the book (which task I have now completed), waves of this shame and fear were palpable and close to silencing. Fears of retaliation, of people being hurt, of anger at what I am revealing, etc. can be so intense I just want to throw in the proverbial towel. But instead, I kept reading, and talking about this issue with a few trusted friends, who have assured me it's normal and to keep going.
So, when in yoga there was this sensation of that shame and fear being lifted off of me, I felt like I could breathe free for the first time maybe like ever...I feel it again now writing about it (the shame/fear nexus) but I have made a decision - that has been supported by yoga and meditation - to allow for this discomfort and not act on it.
Today, the shame trigger was reposting something on Facebook about a woman who realized she had been in an abusive relationship. Just reposting That put me in a shame-fear spiral. (Facebook is deeply weird when it comes to attempting to share anything real, but that's another post - and should show you how deeply out of kilter I am with the world of having A Brand - as in I'd rather kill myself than do that - or should I say, if I did that, I'd already be dead even if there was a body walking around - is this why there is an obsession with zombies these days? but I digress.)
Which leads me - believe it or don't - to Tina Fey's new television series Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. What? you say, why would a comedy about a woman who is saved from having been kept captive underground by a cult leader who convinced his captives the world had ended be something that would matter to me? Bwahahahaha.
Well, anyone who saw or knows the subject matter for My First Autograce Homeography (1973-74) may be able to answer that trick question. Even though I was not - thank goodness - held hostage for any huge amount of time, I was for somewhere between 24-48 hrs (I was 10 and the whole last couple crazy days were - crazy - and included a psycho caretaker - I've written about this before so won't repeat - but that also involved a 4 month run-up of brainwashing etc.).
When I was living with my psycho babysitter, she convinced people I was evil and that I had done things I knew I had not done. I also challenged her when she convinced people to play boardgames wrong, etc. As in this comedy, I was not looked upon kindly and was chided or punished. But when I was saved in the end, I was - while battered - not broken. A therapist I worked with found this incredible. I find it incredible.
The reason I love the TV show is that the main character is portrayed as having resisted the cult leader and her main emotion - upon being rescued is: hooray the world is still here! And she makes the very sensible decision of not going back to Indiana after they have been interviewed in NYC and instead goes AWOL to live in New York.
How could I Not Love This Show?!!
Even though it's a sit-com and obviously not an in-depth look at the whole situation, watching this woman navigate life afterwards, including what amounts to PTSD, etc. is extraordinarily funny (because Tina Fey is a genius and the casting is brilliant) and ALSO healing.
Happily, for me, I was watching this show on Netflix while reading the draft of the book about my grandmothers. This buoyed my spirits and made it possible to move through.
Well, that and the yoga, meditation and some great friends and John, my beloved Canadian.
So, that's been my last coupla weeks...Tomorrow: Rewrites. (Besides emotional stuff, reading draft also showed massive redundancy, some gaping holes and lots of stuff that needs to be written - you know - better. However, on the positive side of the ledger - some pages were good here and there - and there is a there there. A book exists. However imperfect and in need of help. It's there. Hooray.)
Oh, should mention, when I finished reading the book draft, I bowed to my Ganesha statuettes, a Buddha tapestry, my ancestors (grandmothers, grandfathers, fathers', mother) and then to me when I was young. At which pointed I cried and cried and cried, because I had survived. These were good, healing tears.
No matter what else happens with this book, it's brought me to this place. And for that I am profoundly grateful.
Today, during a restorative fish pose (blocks holding up chest and head), I felt the weight of the world fall off of me and a sense of instead being buoyed up by the earth. Hard to describe what created that sensation, but it involved - oddly enough - the fleeting thought that at 51 years old, there are now many more people younger than me than are older than me on this earth. I felt an accompanying lightness, realizing that I've done my bit to try to change things, etc. and now there are all these younger people who have their chance to make their mark. I'm free now to write and do what I want to do. That might sound selfish, I don't know, but to me - who's spent so much time trying to hold up the world (not that anyone asked me to do so, mind you, but nonetheless I heeded some kind of sense of call...), this is a huge relief.
At another point during relaxation, I felt another weight being taken off of me - that of shame and the fear that shame engenders - the fear of being seen, of being violated, or violence being done to me - physical mostly. There are more prosaic fears of being embarrassed and such, but the haunting quote from Margaret Atwood comes to mind whenever I am writing about certain subjects. "Men are afraid women will laugh at them. Women are afraid men will kill them."
If you happen to have the fun role of being a female writer and are writing about certain issues that are close to home, these fears can gain purchase on your soul. But underneath those fears, far more corrosive, is the shame - especially if you grow up in the largest special interest group in the world: women. Does it start with Genesis if you grow up Judeo-Christian? The rap of being the one who started the fall? Patriarchal laws/culture, etc.? I don't know. I know there's a lot of personal crap that plays into this for me, too - along with an intergenerational shame wave - for lack of a better way of putting it.
Nonetheless, while reading the draft of the book (which task I have now completed), waves of this shame and fear were palpable and close to silencing. Fears of retaliation, of people being hurt, of anger at what I am revealing, etc. can be so intense I just want to throw in the proverbial towel. But instead, I kept reading, and talking about this issue with a few trusted friends, who have assured me it's normal and to keep going.
So, when in yoga there was this sensation of that shame and fear being lifted off of me, I felt like I could breathe free for the first time maybe like ever...I feel it again now writing about it (the shame/fear nexus) but I have made a decision - that has been supported by yoga and meditation - to allow for this discomfort and not act on it.
Today, the shame trigger was reposting something on Facebook about a woman who realized she had been in an abusive relationship. Just reposting That put me in a shame-fear spiral. (Facebook is deeply weird when it comes to attempting to share anything real, but that's another post - and should show you how deeply out of kilter I am with the world of having A Brand - as in I'd rather kill myself than do that - or should I say, if I did that, I'd already be dead even if there was a body walking around - is this why there is an obsession with zombies these days? but I digress.)
Which leads me - believe it or don't - to Tina Fey's new television series Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. What? you say, why would a comedy about a woman who is saved from having been kept captive underground by a cult leader who convinced his captives the world had ended be something that would matter to me? Bwahahahaha.
Well, anyone who saw or knows the subject matter for My First Autograce Homeography (1973-74) may be able to answer that trick question. Even though I was not - thank goodness - held hostage for any huge amount of time, I was for somewhere between 24-48 hrs (I was 10 and the whole last couple crazy days were - crazy - and included a psycho caretaker - I've written about this before so won't repeat - but that also involved a 4 month run-up of brainwashing etc.).
When I was living with my psycho babysitter, she convinced people I was evil and that I had done things I knew I had not done. I also challenged her when she convinced people to play boardgames wrong, etc. As in this comedy, I was not looked upon kindly and was chided or punished. But when I was saved in the end, I was - while battered - not broken. A therapist I worked with found this incredible. I find it incredible.
The reason I love the TV show is that the main character is portrayed as having resisted the cult leader and her main emotion - upon being rescued is: hooray the world is still here! And she makes the very sensible decision of not going back to Indiana after they have been interviewed in NYC and instead goes AWOL to live in New York.
How could I Not Love This Show?!!
Even though it's a sit-com and obviously not an in-depth look at the whole situation, watching this woman navigate life afterwards, including what amounts to PTSD, etc. is extraordinarily funny (because Tina Fey is a genius and the casting is brilliant) and ALSO healing.
Happily, for me, I was watching this show on Netflix while reading the draft of the book about my grandmothers. This buoyed my spirits and made it possible to move through.
Well, that and the yoga, meditation and some great friends and John, my beloved Canadian.
So, that's been my last coupla weeks...Tomorrow: Rewrites. (Besides emotional stuff, reading draft also showed massive redundancy, some gaping holes and lots of stuff that needs to be written - you know - better. However, on the positive side of the ledger - some pages were good here and there - and there is a there there. A book exists. However imperfect and in need of help. It's there. Hooray.)
Oh, should mention, when I finished reading the book draft, I bowed to my Ganesha statuettes, a Buddha tapestry, my ancestors (grandmothers, grandfathers, fathers', mother) and then to me when I was young. At which pointed I cried and cried and cried, because I had survived. These were good, healing tears.
No matter what else happens with this book, it's brought me to this place. And for that I am profoundly grateful.
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Of Loving Kindness and U.S. Foreign Policy debates
So the good news is my weekend at Kripalu with Stephen Cope & Sharon Salzberg rocked. Stockbridge, Mass. this time of year at the top of a mountain is kind of breathtaking - all burnt orange and yellow trees surrounding a glistening lake that mists up at times and looks like a magic dragon may emerge any moment…That kinda thing.
Cope and Salzberg are refreshingly no bullshit people with yoga and meditation practices, so the idea of loving kindness coming from them does not sound like a bad commercial, but instead a rigorous heart opening process that has nothing to do with being rolled or laying down your principles. Salzberg, in case like me you didn't know, was born in the Bronx. She now lives in NYC and is the least sentimental person you'll ever want to meet, while still being a staunch advocate for 'metta meditation.' We learned that metta doesn't actually mean loving kindness but instead friendliness, so it's a way of making friends with the world essentially. As I write it, it all sounds a little hooey, and when I first came upon this concept, it kinda made me ill, but in practice, it's quite powerful.
More about this once I calm down about horrendous foreign policy debate I just watched in which there was No difference between the Republican and Democrat so they were just posturing for position. Obama is of course smarter and all that, but the reason I for one cannot work for him this year is that he's made it OK for the U.S. to overtly assassinate "our enemy," in this case of course Osama bin Laden.
I know I'm in a minority of like 3 or something but I for one don't think it was a good idea to assassinate bin Laden. If we believe any of the bullshit we profess in this country about human rights and yadeyada, then we should have captured him and brought him to trial. But that would be messy and might bring out things we'd rather avoid like the fact - oh say - that we created bin Laden in the first place when he was useful to us, etc.
I was in NYC on 9/11 so please, no, don't send in cards and letters telling me I don't know what happened here. I do know what happened here. I smelled burning flesh, plastic and metal for weeks on end, saw missing people photos everywhere, handed cookies to firemen. You name it. Knew people who died. The works. It was horrendous but I thought then and feel now that adding to that level of violence would do nothing and in fact would make matters worse, which it did and has.
Let's review: Pakistan for instance. Can you seriously say we have made that a better place or a worse place? What about all the people who have died from 'drones' - Drones, as in planes that fly without people in them and drop bombs. Planes that come from oh say Nevada and kill people - actual people - people like you and me - in say Pakistan, like a lot. A lot of people. Some of these people may be so-called 'enemies' whatever the fuck that means, but most of them, I'm willing to bet you lots and lots of money, are just 'normal people' (i.e., like you and me: care about their kids, want a nice life, etc…all that shit). Living in NYC on 9/11/01, we got a first hand look at what that's like. One moment, it's a beautiful sunny day, next moment, massive destruction and thousands of people dead. Poof, like that. Out of Fucking Nowhere. (I should note here that many people who lived in NYC that day did not want to see more violence and in fact marched against more violence a couple weeks after all this happened, while the site was still burning. I challenge you to find another city with people who would do that.)
I could go on. It's like shooting fish in a barrel, but I won't, because the list of the worst abuses of U.S. military power is longer than Proust's Remembrance of Things Past (ironic because of course we remember nothing - so convenient our collective amnesia that we protest over and over again is 'innocence' rather than the willful ignorance that it is - so like when 9/11 happens, we can say: why on earth did those horrible people do that to us? As if we did nothing at all to bring it on. Seriously? Take a look at history, kids).
I will vote for Obama because of healthcare reform and my (and many others') need of it. I also see no viable alternative. I voted for Nader for many election cycles beginning in 1996, because Clinton ditched the social safety need so he could get re-elected, and I realized all he had accomplished was finishing Reagan's agenda. I voted for Obama in 2008 because I wanted to see us move away from racism in the U.S. I knew he'd be the pragmatic president he has been. I did not believe he was the second coming, so I'm not disappointed. However, I cannot condone assassination, keeping Gitmo open and the ongoing death of civil liberties under the excuse of "needing to be secure." Therefore, I cannot make phone calls like I did in 2008 (from London to Ohio, Indiana, etc.) or advocate for Obama to my more purist left-wing friends. I can only nod in agreement and explain the reason for my vote.
I also believe that Romney winning could signal the end of Roe v. Wade and make life harder for many people who are not rich.
But as for foreign policy, there isn't even a tiny shaft of light between them other than maybe military spending and that's all bluster anyway. If it's fictional dollars you're pushing around, you can say anything.
Loving kindness then…where does that fit in? This way: respect for all people involved even when I violently disagree with them. Realizing that even if I so disagree those people do believe in what they are saying and doing. At the same time, compassion for myself and my own point of view and fighting for it all the way. It's not about laying down and dying. It's about staying clear on my own intentions, am I trying to gain points? Just prove I'm right? Or is there a principle at stake larger than my ego?
As Gandhi said, if you aren't fighting because you are afraid to fight, you should fight. Non-violence is not for pacifists, it is for warriors. You need a lot of faith and courage to act non-violently, because there's a good chance you will get hurt or even die, which is of course true. I don't know if I'm up to it. It remains an aspiration for me.
Speaking of warriors, I am now reading Stephen Cope's newest book The Great Work of Your Life, which is his riff on the Bhagavad Gita as it relates to how we make our way through life. It's worth a read. Will write more about it when I've finished the book but his first book Yoga and the Quest for the True Self had a profound effect on my life and also ended up in my PhD thesis in regard to his take on the witness. He's that kind of smart, but also astonishingly compassionate and down to earth. Just trust me on this one people. Read his stuff. My stepfather Tom gave me his first book and at the time I almost hurled it across the room. So not into yoga or those who did yoga was I. In fact I thought people who did yoga were full of all kinds of shit. His book, from the perspective of a skeptical Western psychoanalyst finding his way to Kripalu and his experience with others who had done the same shifted my prejudices. I now am yet another person who swears by yoga (in addition to my years of meditation), not only as a way to move my body but all the other paths as well (meditation, karma, etc…)
I can't believe I found a positive way to end this blog post but I did. I will stay there for now. The debates were just too depressing to even think about.
Cope and Salzberg are refreshingly no bullshit people with yoga and meditation practices, so the idea of loving kindness coming from them does not sound like a bad commercial, but instead a rigorous heart opening process that has nothing to do with being rolled or laying down your principles. Salzberg, in case like me you didn't know, was born in the Bronx. She now lives in NYC and is the least sentimental person you'll ever want to meet, while still being a staunch advocate for 'metta meditation.' We learned that metta doesn't actually mean loving kindness but instead friendliness, so it's a way of making friends with the world essentially. As I write it, it all sounds a little hooey, and when I first came upon this concept, it kinda made me ill, but in practice, it's quite powerful.
More about this once I calm down about horrendous foreign policy debate I just watched in which there was No difference between the Republican and Democrat so they were just posturing for position. Obama is of course smarter and all that, but the reason I for one cannot work for him this year is that he's made it OK for the U.S. to overtly assassinate "our enemy," in this case of course Osama bin Laden.
I know I'm in a minority of like 3 or something but I for one don't think it was a good idea to assassinate bin Laden. If we believe any of the bullshit we profess in this country about human rights and yadeyada, then we should have captured him and brought him to trial. But that would be messy and might bring out things we'd rather avoid like the fact - oh say - that we created bin Laden in the first place when he was useful to us, etc.
I was in NYC on 9/11 so please, no, don't send in cards and letters telling me I don't know what happened here. I do know what happened here. I smelled burning flesh, plastic and metal for weeks on end, saw missing people photos everywhere, handed cookies to firemen. You name it. Knew people who died. The works. It was horrendous but I thought then and feel now that adding to that level of violence would do nothing and in fact would make matters worse, which it did and has.
Let's review: Pakistan for instance. Can you seriously say we have made that a better place or a worse place? What about all the people who have died from 'drones' - Drones, as in planes that fly without people in them and drop bombs. Planes that come from oh say Nevada and kill people - actual people - people like you and me - in say Pakistan, like a lot. A lot of people. Some of these people may be so-called 'enemies' whatever the fuck that means, but most of them, I'm willing to bet you lots and lots of money, are just 'normal people' (i.e., like you and me: care about their kids, want a nice life, etc…all that shit). Living in NYC on 9/11/01, we got a first hand look at what that's like. One moment, it's a beautiful sunny day, next moment, massive destruction and thousands of people dead. Poof, like that. Out of Fucking Nowhere. (I should note here that many people who lived in NYC that day did not want to see more violence and in fact marched against more violence a couple weeks after all this happened, while the site was still burning. I challenge you to find another city with people who would do that.)
I could go on. It's like shooting fish in a barrel, but I won't, because the list of the worst abuses of U.S. military power is longer than Proust's Remembrance of Things Past (ironic because of course we remember nothing - so convenient our collective amnesia that we protest over and over again is 'innocence' rather than the willful ignorance that it is - so like when 9/11 happens, we can say: why on earth did those horrible people do that to us? As if we did nothing at all to bring it on. Seriously? Take a look at history, kids).
I will vote for Obama because of healthcare reform and my (and many others') need of it. I also see no viable alternative. I voted for Nader for many election cycles beginning in 1996, because Clinton ditched the social safety need so he could get re-elected, and I realized all he had accomplished was finishing Reagan's agenda. I voted for Obama in 2008 because I wanted to see us move away from racism in the U.S. I knew he'd be the pragmatic president he has been. I did not believe he was the second coming, so I'm not disappointed. However, I cannot condone assassination, keeping Gitmo open and the ongoing death of civil liberties under the excuse of "needing to be secure." Therefore, I cannot make phone calls like I did in 2008 (from London to Ohio, Indiana, etc.) or advocate for Obama to my more purist left-wing friends. I can only nod in agreement and explain the reason for my vote.
I also believe that Romney winning could signal the end of Roe v. Wade and make life harder for many people who are not rich.
But as for foreign policy, there isn't even a tiny shaft of light between them other than maybe military spending and that's all bluster anyway. If it's fictional dollars you're pushing around, you can say anything.
Loving kindness then…where does that fit in? This way: respect for all people involved even when I violently disagree with them. Realizing that even if I so disagree those people do believe in what they are saying and doing. At the same time, compassion for myself and my own point of view and fighting for it all the way. It's not about laying down and dying. It's about staying clear on my own intentions, am I trying to gain points? Just prove I'm right? Or is there a principle at stake larger than my ego?
As Gandhi said, if you aren't fighting because you are afraid to fight, you should fight. Non-violence is not for pacifists, it is for warriors. You need a lot of faith and courage to act non-violently, because there's a good chance you will get hurt or even die, which is of course true. I don't know if I'm up to it. It remains an aspiration for me.
Speaking of warriors, I am now reading Stephen Cope's newest book The Great Work of Your Life, which is his riff on the Bhagavad Gita as it relates to how we make our way through life. It's worth a read. Will write more about it when I've finished the book but his first book Yoga and the Quest for the True Self had a profound effect on my life and also ended up in my PhD thesis in regard to his take on the witness. He's that kind of smart, but also astonishingly compassionate and down to earth. Just trust me on this one people. Read his stuff. My stepfather Tom gave me his first book and at the time I almost hurled it across the room. So not into yoga or those who did yoga was I. In fact I thought people who did yoga were full of all kinds of shit. His book, from the perspective of a skeptical Western psychoanalyst finding his way to Kripalu and his experience with others who had done the same shifted my prejudices. I now am yet another person who swears by yoga (in addition to my years of meditation), not only as a way to move my body but all the other paths as well (meditation, karma, etc…)
I can't believe I found a positive way to end this blog post but I did. I will stay there for now. The debates were just too depressing to even think about.
Thursday, October 18, 2012
We live in financial times in D.C., Writing, Old Friends, Autumn...
First, I want to announce a kind of cool event the day before the election in Washington, D.C., which is a staged reading of my play We live in financial times, Part 1: Blackberry Curve at Busboys & Poets with a very special guest speaker for the talk-back afterwards: the economist Dean Baker. He's the dude that predicted the 2008 financial crash/meltdown. Of course everyone thought he was Chicken Little when of course he was Cassandra (the chick who was always predicting disasters no one believed, but then turned out to be true - typical Greek tragedy stuff...).
So, it should be a rolicking good time. Busboys & Poets is a great series of cafes that host artistic, political and community events. My good friend-colleague Marietta Hedges has set this up and she will be playing a key role in the performance. I will be kind of parachuting in as director/writer working with people I've never met that Marietta has assembled (I trust her implicitly, so know that they will all be great but still it's gonna be a little like speed dating theater-style).
It is an exciting event and if you are in or around D.C. and don't want to spend the whole day before the election biting your nails or tearing your hair out or rending garments, this is another option...
I have been moving along down the road albeit slowly with the grandmothers. Go in and out of my ability to be in that territory. Just when I feel I may be trampled underfoot by depression, I have - thank God/dess - an acting class to go teach. The students and the work we are doing combined never fails to drag me out of the funk. It reminds me once again I most likely need to move between both these poles - the introspective, writing place and the play with others in a space place...
Meanwhile, went to a panel discussion last night at the Strand that including some very interesting authors, including Elizabeth Nunez (also a prof at Hunter) whose book Boundaries sounds fabulous (about the boundaries of expatriation/immigration, etc. - a subject close to my heart) and my old friend from high school, David Maine, whose book The Age of Madness I've written about here already. What was great about this panel was the questions to the authors were about their process as writers and because they all have a lot of experience and all write incredibly well their answers were particularly enlightening, especially in that they all have different processes. So instead of the weird sense you can get at these things that there is a consensus way to write, it became obvious that everyone has their own way, their own demons and their own ways to move through them.
Seeing Dave brought the usual strange nostalgia pull of The Past in all its weird semi-glorious semi-numinous sense of possibility and regret for paths not taken...and the simultaneous realization that those cannot have been taken because we are who we are, etc...(please see T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets for Far better description of this phenomenon than this hatchet job...)
Finally, it is autumn here in NYC finally. Still pretty warm but every once in a while the crispness of the season. I find it indescribably wonderful, to see leaves changing, smell that cool sharpness and see the colors against the blue blue sky.
I'm off to Kripalu this weekend to do a workshop with two meditation/yoga superheros of mine: Sharon Salzberg and Stephen Cope. Every time I've gone to Kripalu it's been life-altering. I doubt this time will be any different, even if it is only a weekend. I will be sharing a room with my mother. This was our alternative to go going to a spa in an attempt to heal from the trauma of losing my step-father/her husband, Tom. No idea how that will be for either of us, but it's worth the attempt.
Back to preparing for acting class with my lovely students, who are working on showing their dreams through objects...and can I say, doing it incredibly well.
So, it should be a rolicking good time. Busboys & Poets is a great series of cafes that host artistic, political and community events. My good friend-colleague Marietta Hedges has set this up and she will be playing a key role in the performance. I will be kind of parachuting in as director/writer working with people I've never met that Marietta has assembled (I trust her implicitly, so know that they will all be great but still it's gonna be a little like speed dating theater-style).
It is an exciting event and if you are in or around D.C. and don't want to spend the whole day before the election biting your nails or tearing your hair out or rending garments, this is another option...
I have been moving along down the road albeit slowly with the grandmothers. Go in and out of my ability to be in that territory. Just when I feel I may be trampled underfoot by depression, I have - thank God/dess - an acting class to go teach. The students and the work we are doing combined never fails to drag me out of the funk. It reminds me once again I most likely need to move between both these poles - the introspective, writing place and the play with others in a space place...
Meanwhile, went to a panel discussion last night at the Strand that including some very interesting authors, including Elizabeth Nunez (also a prof at Hunter) whose book Boundaries sounds fabulous (about the boundaries of expatriation/immigration, etc. - a subject close to my heart) and my old friend from high school, David Maine, whose book The Age of Madness I've written about here already. What was great about this panel was the questions to the authors were about their process as writers and because they all have a lot of experience and all write incredibly well their answers were particularly enlightening, especially in that they all have different processes. So instead of the weird sense you can get at these things that there is a consensus way to write, it became obvious that everyone has their own way, their own demons and their own ways to move through them.
Seeing Dave brought the usual strange nostalgia pull of The Past in all its weird semi-glorious semi-numinous sense of possibility and regret for paths not taken...and the simultaneous realization that those cannot have been taken because we are who we are, etc...(please see T.S. Eliot's Four Quartets for Far better description of this phenomenon than this hatchet job...)
Finally, it is autumn here in NYC finally. Still pretty warm but every once in a while the crispness of the season. I find it indescribably wonderful, to see leaves changing, smell that cool sharpness and see the colors against the blue blue sky.
I'm off to Kripalu this weekend to do a workshop with two meditation/yoga superheros of mine: Sharon Salzberg and Stephen Cope. Every time I've gone to Kripalu it's been life-altering. I doubt this time will be any different, even if it is only a weekend. I will be sharing a room with my mother. This was our alternative to go going to a spa in an attempt to heal from the trauma of losing my step-father/her husband, Tom. No idea how that will be for either of us, but it's worth the attempt.
Back to preparing for acting class with my lovely students, who are working on showing their dreams through objects...and can I say, doing it incredibly well.
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