Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.
~ Semisonic – Closing Time

I’ve always been a sucker for new year’s resolutions. The promise of renewal and starting fresh enchants me. Granted, I barely recall a resolution of significance I’ve made in year’s past. They were usually short and sweet: read the newspaper more, or stop eating Twizzlers. Mine were beautifully concrete and simple to adopt.

Renewal at the end of yoga class in the form of savasana (corpse pose) was a whole different story. Apparently I’ve never been a fan of what inevitably comes before re-birth: death. In the early days I would crawl out of my skin in corpse pose, due to my difficulty being still combined with my dis-ease of mortality. I would literally run for the door in those moments.  I had deluded justifications at the time – “gotta get back to work…gotta hop in the shower….gotta make it to my dinner plans…gotta beat the rush hour traffic.”   Time and time again I heard from my yoga teachers that corpse pose is the opportunity to reap the benefits of the yoga practice. This only added further dissonance and guilt within me.  I now think of the energy I put towards distracting from the very thing we can be certain of in this lifetime: goodbyes.

I’m not the only one uncomfortable with corpse pose. Who wants to think about death, let alone practice it after feeling so alive and vital from a yoga class?  Yet we know death happens every day in various forms. Relationships come and go.  Friends relocate.  Clients walk out the door of my office never to be heard from again. Several of my dearest friends have watched a parent die from cancer. I’ve watched my own mother succumb to dementia for the past decade, an intellectual death in the very least.  She embodies the image of a person I recognize, but the interactions can feel like that of a stranger.  Like my savasana practice, I would run for the door of my mother’s home, particularly during the confusing early years of her illness.  I was eager to escape the discomfort of her declining condition.  Just about anything else seemed better than having the same conversation repeatedly while staring loss in the face.

When I first moved back to Minnesota a couple years ago, I cleaned out a bedroom in my childhood home where my mother’s caretaker was planning to sleep. We were transitioning her to 24-hour care.  My mother is an appreciator of writing and poetry and has boxes of old articles. While sorting through one of the many boxes of her clippings I came across a poem by Lucille Clifton which my mother had copied in pencil, smudged and barely legible, called I Am Running into a New Year:

i am running into a new year

and the old years blow back

like a wind

that i catch in my hair

like strong fingers

like all my old promises and

it will be hard to let go

of what i said to myself

about myself

when i was sixteen and

twenty-six and thirty-six

even thirty-six but

i am running into a new year

and i beg what i love and

i leave to forgive me

I can see what my mother loved about this poem. The last two lines always linger within me. I hope to forgive myself for those times I ran away from her because the illness felt too painful. I hope to make the most of the time that remains with my mother alive on this earth.

My oldest friend, in the midst of losing her father to cancer, made a poignant statement at lunch yesterday, “family resolutions don’t happen when a person is on their death bed.” She reminded me the time is now.  To that end, this year’s resolution will not be so concrete and simple. I will send my sankalpa (sanskrtit for purpose and intention) to stay with the discomfort of goodbyes, and not run for the door in the face of loss.  I will surrender on my back, assimilate the lessons from the class, and drop my heavy head with its monkey mind.  Inhale gratitude for the presence of those in my life, exhale grief for our collective loss.  I will embody the rhythm of all that comes and goes.

I will not wait to tell the people in my life just how much I love them.

So whatever your lingo of choice — goals, intentions, promises, hopes, sankalpa, or if you’re the person who vehemently refuses to make any resolutions in the new year — I suggest you let old ways of thinking die.  Look at impermanence in the face and embody it with the softness of a corpse pose.  Observe the ways in your life that you run from the inevitable, the ways you avoid loss. Notice too the ways you seek death and stagnation by avoiding your own livelihood.  Look in your own eyes, look in your beloved’s eyes, and tell them just how much you adore them. 

{P.S. I’ve come a long way considering I can now indulge, sleep -  and even snore at times -  in savasana.}

“Don’t grieve. Anything you lose comes round in another form.”

Since graduating from high school I have lived in 6 states, 2 countries and way too many addresses to count. I moved for college, semester abroad, graduate school, internship, cheaper rent, a better neighborhood, better climate, a pet, a partner, a parent, a spouse, an uncoupling.

It’s exhausting to think about. People often snark, “I hate moving.” It digs into the existential pit of our stomach: fear, change, loss, uncertainty, disorganization, effort.
At times as I was finally nestled snugly in my new pad, I was uprooted. Like a house of cards carefully crafted, moving felt like a swift wind toppling it down.

My recent mixed feelings about moving is the reason it took me so long to write this essay — I kept struggling to come up with a summary paragraph that put everything into a tidy box with a peachy-keen moral providing solace for my readers, and myself.

Instead I sat and recalled the sheer hassle of the comings, the goings, and everything in between. Panic while running out of gas near Rock Springs, Wyoming with a U-Haul in the middle of the night. Putting my belongings in a storage unit in Oakland only to discover I couldn’t fit everything (and nearly avoided getting locked-in at midnight trying to cram it in.) The cat that howled constantly for 2 days in the car. The broken & lost items. Needing help from a stranger while in the dessert because I was unable to back-up my moving truck (there is a technique to this). The tears as I watched in the rearview mirror the distance grow between my mountain life and my next chapter Eastward.

Beyond the logistical nightmare of packing your “life” into a bunch of boxes, the dreaded trip to the DMV, and lost mail because friends can’t keep track of your current residence, there is the sense of everything being untethered. Add to that feelings of loss for the era left behind, the rituals created with friends, the inside jokes, the smells in the air, your favorite yoga class. I eventually noticed a pattern: while in the stages of a new era, I longed for the previous one. I noticed my pattern to attach, face change, resist change, surrender to change, reinvent, all only to attach once again. It’s one big cycle. Attachment sucks us in like a gravitational pull whispering “you’ll be safe and sound.”

So what’s my (seemingly depressing) point, to myself and perhaps to you?

Stop resisting it.

Everything is changing with every moment. Which is why everything is precious. And maybe it’s why the universe has me move so much: to remind me of this constant truth. To put me back in my place as soon as I get a little too stagnant, a little too comfortable, and my world a little too small. While it may be natural to attach to the familiar, I work to cultivate acceptance that nothing remains unchanged. This house, this address, this commute, this posse, and this era will all someday shift or fade.

In yoga we can make the mat our “home” and come to it with a sense of wonderment and intrigue rather than comparison for a past class. Yoga asks us to transition through the poses, move dynamically, flow, become static, release, cycle, detox, and let go. We move on the mat to practice moving deliberately and with presence to our lives in this very moment. We practice showing-up on the mat despite the changes around us. We release what was once familiar and reinvent ourself again and again, only to create home once more. {ahhhh….child’s pose} Yoga feels like coming home, because it helps us all be who we really are, right here right now.

Hold space for the feelings that arise with the transitions. A new routine awaits with fresh smells, new friends, inside jokes, another good sushi joint, and perhaps another favorite yoga class.

I was the brainiac who did that recently. Real smooth move.

Contrary to what I always imagined would happen – a HUGE explosion blowing up the gas station, myself, and all surroundings into flames – in reality the pump effortlessly released from its base and dangled along the ground as I drove away. No flames. Not even a drop of leaked gas.

Upon noticing there was not in fact an explosion of Hollywood-proportions, I practiced yoga instead.

I got out of the car, put my mat on the asphalt, warmed-up my body with surya namaskar, followed it with a standing balance series, core work, a backbend, an inversion, and then lay on my back in the driveway of Super America for a long savasana.

Alright, obviously that last paragraph is not what I meant when I said I practiced yoga.  Upon realizing I snapped off the gas pump I practiced yoga philosophy: I observed, I took a few breaths, and I found freedom in the moment. Freedom from reactivity. I practiced my yoga, just not necessarily my yoga asana.

Quick lesson for the non-yogi: The word asana means posture. Yoga poses have their original Sanskrit name and then most have an English translation. Corpse pose = savasana. Other examples include Eka Pada Rajakapotasana (one-legged king pigeon pose), Parivrtta Anjaneyasana (low lunge twist) and Tittibhasana (firefly), to name a few.

In the United States, the word yoga seems synonymous with poses, the body, movement, and party tricks like, well, tittibhasana. I came to the practice myself as an athlete wanting to cross-train. The asana appealed to the physical competitor inside of me. But the other branches of yoga, namely the philosophy (yamas and niyamas), lit a spark in the seeker within and keeps me coming back for more. The opportunities to practice are endless.

Finding freedom from reactivity keeps me coming back to my yoga – asana or otherwise – because there is always another opportunity to react, panic, defend, judge, flee, freeze, fight, burst. I realized I simply don’t want to explode like a flame anymore. So I practice.

Genpo Merzel, founder of the Big Mind approach to Zen states:

“… realization is always sudden, immediate.  But the assimilation of this realization into our life takes time.  You can’t ignore that things take time. The awakening is outside of the realm of space and time, but to integrate it into your everyday life is always going to take time.”

So I seek patience in my practice of this mighty pursuit. I have affectionately given sanskrit-like labels to these moments in which I choose to breathe versus flight, flight, freeze or react …. this one was GasPumpAsana.

The next time you drop your phone and the screen shatters, practice PhoneShatterAsana. You see a cop emerge behind you and prepare to pull you over, practice SpeedingTicketAsana. Miss your connecting flight en route to vacation and get stuck overnight without your belongings? AirlineTravelWoesAsana.  You fall to your knees, head in your hands, bereft, in anguish…sounds like the perfect opportunity for ItDoesn’tGetWorseThanThisAsana.

And If you’re wondering about the penalties for pulling out the gas pump, the store manager told me “it happens all the time,” then she shooed me away like a moth from a flame.

My message to you – be ignited by your flame, your passion, your service and find freedom from what bursts out…save the drama for your mama and the reactive explosions for Hollywood.

TheEndAsana.

“After The Storm.” This is the name of a beautiful song by the band Mumford and Sons. The title is fitting… it was a long, hard winter. We all had our moments. Yet we find ways to survive the climate and endure. How did you manage your internal climate? I sought refuge. Refuge is a beautiful concept: “resting in, finding solace in, unloading your mental burden to…”

I offer a small sampling of my own refuge from this past season:

~ The in and out breath. Lengthening the exhalation, holding empty. The stillness before initiating the next inhale.

~ Connecting to the language of the body: sensations.

~ An embrace – a real hug, not the dainty kind.

~ Surrendering, because “you can’t rewind to yesterday when you were innocent.”

~ Choosing self-care over numbing.

~ Asking for help, knowing it came from inner wisdom.

~ Home, a sanctuary with everything in its place.

~ Language – words and phrases that resonate, such as the elegance in the language of Eastern philosophy.

~ Running fast to the beats of the band Phoenix.

~ Running slow to the lyrics of my main man, Mason Jennings.

~ Running in the rain. Being so wet that another drop doesn’t matter.

~ Eye contact – the all-knowing kind. Being truly seen.

~ The voice of an adored one.

~ Loving Kindness (“Metta”) meditation.

~ Staying present, even when it’s painful.

~ A furry animal. Almost any one will do.

~ Belly laughs, especially when they catch you by surprise.

~ The dessert with its stark heat, red rocks, wide open spaces; the solitude of the trail.

~ The potential of the months ahead on the Summer Solstice, my favorite day of the year.

Discover what refuge means to you. Because the forecast is unpredictable, folks. Find your own source of refuge and return to it again and again. We all know another storm is around the bend.

There will come a time you’ll see
With no more tears.
And love will not break your heart
But dismiss your fears.
Get over your hill
And see
What you find there
With grace in your heart
And flowers in your hair.

- Mumford and Sons, “After the Storm”

“Clothing optional hot springs…”

I read this statement in the brochure for the Esalen Institute. I read this after I’d registered for one of their highly acclaimed professional workshops. I was intrigued yet felt a bit uncomfortable. Later when mentioning to friends my plan to visit Esalen a few commented, “you’ve got to try the hot springs.”

I recalled this months later while deciding whether to pack a swimsuit. Having never been to a place with clothing-optional anything, the swimsuit seemed a must. It’s that small yet powerful piece of cloth that protects one from feeling totally exposed.

I was already having a hard time preparing to leave behind other forms of “protection” like my to-do list, technology, and the comfort of daily routine. Here I was going to an idyllic meditation workshop for healers to focus on self-care on the cliffs of the Pacific Ocean, yet I was afraid to be without the security blanket of modern technology.

It took a couple days to settle into Esalen. Bunk bed rooms, cramped bathroom, not knowing anyone, feeling like the new kid at school in the dining lodge.  Then there was the biggest discomfort of all: days of sitting meditation.

I have always been a moving meditation sort of gal. This includes repetitive-motion endurance and adrenaline sports and a yoga practice that gravitates to the more physical variety.  I even stretch a bit while listening from my therapy chair. Sitting meditation meant finding stillness in more ways than one. It meant confronting the very thing Western society (with its many distractions and encouragement of doing, doing, doing) helped shelter me from: observing, reflecting, contemplating, analyzing, seeking, projecting, ruminating, wondering, past, future, past again…all to ultimately let those thoughts be observed, to drift away like a cloud, and to come back to simply being.

This got me thinking about the hot springs. And the swimsuit. And the ways in which I take cover to protect myself from my fears. These protective walls come in the form of swimsuits and to-do-lists, in judgements and opinions, in the “shoulds,” in the rigid perceptions, self-comparisons, in the striving to be a people-pleaser or perhaps a nonconformist. I became curious about what limits us ALL from being authentic and keeping it real. What would happen if we all abandoned our swimsuits, if we all shed the layers?

Meditation at Esalen Institute showed me the way.

I call myself a “recovering Type A.”  For my people in particular, seated meditation is like the wrecking ball which demolishes our skyscraper of perceived identity. The mind and ego build a fortress to protect itself from sadness, stress, pressure, fear, vulnerabilities and so forth. We defend against what IS because we learned it’s painful at times. Beginning in youth we built a firm, stone building within the mind to protect ourselves. Meditation has the power to dismantle our notions of what protects us – like the voice which says you’re a victim or others are to blame. Or that everything would be better if you lived somewhere with warmer weather, a different job, made more money, or had a more loving partner…

Meditation first makes you aware of the fortress you created with your “story” of reality, then knocks it down like a wrecking ball. The forklift arrives to take away the debris and there you are with yourself, excavated. You are revealed and exposed to yourself. Feelings of shame, anger, regret, fear, disgust, and panic may ensue.  Yet it begins a process of dissolving the darkness to reveal the light. Oddly, there can be a sensation of calm because you are finally in the present moment and taking responsibility. You start to see the grace of things and start to have gratitude. You feel tender. You feel more compassion for yourself. You feel honest to what is.

And ultimately this is empowering. Because now you know that it comes back to you. You get to decide to follow your in & out breath the next time you’re stuck in traffic. You get to speak from your heart rather than be invisible. You get to choose to be around those who see your light. You get to make choices that break free from old patterns which perpetuated your suffering. Meditation helped me realize there was little to hide behind. Any facade of having it “all figured out” as a psychologist, a yoga teacher, or a woman limited me from just. being. real.

Pema Chodron states in The Places That Scare You, “We don’t really want to stay with the nakedness of our present experience…. [in meditation] we clearly see the barriers we set up to shield us from naked experience. Although we still associate the walls we’ve erected with safety and comfort we also begin to feel them as a restriction.”

Which leads me back to the hot springs. The oh so purifying hot springs. On the cliffs of Big Sur California at my meditation workshop I decided it was time to let go of any facade I’d clung to in the past. Brazenly at the baths I peeled away a layer and dropped my towel.  Alone under a full moon, I surrendered and sunk into the steaming hot water and listened to waves crash against the shore. I realized the sheer discomfort of meditation was meant to get me to this place, this moment of simply being exposed and being real.

Today, may you also peel away a layer and brazenly expose the real you.

I have a dislocated finger, pulled hamstring, numb left toes, and a bum knee. Finger due to racing down a mountain. Hamstring doing circuit training. Knee from forcing myself into lotus position. And the toes, well… investigating that with my doctor. Evidently my body has limitations and battle scars. I have put it through a lot.

I blame runner’s high for the dislocated finger. I was coming to the end of a trail race and feeling invincible. I was even plotting to run my first ultra trail marathon. Suddenly while sprinting down the mountain I tripped on a rock and crashed in the bushes. I got up and brushed myself off, feeling thankful my teeth were in tact! Then I looked down and noticed my finger bent in half.

Isn’t that the way life can unfold? One minute we’re flying high and the next minute we face plant. The injury can feel irreparable.

My finger never lets me forget. I move into crow pose and feel the strain of balancing with a broken finger. I drop my phone after losing grip with the finger. I see the bulging angle when washing my hands. These events at times frustrated me, but now they remind me of the inherent risk in living fully and why the heck it’s worth it.  The finger symbolizes saying “yes” to opportunities, even the scary ones, and revealing myself nonetheless.

I know there are risks. The uncomfortable feelings of vulnerability, confusion, self-doubt. I know they allow space for grace, intimacy, and connection. Living vibrantly doesn’t mean you get to pick and choose, it’s a package deal. The finger reminds me that for better or worse, I don’t hold back with what I love, despite the potential loss.

Anything we give our heart to – relationships, our craft, our philosophy – brings us to our fears and to our livelihood.  It can be a beautiful cycle, really. We climb the mountain of our passion, at times weary of the rocks and switchbacks along the way. Perhaps we do take a spill, feeling bruised. Yet we can eventually feel balance again, even feel a renewed sense of empowerment in knowing we survived. One day you may soar down a mountain once more, this time with greater wisdom.

Whether it be a relationship or a finger, it’s painful to bend in half, to feel fractured. There is the phrase “falling in love” but I prefer the notion of “face planting in love.” Whatever your passion or pursuit, I hope you face plant. I hope it’s a real digger. I hope it leaves a scar – like a bent finger – that’s visible and reminds you of your strength and following your heart. Because this is living and learning fully.  Invest, dive deep, become vulnerable, transcend.  Amidst all my regrets of falling, I realize there are no regrets.  Regret would have been not showing up in the first place.  As a yoga teacher my injuries help students with their own aches and pains.  As a psychotherapist my falls allow me perspective and awareness, enabling greater empathy and compassion.

My ultimate advice to you: do not fall into your life, rather, face plant. This will be your biggest teacher. This will bring you compassion for your mistakes, and for others. Whether you dive deep into your love for another person, your craft, your philosophy, your truth….go into it with gusto, despite the risks.

“In order to not leave any traces, when you do something, you should do it with your whole body and mind; you should be concentrated on what you do. You should do it completely, like a good bonfire. You should not be a smoky fire.
You should burn yourself completely. If you do not burn yourself completely a trace of yourself will be left in what you do.You will have something remaining which is not completely burned out. Zen activity is activity which is completely burned out, with nothing remaining but ashes.”

~ Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind Beginner’s Mind

Disclaimer: by yoga I don’t mean balancing upside down or touching your toes. I mean the philosophy, the seeking, the daily practice of consciousness, the facing of even the most grim emotions and self-truths (when all the cell phones and emails and TV’s and shopping and eating and people aren’t there to distract you).

Back to the phone conversation. I realized this sounded dramatic and in that conversation I felt drama. So be it, I was in a sassy mood. Every song on the radio was singing to me. But who was I to “blame” yoga, speaking of it with a capital Y and insinuating it has the power to save or ruin lives? Apparently I was someone who felt like a phoenix rising from the ashes. I felt like someone broken open.

By broken open I mean conscious of my feelings — ALL of them. Escaping none. And there were many, confusing and conflicting. I was conscious of the recent losses and my grieving. Conscious of the light and new beginnings as well. Conscious of my role in the reality of my present life. And conscious of the narrative I created along the way. I was conscious of my pain and I was raw.

To be clear, I would have never chosen to be broken open. Who really chooses pain? We choose freedom and we seek happiness and therein lies the rub: the pain of transformation to get there. I wasn’t courageous perhaps because I was afraid on some level of the magnitude of loss. But nonetheless a series of life changing events occurred. The depth of feeling is unlike anything I’d ever imagined or experienced before. From that excavation of feeling is emerging a stronger me. It was in there all along, but got buried.

Far preceding that phone conversation I recall a pivotal time in my life when this breaking open began: the first day of my yoga teacher training. Although I had no idea what would unfold, I began the process of self-awareness and the path to my own authenticity. (Note: you can roll your eyes at words like authenticity the way I used to at times long ago before it had more meaning for me. I’ve come to realize clichéd words and phrases are clichéd for a reason – they are effective descriptors of powerful concepts.)

On that first night of yoga-teacher training D’ana warned us: this was the beginning of the end of being fake, which has since served as a powerful reminder to let go of image (See my blog “Being Real” for more on that topic). I remember we sat in a circle and had to state our name and reason for taking the training. Simple enough. I remember a student who, when it was her turn, broke into tears: “Yoga saved my life” she explained.
I felt a bit uncomfortable thinking, ‘What did I get myself into?’ Intuitively I knew it was something big. When it was my turn I froze. I didn’t have the words to explain why I was taking the training. I mumbled something about self-care and then later berated myself for not being more profound.

Years later, I know how to articulate those feeling more clearly. I can now understand how my subtle body pulled me like a magnet to the training because it was tired of the analytical brain keeping it from healing. My brain couldn’t say it aloud that first day but my body knew. The body always knows. I’ve been on the path of articulating and defining my message ever since. I believe I AM a vessel for messages of healing, just like you are a vessel for your own message, whatever it may be. As a psychotherapist, as a yoga teacher – and now as a fresh faced writer exposing myself! – I want to help you understand and define your message too. Whether you tell yourself yoga saved your life or ruined it, whether you master a handstand or barely touch your toes, there is power and meaning in the philosophy found within the practice of yoga, of dedicated consciousness.

This is the first in an ongoing series of essays about my process of letting go in order to get real. May my own transformation and insight help you follow your path and be a vessel for your message. Perhaps you’ll see how breaking open leads you to greater wholeness as well.

In lightness and darkness and everything in between,
Rachel

p.s. “Never say never” is one of my favorite clichéd expressions. What’s yours?