A Meditation on the Meditation

Yoga is a moving meditation, a meditation on the body and its relation to the heart and mind. It is also a kind confrontation with personal limitations or perceived limitations. It can become a physical catharsis of emotional pain or trauma. At the same time it can be very comforting. The experiences from posture to posture are so complex they are difficult to put it into words, so ephemeral they are difficult to recall after the posture is over.

However, I'd like to attempt to begin to bring these to conscious light, to examine them in a different way.

I'll start at the beginning with pranayama breathing. This often brings with it an emotional recollection of all beginnings: the beginning of the school year, beginning a new book, a new friendship, a drive to an unfamiliar place, a new job. These usually elicit in me some nervous excitement, the thrill of adventure, curiosity about what is to come. The greater part of the feeling, however, is usually pure anxiety and sometimes panic: can I do it? (the practice, the school year, the drive), will I embarass myself?, oh,my god, this is going to be too hard!, don't want to do this after all- what was I thinking?, will I get hurt?

It doesn't help that, because it is at the beginning of class, I am stiff and my muscles cold, so that some of my doubts are reinforced by signals from my body. My neck hurts moving back and down over and over. My center of balance is elusive: are my hips in the right place? Is my back straight?, am I collapsing my rib cage (even though I'm focusing hard on lengthening my spine)? Am I holding my stomach in enough?

I also think about the class ahead. I want to get as much out of it as I can, so there is the pressure to "succeed" which is self-imposed as well as a desire sometimes to please the teacher- that need for external validation. I feel that more strongly with some teachers than with others. (But I'll save an examination of teacher-student relationship for another time. It requires and deserves it's own exploration, as I learn more about myself, not only as a student, but also as a teacher.)

As these doubts and desires bubble to the surface, so also am I trying to acknowledge, honor them and then let them go, to replace them with non-judgement, non-attachment. I am also consciously trying to replace them with positive messages to myself, positive thought.

Because I have a family history, as well as my own history of depression, my mind is deeply canalized for negative thought- it comes very easily to me and I can slip very quickly into those patterns of doubt, anxiety, frustration. As I begin and move through pranayama, throughout the entire practice, really, I try to remember this. I say to myself "now I a canalizing for happiness." I am trying to make new neural pathways for joy, acceptance, openness, curiosity.

In that spirit, I meet those familiar negative thoughts, recognize them and try to let them go. Of course, this a constant back-and-forth conversation. It's not a matter of winning the argument- positive thoughts vs negative thought- it is the importance of the conversation itself.

Another aspect of pranayama is, of course, the actual breathing, expanding lung capacity, gaining energy through breath, living in the breath. For me, though this doesn't always present itself as conscious thought, it is extraordinarily powerful nonetheless, as it calls out memories of both my mom and dad, who both died of lung related illness. As I breath deeply, looking at myself in the mirror, some part of me is recalling their deaths, their individual journeys, the pain and loss, the peace and release. I'm also looking into the face of my own mortality. I began and continue my practice because I want to live a long and healthy life and honor that lesson my parents gave me about making responsible choices and taking responsibility for my own health.

But I will die one day. Throughout the year following my mom's death, that reality hit me like a ton of bricks. I would stop on the stairs or getting out of my car or in the middle of a staff meeting and the thought of dying, specifically of Not Being one day anymore, would clench my heart and lungs like a vise. I found some books that lent me some perspective and made it possible for me to think very deeply about my own death without panicking and even with a great reverence for it. These thoughts, in one form or another, also arise during pranayama. And that's just the beginning of practice!

In the next post, I'll examine half-moon pose.