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Yoga yoga yoga!

Mind on Yoga

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Since returning from leading backpacking trips over the summer, I’ve been reinvesting myself in my yoga practice, expanding to new places physically and mentally. I started doing a daily yoga practice last year when I quit my office job, and the transition from once-in-a-while to everyday was astounding. My hips and legs opened up dramatically and my heart felt lighter. I didn’t make time to continue my practice with all the outdoor time I had this summer, but now I’ve redoubled my efforts. I bought an unlimited month at a studio (previously I almost always practiced on my own, or to podcasts) and have been going 8-9 times a week. I feel pretty lucky to be able to make the time for that, and the constant engagement has once again deepened my understanding and commitment to yoga. I’ve also been reading about more of the philosophical side of the art (including B.K.S. Iyengar’s Light on Life, which is fantastic), bringing connection to my meditation practice and to the musings I’ve had lately on vulnerability, creativity, openness, and play. I’ve been coming across some big ideas lately.

Expansion and Integration

I’ve never thought about the cycle of expansion and integration before, but it’s been showing up on all different time scales in my life lately. On the shortest scale there is the breath, with the inhale expanding one’s body and the exhale deepening a pose with contraction. Over several breaths in a pose, the body expands out through the bones, and integrates back to the center with the muscles, creating depth and balance. On a longer time scale, our bodies try new poses and stretch our comfort zones, then take some time to grow accustomed to a new range of motion. This is how growth happens in yoga as well as life in general. This past year for me has been a time of major expansion in my life. I’ve been doing all sorts of new things, testing my limits with creativity, the outdoors, and the idea of teaching. Aside from my yoga practice, I’ve been taking it easy for the last month or so. I’m using an expansion in my yoga practice to integrate some of the other big things I’ve been working on into my whole being.

Balance

Balance is clearly an important part of yoga. There are all sorts of balancing poses, on feet, on hands, on one of each, etc, etc. Balancing in space is a great way to bring focus to a pose. It also brings our awareness to a balance in the fourth dimension, time. When we lean too far into to future or the past, we falter in our awareness and slip into negativity. We stress about things to come, regret things gone by. I like the idea that one’s physical position in a posture relates to a mental tendency to be a little bit ahead or behind. Obviously we need to do a little planning for the future, but I’m pretty sure being present and conscious of the moment is one of the most important factors to creating a deep sense of happiness.

The Gunas: Tamas, Rajas, Sattva

A month ago I had never heard of the Gunas, but the idea has come up a lot recently. I’m still working on figuring out what the whole thing is about, but it’s kind of like the three threads of energy that encompass the universe. There is tamas, which is the grounded, heavy, solid energy. It can be dark, isolating, and is typically associated with the body. Rajas is a bright, active, perhaps frenetic energy which is associated with the mind. Sattva is luminosity, balance, and presence. In class we’ve been focusing on balancing the tamas of the body with the rajas of the mind, and sitting in a place of sattva. I’m pretty new at this whole thing, but this has translated to the idea of expansion and integration in my practice. There is a balance (both metaphorically and physically) of simultaneously extending the limbs and pulling them back in, and this creates a profound sense of presence and freedom. Part of this comes through visualization (another crucial part of yoga and all other aspects of life), which ties the mind to the body and to the moment in time.

 

All this is turning out to be transformational in my life right now. I feel a renewed sense of life energy when I practice these things, and I’m excited to delve deeper into them. With or without the physical postures of yoga, finding balance through awareness is something I’ll be working on for a long time. I’d love to hear your experiences with yoga or any of these ideas!

Community Building Through Shared Living

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I’ve been living with room- and housemates ever since heading off to college over a decade ago (and since birth, if you count family), and I feel like I’m starting to figure out what makes it work. I’ve never lived alone, and although I’m sure that has lots of its own merits, I love having roommates and the energy that comes along with that. I also haven’t lived in a true commune-type situation, so most of this applies to having fewer than four or five in the house. Here are some tips, tricks, and fun ways to approach the experience of shared living.

Intention. The biggest part of creating a positive living experience and a sense of community is having the shared intention to do so. Simple in theory, but harder to find in practice. There has to be buy-in from all the housemates in order to create a community rather than just a bunch of separate rooms connected by a hallway or kitchen. A great way to facilitate this is with some kind of founding document or manifesto for the house. Write out the intentions you all have and post it as a reminder. This has gradually evolved at my house, and we currently have a list of “Top Priorities”:

  • Meet new people
  • Experience new things
  • Be mobile
  • Don’t hold back
  • Be generous
  • Practice gratitude

This is a great lead-in to important thing #2:

Communication. Let’s be honest. Having great roommates is like being in a relationship. Communication is key, and without it things are going to get weird and uncomfortable pretty quickly. Face-to-face meetings and check-ins (about both house stuff and personal stuff) are the best, but technology can help fill the gaps. House spreadsheets for chores or purchases, group text messages for random updates and silliness, message boards, inspiration boards, quote boards, the whole shebang. A great way to improve communication is to get rid of the internet at home. It can be hard, but it’s worth it. When I was working full-time, an occasional long email to the house as a life update would go a long way toward starting necessary conversations and talking about difficult things.

Shared Experience. Your roommates don’t have to be your best friends, but everything is more fun when they are good friends, or when there is openness to becoming good friends. Sharing experiences is a great way to do this, and one of the ways I bond most quickly. Cooking together is an excellent start, and as the house develops, sharing bulk grocery shopping and having parties/game nights/potlucks can be wonderful. Less routine adventures are the best for creating long-term shared memories. Road trips, bike tours around unfamiliar neighborhoods, shopping at Goodwill, hosting yard sales, going out dancing, construction/art/craft projects, hosting guests/couchsurfers, whatever you all enjoy but don’t get to do that much.

Being Open. Everything is not going to be perfect all the time, but things will be much smoother if everyone is willing to step a bit out of their comfort zone occasionally and let the house do things in a way they normally wouldn’t do it themselves. Have conversations about new things, be flexible. Try to see the situation from your roommate’s perspective; take a step into their world view to expand your own.

POSITIVITY! This is a life skill, not just for shared housing. A big way it translates into a living situation, though, is through generosity. Everyone is going to owe everyone else a few dollars at some point, and if one person is consistently getting the short or long end of the stick, it’s probably time for a conversation. When cooking or baking, it’s best to make enough for everyone even if they don’t ask or aren’t home. If two of the housemates are better friends, that doesn’t need to lead to the exclusion of others. Basically, play together and be silly. Create house rules and a “sin jar” for breaking them. Make unusual traditions and inside jokes. Be creative and cherish the fact that everyone is going through the same struggles in life as you. Be grateful that you have wonderful people to live with, and give them the same respect you want to see from them.

Oh, and do as many dishes as you can stand to do, as often as possible.

Taking the Plunge: It keeps getting better

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This is an update on my new life of self-employment and -empowerment. Previous entries include: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

Whew. Life has been a whirlwind. I’ve been out of Seattle about 80% of the days and nights in the last two months. Most of those have been outdoors, which is totally excellent. I’m on track to blow out of the water any of my previous records on number of nights slept under the stars, and total hours not spent under a roof. Much of this has been through my new job leading backpacking trips for middle and high school boys with the YMCA. I just got back on Saturday from an 8-day adventure through North Cascades National Park, which got me thinking about a lot of what’s happened in my life lately.

Here’s the gist. For a long time, I’ve made a lot of the big decisions of my life on something of a whim. This isn’t a bad thing, necessarily, and it has worked out extremely well thus far. I’m pretty sure I majored in physics in college because I was good at math and I had a great professor my freshman year. It seemed like a good idea, but I never really though about the reality of the field: hyper-competitive academic environment, lots of colleagues with poor social skills (sorry physicists, but I doubt you’d disagree), a life spent in a lab working primarily on intangibles. It could be a really a good life, but it doesn’t mesh well with a lot of my core values.

I had pretty much realized these things by the time I applied to grad school, so I decided to do geology instead (not coincidentally at a school with a great ultimate frisbee team), expecting most of those qualms to be remedied by the nature of the field. If I had played my cards differently, I think it could have worked out really well, but I ended up pigeon-holing myself in geophysics, and spent most of my grad student years on a computer looking at satellite data. Good intention, but I didn’t quite follow through with it. This led to a lot of exploring which was hugely valuable, and which fluctuated on the intention-whim spectrum: sustainable agriculture in Italy, various construction projects, an office job in green building consulting.

In the past year I’ve gotten better at making intentional decisions, and basing those decisions around my core values. It helps that I have made big strides in actually clarifying my life values. So when this job to lead backpacking trips came along, I pretty much knew I had to take it. It still wasn’t easy, and it even meant parting ways with my most excellent band, Pocket Panda (check them out anyway!) because of the amount of time I’d be out of the city. But the job meant a lot of time in the woods exploring national parks, working with kids, sharing some of my biggest passions, constantly working on healthy relationship building, and taking some big steps out of my comfort zone. I even got to throw creativity into the mix, as the trips I’m leading have an additional focus on art, music, and cooking (seriously, this might be the best job ever).

The focus I’ve put on my creative endeavors lately, primarily painting, has also been filled with intention and alignment with my values. But it has lacked a lot of the positive characteristics of outdoor education, so it has been a revelation to find a way to do both things part of the time. I still have the mental space to go paint at my studio this week, knowing that I’ll be in the woods for weeks straight very soon. I’m sure this will all evolve in impossible-to-predict ways, but for now, I’m continuing to live the dream. And make a little bit of a living in the process!

Goats rock.

Competition, Comparison, Vulnerability

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I just spent a beautiful long weekend in Stehekin, WA, aka Magical Dream Fairy Land. It’s a town of about 85 full-time residents, accessible only by 50-mile ferry ride or a long hike through the North Cascades. There is not much happening in town aside from a kick-ass pastry shop, and it’s surrounded by gorgeous peaks and hiking trails in every direction.

Normally when I go out in the woods like this, I have some big goal: summit a mountain, cover a lot of mileage, climb some difficult cliff faces. This time, not so much. With the support of my group of friends, I approached the weekend with a distinct lack of major ambitions or goals to achieve. Instead, we decided to focus on being present, being open to adventure, and taking things as they come. This is something I think about a lot, but have a hard time doing in real life. The weekend was great practice. Even without having a plan, we managed to camp in beautiful places, go on long walks, eat delicious food, meet new people, have really enjoyable interactions with all sorts of characters and wildlife, watch the sky change color, find animal shapes in the clouds, do sunset yoga, clamber around rock formations, play music everywhere, deepen our friendships, talk about life and the universe, breathe deeply, race sticks down rivers, lose ourselves, find ourselves, forget about cellphones and email, be amazed, eat more, walk more, find a healthy dose of peace of mind.

On the car ride home from the ferry we listened to a podcast featuring Brené Brown on vulnerability, and it summed up wonderfully a lot of the thinking I had been doing. My natural state has always been to be ambitious, competitive, and a bit (ok, maybe a lot) of a perfectionist. In general, this has treated me pretty well so far. I’m good at a lot of things, so I can usually do well enough to be satisfied with my performance. I’ve done a lot of cool things that I’m glad to have done, and I almost always function well in society. But this is a dangerous path, and ultimately not the one I want to follow. It means deriving happiness from comparison with others, either by raising my own status or lowering theirs or both, creating an unhealthy feeling of self-importance and ego. This works really well for a lot of aspects of life, and it’s strongly encouraged by our society and capitalism in general. It doesn’t work, however, for cultivating happiness.

Here’s what I haven’t learned to do yet, but this weekend reminded me I need to be working on:

Being vulnerable

Putting myself out there, especially emotionally

Being okay when things don’t go as planned

Being okay with not being the best at everything

Asking for help

Letting the universe point me in new directions

Failing a lot

Doing what feels right

Taking things slowly

Getting hurt

Forgiving myself and others

Listening

 

It’s not a comprehensive list, but a good start. If you’ve got suggestions, let me know…

Meditate with Max!

A Veil of Perception

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I’ve been meditating regularly for the past several months, spurred on by an intensely quieting trek in the woods and a major life transition. It has been bringing to my mind all sorts of thoughts on reality, perception, and consciousness. It has also allowed me the mental clarity to focus hard on things like art and music, despite not having any sort of schedule or deadlines or external impetus. It’s a wonderful practice which I think can improve any life.

I should probably preface this by saying that I don’t really know anything about the subject, just a few things I’ve read and noticed. There are so many ways of describing meditation, but I’ve been noticing most recently changes in perception. Buddhist philosophy talks about about maya, the fact that our interaction with reality is an illusion. It’s easy to read these words, but harder to internalize them. Regular practice of meditation starts to give a sense of the truth in the idea.

At first, our perception of the world around us seems pretty accurate. Especially if you have good eye sight, things are probably pretty clear, depth is well understood by the brain, colors are intact and go well together. It’s pretty hard to know what things actually are, but it seems clear that they at least are something. But here’s the thing about perception: everything goes through our brains. And all of our brains are different. Who knows where some peoples’ brains have been. Even barring major malfunctions, they are filled with memories, fears, desires and intentions. Everything we see is tinted by everything we have seen, and everything we can imagine seeing. At the same time, the impermanence of these things becomes clear. We will only be here for a short while, memories of us only slightly longer.

This might seem like not such a big deal, but I think actually feeling the truth behind it is really important. Perhaps impermanence and the lack of uniform reality could lead one down a path of apathy and disconnectedness. Instead, I believe that in combination with a focus on compassion, it is freeing to know that nothing lasts forever, that fear and discomfort will evaporate as quickly as they arrived, if you let them. There is a certain levity and joy in this state of mind, one that allows full expression and easy improvisation. There is little danger in trying new things, in reaching out, and in putting yourself out there.

A gray, rainy day in Seattle can be miserable if that is how you perceive it, but it can also be delicious and refreshing. Either way, it certainly will not last forever, and how we interact with it is up to us.