musings

A Return to Yoga: Seeking Stillness (and a Stretch)

I have been plagued on and off for the past several months with knee problems. And my lower back and my hips, and everything is tight. I took six weeks off this summer, which, though actually really challenging, did help the immediate situation with my right knee. Just as I was getting back into shape and thinking that my Columbus Day half marathon was in my sights, I got swine flu. No dice.

I’m creeping my way back into running now, but I’m also realizing that these hip and knee and back problems are not going away. Nothing major, but definite aches and tightness. The joys of being 35, I suppose.

This long preamble is to say I went back to yoga on Sunday morning. I used to have a very committed yoga practice. For years I practiced 4 or 5 times a week and it was a big part of my life. Somehow, having children and more time pressure has caused me to drift back to running. And I love running. I don’t think I will ever stop running (as long as I can). I have always thought of running as a kind of worship: it is where I can be still and can think, it is often where I come as close as I ever have to feeling the presence of the divine. I love running around my neighborhood, tracing the changing seasons and the trees, running in the heat of the summer, the rain of the fall and spring, and the ice and snow of the winter.

But with the gradual, persistent issues of tightness in my body I am realizing I need to reincorporate yoga. A little. Now I need to figure out how. So Sunday morning I went. Even though what I wanted was to lace up my sneakers and head out, instead I took my mat and flip-flopped to what turned out to be a very lame class. Still. My body remembers yoga like a long-lost but deeply-buried language. It felt familiar, returning to the poses that I can do from sense memory. It was also humbling, because I am so weak and so tight, so much more than when I used to practice regularly. But it felt good. And so I am newly committed to find a way to practice every week. Or most weeks.

Combining running and yoga is probably ideal for the body (at least my body), but it is also the perfect metaphor for the tension that exists for me between stillness and speed. This tension is central to who I am, I blogged about it last month over at Chicken & Cheese, and I am probably boring you all with my repeated forays into discussing it. I continue to be frustrated by my inability to be still, to appreciate all that is, while also trying to accept and embrace the inherent impatience of my nature, the instinctive way I move forward, quickly, in the world.

The reason vinyasa yoga worked for me early on is that the meditative aspects of the practice were reached only through physical exertion. I know myself well enough to know that the other way around does not really work for me. I did find, though, that a vigorous, physical asana practice allowed my mind to still. Sometimes. For a little while. My first teacher used to tease me constantly about how I fidgeted; he pointed out that in a long pose I always had an itch to scratch, hair in my face, need for water. And he was right. But sometimes, just sometimes there would be a moment where it was just me and my breath. It’s those moments – and some space in my aching, tight knees and hips and back – that I hope will motivate me to return to the studio, at least occasionally.

Questions

(visual aid to jar your memory)

Okay, so maybe my passive, indirect post about how I would like to know the answers to these questions but was ashamed to ask wasn’t the most effective. It definitely was pretty classic Lindsey. But I’m trying to push past that. I want to light the fire, with Danielle and more broadly. And I need your help.

Those of you who know me well out there (and I think there are a few of you), I’d be ever so incredibly grateful if you would answer these questions for me. Quickly. I don’t want to be a burden. One of you sent me answers. A most unexpected person, whose answers were thoughtful and reminded me again that getting to know someone through their writing and through the ether can create a real relationship. Thank you, you single answerer of my questions. Please know how very much that meant to me.

Here are the questions. And I am absolutely, stone-cold mortified to publish this post. Really, really scared. Embarassed and ashamed at being so seemingly self-absorbed. I’m sorry.

: What do you think is my greatest strength?
: How would you describe my style?
: What do you think I should let go of?
: When do you feel that I am at my best?
: What do you wish I were less of, for my sake?
: When have you seen me looking my most fabulous?
: What do you think I could give myself more credit for or celebrate more?

Holding ambiguity and emanating peace

The membrane between me and the world is very porous.

Certain people have unfettered access to me; I take their input and criticism as truth. It is like having a central line into my chest. Which is good as long as the input is well-intentioned, even if negative. Not good when that is in question.

I celebrate compassion. I believe kindness is the most important thing. That life is not black and white. That there are many grays. That what matters is doing the best you can. And I believe that most people are genuinely doing their best.

I think that relationships are art, not science. It is a fallacy – a comforting, seductive one – that there are clear rights and wrongs. That there are rules. There aren’t. There is instinct, there is fuzziness, there is lack of clarity. This is uncomfortable. You have to let go and trust. In fact, to force human relationships into a rigid framework of binary 1s and 0s is to miss out on some of their most exquisite, moving nuances. It is in the spaces between that the real love exists.

Life is endlessly long and it is heartbreakingly short. We are all flawed and wounded, we all limp. None of us dances without stumbling. But none of us needs others to tell us we are broken. We aren’t. There is a fine line between wanting to help each other be better people and being downright destructive. There is much good in every single person, so much to celebrate. None of us is more important or more worthy than anyone else. Nobody. This I believe as firmly as I believe anything.

People are amazing. There is more in each of us than we know. Last weekend I watched a dear friend practicing her passion. She had taken a risk, walked away from a safe professional harbor, and she is also enduring significant pain and fear in her family. Handling – with such grace – something most of us can barely imagine. And there she was. Laughing and smiling and creating beauty in the world. She is amazing. People like her make me realize I need to be a better me.

We must learn to hold ambiguity in our hands and still, somehow, emanate peace. We need to accept the terrifying uncertainty of it all. Maybe, actually, embracing that uncertainty is the only road to true freedom. It could all end tomorrow. This moment – and only this moment – is life. What are we all waiting for?

I need you. I don’t need you.

Kate at sweet/salty has a gorgeous post this morning. Her last lines are a far more evocative and articulate description of something that’s been much on my mind lately.
I’ve been thinking about how most everybody’s ‘bad’ behavior comes from deep human emotions. Of how I want to be more compassionate to those I love when they behave in annoying ways, since I know it is an expression of true feeling. I don’t know why it is so hard to say what we mean, to describe what we want. Maybe because we are afraid that if we ask for what we want nobody will offer it? Maybe because we are afraid to expose ourselves, to be truly vulnerable, because rejection of that realness would sting far more than someone just being mad at our tantrum or whining.

Kate says it much better than I can:

We yearn and mourn and scrape calloused heels in unbecoming ways. We covet. We hardly ever say what we mean. We disrespect a perfectly honourable and universal dark. We pretend despite instinct. We grip white-knuckled to precious truth with one hand, whipping ourselves with the other as though we should somehow be more enlightened than the animals we are.

I need you. I don’t need you.

We are unaware that even at our most absurd, there is no need to apologize. We wander, dreaming like meat of the sweet, hot breath of a siren.

Looking for a neon answer, finding only gray.

I keep marking this post by Heather of the Extraordinary Ordinary (fantastic blog title) as unread in Google Reader. I keep rereading it, mulling over her words, turning over her images like a flat and sun-warmed beach stone in my hand.

Heather’s words have burrowed into my head with the same gentle, quiet insistence that she conjures when speaking of the answer that came to her. With the sustained, almost silent patter of snow falling onto snow. Her faith that the unknown towards which we venture is already filled with grace and her belief that it is okay to sometimes just let go and fall, even into the mystery of where we will land both fill me with an overwhelming peace.

I love the image of wanting an answer in neon and being forced to recognize that sometimes it is nowhere near that clear. It is so seductive, isn’t it, a world where Right and Wrong, Yes and No, Good and Bad are clearly demarked? I confess I haven’t very often found that world, and mostly have to make do with muddling through a murky landscape full of shades of gray. I am growing to recognize this terrain as home, though, and over time I’m feeling more comfortable there.

I keep trying to select a line or two to quote, but they are all too beautiful to make a short selection. So I’ll quote most of her post in full. Go read her blog: it is worth it.

The other day, I prayed. I wanted to know just the right answer, what is the very best thing to do that won’t mean we’re falling and landing in exactly the wrong place? I wanted an answer of the neon variety, a big bold thundering voice heavy-like-snow telling me what we should do.

But the voice was instead soft, like a covering, and the words there is no wrong answer here rushed their way through my suddenly still and quiet mind. That voice came with not my wisdom, but the gifted voice that is from someone else far greater. Like a gust of wind it came and went and then I smiled because of that reminder that sometimes there’s no black and white answer, no wrong or right or good or bad.

Sometimes either way, thing, or choice is good and right because we want so badly to do right and lovely things, so our steps are covered with a blanket of grace and we go.

No matter how right we’re trying to be, sometimes there’s no neon.

There is no wrong answer here.

The unknown place we will land is already occupied by that same merciful voice.

The only choice we have is to let go with a relieved sigh and fall, landing in a neon grace, despite the mystery of where we’ll come to a stop.