Creating the Present

December 31.  The last day of 2014 - not that it really matters - it's just another day passing early in the annual cycle of slowly lengthening post-solstice days.  But we mark each "new" year as a holiday, and we got off work two hours early, letting me walk home before the sun went down.

I took the long way around today, walking down to Sligo Creek and then up the path and to the house from the opposite way - adding probably 3/4 of a mile to the trek.

I've been working on how to be more present - how to experience life more fully and deeply - and I've concluded that one key is approaching each experience as if it was brand new.

If I assume that because I've walked the path to and from work several thousand times that there is nothing new to see, my brain will oblige and ignore most of what is happening around me.

If I look for something new, it is always there.

Consciously not letting my past determine my present, I open up to more experience, trying to see it without immediately judging it as good or bad, beautiful or ugly, of use or not.  Exploring, playing, sensing - participating with the world around me in creating my present experience.

Existential Musings for the End of 2014

In a 13.8 billion year old universe, I'm a particular organization of matter/energy that will exist, recognizable though constantly changing, for - let's be very optimistic (and keep the math simple) - 100 years.  0.000000000072 of the age of the universe.

The stuff I am made of is elements forged in the sun a few billion years ago, and recycled since, who knows how many times, though other forms - organizations of matter/energy - both living and non-living.

When I die, my stuff will be scattered and recycled again, and again, until the end of time.

It's quite a peculiarity of my human ego that I think of myself as particularly important - that I imagine that I'm a special being blessed with the means to pass on some aspect of myself to "my" progeny.

It's perhaps even more peculiar that I have the ability to recognize that as the illusion it is - that the more persistent thread of life is the DNA itself - the particular program for organizing the stuff of the universe into me - a living machine of sorts with the function to participate in a complicated, reassorting replication of the program that passes on through time, even as I appear and then disappear, a mere blip in the expanse of time.

Meanwhile, we humans have collectively developed and accumulated a stunning ability to understand and manipulate the basic stuff of the universe - to develop tools that extend the range of our naturally evolved senses to orders of magnitude of largeness and smallness.  We can control the subtle fluctuations of energy fields to the point that we can each have a personal device that extends our ability to connect and communicate around the globe.  We can unleash the power of a sun and destroy a city - or more.

The huge explosion of this ability to affect our world - at macro and micro levels - has occurred within my lifetime - the last 0.000000000072 of the age of the universe - give or take.  It is insane for us to think that we understand the implications of what we are doing.  It is high hubris to think that we will be able to corral, constrain and control the myriad of existential threats to our species that we have, and have yet to but certainly will, unleash.

At the same time, these abilities have, from many perspectives, greatly improved our lives.  Do we have the collective ability to sort out the things that will sustain us from the things that will destroy us?  To succeed at the former, and avoid the latter?

The answer to that will likely come, if it is consciously known at all, from a future particular organization of matter/energy that is not us.

Waking

I returned home yesterday from a week-long holiday trip to Colorado and Oklahoma, visiting relatives.  While I enjoyed the trip, it wasn't particularly restful.  I had only a couple of days in one place, then another trip to the airport.  The last night, I flew from Oklahoma to Denver to connect with Pam.   That flight was late, so it was after 10 pm before we got to the hotel, and we had to get up at 4:30 am to catch our early morning flight home.  We were both very tired when we arrived in the early afternoon.

I went to bed at 9 o'clock last night, and got up a little after 8 this morning.  I noticed something different right away.  Usually, when I first get up, I have a short period when I need to find my balance, gather my mind, and finish waking up as I stumble out of bed and into the bathroom.

This morning, my feet landed on the floor, I stood up, and felt wide awake, in complete balance, and ready to go.  Was this because I'd slept 11 hours, letting my body, not a schedule, decide when to rise?

A Day, A List

I committed to a very busy schedule this fall, with work, yoga teaching, and one weekend a month in an intensive workshop.  Hard to believe that in September I was waiting to start my first scheduled weekly class.  Now I have three, and have been subbing for other teachers - one or two classes most weeks.

A result of being busy is that little things that I used to keep up with have piled up.  Mail to look through, and other accumulations of things that need attention.

Friday ended another busy week and I realized that I had one day to get ready for the holiday trip to Colorado and Oklahoma.  I not only had to get all the things ready to go - I also had to get my mind ready to go.

I woke this morning and began a list of things to do - pack, sort mail, vacuum.  As I began to work, the list continued to grow - haircut, shower, schedule a taxi, check-in online.  I had one more yoga class to teach too, subbing for a Saturday afternoon class that I didn't know.  Making lunch, opening a package that had arrived - then putting the contents away.  Taking care of the end of year charitable contributions.

The smoke alarm downstairs must have known that today was my day to get things done, as it began to chirp it's dying battery alert.  That went on the list too.

The day flowed by.  I worked through the list, checking things off as I finished, adding new things.  I did a few things that didn't make the list.  I simply did them as they came up, and then moved on - making lunch, cleaning up after, turning off the water supply to the washing machine.

Some weeks ago I wrote about another Saturday that I found the flow - was able to ride the current - accomplishing a lot, but with a feeling of effortless and no anxiety or distress.  That was my intention for today, and as I write this post, finishing one of the last items on the list, I am tired, ready to get some sleep for the early morning ahead, but I am also ready to go.

Some Harmony Today

William Harvey is a professional violinist with a big vision.  He founded a non-profit ten years ago, Cultures in Harmony, with a mission to use music to build relationship and connection between people from diverse cultures around the world.  Then he spent several years in Afghanistan teaching music at a school in Kabul, and last year moved to Argentina as concertmaster (1st violin) of an orchestra there.  All the while keeping Cultures in Harmony going.

I took some time off work this morning to ride the Metro down to Columbia Heights and meet William for coffee and a crepe.

You may be wondering how we even know each other - this global citizen Julliard trained violinist and me - a government bureaucrat in marine fisheries, amateur musician, and yoga teacher.  The answer, I think, is a common interest in humanity, being open to possibility, and the miracles of modern communication.

There's a public radio program that features youth performing classical music, "From the Top." Pam and I have listened to it fairly consistently on Sunday evenings around dinner time.  Some years ago, William, who had previously been on the show, was featured on an alumni program, and talked about the organization he had founded, Cultures in Harmony.

I looked at the web site, thought it was a great idea, and made a donation.  A few years later I connected again with him on facebook, and followed his posts from Afghanistan and then Argentina.  So when I recently got an email from him that he would be in Washington this week and was interested in meeting, I didn't want to miss the opportunity.

We had a lively and far-ranging conversation, and I left with an uplifted spirit, glad there are people like William in the world, dedicated to the common good of humanity.

A Day for Clarity

Today was striking in its clarity.  I first noticed the brightness of the moon, stars and planets in the early morning sky.  Clean and crisp, the air seemed perfectly transparent to the light streaming in from thousands, millions, light years and parsecs away.

Later in the morning, the landscape and all the objects in it - trees, houses, office buildings, church steeples - were sharp-edged in the deep contrast of light, and depth of shadow and color.

I watched, over the course of a couple of hours, the slow unfolding of a parade of clouds moving in from the west and floating by under the blue morning sky.  They move slowly enough that a casual glance sees only a static snapshot.  A closer look reveals the subtle, but constant motion that, over the course of some minutes, transforms the scene.

Life passes like that, too.  An hour, or even a day, seems inconsequential, but the flow is inexorable, piling cumulative changes up until we've turned from young to old, and wonder how much we have missed, forever, for not paying attention.

Finding Ease Amidst Effort

Yoga poses move the body in all different directions, and every person's body is different.  What is easy for one person is hard for another, and then, in the next pose, the ease and difficulty may be reversed.

Improved physical condition and ability is a natural result of yoga practice.  Even more important is paying attention and learning the tendencies, flexibilities and restrictions of your own body.

I've learned to avoid isolate effort in yoga practice.  By that, I mean that one particular part of the body is working noticeably harder than the overall body.  This over-effort is counterproductive, though at first it may seem as if the effort will stretch, or strengthen, the body.

I think it's better to find the place where the entire body is in balance - working, but not straining - and with no particular spot standing out, flashing a red light, blaring a siren.

When in perfect balance, with effort distributed throughout the body, I can be working very hard, yet with a feeling of effortlessness.  This is amazing, and wonderful to experience.

Shadows and Being

Walking home from assisting in the Monday night yoga class, I became interested in my shadow.  I watched as it lengthened and shortened, and as it moved from behind me, around to the side and to the front.  Sometimes on the left, sometimes on the right.  Sometimes disappearing, other times more than one shadow, moving independently.  As it moved, and changed size and shape, it also changed in contrast - sometimes dark and sharp edged, other times faded, barely visible.

I thought of how often I had walked this route over the past 11 years, and never paid more than passing attention to my shadow.  Tonight, I watched it in fascination, thinking about what it told me about the sources of light I was passing.  

I also began to identify more and more with the shadow - aware of it as my shadow - its presence a response to my being.  I was watching it grow longer before me with each step, only peripherally aware that it was also growing fainter.  My concentration deepened as the shadow became lighter.  Then, in the next step, the shadow melted into the pavement.  My breath caught briefly as my mind processed this fading from existence, this merging of my presence into the larger world.

Then another step, and another shadow began to emerge.  I began to watch for these fade-outs - the progressive diminishment of my projection onto the earth until, just in an instant, I disappeared.  Every time was a bit unsettling.  A metaphor for the end of life, in a fading shadow.  A phenomenon that has been around me on every night time walk, waiting for me to notice.

Expanding Awareness

All around, all the time, countless things are happening that I am not aware of, not paying attention to.  As one way to expose a tiny bit more, I sometimes close my eyes, take a full breath in and out to focus my attention, then open my eyes and observe, closely, the first thing that catches my attention, observing at least five things about it before my mind moves on.

Anxiety

Yesterday's post got me thinking more about anxiety.  Wikipedia describes anxiety as "... a feeling of fear, worry, and uneasiness, usually generalized and unfocused as an overreaction to a situation that is only subjectively seen as menacing.  It is often accompanied by muscular tension, restlessness, fatigue and problems in concentration."

I recognize that description - it fits well with my experience that I call anxiety - so I have the right word.  All I really know is my own experience, so it is natural for me to think that my experience is "normal," that the way I feel is how everyone feels.  Though that is certainly not the case, it must be a common enough experience that it is defined with a description that I can relate to.

What causes anxiety, and how can I reduce it?  I think it stems from one of two things - either attachment to a particular future outcome - or aversion to one.  That is, there's something in the future that I want to occur, and by being attached to that particular outcome I become anxious at the possibility that it might not be realized.  Or, there's some future condition that I want to avoid, and I become anxious that it might occur anyway.  

I can plan and prepare, thereby increasing the likelihood of the outcome I prefer, but there will always be anxiety until I let go of the attachment or aversion.  There's a yogic teaching that we are entitled to our actions, but not to the fruits of our actions.  That is, we do our best in pursuit of the outcome we prefer, but in the end, we need to accept whatever occurs. 

Relationship to Time

I was off from work today to attend a workshop by yoga teacher Rod Stryker.  I also had a mission to mail a Christmas package to Tanya in France.  I've been so busy with work and teaching that my opportunities to get to the post office were few.

The post office opened at 9, and I wanted to get to the studio by 10.  The workshop was going to be packed and I wanted to get a spot by the door so that I could get out easily - I needed to leave to teach a class - a scheduling conflict created by my not paying quite enough attention to things.  The walk from home to the studio is a bit under 20 minutes, and the post office is perhaps a 3 minute drive away.  So, I had enough time if I didn't get caught in a long line at the post office.   To improve my chances, I left home in time to get to the post office by 8:45.

My mind likes to think of things that might go wrong, and as I backed the car out of the drive and headed up the street, I could feel a little tension in my gut.   What was my back up plan?  If the post office was really slow (and from experience I know it can be slower than you would ever imagine), when would I need to bail out and come home to get to the studio on time?  This question, of course, implied that getting to the workshop on time was more important to me than mailing the package this morning.  But if I didn't mail the package this morning, when would I be able to?  Perhaps I could take some time off work early next week and do it.

All these things went through my mind a time or two before I came to my senses and settled back into the present.  Drive to the post office.  Go in.  Oh, no line.  OK, wait for 9.  And then a few more minutes - I guess opening at 9 really means they start at 9 getting ready to open.  Even being first in line and having the customs form already filled out, mailing a package to France took quite a while, but I was done before 9:15 and made it home with plenty of time to get to the workshop.

Time.  It's everywhere, and in everything.  Things take time to do.  And many important things - the way we organize life - are planned to happen at particular times.  I have expectations about how much time things will take, and that leads to anxiety that things will take longer and interfere with subsequent things, especially important, scheduled things.

There's a lot to unpack in that paragraph.  What makes something "important?"  Are my "expectations" about the time things will take deeper than just an objective estimate?  Are they loaded with judgment and attachment?  What's the source of the "anxiety?"  Why be anxious about something I don't control?  Or perhaps an even better question - Why be anxious about things I really do have a lot of control over?  Even if my post office plan went awry, there was almost no chance that I would miss the workshop, and it would have been fine to mail the package on another day.

Light Show

Toward sunset, the city was covered with a pancake of cloud, dark and shadowed underneath.  Beyond the cloud's edge, to the west and south, the colors of sunset glowed in a thin band.

I watched for a while, and noticed one spot slowly growing brighter.  This, I surmised, was where the sun was setting.   It continued to glow brighter, but the overall scene was unchanged - a flat, shadowed layer of cloud overhead, fringed with a narrow band of color.

Suddenly, the entire sky glowed red, as the sun dropped low enough to cast light on the underside of the clouds.  The light revealed new details in what, in shadow, appeared flat and featureless.   Bands and ripples of cloud glowed in different shades of light and shadow.  

Then the color began to slowly deepen into the longer wavelengths of red with the brightest spots taking a rich, golden hue.  The color stretched from overhead to the horizon to the east, south and west.  An experience of pure beauty - nothing to be done but be present in it.  

Wind

I walked up the street to the shopping district of Silver Spring at lunchtime today.  One of the taller buildings flies a large flag on top.  The day was breezy - at ground level the air swirled around, blowing scattered leaves around.  But up at building top level, the air flow was strong and fast.  The flag rippled out from its pole as if straining to get free and fly with the wind.

When I lived in Alaska, I sometimes walked across the bridge between Juneau and Douglas Island.  At the edges of the bridge, the wind might be barely noticeable.  But out on the bridge, over Gastineau Channel, it would be streaming past, then die quickly down as I reached the other side.

I'm fascinated by the way that air, which we move through so effortlessly when it is still that we don't even feel its presence, can exert such incredible force when it is flowing fast.

Down the street a little ways, where the wind funnels between two tall buildings, a couple of men were playing - stretching out their arms and leaning into the support of the rushing air.  I remember doing that as a kid, in the field behind the house in Kansas, on a particularly windy day more than 50 years ago.

Senses

I've recently clarified something in my mind - one of those things that is perfectly and completely obvious once recognized, but which can hide just beneath the surface of understanding for a long time.

Sensing is always in the present.

I am a complex sensing being.  Sight, hearing, smell, taste and touch - especially touch - not just touch in my hands, but touch from every square inch of skin - the things that I sense, are always what is, right now.

Signals are coming into all of the sense organs all the time.  The mind is very good at ignoring almost all of it.  Bringing awareness back to the senses - opening up to even just a little more of what I am continuously experiencing - is perhaps the quickest path back to the present moment from wherever in the past or the future my mind has strayed.

Clarity

Yesterday was cool, gray and rainy.  The evening was accompanied by the drumming of raindrops on the roof.

This morning though, was bright and clear.  There's nothing like the clarity of a cold winter day.  Everything in the landscape seems closer, more distinct.  The winter sun angles down through the leafless trees, making patterns of light and shadow.

A late falling leaf drifts down through the cold, heavy air.  A gray squirrel, light tickling its thick coat, scurries through piles of leaves.  The water in the creek, also clear, glistens in the light and runs dark through the shadows.

Everything seems to be simpler - more of what it is.  The pure transparency of the atmosphere lets light reflect undistorted forms into my eyes, raising vibrant images in my mind.

Free Form

Teaching yoga has changed my own practice.  I have less time for it, and I spend much of it working out things to teach.  This has been good - I've uncovered new insights by thinking about the details of poses and how to teach them most effectively - but I also want to maintain my own practice.

After work yesterday, I began to practice with the idea that I would do back bends, making my way toward wheel pose (urdhva dhanurasana).   I rolled out the mat and followed my first impulse, making my way to downward facing dog.  From there I brought one leg forward and under, opening up in a side plank variation, then back to dog and down to my belly for the first back bends - a series of cobra poses with the breath, starting with a tiny lift and gradually extending them up to a full cobra.

The next 40 minutes or so I followed my instincts from one pose to another, through more back bends, balance poses, and strengthening exercises, mixing some things I've been teaching recently with things I haven't practiced in months.

At one point my right leg felt noticeably tighter than the left in a hamstring stretch, so I paused to work down that leg with a tennis ball, from the top of the hamstring down to the bottom of the calf.  That helped a lot, as I expected.

Practicing freely can lead to unexpected, interesting things.  After my first wheel pose, I came down and immediately lifted my legs and upper body into navasana (boat pose).  That was interesting.  So I did them both again.  The full back bend of wheel followed by the front body ab and hip flexor engaging boat pose.  It is unlikely I would every have thought to pair those two poses, but practicing freely and instinctively led me to them.

I hope as I teach that I can show students how to go beyond just following my instructions, and develop a practice of their own that lets them follow their own bodies and instincts to interesting places.  

A Container for Your Experience

I taught two yoga classes tonight, at a studio, just opened this fall, that serves lots of new students.  One class was advertised as a vinyasa class - the other as a beginning vinyasa class.  But the reality is, people just come to the class that is convenient for them - that fits their schedule.  And in a place with lots of new students, almost everyone is a beginner.

Vinyasa, the practice of connecting yoga poses together with the breath, is inherently an advanced practice.  Teaching people vinyasa who don't yet know the individual poses well is very challenging.

Tonight, my beginning class was at least as capable as the regular class.  As soon as the vinyasa class began, I knew I needed to modify my expectations about what and how I would teach.  Very valuable experience for me, but not easy or comfortable.

I was reminded of what one of my teachers describes as creating a container for each person's experience in the class.  What more can I do?  Each person experiences their own body in their own way.  I can see certain things and make educated guesses about what is happening, but in the end, only they know.  I can shape the class so that the container is as safe as I can make it, still present them with some challenges, and give them suggestions to focus and heighten their awareness.

I can't do their practice for them, or tell them how they feel in their own bodies.  I can only create a container for their experience.

A Whole Lot of Yoga

I'm having a great time teaching yoga.  I enjoy the process of putting a class together - figuring out new things to teach.  I'm always more energized after a class than I am when it starts.  I've been getting a lot of teaching opportunities between the two studios I teach at, and the fitness center at work.

Tomorrow, for example, I'm teaching one class before work in the morning, and two classes in the evening.  It's been great to jump start my teaching, but I know this pace (15 classes over the past 12 days) isn't sustainable over the long run.

I'll have plenty to do after the first of the year with a regular schedule of 4 and a half classes a week.

So I'm very grateful to have the opportunity to teach a lot this fall, but I need to avoid getting overcommitted.  I also need to get as much rest as I can.  Tonight that means going to bed a bit earlier than usual.  I hope that will charge me up for the busy day tomorrow.

The Love-Hate of Busy

After several months of non-stop busy-ness at work, suddenly performance reviews for the past year and action planning for the next year are done.  My calendar is not full of meetings, my incoming email is stream, not a flood.

I find myself not knowing what to do.  I've been so conditioned to reacting to "important" things being pushed at me, that I've temporarily lost the ability to choose for myself.  Or so it feels.
Part of the feeling may be just the need to settle a bit after an overwhelming period.

There is still plenty to do.  I just have more choice about which things to do and how to do them.  I have to get used to that again.  I can pay more attention to the people who work for me.   I can give some of them a helpful, but needed, push.  I can gather the energy to tackle some of the projects that have languished because of some particular difficulty or complexity.

I can contemplate what it means that this condition - with more reasonable work load, more choice, and the opportunity to be more proactive and creative - seems to me less comfortable than just being busy.

Simply Experience

13.8 billion years ago, or thereabouts, our universe emerged.  It took about 9.2 billion years before our sun and the solar system, including earth, formed.  So we're projecting a measure of time, the time it takes earth to orbit the sun, back across a void of time.  How many years passed, before a year even existed?

It took about a billion years before life emerged on earth.  Many forms of life have come and gone.  Our particular form has come, fairly recently, and has not yet gone, but certainly will.  How disconnected we are from reality?  Each of us views the world from the perch of a little god - imagining we are the center of the universe, feeling our own uniqueness, importance, and individuality.  In reality, we're no more than a single fleeting manifestation of the genetic information and machinery of life that is flowing along with time, constantly changing, recombining, evolving.

How can we think we are the purpose of the universe?  Perhaps we are.  But then so is everything else that exists or ever did - a mountain, a tree, a grain of sand, a star, an electron, a cockroach, a triceratops, a passenger pigeon.  The universe changes, life evolves.  Individuals of all species come and go in the blink of an eye.  Species have a longer shelf life, but also eventually perish either through extinction or evolutionary change.

As the river of time flows, we come into it, ride along for a while, and then return back to eternity.  Our minds can reach back into the past, and can imagine the future, but life is happening only in the frontier of the river of time we call the present.  The present can be experienced, but it can't be held onto, since any experience we cling to instantly becomes past, not present.

The full experience of the present requires that our self importance - that little god perched within us - be replaced by a pure acceptance and openness to experience.  We take in all that is, and take in more and more, not clinging to it or judging it - both things that instantly jerk us out of the current of the present and leave us spinning in some backwater eddy.  We simply experience.    

Old School

Today was a day of light and shadows, warm enough for a bike ride and a nice day to rake up the last of the leaves from the yard.

Leaf blowers have taken over the world.  Some days during the fall they whine incessantly throughout the neighborhood.  I don't like them.  They seem  a noisy, polluting waste of energy.

The scratch of a rake, on the other hand, takes me back through the autumns of my life, to my first memories of raking huge piles of elm leaves in Kansas, which we happily jumped into and ran through.

Perhaps a leaf blower would be faster - there must be some reason people use them.  But I'll leave the blowing of leaves to the real wind.  I'll stick to the rake.  A simple tool - springy tines of metal fanning out from the end of a long wood pole - that sends vibrations up into my hands as it presses into the earth, dragging up the leaves and pushing them ahead, toward the growing pile.   A tool that lets me work out in the day, still hearing the sounds around me - the birds, dogs, people walking by, cars passing on the street behind, and yes - even the sound of the damn leaf blower whining away in the distance!

Song of the Sycamore

There's a huge, spreading sycamore tree on the route I usually walk to work.  The trunks rise high into the sky and spread branches out that extend completely over the street.  By now, most trees are bare of leaves.  There are some oak trees that hold onto their leaves longer, but until today, I'd never noticed that the sycamores do too.

The air this morning was crisp, the sky blue.  A very pleasant late autumn morning, with a slight breeze.  As I walked up the street, I heard a sound - not quite rustling, not quite tinkling.  The blend of hundreds of distinct vibrations, blending into a chorus coming from above.  I looked up, and could see the leaves, brown against the blue sky, moving back and forth in the breeze, each a little instrument making its morning music.

I stopped and listened for a while.  At that moment, it seemed as beautiful and interesting as any music I could imagine.  I marveled at the thought that this huge, old tree, standing tall year after year, spreading shade in summer, was also a unique musical instrument, waiting for the fall breeze to bring it to life.

Gratitude

Today is Thanksgiving Day.  An annual holiday that calls out gratitude for special attention.  But life can't really be lived by being thankful one day a year.  Gratitude is a constant practice, or it is really not there at all.  It isn't something that can be applied in a thin coating.  You can't be a little bit grateful.  Gratitude must run deep to the core of how you relate to life.

I do have a special practice for the day.  During meditation, I express gratitude to members of my family, close friends, and teachers. One by one, whether still living or having passed away, I name and thank them.  I'm always surprised at how long the list is.  I have a lot to be grateful for.

Double Skunked

As a kid growing up in the midwest, if you went hunting or fishing and came back empty handed, you were "skunked."

Now, we knew what skunks were, and were also familiar with really being "skunked," - being, or more likely, having your dog get - sprayed by a skunk.

I can only speculate that the connection between the two uses of the word - being sprayed with an awful smelling and hard to remove musk, and failing to bring home the bacon - is that both were very undesirable things.

Today is the day before Thanksgiving, and we had a snow storm.  The snow didn't stick, but it was falling fast and thick around mid-day.   I'm guessing that explains why no one showed up for the noon yoga class that I was subbing for another teacher.  At least I prefer that explanation to the thought that they knew I was teaching and stayed home.

Then, in the evening I drove up to The Happy Yogi to teach my regular Wednesday class.  You guessed it - skunked again.

I didn't really mind.  I had a little time to work on my own and catch up on some journaling - and then got to come home for an earlier dinner.  So perhaps "skunked" isn't quite the right word - but I like it, so I'm going to adopt it, give it a new definition: "to go to teach a yoga class and have no students show up."

Today I was double skunked!

Deer Encounter

I hadn't seen the neighborhood deer for a week or so.  Each morning as I begin my walk to work, I wonder if I'll see them.  Today, as I crossed Dale Drive and headed up the path through a wooded area, I saw a couple of deer crossing the path.  Then a third.  Though the morning was quite light already, they seemed little perturbed by me, edging off the path as I approached, watching, but not seeming particularly fearful.  When i got beside them, perhaps 10 or 12 feet away, I stopped.  For a bit, it almost seemed as if they were waiting for me to beckon them over, perhaps to give them a good scratch behind the ears, or under the chin.  Then the closest one jumped, and bounded a few yards away.  As I turned to walk up the path, I saw a fourth, right behind me on the other side.  Perhaps their tolerance of me was because I'd wandered into the middle of their herd, and they didn't want to leave until the straggler had made it past me.  

Clearly, they didn't see me as much of a threat, and I'm glad for that.  

Beyond Habit

As useful as habits are, even better is to move beyond habit.  This doesn't mean that habits are somehow banished - they are far too useful in helping us navigate life.  Moving beyond habit is to maintain a degree of awareness so that we recognize when we are acting from habit, and can choose, if we wish, to act differently.

Perhaps this will be a one time change that gives a better result than our habitual reaction, and we will settle back into a habit that, over all, serves us well.  Or, perhaps our choice will lead to development of a different, improved habit.  It all depends.  The essential thing is that we have awareness - that we know when we are acting from habit, and that we choose to do that, or choose to make a change.

Use the habits that serve you well.  Develop new, and better habits.  Be aware, and choose a different, non-habitual action when warranted.  Move beyond habit.

Old Habits, New Habits

We are, indeed, creatures of habit.  We learn a way of doing something, and so long as it works well enough, we repeat it, again and again, until it is deeply seated.  We can carry out much of life out of habit - getting up, getting dressed, eating, going to work, and on and on.   Habits are very useful.  They help us function, to get by, without having to figure everything out anew.

But we want habits to serve us, not define us.  When a habit is "just the way we are," even if it isn't leading to the best results or is impacting us, or others, in a negative way, it's time to revisit and rethink how we want to be, and learn a new habit.

I once read what seemed to be wise advice, that the way to get rid of a habit that was no longer serving us, was not to put energy into stopping the habit, but rather to replace it with a better habit.  The more deeply a habit is embedded, the more difficult it is to end.  But we can bypass the resistance to change by simply focusing on the positive change of building a new habit.  The old one may occasionally reappear, but if simply acknowledged without judgement, its power will diminish as the new habit takes hold.

Healthy Movement

Bodies are vastly different, from person to person.  At the extremes, they range from stiff and tight with little range of motion, to hypermobility - a body that will move beyond the safe range of motion for its joints.   Sometimes a body has little movement in some areas, and much movement in others.  

Healthy movement is a little movement in a lot of areas.  When we move, if there's stiffness or restriction in one place, a place with more mobility will compensate.  If it moves too far, an injury may occur.  

I have hypermobile thumbs.  The joints can move in a way that looks exactly like the photo here in the Wikipedia entry.  I rarely move them that way now, but did quite a lot when I was young and it was interesting to say "Hey, look what my thumbs can do!"

Flexibility is valued in yoga.  Increasing flexibility is high on the list of reasons that people are interested in yoga - myself included, when I started.  More flexibility lets a yogi "do" more poses, get into prettier shapes.  And yet it is the more flexible people, rather than the stronger, stiffer ones, who are most apt to be injured, because they can push past the limits of what the body's structure can support.

I'm very interested in how to teach mixed classes so that the people who can benefit from increasing their range of motion can find more space and openness, while those with too much mobility stay safely back from the edge, and build more strength to support their body.  How do I do that, teaching the same pose to a group?  I think the answer is aiming both groups toward the middle, in terms of the shape of the pose.  Some will feel stretch and lengthening, and others will feel muscle engagement and holding back.  Both will be getting what they need.

Rush of the Seasons

Here it is, almost Thanksgiving.  We've had some autumn to winter crossover weather, one night the temperature dropped below 20 degrees, and almost all the trees are bare now.  But it doesn't seem that summer was all that long ago.

I notice that the days are short now, and the sun low on the horizon.  And then I think that it's only a month until the winter solstice, and the days will begin lengthening again.  It seems like I'm only recognizing the onset of a new season when it is 2/3 over.

We had a warmer day today, and then another cold front moved through in early evening, dropping the temperature into the mid 30s.  My walk home started out feeling a bit raw, but as I walked I began to notice the crisp cleanness of the air, the bright stars in black space, patterns of light and shadow, and I began to relish the briskness of the cold air on my skin.

Rush, rush, go the days.  And the seasons.  And life.  Enjoy it all.

Possibility

I recently learned of the work of psychologist Ellen Langer.  This article gives an overview.  There's a lot of interesting things, but the following quote caught my attention:

"Langer believes that the more we adhere to labels and categories, the less open we are to possibility."

This idea immediately struck me as true.  Why label myself as middle aged, a fisheries biologist, a yoga teacher, a musician, or any other thing?  I'm just me.  I am a certain number of years old, I have a degree in fisheries science,  I teach yoga, and I play several different instruments.  But I am not defined by those things, they are simply a part of my experience and how I have expressed my life so far.  They don't limit the possibilities of what I may do next.

No Sooner Than...

Just a day after I accused my mind of running amok while unattended at night, I woke in the wee hours to find that it was musing about a wonderful idea for a yoga practice about gratitude.

I'm teaching a couple of classes the day after Thanksgiving, subbing for a really wonderful teacher.  I had thought of the general idea of a special practice on the theme of gratitude, but hadn't come up with a good idea of how to approach it.

So while I was sleeping, my brain did something useful after all, and came up with a nice idea, for an individual affirmation of gratitude, within a structure that I think is true to yoga:

I am grateful for breath,
  and the energy of life it brings.
I am grateful for [something specific to me],
  I am grateful for life.

I'll use this throughout a very focused practice requiring careful attention to the breath, using it to lead movement into, and alignment of, the poses.

I could use some more good ideas, so I'll hope the helpful mind shows up again tonight.

This is Your Brain, on Sleep!

You'd think the brain could use a good night's rest to do something useful, like solve a problem, sort out what's important from what's not, or even just chill out.

Instead the brain, if mine is at all representative, takes the opportunity to go a little crazy.  Throw everything into the pot, stir it around a few times, and then show the movie in a slight fast forward on the screen of my mind, so that I wake up to a chaotic swirl of thoughts and images.

I've noticed my mind wakes up without a good sense of time.  Asleep, it seems to think that everything needs to happen at once.  So my first waking job is to come back to the sense of time, priority and sequence.  Things take time, and not everything can, or should, happen at once.

I was thinking of what a mess it would be if time wasn't there as a canvas to spread life out on.  Imagine what a beautiful symphony would sound like if all the notes from all the instruments were played at once.  It would be nothing but a roar, a dense and very loud block of sound - likely indistinguishable from any other work given similar treatment.  Time provides a ground to spread out the sounds upon, so they can be noticed and juxtaposed in particular relationships that we experience as unique, beautiful and profound.

Thinking about that gave me a different perspective on my life.  Much time is spent on little things - buttoning a shirt, tying a shoe, brushing teeth, feeding the pets.  If I enjoy and appreciate them, these are the beautiful little notes I string together to make the composition for the day.  If I ignore them, take them for granted, I miss a great opportunity to experience life at its fullest.  If I get caught up in rushing to do everything at once - hurrying on to the next thing before finishing the one before me, I make my life a cacophony of meaningless noise.

Unwinding

After a very busy weekend, I'm spending this evening relaxing, unwinding.  In navigating through the frenzy, it helps greatly to stay in the present - to stay focused on what is happening now - and to be aware of what it feels like to be pulled away from the present and to have the tools - such as conscious awareness of breath - to come back.

The sounds around me are the regular tick of a clock across the room, the hum of the drier running downstairs, a different hum from far off machinery someplace outside, and the wet-tire sound from cars going past now and then.  Listening to sounds is a good technique to relax and draw inward, a good way to unwind.

Slowly Spinning

Last Tuesday, I sat down at the computer in the early afternoon and noticed a band of light, perhaps a half inch wide, on my right wrist, from the sun coming at a sharp angle through the window.  Before my attention wandered, I noticed the strip narrowing ever so slightly.  My mind, so easily takes the day for granted, when in fact the sun, and the angle of its light, is always moving.  In much less time than I would have expected, the band of light grew thinner, and then vanished.

This afternoon I watched the sun set, off to the southwest over the buildings of Tyson's Corner, Virginia.  Deep, golden red, and casting it's color onto scattered clouds, it slowly sank below the horizon, finally blinking out in gap between two tall buildings.

Tonight is cold, and as often happens, clear.  As I walked home a little after 9 pm, I scanned the sky.   Cassiopeia was overhead, and to the east a bit, I saw a blurry area that I thought might be the Pleiades.  But that would mean Orion should be in the vicinity, and I couldn't see it.  A half block more, and I spied the three points of light in the belt of the great constellation, which, still laying on its side, was rising above the eastern horizon.

The universe is always in motion, ever changing, even if sometimes our minds want to strip that complexity away for an illusion of constancy.

November 13, 2014, Observations

Early morning, after the change back to standard time.  The moon is overhead, with Jupiter near by.  Orion is well off to the west, reminding me how late it is in the fall, and how few times I had good viewing this fall.  Perhaps mostly weather conditions, or perhaps my schedule just didn't have me up and out at the right times, but I feel that I've missed something.

A few blocks from home, in a shaded spot on the street, under a big spreading oak, a shape moves out from the east side.  Mind notices, processes, concludes - way too big for a dog or a fox, must be a deer.  Different somehow, a buck, perhaps?  Yes, I think so.  There's another one following.  That looks like a buck too.  I'm pretty close, they see me, do they know what I am?  Wait.  Should I keep walking?  Will they feel threatened?  Would they run, or perhaps be aggressive?  OK.  They're moving on across to the other side, eyeing me, but not too concerned.  Guess it's OK to walk by.

Evening.  Cloudy, cold, and drizzly.  I'm not really prepared for that, but just barely have enough layers.  If it doesn't rain harder, I'll be alright.  Dark, cold, wet, what does that remind me of?  Oh, 30 years living in Juneau - I can handle this.

I'm Grateful for Thich Nhat Hanh

Word today that the Vietnamese Zen Buddhist master, Thich Nhat Hanh, is gravely ill, is worthy of reflection.  He has worked tirelessly for peace, for longer than I have been alive, .  He has influenced millions of people through his writings.  I first became interested in meditation from reading one of his books, and so I, like many others, owe him a great debt of gratitude.  His has been a life well lived, a giant contribution to humanity.  And yet, his life, like all of ours, will come to an end.  Let me, in some small way, be worthy of the gift he has given.

Body-Mind-World

It was cold overnight last night, but warmed up past the forecast today, reaching 70.  It was a lovely day to work outside, raking up the leaves from the yard and piling them along the edge of the street.

Looking back at the blog from a year ago, I found that this same time last year had also been nice, and I had spent some time sitting down by the creek. - link to last year's post

The seasons repeat, and there are certain things that will always happen in fall.  The trees will turn color, the leaves fall.  Nights will get colder until one night water freezes.  There will be a beautiful, warm day now and then that awakens utter joy at being alive and able to experience it.

But within the cycles and overall patterns, each day, each moment, is unique.  And through it all moves my life - not in a cycle, but in an arc.  Every day I'm the same person, but I'm changed, in both body and mind.  Or perhaps, I should say body-mind, because I increasingly realize they are not separate, but are two aspects of a single thing, me.  And I am not separate from the world - I am a connected part of it.

A Minor Crash

Saturday was a busy day catching up on a month's worth of mail and a variety of other chores.  Sunday was an extra-packed yoga day.  After the 8:30 am two hour class Pam and I usually attend, we came home for a late breakfast.  Soon after I headed back over to attend an early afternoon class that I may be teaching after the first of the year, then had a photo shoot - one of a dozen or so "models" for the next brochure - and then ran downstairs to teach my Sunday afternoon class.

I came home and helped finish preparing supper.  Afterwards, I sat down to read and soon felt very drowsy.  After trying to stay awake and read, I eventually gave in and laid down on the floor for a while.  I never felt that I had fallen asleep, but when I finally did get up it was almost 10 o'clock.

I knew, heading into the fall, that was burning the candle at both ends, to some degree.  The steady expansion in my yoga teaching has finally reached the point where I'm thinking hard about how what is a sustainable level for me.

My little Sunday evening crash is another reminder that I do have limits, after all.

Creekside Perspective

I walked down to the creek this afternoon on this sunny fall day, with blue sky and colorful leaves scattered around, some remaining on the trees.  In the bare branches, I could see the nests of squirrels and birds, hidden all summer amidst thousands of leaves, but now exposed.

Several crows perched high in a tulip poplar near the creek.  I walked across the log that dams the creek near the playground, and sat on my usual rock, but facing upstream this time.  There are two pedestrian bridges, one over the main creek and the other over a small tributary.  Their gentle arc over the water made a lovely scene.

Soggy leaves are piled up on rocks and gravel bars in the stream.  The sun is low in the sky - it's just a month and a half from the year's shortest day.  It's chilly, and the people coming by are dressed in jackets and hats.  The playground is empty.

I notice the sound of water rushing over the dam behind me, and that I can barely make out the sound of water rushing over a small fall and rapids upstream from me.   But by moving just a little - bringing my head forward perhaps a foot, I could make the sounds nearly balance.

Air is so amazing in it's ability to carry minute vibrations to my ears, like those just made by a leaf sliding down a streamside rock and falling into the creek, even while it moves, fluidly and unseen, all around me.

Upstream, water leaves a glassy-surfaced pool and runs quickly through a rocky area, creating streams of bubbles that ride the main current channels into the pool below.  Reflections of cars on the parkway flash across the water upstream of the bridge.

After a while more, I rose, and crossed back over the log to head home.  The crows are gone.  Two families have just arrived at the playground.

Autumn Observations

Looking back at the blog post from a year ago - Friday, November 8, 2013 - I found that my observations about the season apply very well to now:

Though every day that passes brings change, the fall seems to bring more intensity in the change. Much is happening - noticeably shortening days, the changing colors of foliage, the trees shedding their leaves, the large temperature swings, cold nights.  The hour shift when daylight savings time is replaced by standard time is especially jarring.  Of a sudden, it is getting dark right after work.

I have a panoramic view from my office window, out to the south over Rock Creek Park and the neighborhoods of Northwest Washington.  To the east, I can see the Capitol, the Washington Monument, and the shimmer of the Potomac beyond.  To the west, the buildings of Bethesda rise above the tree tops, and farther away, and somewhat to the south, is Tysons Corner, Virginia.  On a clear day I can see to the Blue Ridge.

Yesterday, which was a cloudy day with light rain from time to time, I was treated to a spectacular display of fog and diffused light in the afternoon as the storm began to break.  Sunlight streamed through the clouds, and the air was thick, filling each little valley with fog that silhouetted the bare branched trees on each hill.  The light shifted constantly, growing bright and then fading as I watched.

This morning the scene was entirely different.  Beneath the blue morning sky, a layer of clouds sailed briskly along from west to east.  The rising sun angled in below the clouds, kissing the tops of the trees with their autumn colored leaves, and reflecting brightly off white painted buildings and glass windowed office buildings.  About noon, the sun was up enough to the south that it began streaming in through the window, and I had to close the blinds.   When I left the building at lunchtime, I discovered that the wind pushing the clouds along was sailing along at ground level as well, and quite brisk.

Ahh, invigorating autumn!

Naming Names

All my life I have struggled with remembering peoples' names when first introduced.  I would hear the name, but not retain it.   Then, knowing that I had "known" the name, I'd be embarrassed to ask for it again.

Teaching yoga has put me in contact with new faces and names on a regular basis, and I want to remember the names, because I understand how important it is to people.  At first, with my mind occupied thinking about the class to come, what I was planning to teach and concerned whether I would remember it, I had a few classes where the names failed to stick.

Gradually, though, I refined my methods.  The most useful thing is for me to repeat the name in my mind a few times, associating it with the image of the person.  Writing the names down helps too.  I'm getting better and better at it, and my new expectation that I will remember the names seems to help as well.

I taught two classes tonight - one my regular Wednesday class, the other as a sub for a teacher who wasn't feeling well - and I remembered all the names.  I was also able to greet several people who had come for the first time last week by name this week, which surprised some of them, and I think goes a long way toward establishing that I care who they are and value their participation in the class.

The Futility of Avoiding Imagined Outcomes

I've written before about my natural aversion to conflict.  But I think what's really going on is different.  I deal pretty well with conflict when I'm faced with it.  My problem is that I imagine there will be conflict, and then tell stories to myself about how it will unfold, and then second guess taking the actions that I imagine will lead to the conflict.

Such a thing came up today.  I had decided to reassign one of my division's people to a new supervisor.  I was fully confident that this was a good move for the division and for the employee.  And, I imagined that the current supervisor would be upset at the move.  Because of my assumption about how they would react, I spent some time over the past couple of days running my imagined dialog and their reaction, and my response to this imagined reaction, over in my mind.

Not nearly to the extent that I would have a few years ago, but still enough to be distracting and make me think about what I was doing.

I went to work this morning, with a meeting scheduled to discuss the issue.  It had occurred to me that I was responsible for my decision, and it wasn't my place to be responsible for the supervisor's reaction, but I still carried a little bit of anticipatory anxiety into the meeting.

I stated my intention clearly and without apology, and the reaction I got was, 'that makes sense, I'm OK with it.'

So, the conflict that I imagined was only that - and whatever time and energy I spent preparing for it was for naught.  I know that conflict will occur - perhaps the reaction would have been negative - but I learned that the place for me to invest my energy is in making choices that I truly believe in, and accepting that the other affected parties are responsible for their reaction.  I do not make their choices, and there is no point in my thinking that I know what they will be.

The Meaning of Happiness

I recently read an article from The Atlantic that contrasted happiness with finding meaning in life.  The article, citing some psychological studies, equates being in the present with a kind of shallow, selfish happiness; and said that people who spent more time thinking about the future or about past struggles found more meaning.

This is not my personal experience.  I have found much deeper meaning through the practice of living in the present, and the thinking that I do about the past and the future is much more open, compassionate, and honest.

The article also described happy people as 'takers,' their happiness coming from getting what they want and having no worries or struggles.  People who found meaning in life, on the other hand, were 'givers.'

Again, this is not my personal experience.  I have always been happier giving, being helpful, being useful.  Perhaps the problem is with the premise - that happiness and meaningfulness are somehow opposites.  

On Presence

Presence is having your attention on what is happening now - what your are experiencing now.  Being present opens up the door to a richer experience of life - awareness of even a little more of the seemingly infinite world around us that, for the most part, we ignore.

I know I'm present if I'm enjoying little things, and seeing, smelling, tasting and touching things as if they were new.  I know I'm not present when I'm doing something, and before it is finished, my mind is thinking about the next thing to do, or the one after that.

After lunch today, I was washing dishes.  When I scrubbed soap over the surface of a curved, glass, skillet lid, the foamy bubbles coalesced into beautiful swirly patterns.  I spent a few minutes, far more than needed to clean the lid, wiping the bubbles this way and that, and enjoying the resulting patterns.  If I had tried to paint a lovely pattern, I couldn't have done as well.  Was it silly to enjoy it just because it was soap bubbles on a pan lid?  The present me says no.  It was completely engrossing and fulfilling to a mind in the present.

After I started this post, Pam called to ask if I would help fold laundry.  It is one of those tasks sometimes described as mindless, as if it is something of a necessary waste of time.  Instead, it's an opportunity to notice and enjoy the smell of clean clothes, the texture of each piece, still slightly warm, all fluffed up from tumble drying.  I didn't need to keep thinking about this partly written post.  It was here, waiting for me.  Far better to be present for the laundry folding, and then be present to write, rather than being absent for both with my mind who knows where.

Gravity

The trees are losing their leaves quickly now.  The lawn is covered with leaves, and the gutters are full.  When each leaf lets loose, it has a few seconds of freedom as it floats, twirls, flutters, or tumbles to the ground.  There is no escaping the pull of gravity.

Gravity is always there, pulling us towards, roughly, the center of the earth.  Much of the energy we expend is to move against that force, and to balance in the force field.  We are so well constructed that we can go for days, even weeks and months, with no loss of balance, no sense of danger.  But lose that balance, and gravity has you lying on the ground so quickly you're not aware of how it happened.

There are many ways that gravity can kill us.  It can bring a tree limb, or a whole tree, crashing down.  It can bring a loose rock tumbling over a cliff to strike us, or sweep an avalanche of snow around us.  Slip on a patch of ice, and gravity can pull you down with such force that the blow to your head is fatal.

But without gravity, we wouldn't exist.  There'd be nothing to hold the earth together, no stabilizing, unifying force to hold the water in the oceans, cause the rain to fall, or hug the atmosphere to the earth, with its oxygen that we need.

We're part of it, too.  Gravity is an attractive force between matter.  Our mass has a tiny gravitational force, as does everything in the universe.  It's not something other than us.  It's in us, around us, through us.  Gravity binds us to everything.  It never give up, and eventually, when we lose our ability to gather energy and use it for our movement, gravity will pull us down, one last time, like a falling leaf.

Halloween

Today feels to me like the end of a lot of things.  Halloween, October 31, falls on Friday this year, so it's the end of a work week as well as the end of a month that seemed to race past.

It's also the end of a particularly busy week that included the busy day last Sunday, with yoga workshop, teaching, and the Composers Society concert.  That launched 5 straight days of yoga teaching in addition to work, that ended with back to back classes last night.

I'm enjoying it very much, but I'm ready for a weekend without a lot of obligations.  It will be busy enough - I will be working on a presentation I'll make on Monday afternoon, and have my Sunday yoga class to prepare for and teach.  But in comparison, that's a very light load.

Meanwhile, it's Friday night -- Halloween -- yet this looks like it will be the second year in a row that we have had no one come by to Trick or Treat.  There aren't many children in the neighborhood, and there seems to be a continuing trend away from what used to be an annual ritual of families going door to door in search of candy.

Yet Another Moment

After work, I drove up to Fulton, Maryland, to teach a class at The Happy Yogi.  The day had been gray, with a little bit of rain.  I was in the front of the studio when suddenly the trees outside, in various stages of turning color for fall, were lit up  with the warm, golden light of the sun, as it lowered toward the horizon and the light streamed in under the western edge of the clouds.  The trees shined bright against the gray backdrop, the intensity slowly waning as the sun set.

Just For a Moment

On Tuesdays I leave the house at 7 to walk to work.  Mondays and Fridays I leave later, and Wednesdays and Thursdays earlier.  Tuesday is the morning that I see the most people out - partly because it's the time when the high school kids are waiting for the bus.  But there are also dog walkers, joggers, and cyclists out that time of day.

As I approached the Metro station, about 7:20, the sun rose above the horizon.  I couldn't see it, but I knew because the sky suddenly was streaked with red as the light reflected off several layers of scattered and wispy clouds.  It was a glorious sight, but changed step by step.  Within just a few seconds the color had faded away, a reminder to pay attention, and be open to the beauty that presents itself, even if just for a moment.

A Too Long Day, Year 2

I have been revisiting posts from last year.  It's interesting to see what I was writing about then, and, in keeping with yesterday's post, to reflect on what is similar and what is different a year later.

Yesterday, I had a very busy day.  It started with a 9 am workshop, the final session in a series that had started Friday morning - vigorous, challenging yoga.  Then I came home for lunch, followed by an 8 mile bike ride with Pam.  Next was a trek to Takoma Park to teach a yoga class - with a quick stop on the way to pick up some fruit for the final commitment of the day - the fall concert of a composers group that I am president of.  It was almost 11 pm before I got home.

The day was long, busy, but not overly tiring.  I simply did each thing as it came, finished it, and moved on to the next.  I enjoyed the morning workshop.  The bike ride was brisk, invigorating.  The yoga class was the best I have taught.  The concert and aftermath - reception and packing everything up, closing the venue at the end - was long but enjoyable.

I looked back to see what was happening this time last year, in 2013.  This was the post for the corresponding Sunday, a year and a day ago:  A Too Full Day - a busy day involving yoga and a Composers' Society concert.

This year's experience was more settled, less stressful.  But last year's dinner recipe was better.  I need to try that one again, soon.

Live Life Well

Consider three things needed to live life well - commitment, action, and reflection.

You need to understand what is important to you - what you are willing to commit to.  What inspires you.  What you are devoted to.

You have to act.  Action consistent with your commitment is best, is aligned with your life.  Action can be effective, or ineffective, skillful or unskillful.  Skillful action will support your commitments.

Reflection provides the feedback loop to keep your actions aligned with what matters to you.  By paying attention to the results of your actions, you learn from them, so that future actions become even more skillful, more effective.

Reflection is also directed at your commitment.  You may have thought something was very important to you, that it deserved your dedication and commitment.  With more experience, and with discerning, honest reflection, you may find it less worthy of your time, your life's energy, leading to a new, more powerful commitment.

Do not be frozen because you aren't certain of your commitments, or the skill of your action.  Commit to the highest and best thing that you can, and act as skillfully as you can.  But don't be attached to either your commitment or the results of your action.  With discerning reflection, you can change, adapt, grow.  You can commit to better things, you can act more skillfully.

Through this process you live a life of purpose and accomplishment, your actions aligned to the direction of your inner self.

Perfect

While last weekend was windy, full of the fall spirit of energy and transition, this weekend is more settled, with gentle breezes and pleasant warmth in the sunlight.

The wind and rain that we've had has stripped the tree tops of the earliest-turning foliage.  This won't be one of those years where the trees turn color and then stand for a while, postcard picture perfect.

I walked through the neighborhood in the afternoon.  The shade was cool, the sunny spots warm.  Fall flowers are blooming, and the overall feeling of the day was that there was still a lot of life in full presence, even as the trees are pulling back to rest for the winter.

The leaves on a tree up ahead began to shimmer and rustle as a breeze blew through.  Soon, I felt it cool on my skin, moderating the heat from the bright sunlight.  Then and there, the world seemed perfect.

Double Down on Attention

I've written several times about distraction.  Seems to be a recurring theme.  That's great, because it presents an opportunity to practice.

The technique is simple, thought not necessarily easy.   When I notice myself being distracted - when I'm walking home with all of nature to experience and feel the urge to check email on my phone - I simply decline the distraction and double down on my attention to what's around me.

I had one of these moments today, walking home after a yoga workshop.  As soon as I made the conscious choice to keep my attention with me on my walk, my awareness expanded, and my senses heightened to the sights, sounds and scents of a beautiful fall day.  I was very glad that I had rejected the offer of distraction.

Morning - October 23, 2014

The top of the tree canopy, out across Rock Creek Park and beyond, is beginning to turn color.  Above, the sky is deep, pure blue, shading to pale - nearly white - toward the southern horizon.  In the sky are two layers of clouds.  The higher one hangs, motionless, as near as I can tell.  Beneath it, there is another layer - long bands of white and gray, sliding quickly along from west to east.

I perceive the clouds as moving through the air, since I can see the clouds, but not the air around.  In reality, the clouds are part of the air, and it is the entire atmosphere that is moving.  The cloud isn't a separate thing in the atmosphere.  It isn't like an airplane - a solid object that moves through the air.

The difference between a cloud and a similar volume of air that you can't see is just the amount of moisture present.  Air with enough moisture forms larger droplets that reflect light.  What looks like a completely different phenomenon from the invisible air is simply the result of a threshold being crossed.  When there's enough water in the atmosphere, we can see it.  There's no difference in kind, just in degree.

Clouds are visible atmosphere.  Energy from the sun can heat the air so that the moisture moves back to the invisible state.  Indeed, in the course of 15 minutes or so, the upper layer of clouds slowly, almost imperceptibly, melts away into the blue sky, while the clouds below continue to stream from one horizon to the other.

Om and the Etch-a-Sketch Principle, Redux

As the Mindful Day blog heads into its second year, I've been thinking that it might be interesting to look back at posts from the year before.

After work today, I taught a yoga class in which I introduced the idea of Om as a mind-clearing vibration, analogous to how shaking a cluttered Etch-a-Sketch clears its screen.  When I looked back at posts from October 2013, I found my original post about this.

So I offer as today's topic - just a little over a year later - Om and the Etch-a-Sketch Principle, Redux

Why Practice?

I want to be positive about thing in my life.  Not everything is a good thing.  Somethings are painful.  I can still be positive in how I react.  That's why daily practice is important.

I practice letting go of the little aggravations daily - in actuality, it's a continual practice.  I feel better right away.  But most importantly, this discipline of practice, when it is relatively easy and the stakes or low, better prepares me to let go of the bigger things - things that potentially could bring me crashing down - when they come my way.  Inevitably, they will.  My practice strengthens me, little by little.

Shadow Show

Yesterday afternoon the sun was streaming through the back windows, casting sharp shadows on the floor from the trees outside.  The shadows, leaf and limb shaped, were animated by the gusty breeze.

The most energetic gusts sped the movement up so much that my eye could no longer distinguish the shapes.  It was the same feeling I have watching a movie in fast forward.  Then the wind would subside, the motion would slow, and the shapes once again emerged from the blur.

What's Up with Fall?

What's up with Fall?  Energy, that's what - invigorating, stimulating, agitating energy.  I used to think Fall was just Fall. Maybe it felt different - that headlong rush toward the end of the year and the holidays that always seem like they should be fun (and often are), but which are often stressful as well.  

It's a time of much transition, but I didn't think more of it. Growing up, fall was always back to school, and my birthday, and Halloween, and then Thanksgiving.  Then it was on to winter, and Christmas and New Years.  No wonder things were hectic.

But if Fall is inherently a time of transition and agitating energy, how does that affect my life?  I find it is harder to keep my focus, to find calmness and stability.  My mind bursts with things that must be done, leaping ahead to one thought without finishing the one before, building up the anxiety of so much to do, and so little time.

How can I stay grounded, keep to the calm waters, while everything around is trying to pull me into the rapids and over the falls?  To start, I give priority to meditation, particularly first thing in the morning, to set a solid foundation for the day.  I recognize the signs of stress and chaos in the mind - not as a normal, acceptable state - but as a state of dis-ease that needs attention.  

One of the most powerful techniques, in response to mental scatter concerned with a whole day's (or week's - or month's) worth of tasks as if they all need attention at once - is to bring myself back to one thing.  I focus on just one thing, and set to do it with my full attention.  Even with simple things - things that we so often try to "multi-task," like making coffee, feeding the cats, putting clean dishes away - bringing my mind back to my breath and completing the task with full attention does wonders for me.  It settles down my mind and brings me toward that state of flow, where I'm doing things without second guessing myself, and without worrying about other things that need to be done - and will be done when the time is right - but for which investing my mind now is simply pointless.

Air

This morning was crisp, with blue sky and warmth in the sunlight.  A stiff breeze swirled leaves around along the street as we went to the farmers market.

Air.  It's all around us, all the time.  If it wasn't, we would die in minutes, as we are more dependent on the oxygen it brings us than on any other thing.  Yet it is invisible to us.

Strange that something so vital, that immerses us, is practically imperceptible, seeming like empty space.  But how dense, how packed with molecules it must be, that the tiny vibrations of a cat's footstep on the hall floor are carried to my ear.

The swirling leaves made visible the movement of the air, revealing indescribable complexity in the movement.  Rushing this way and that, backtracking, circling around, dashing and darting.  Speeding along, then fluttering to a stop.  How amazing would it be to see all the movement in the air around me?  It might be the most mind-blowing experience I can imagine.

An Autumn Day

Today was a busy and productive day.  My mind was busy when I woke up, and did not fully quiet during morning meditation.

The walk to work was quintessential autumn - blue sky, cool air, leaves scattering the ground and increasing color in the trees.

Mid-day seemed almost perfect as the sun provided just the right amount of warmth and the whole world was bright under the blue sky.

The sun put on a show as it set, lighting up a band of clouds with a deep, golden red glow  that gradually darkened toward purple.  A jet passing above the clouds headed south and another passing below on approach to the airport were tiny, providing a better sense of the grand scale of the sunlit cloud.

Staying Positive When Things Blow Up

I had just arrived at an 8:30 am meeting when my cell phone rang. It was one of my branch chiefs, saying that the security guards wouldn't let a consultant we had hired into the building because they had a drivers license from Maine and no other ID.

We had all the staff scheduled to start a two day writing workshop at 9:00, and the teacher couldn't get into the building, due to a new law that required IDs to be compliant with new federal security standards, which several States have decided not to follow.

I'll let be for the time being the issue of the absurdities of our security state, that prohibit access to government buildings by U.S. citizens that the government has contracted with to provide training to its staff.

The crisis at hand was that if we couldn't get the contractor into the building, we'd have to cancel the training.  My initial reaction was, "I don't know if there's a solution, but I'll see what I can do."   A key to not being pulled down the stress and anxiety hole was accepting that there might not be a solution, and we'd have to cancel the training.

I reminded myself of my intention to be positive in all things, and that this was a good test of my ability to live out that intention.

By the time I had walked down the stairs two floors to my office level, I had remembered that there was a conference room outside the security area.  I walked down to let the staff know that there might be a change of plans, then went back up a floor to the desk of the woman who schedules that room.  I explained our dilemma and was happy to find that the room was not scheduled, and that we could use it for both days.

We were able to proceed with the training as planned, other than starting a few minutes late.  This positive outcome was by no means guaranteed.  The room could have been in use, or the key staff needed to work it out could have been unavailable on such short notice.  Being willing to accept both outcomes - the one I preferred and the one I didn't - made it much easier to stay positive and work through the situation.

It's Now, Now What?

Connecting with the breath helps keep me in the present.

It's Now, Now What?
The coolness of the floor on bare feet.
Pulling in a deep breath of fresh ground coffee.
The touch of cloth on skin while dressing.
Warmth of a cat brushing against my leg.
It's Now, there is nothing else.

Starting the Day Right

One of the fundamental tools of yoga and meditation is maintaining a connection between mind and breath.  Or, put another way, to have some part of your mind aware of the breath, as it moves in and out of the body, even as you are engaged in other things.

The breath is a sensitive instrument to indicate the quality of your experience.  It changes when you are frightened, excited, calm, anxious, tense, worried, focused, agitated, relaxed.  It is an almost magical connector between mind and emotions, because just as the breath reflects what is happening to you, the mind can influence (I'm intentionally not saying control) the breath, and the quality of the breath can educe the corresponding physical and emotional state.

Consciously calming the breath, slowing and lengthening it, can bring more ease to the body and mind.  More rapid, energetic breathing can heighten senses and alertness.

All that as a bit of an introduction to the simple topic for today.  I am breathing constantly, and the breath is always happening in the present.  Keeping a connection between my mind and my breath keeps my mind in the present as well.  Keeping my mind in the present lets me experience life more fully, and helps me find and stay in the flow state I described yesterday.

I've come to appreciate the value of making that connection as soon after I rise in the morning as possible.  The first few minutes are sometimes a bit groggy, but as my awareness rises and senses my swirling, unfocused mind, I know it's time to connect, to plug in.  I often turn to the simple practice I described a few days ago - Yoga, Short and Sweet, and then carry that awareness with me the rest of the day.

Getting to Flow

I had one "most important thing" to do today.  That was to get my father's 2013 income taxes filed.  I'd bailed out last April and filed for a 6 month extension.  I had them prepared and copied, but hadn't found the time to double check them and package them up for mailing.

I thought it would be the first thing I did after breakfast, and then it would be clear sailing for the rest of the day.  But it wasn't the first thing I did, or the second.  I wasn't intentionally procrastinating, but as I finished one thing another would appear, and it seemed right to do it rather than try to stick it on a mental to-do list, which I've found becomes another source of stress.

I felt that I was in a flow, where I was participating in the actions but not "doing" them.  That is, it didn't seem that I was exerting any effort, either mentally or physically.  I didn't lose track of my most important thing.  Rather than feeling as if I was avoiding it, I felt I was building up momentum that would carry me through it once it came up in the queue.

Moving from one task to the next seemed inevitable, not like I was making a decision.  I was just moving from one obvious thing in the present, to the next.  It also seemed that the actions took no time.  I knew that the clock was ticking, outside of the flow, and that when I finished I would see that some time had elapsed.  But in the moment, I had no sense that one task was taking a particular amount of time.  I had no time expectation, so my mind wasn't running the background task of Time Monitor, constantly whispering "this is taking longer than you thought it would," "this is taking too much time," "you feel anxious" etc.

When the most important thing became the next thing to do, I gathered up the documents and mailing supplies and set to work.  It wasn't as straightforward as it might have been, and my subconscious anticipation of that complexity may have been why I hadn't finished it sooner, but I was well into the flow, so one thing just followed another, taking no effort, taking no time, until it was done.

A Belated Birthday and a Couple of Scrapes

Mindful Day turned a year old 10 days ago.  October 2, 2013, was the first post.  The impetus was the federal government shutdown that sent us all home in a state of limbo, not knowing when we'd go back to work.  The blog gave me something to do - something I hadn't done consistently before.

So now I'm into the second year.  I haven't posted every day, but most.  It has helped me document some of the interesting things I have seen and done, and also been a motivator to look more closely at things, to pay attention, and to think about what seems important and why.

We went for another bike ride today, up Sligo Creek trail to Wheaton Regional Park, where we explored a few new trails before heading back.  About a mile from home, I came around a corner and the trail ahead was filled with people.  Usually people stay to one side of the trail and leave at least a little room to maneuver, but not this time.

I hit the back brake and the wheel skidded out on the leaves on the trail.  I managed to ride the skid a bit so I wasn't going full speed when I hit the rough asphalt, but I knew it was going to hurt.  I ended up with a broad scrape on my right leg below the knee, and a nickle-sized round deep scrape and contusion on the side of my right foot right behind the big toe.  The sock and the shoe also have nickle-sized round holes.   I expect I will heal, but the sock and shoe will not.

I was riding too fast for that stretch of trail.  It would have been fine if not for the people.  But I know the trail is busy on nice days like today, and needed to be more mindful of the situations I might encounter.

Farm Visit

I woke up this morning to the sound of rain pelting the roof.  I wanted to just stay in bed.  But I also wanted to go with a group from Willow Street Yoga to Rocklands Farm - and I had agreed to be a car pool driver.  So, after a bit, I got up and began to get ready.

Rocklands Farm is perhaps a typical small farm near a big city.  It has a diverse business growing vegetables and several types of farm animals for community supported agriculture, is a venue for weddings and other events, and has started a small winery.

By the time we got to the farm, the rain had stopped.  Of course, everything was wet, and the air was cool and damp.

Our first activity was an hour of yoga in the barn.  The barn isn't used for farming anymore, but as a rustic event space.  It also isn't heated, and the temperature was just in the mid 50s.  The floor was heavy, unfinished, wood planks - warped to various degrees.  This environment brought a little more edge and immediacy to the practice.

Next, we went for a tour of the farm.  We met Scout, an energetic farm dog who believes humans exist to throw a tennis ball for her to chase.  We looked at their fall garden - sweet potatoes, turnips, radishes, arugula and other greens, and much more.  Then we hiked out across the wet pasture to a fenced area with the free range laying hens.  After watching them for a while, we went on, past a couple of wary sheep, to another area where the pigs are kept.  There were all ages and sizes, scattered over the hillside when we walked up, but over the next few minutes they congregated over by us, until the farm guide was worried they would find a way through the fence, as the electric fence seemed to not be working.

We went back to the barn building for lunch, then shopped for farm produce before heading home down River Road, past the ridiculous mega mansions of Potomac, and back into the heavy city traffic on the Beltway.

Taking it all in

I walked home from work today, eyes and ears wide open, consciously taking in as broad a view as possible, trying to see and hear everything around me.

The day was a bit unsettled.  It rained a little, a fall front was moving through.  The birds were very active.  I heard one singing that I didn't recognize.  A woodpecker hammered away in an oak tree, and there were always some birds in sight.

Each day the volume of falling leaves is increasing, and colors - reds, browns, and yellows - are beginning to spread through the tree canopies.

58 Times Around the Sun

58.  It's not a very large number.
It costs more, in $, to fill the car up with fuel, and quite a bit more for a typical weekly trip to the grocery store, or for restocking pet supplies.  It is just a little more than the number of weeks in a single year, and less than the number of days in two months.
I remember when $58 was more than enough to buy almost any single item of clothing I was interested in, but now it's easy to spend that on a basic pair of pants or a shirt.
But as an age, it seems like a bigger number.  Perhaps that's because it's approaching the age when people think about retiring, or because it's well into the age range that people think of as "grandparent land," and of course, grandparents must be old.  Or because it's well past the midpoint of what anyone could expect to be their numbered years on earth.
Having turned 58 today, it doesn't seem like a very big number at all.  And it doesn't seem all that important, because I realize that my life is lived from day to day, hour to hour, minute to minute.  If I get to enjoy more minutes, hours, and days, the years will pass as they do, until they don't.

In the meantime, I just want to enjoy the experience.

I have another fox sighting to report.  Today's was before dawn, about a block from my previous evening sighting.   This time the fox was a shadow streaking across the street at full speed about half a block ahead.  If I hadn't been looking in that direction in that instant, I never would have known it was there.

Early Morning Sky

One of my favorite things about this time of year is seeing Orion, Gemini, and the Pleiades on a clear morning.  This morning I left the house a little before 6am on the way to teach an early morning yoga class.  The street was wet and littered with leaves from last night's heavy rain.

As I started up the street, I looked up and saw a bright planet overhead.  I was a bit startled by it, as I had expected it to still be cloudy, or the sky to be hazy with moisture at least.  I looked up where I thought Orion would be, and was greeted with a clear, bright view.  Even the Pleiades, which are usually a fuzzy glow to my naked eye, were brighter and sharper than normal.  I looked back to the north and saw the Big Dipper standing on it's handle, and Polaris off to the west.

The moon caught my attention next.  Setting down toward the west, the lower right crescent was lit, but the shadowed part was brighter than usual with an odd colored glow.  I was seeing the blood moon eclipse, thought I didn't know that until a bit later.

Certainly the most stunning sky view for me in a long time.