Laying it on thick
Baby Shower, acrylic on board.

At thirty, my changing body was both miraculous and challenging, a home for a growing fetus and a low-level source of worry about the thickness of my thighs, how my body looked in a bathing suit. A benefit of growing older is pulling back from the boundary of skin, muscle and bone, to see that we are something so much more spacious and illuminating than we thought. When we do, our yoga practice evolves to fit this reality.

“As above, so too below,” is a saying that encapsulates a major thread of Tantric philosophy. Just as the universe is always expanding into being, so too are we, giving birth to ideas — even people! — bringing consciousness into manifest, manifest into consciousness.

A few years back I evolved my teaching of asana yoga into the teaching of mindfulness through creativity to older adults in the DC Around Town program. I emphasize the same things I do in an asana class with those in my creativity classes: stay present to what you experience, and focus on the process, rather than a destination or perfection. There is joy here because you are bringing your always flowing and illuminating mind home to serve consciousness. Minutes, hours can fly by when you are nourishing the mind in this way, whether you are moving your whole body or just your paintbrush or pencil.

Our current project in the art class at St. Alban’s is painting old lunch trays with our favorite lunch foods, inspired by the work of Wayne Thiebaud. His penchant for painting the sweets of his youth, his thick application of paint like icing on a cake, are amazing ways to connect once more to the joy of creating with paint or food, the taste and smell of our favorite foods, the feeling we get when we sit down to eat with a friend. As I painted this picture of the foods and of my big belly at my baby shower 28 years ago, I stayed present to all these things and to the beauty of the color of the acrylic, the way the paint flowed on the board.

To find a path to joy, don’t be afraid to make a mark, to lay it on thick, to eat it all up.

Pull the Tab for Your Reality Show

What if we were to be able to open our perspective as easily as opening a can of tomatoes? There, instead of the wilted basil leaf, grainy juice and slick flesh, was a new way of seeing?

The inspiration for this piece came from The Wisdom of No Escape by Pema Chodron. She speaks about enlarging our perspective through the practice of meditation, of looking deeply and precisely at ourselves with gentleness and then letting go of what comes up. She says this can help us take the black sack off our heads to see that we’re standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon. I would like to take the sack off my head and be awake to something as wide and deep as the ocean.

You have to open a lot of cans to be awake in this saucy life. The practice begins with showing up, just as you are, and looking inside. Many times, it will be like an episode of the reality cooking show Chopped – how can you possibly live a life with a syrup of resentment, a jar of cowardice and a sarcasm cake? Those ingredients also contain your empathy, your resilience and your humor. To transform, you have to see and use what you have inside.

This piece sits beside me as I write this, reminding me to open up, to look inside, and stir the bubbling ocean of juiciness.

The Wisdom in Your Fingers

There is a Rumi poem that begins with

 Your intelligence is always with you,

overseeing your body, even though

  you may not be aware of its work.

  If you do something against

 your health, your intelligence

  will eventually scold you.

I wonder what Rumi would have had to say about the unnatural glow of smartphones on our faces?

I painted this self-portrait to capture what my smartphone sees in my searching of its sickly yellow light. I might be googling something like the pain in my elbow or the latest environmental disaster or maybe both simultaneously. I could be engrossed in the latest Buzzfeed list or mindlessly scrolling through a social media feed. It doesn’t matter.

I say I’m not going to look at my phone before bed. I do. 

I say I am done with Instagram and Facebook. I’m not.

Rumi tells us

You and your intelligence

Are like the beauty and the precision

of an astrolabe.

Together, you calculate how near

existence is to the sun!

If only we weren’t so pulled to the Pavlovian dings of incoming information, we could know who we are, where we come from, how we’re connected to each other, to the intelligence that created us and the universe.

Thirteenth century Islamic scholar and poet Rumi has the antidote:

Now try, my friend, to describe how near

is the creator of your intellect!

Intellectual searching will not find

the way to that king!

The movement of your finger

is not separate from your finger.

You go to sleep, or you die,

and there’s no intelligent motion.

Then you wake,

and your fingers

fill with meanings.

Think about how we take these sacred meanings and shush them with the endless sliding of finger on the glass in our hands. It isn’t the technology that is the problem, it is how small we make ourselves next to it.

He gently reminds us – keep seeking that connection to your intelligence with all your pulsing energy.  There are guides along the way. Use them, he tells us.

Join me in observing the wonders of our intelligence as we move, breathe and meditate this fall. My free Gentle Movement and Guided Meditation class is on Wednesdays from 7 – 8:30 pm, beginning September 22, ending October 27, 2021. It will be delivered on Zoom.  Just let me know you are interested by dropping me an email and I’ll send the link. Then, perhaps

Observe the wonders as they occur around you.

Don’t claim them. Feel the artistry

moving through. And be silent.

Though we’ll be on screen together, we’ll soak up the beauty and precision of the intelligence that binds us.

Negative Space

When I learned to draw, one of the techniques I found so helpful to capturing reality was “negative space, ” paying close attention to and drawing the space around an object, rather than the object itself. It helps particularly with complicated objects and with linear perspective.

Hasn’t this past year been a communal exercise in negative space? We traced the space around the objects that we thought defined us and in that space we found the dimensionality of what we once took for granted and a perspective that was so hard to capture.

As a yogi, when I hear “negative space,” I also think of the Sanskrit word, “dukha,” commonly translated as “suffering.” One understanding of the etymology of the Sanskrit can be traced back to the seed words of “duk,” meaning “bad,” and “kha,” meaning “space.” The origins of dukha as suffering refer to the imbalance in the axle of a wheel, which caused discomfort to a traveler. And isn’t that how we feel when we are suffering? In a bad space, bumping down life’s highway.

One of the prompts I offered to my Art and Yoga class at All Soul’s this past spring was to create a piece inspired by negative space. I wrote this piece for the class, but didn’t share it then, so I share it here. The painting above is an old one done years ago from the “In the Garden” series.

Negative Space

As I drove around the corner and was about to pass the elementary school, I saw a toddler trying to climb the curb on the opposite side of the street. There was too much space around this tiny person, dressed in a dirty pink fleece jacket. She was small enough that climbing the curb meant that she bent to touch the cement to lift her foot towards it.

I pulled the car over and unrolled my window. As I did, I could see an Audi rounding the corner and waved for caution.  The care stopped. I could see from my rearview mirror that the driver was going through the same thought process I was.

Opening the car door, and leaving it open, I asked, “Where is your Mommy, honey?” as I walked towards her. I looked around. No one on the ball field. No one on the sidewalk in front of the school either.

When I picked her up, she bared her little teeth at me in a halfway smile, or in looking up at my face she grimaced to focus, I couldn’t tell. She was young enough to wear diapers or pull ups. She pointed at me and then at the house beyond the curb.

“I’ll drive up the road to see if there are people looking for her,” the man in the Audi said to me as he drove slowly past us.

“Does your family live here?” I asked too brightly and too loudly. I knocked at the front door of house she had pointed to and waited. She slumped on my hip and rested her head on my shoulder. There was no sound in the house.

 The Audi circled back.

 “There’s not a soul anywhere.” The only sound was the car’s idle.

 “I guess we’ll have to call the police,” I said.

Then: movement at the furthest corner of the ball field, in the woods beyond the school building. A woman ran towards us, her hands outstretched, her long blond hair electric behind her. I began waving, pointing to the child at my chest. As she got close, I could hear her urgent sounds as she ran low to the ground, unaware of the mechanics of her body’s propulsion, so single minded in her focus.

“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God,” she breathed.

“I found her as I was driving up.”

“Oh my God, oh my God. There. Oh my God! Thank you. Thank you.  My lead teacher is there…” she looked to the school. There was still the emptiness of the ball field. No one.

“She was where?! Oh my God. She…we! She’s part of the school. I’m day care. Special ed. I don’t know how. We have an outdoor classroom. She was gone.”

The woman didn’t look strong enough to handle adrenaline pumping in her slight frame. I was thankful she wore a mask, not because of the coronavirus, but because her fear and her guilt would have been too vivid and sorrowful to witness on this beautiful spring morning.

The man in the Audi drove off, waving at us, his calm smile incongruous with the flames of panic that continued to engulf the teacher.

“Thank you. Thank you. I hate to think…” the teacher said as she took the little girl from me. She clutched the child to her chest as she ran back to the school without looking back.

Later someone suggested that I should have followed up with the police anyway. But having worked at an elementary school for a brief time, I knew the teacher would have to file an incident report with the school and notify the little girl’s family. The negative space this child had created on an early spring morning would leave a permanent scar.

Small Stillness

It was strange to drive a long distance again in my old Nissan. In this pandemic, Tom and I have driven short distances, usually for coffee and a walk in the woods. But the Friday before Easter, I drove to the Eastern Shore to see my father and his wife. To pass the time, I listened to one of the recent episodes on Radio Lab, about the elements of the periodic table.

At Dad’s, we discussed what lies beyond. Beyond this pandemic, this post-democratic world, beyond the mundanity of our aging bodies. Each of us faces an edge we need to cross. We are born, we learn to walk, to talk, we graduate from school, get promoted, buy the house…all the while we think: what is next? And in this question, we also glimpse a reality of who we are. It seems even the universe has an edge beyond which scientists speculate about, an edge that contains a truth we don’t yet know. They call it dark matter, an apt description for anyone facing the “what’s next?” question.

What I found compelling about the Radio Lab podcast on dark matter was how quiet it must be to find it, to get to the edge. There are are scientists working in a place miles below the surface of the earth, trying to hear the whispers of dark matter as it passes through Xenon, the 54th element of the periodic table. This struck me:

It’s Isiah’s call, you know. He’s lying on his mat and he hears the whisper because…that’s for me alone. That call is for me alone, and that’s that sense that this experiment gives to me is that here the universe has been shouting, and shouting, and shouting at us and we’ve gathered all this scientific knowledge out of the shout, out of the clapping, out of the cheers. Now where we’re at in the 21st century is we’re going down to what’s it saying in the whisper, and those whispers go clear back to conception. They go clear back to birth. If we understand these whispers, we’re very close to understanding gestation. 

Radio Lab, “Elements,” March 25, 2021

These were the ideas that swirled in my head as I got a bit of time in the studio last week. I started teaching Yoga and Art at All Soul’s Church Unitarian in Washington, DC the Monday after my visit to Dad’s. It is a zoom class with 8 dedicated and courageous souls who want to explore the realms of their creative spirit. The first assignment I gave them was to create something small — no bigger than 4″ x 4″ or more than 500 words. We shared our creations this week, in a supportive and spirited discussion after a gentle flow focused on the balancing and purifying of energy within.

I began my creation with the cosmic egg. Technically, I wanted to see if I could carve shapes and designs into its edge, to balance it on this spiral, to cup it in dark matter. I worked only with things that I had at my disposal in the studio — a Chemistry textbook from the 1940s, given to me by Marie, and the forms I made of bee hives used in my rubbings last year, the inside of an AirPod box, wire. Tacky glue holds it together, mod podge gives the “sink” its shine.

Big answers come in small, quiet packages. Informal mindfulness practices like art-making and formal practices like meditation lead to a profound quiet, where we can hear the whisper that is the moment of conception, feel the energy that holds us and animates us. Like a top whirling, we appear to be motionless, but we are pure energy, the centripetal force of the things that are outside rooting us to the center.

Verticality

We were sold on this house the moment we saw the old oak tree that had gracefully welcomed the house to be planted around it.  It had bubbled up from the ground more than 60 years ago, and the roots still roiled the soil around the massive base of the trunk.  It tapered slightly to the right, giving it the appearance of a much taller tree. The canopy spread as far as the boundary of our yard. All manner of suburban wildlife lived in the tree, and now in our quiet life, Tom and I delighted in our outdoor classroom —  squirrels on the prowl for mates, the mockingbird ‘s officious patrols; the rabbits and their new families; the mangy doe and her twin fawns in the early mornings when the acorns are plenty. A fox and a hawk circled occasionally, looking for baby bunnies and chipmunks.

The tree’s roots became soft and a hole grew at the very base, large enough for small animals to burrow in. We  weren’t worried knowing that the tree generously made space for so many living things, including our children and our funny little dog, and also for inanimate things like swings and Christmas lights. Finally that hole caused branches to die, giving themselves over to insects, which in turn became food for the woodpeckers, the brightly colored ghouls.

Had the tree fallen in a storm, it would have destroyed the back of our neighbor’s house and the evergreens along her fence. We made a painful decision to have it removed. I wonder if it was painful because of our older age, or because of these strange times we now live in. Would I have mourned the tree when I was a 35 year old mother of young children who could finally use the yard for pick-up softball games? I didn’t have the time for quiet watching back then. Now I have solitude and the daily lesson of impermanence. I am so thankful for the sustenance and protection this tree gave me and my family.

Seems cruel to mourn a tree when there is so much human suffering now. Perhaps my grief is displaced. Looking at the arbor of our communal life, I see vulnerability for the first time.  I wonder if we can count on the harvest of goodwill, common good or democracy.

I’m working with verticality in my teaching practice this week. Stand tall, witness from the root of your being. Rise to give sustenance, protection, especially in a storm. Live for others. Think long term, like the trees.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Truth Moves

This is a detail of my teaching manifesto, done at the request of the yoga teacher training program at Tranquil Space in 2012. Kevin asked all of us to think about why we were called to teach and I felt inspired to do this piece with found objects — a ribbon container, beads, wire, fabric, old foam core, paint, a slide of one of my paintings.

I keep it on my desk to remind me that everybody has a story, every BODY has a story, that my calling is to listen for these stories, breathe with these bodies, connect with my fellow earth travellers in and out of the classroom and share the joy of this practice. (My thought process and my new understandings of this piece are below.)*

That’s why I’m so excited that I have a chance to work with some people who use their bodies as the impetus for creativity in a workshop called Truth Moves at The Lion’s Den this coming Sunday, June 14 from 1 – 2:30.

The Lion’s Den is a community organization providing dance/art/movement/fitness as vehicles of expression where people will feel valued and see real results while being part of an inclusive and welcoming community. She has asked me to come and bring the template of the chakras to their work, as another way into the truth in their moves, their vehicle for communication and creativity in the world. Their work, their lives are vitally important to this creation. I’m  thrilled to help in this very small way.

Dancers know that body movement can communicate, connect and heal. Ever wonder why? Is there some deeper truth to the movement of the legs, pelvis, torso, arms or head that we all share? Come learn about the ancient wisdom of the chakras and experiment with this body/mind philosophy in movement and sound.

I’ve designed this workshop for anyone who has ever felt embodied (not just dancers!). If you have ever felt the embrace of of sun on your skin on a chilly day, the relaxation into a hug with someone you love, the way you could dance all night in god-awful shoes at the club;  if you’ve ever felt something is just not right in the pit of your stomach; or fought a lump in your throat as you struggle to hear or tell the truth, or the prickle of happy tears…I welcome you on this journey.  I’m sure we’ll all learn something from one another. We’ll be doing some movement (and dancers will be free to expound, expand and use these movements towards their own creative ends) but these movements will be gentle and designed for every body and every purpose in mind.

Lauren graduated from the Refresh Yoga Center Teacher Training program (where I am a lead trainer) after she was already an accomplished dancer and dance teacher, barre instructor, entrepreneur and lion-hearted risk-taker. Students and teachers alike were grateful for her authenticity and honesty, the joy she radiated, her infectious laugh and her ability to bring a room of people together in love and some serious asana practice. Even if this workshop doesn’t sound like something you would do, please learn more about Lauren and her organization. I am so happy to work with her in this small way, as she brings her vision to the world.

Some notes about this sculpture, my calling as a teacher, and the TRUTH MOVES that we are all experiencing in our lives thanks to the live saving work of BLACK LIVES MATTER:

*My thought process on this sculpture: the foam core was cut in strips and glued to the outside rim of the large ribbon spool, representing the bones, the silky transparent fabric on the outside of the spool, skin. I liked how the slide of my painting was only visible when you put it up to the light, how the reflections, though distorted, light the dark shiny walls of the tube. For me this was a symbol of the goal of our yoga practice — finding the truth of Self, abiding there — and I wanted to demonstrate that this takes work. In this interactive piece, you have to physically move beads out of the way to see the image. These beads represent the kleshas — ignorance, egoism, attachment, aversion and the fear of death/clinging to life — the causes of suffering.

Here is the original painting: 

How I feel about my manifesto now: I recognize my embrace of the root of racism — making the white body as the supreme standard — all this pink on the outside of this sculpture! Even in the painting, which was modelled on me, I choose to ignore my own darker skin tone for pink and white. I am ashamed of this implicit bias, now glaringly apparent, and thankful that I am beginning to see the light, interestingly just like the body in this painting sees the light on the horizon. This painting was done after the death of my mother, a time when I felt such profound grief, but also the most amazing connection with creation having lived through her death. I feel the same way now — grief, connection, hope. 

Of the several “aha moments” in the past few weeks, the most important for me as a yoga teacher was the interview of Resmaa Menakem by Krista Tippett. I have so much more work to do to understand the way white supremacy shows up in me and in my classes, and that the work of anti-racism begins in the body for all of us. I have missed living into the vast potential of my calling, but as a yogi, I’ve learned that this all is practice — all of this life. We go back and forth between ability and inability to do, see, move, breathe, be. 

Just keep practicing truth. Step into it, desire it, act on it, love it, speak it, see it, abide in it.    

 

Lost Your Pride

My grandmother had a saying that she used when the piteous “bless her heart,” was too mild a sting. “She’s lost her pride,” indicated a slip down the human food chain to the level of under-rock dweller.

Let me unpack this saying just a bit for those who are unfamiliar with Appalachian people from Eastern Kentucky, which was where I was schooled by my Nanny every summer of my childhood. Pride was all some folks could claim as their own. You might make the wrong assumption, as you whizzed by on Route 25 from Johnson City into the dark hollers of Harlan, that a family with that many broken appliances in the front yard had no pride to begin with. But that was all they had – pride of family legacy, pride in their ability to scrape by, proud of their kids, proud of the little bit they owned, though it may be washed away in the creek in the next flood.

So saying “she’s lost her pride,” was a warning, a prayer for sanity offered silently for a friend or neighbor who was experiencing slippage of dignity. Generally, this option was reserved for older people who were making a spectacle of themselves –women who were using too much makeup or showing too much cleavage. Men who had taken up with a much younger woman, or were drunk in public. Younger women got a pass, somewhat. “Two cats fighting in a bag,” was something I heard Nanny chuckle under her breath as the beautiful girls passed the porch in their cut-offs, long hair rhythmically grazing their butts. Seeing me dazzled by their effortless sexiness she would remind, “Pretty is as pretty does.” Let your inner dignity shine forth. My first yoga guru in some sense – don’t be fooled by the surface, since it is here today and gone tomorrow. Concentrate on the interior, and the hard work knowing who you are.

My initiation into Southern womanhood was conducted as Mom and Nanny canned beans in mid-August, the kitchen windows opened, but no help against the Amazonian humidity created by Ball jars boiling on the stove. As a child, I was spared these working conditions – but I hung out in the kitchen anyway, watching them move from stove to kitchen table for breaks of iced tea and Kent cigarettes. Both wore housecoats with snap buttons up the front, sweetened their tea with Sweet n’ low and traded advice, funny stories, hard feelings, compliments and resentments, recipes and suggestions — the teeming, seething perfumed ecstasy of mother-daughter relationships.

After the morning of work and a hearty lunch, we all bathed and dressed up for a walk to downtown Harlan to the dress store that my grandmother worked in when they were poorer. Horton’s was the best dress store in town. My grandmother, voted the most beautiful woman in Harlan Kentucky in the early 60s, kept up with fashion and beauty, but it was always reflective of her inner decorum — modest, elegant. By the 1970s, when she was in her 50s, fashion for her was polyester pantsuits. As she grew older, her beauty shined through though her beautiful legs were hidden in two ply poly.

Mom and Nanny both died in their mid-sixties, at the height of their older woman beauty, where a lifetime of hard and joyful work and love for family and neighbor burnished their inner dignity to a rare shine. I am now 56. My hair is gray and it is long enough now to wear in pigtails, which I do when I need to wear my bike helmet. I live in yoga pants and now have a YouTube channel. Sometimes I worry I’m making a spectacle of myself. I wonder what they would say about their legacy. Have I lost my pride?

I feel their gaze from the front porch of the hereafter. There they snap their beans from MacDaddy’s garden into the newspaper on their laps, iced tea glasses sweating in the first glimmer of sun that burns off the fog in the holler. They wouldn’t want me getting a big head, so they aren’t going to give me complete blanket assurance, especially on the social media front. And they want me to buy tops that cover up my boobs and that butt of mine. Dangerously close to two cats in a bag.

-o-

Epilogue: This story started out from a place of truth — I could heard Nanny say “you’ve lost your pride” as I was braiding my hair. It made me smile at myself in the mirror. But like all writers of memoir, I’ve found that in the putting words around my experience, the truth gets further away from me. There are empty spaces in memory that we fill up with imagination or we insert short hand place holders, like the still pictures we use on Zoom calls. This has meant that every time I conjure up my grandmother, I experience the same day. It is always August, always bean shelling and canning day, and always ends with the trip to Horton’s Dress Shoppe. I wear terrycloth shorts and white sandals, my long hair in a ponytail, my pre-adolescent belly straining at my sleeveless white cotton blouse. I can smell the garden, feel the heat from the carport and the cool of the coal house as I played Starship Enterprise with Ed, Feller, Kathy and Mac. But the soundtrack is off. I hear the rustle of the newspaper, the pop of the beans, doors opening and closing, the Ball jars clinking the in the pot, the mumbles of adult speech, the heavy footfalls of children running but these sounds are not synched with the action..  

In our backward glances, we lose a bit of present-moment truth, so we embellish, sometimes for ourselves, sometimes to entertain ourselves and others, like I’ve done here. Our lives are stories with beginnings, middles and ends, meant to be told and heard — consumed. Like these quarantine doodles of my Nanny, nothing can quite capture her spirit, her beauty, that time, my family, that love.

More than Curious

365 days ago, I decided that it was hypocritical to teach about how to achieve clarity of mind.  Especially when I had been working hard fogging my mind every night with a glass or two of wine, and on weekends with my best friend the (incredibly dry) Cosmo.

Living without alcohol this year has been surprisingly easy. Yet, when I see this picture, taken of me at an Airbnb in Genoa, Italy, I am suckerpunched with nostalgia. We were there in April — Rose’ season.  We would have a bottle at lunch or dinner after a day of touring. The food was a revelation, made holy with the taste of wine. There was an Aperol Spritz for people-watching at sunset …an espresso and grappa after dinner. I look at this photo now and know that on April 21, 2019 I made a choice that has taken me away from this  place, hopefully forever. I didn’t know it then, and now the knowing brings about the suffering of the return, which is the etymology of “nostalgia.”

Nostaligia is a lie we tell ourselves about the past. It is rose (or in this case Rose’) colored glasses.

I didn’t make any big pronouncements when I left.  I said I’d be gone just a little while.  I wrote about my curiosity about sobriety and that I wanted clarity — that was the truth I shared here. But if I could have been honest with myself, I also wanted to step out of the putrid light of shame. Not only the shame of not exactly remembering what I said after the second or third Cosmo, but also the shame of wasting the time I’d been given to paddle furiously towards truth, freedom, compassion.

About four weeks after I stopped drinking, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I am thankful for this turn of events. It would have been hard to navigate that experience in a fog, blinded by the cold comfort of Tito’s. Just another way that I know that the universe has my back.

Lots of stuff has come up in social media — some funny, some sad — about how alcohol is essential to what we are experiencing now. Here’s my experience that might resonate with you: Pain experienced in clarity has the ability to bring peace, even joy, as you find that you already have all the resources you need to move through challenging times. Celebration is all the more celebratory when you can really live into the moment, really be with people you love, rather than wondering if there is just one more glass of champagne left in the bottle.

This picture was taken by my love on our trip to Costa Rica in February, to celebrate our 32nd anniversary. Compared to the photo above, this pic is decidedly less glamorous.  It might be that my drink, a mango smoothie, matches my dress perfectly. I had one every night we were there in February, each one tasting like the sunset. Glamor-schmamor — it was experienced in the now, where everything is an elixir.

So this is a day for a mango smoothie! There will be other milestones on this journey, I know it. Many thanks to intrepid people who have inspired me on this path and who support me every step of the way — you know who you are.

Jesus and the Wheel

There was a boy who looked like Jesus who was very good at the potter’s wheel in my high school ceramics class. He was lanky and quiet and had eyelashes that were thick and mournful. He was strong enough to set the wheel in motion, and strong enough to focus on the vessel that was becoming in his hands.

I admired Jesus from afar as I worked my clay at the table, making my coil and slab constructions. Arlene Ferris, our teacher, was equal parts hippy and Harley rider with a perpetual unlit Marlboro in her lips. She didn’t speak much to me or Jesus since she had troublemakers and jokers in her classes who soaked up her time. She was the teacher of last resort for so many of us.

I wished I could work the wheel like Jesus. As I sat at the table creating with clay like I was patterning a dress or making a cake, he would work quietly, meticulously centering the clay.  Kick, kick, kick, KICK, KICK.  Water cupped and dripped on the mound.  Hands shaping into balance — pulling up and then working down and wide.  Again kicks for momentum, again with water and motion.  All the while, the clay was becoming centered, strong, ready for creation.

In January, I used “centering” as my theme in my yoga classes.  I remember when I first started practicing, how odd but how inviting it was to hurry up and get to class only to take a seat and spend some time in stillness and the quiet. Like clay on the wheel, we need to become affixed first in body, breath and mind. Around and around reality goes but we find the sweet spot of the now, where the wobbling stops.  We will be pushed up and down, in and out; the momentum of our practice starts and stops in the grip of the center. The goal, as it is for a potter centering at the wheel, is to become strong and resilient on the molecular level so that we are ready for shaping, for creation.

Since my word of the new year is “surprise”, I made my way to Marie Pavlicek-Wehrli’s studio to learn printmaking a few weeks ago. I have always had a mental block when it came to the printing press — perhaps it is a machine like the wheel that I don’t feel I can tame. Marie reminds me of Jesus at the wheel.  She is disciplined and meticulous yet open to the grace of the moment and gentle with what arises, letting her creations have the space to breathe and be and take shape. In other words, she is centered and was as encouraging and wonderful as she has always been. I came away with prints and didn’t give in to the “I can’t do this” mode. Getting home, looking through the prints, I knew what I wanted to do. I picked up my exacto and my shears and found myself once again patterning dresses and icing cakes. I’m not exactly done yet — still discovering in the rubbing, the gluing and the template making.  Momentum, yes, but moving from the center.

Transfom. Further. Off the Mat.

I had chosen “surprise” as my word for 2020. When I say this to folks, I can tell that they are trying to figure out a polite way to ask me “haven’t you had enough surprises already?” And my answer would be, “No.  No I have not yet had enough surprise.”  I am thankful for the kind of surprise I received this summer.  I got an instant reset in beginner’s mind — there was nothing to do but breathe in the moment and be grateful.  I didn’t know what was next and I relinquished control.  I found my center, despite the chaos. And I am transformed by the experience.

 

In 2020, I expect further surprise (can you expect to be surprised? I say yes!) I want to be continuously awed by the world around me — from the two little foxes that live near our back yard to Great Falls; from the jungle of Costa Rica to the northern lights of Newfoundland.  I want to be delighted by the gifts that come from a relationship that has lasted 32 years and excitement that children who are grown and doing awesome things in the world bring to my life. For the way in which my teaching practice will continue to open my heart up to new studios, new clients, new teacher trainees and students, new capabilities, new things to learn.

I will get back on my mat this month. I guess I could spend some time feeling sorry for the muscular atrophy that awaits me after this second surgery. Instead, I’m prepping myself for the amazement that will come as I step off the mat into the world. As I did these small collages at the end of 2019, the universe was telling me that it will be a very juicy experience.

Surprising, Juicy New Year to you and all you love.

 

What to Expect

Rose

My breast cancer story has come to a conclusion, with my reconstruction surgery last Wednesday.  Now it is time to be there for others who are just starting their breast cancer journeys.  I feel a bit like an imposter since I had stage 1 and didn’t require chemo or radiation, but I have already been pressed into duty by the sisterhood. Like those wonderful strangers I spoke to on the phone after my diagnosis, I will be there to support anyone who needs it.

What can you expect?

Expect grace and actively seek it out. Open up to its descent. Practice staying awake, just like you did as a child before a big, beautiful day. It is there. You feel it healing. Then you will see it everywhere.

 Hmmm…I don’t think I’m going to be very good at this.

You are a warrior, though this is not a fight or a war. You love your body. It didn’t betray you, it is just doing what bodies do.  You are armed with the righteous power of the present moment. You aren’t to kill, but to heal. You aren’t to fight, but to strip your armor and open wide to this experience so that you can heal. 

I think back to the women I spoke with — friends of friends, who were strangers when I called them and sisters when I hung up. I am thankful for their advice, for their willingness to speak about their experience.

The practical advice I received from these women was comforting and helpful. Their lives, their health, their resilience were inspiring. It reminded me of hearing friends’ birth stories when I was pregnant.  The stories were unique, cathartic, mesmerizing and real. They made me brave, but now I know those stories were nothing like mine would be.

The word “grace” in Sanskrit means “that which follows the grasping.”  When I first read this, I thought that grace came after the understanding that I couldn’t control the outcome of my journey.  But the ancients meant the “grasping” of the truth:  that the body is expendable.  It has a time limit.  But the spirit doesn’t.  It is light. Timeless, eternal light that is everything, everywhere.  It is the light that heals.  Pay attention to the light.

See?  I’m really not too sure about this advice thing. Little heavy handed that.  But on the lighter side, I called my tissue expanders my “coke bottle boobs.”  The magnet ports reminded me of the screw off tops, the wrinkles in my breast mounds like the as hard and shiny as the creases on old glass bottles of Coke. Tom and I joked about it because laughter is the best medicine in our family, but there are others who can’t laugh because of what will come after the expanders are placed — months of chemo, worry, exhaustion, surrender.

I am blessed to be me exactly as I am even if my body is cancering. I am also blessed to be exactly as you are, since we are both the same light, reflecting back on itself in a playful, joyful act of love.  No, cancer isn’t a gift, it is just part of this beautiful, terrible life.  It is as mundane and regular as cold, gloomy afternoons and boring business meetings.  All is well if you can be here right now in this present moment, if you can see the light and open to healing no matter what is happening in your body.

I have absolutely no advice on bras.  Still looking for the right one, though my bud Grace told me I would be back in my old worn and comfy ones soon.  I shopped in consignment stores for button downs that covered up my Ursula Andress surgical vest.  I never paid much mind to my breasts, but I had to grieve them when the time came to say goodbye. My dear friend Corinne was there when this realization hit me hard and let me cry a good long time. We will all grieve the physical someday.  Those of us with cancer just get a preview.

I am here to listen, support, encourage and share with you the fruits of grace. Namaste, sister.

1 by three

 

 

 

All Saints Arrived Early This Year

Mom and me

As I’ve recovered from surgery, I’ve found my way back to teaching art to my beloved friends at Thomas Circle Retirement Community. I decided to teach the technique of assemblage. So I set out to make a piece as an example and document the thinking and the process I took along the way.

I didn’t intend it to be personal. I must have forgotten that art is healing and healing is always personal.

I’d asked participants to bring a photo of themselves in their youth and a box to the first class. In the example that I started to create for them, I chose a picture of myself and my mother taken in 1967 that I’ve always loved.  The flash above my head, the light that creates bars across our bodies, the iridescence of the shiny pattern in the old couch — such a beautifully bad photo my father took one morning in Baltimore.  The flash above my head, the light bands across our bodies and the reflective fabric details initially brought to my mind the miracle of genetic code that is inherited from our parents.

A chemistry textbook written in 1941 and downloaded genetic sequences took way too much of my time as I tried hard to make a statement about my inheritance.  I rejected the result as too heavy-handed. I also spent a long time with micro twinkle lights that made the piece a gimmick. I was relaying the surface, the concept, but not the real meaty stuff of legacy.

When I paused in frustration and concentrated on the few things I can remember about this time in my life, the year before my brother was born, I had a breakthrough.  There was an old chest with tall Queen Anne legs,  the bottoms of which were claw and ball.  Mom had painted it a cheery yellow. The two doors of the cabinet had brass lion pulls — the rings were in their mouths.  Perhaps these were memorable because they were right at shoulder level for me.  When opened, the cabinet revealed a red velvet flocked wallpaper — shocking even to a 4 year old in its ironic juxtaposition of school-bus paint and musty Victorian interior.  On many occasions I bent into the cabinet, my belly on the nubby paper and the smell of chemical glue in my nose.

Top of boxThis memory led to my choice to use the box top painted bright yellow to involve the viewer in the reveal of cool darkness inside. I have an old circle pin with Mom’s married initials on it that I’ve attached to the brass pull — making this more of a memorial to her in my mind.

 

Inside of boxThe inside of the box top is part of an old housecoat (I guess I got this from her  –I can’t imagine who else would have given me a housecoat!) memorializing a time and place that embraced the aesthetic of monogrammed circle pins, this piece of furniture, avocado colored kitchens, sculptured wall to wall carpets, bouffant hair dos and brightly colored housecoats.

As I worked with this piece, I laid down, once again, in that cool dark interior and allowed my vision to adjust, something I couldn’t allow myself to do this summer as I went through surgery for stage 1 breast cancer. I couldn’t add another heartbreak to my losses. There in the darkness I remembered a conversation I had with Mom in the Weinberg Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins after her surgery for pancreatic cancer. She took my hand, squeezed it and thanked me for coming every day to see her. I love you mom, I said. “If it were you in this bed, I’d sleep on the floor,” was her reply. The love she had for her family was so bright it still shines on me; it was so bright it was captured in the flash above my head in 1967.

Inside of box 2Her parents loved her as fiercely as she loved my brother and me. As people who were born, raised and are buried in the Appalachian mountains of Eastern Kentucky, they are most likely responsible for the lyrics of the old Carter Family song that came to me as I painted and glued the final parts of the box:

Well, there’s a dark and a troubled side of life,/There’s a bright and a sunny side too…/Keep on the sunny-side, always on the sunny-side/Keep on the sunny-side of life…

The song brought me back to summer mornings in the kitchen in Harlan, KY listening to my Mom and her mother talk and laugh as they put up vegetables from the garden for the winter in their brightly colored housecoats.

My intention was to demonstrate a process of collecting, assembling and evoking a memory, dream or concept for my class. The universe reminded me of my legacy, the darkness and salty taste of grief, and the comfort and warmth of the light of love.  I am so grateful for the healing that comes from the yoga of art-making.

 

 

 

Weeds and Seeds

Cancer has been a summer weed for me, but I’m happy to report that the doctors plucked it out by the roots. My breast cancer was stage 1, no node involvement and I do not need additional treatment. Only a 5% chance that it returns somewhere else in my body. So I’m cancer free, and I feel so very fortunate and blessed. I will always keep a huge space in my heart for women and the people that love them who have not had this kind of prognosis.

As I return to the ordinary ways of my life (I start teaching at YogaWorks again tomorrow), I have some resolutions I’d like to plant in cancer’s place. One is to practice keeping my heart open at all times, not just special times. To remember the wounds every being I encounter has and perhaps hides. To be part of the healing rather than the hurting. (This is a big order for someone who can leave a yoga class completely blissed out and then be in a snit about a driver who refuses to use a blinker when turning.)

The second resolution I am making is to set aside time for intentional creativity. I was so happy teaching 12 classes a week — 3 of them were art classes for older adults through Iona. Each lesson was a flowering of my own creativity but it had an extrinsic purpose. I had to have the right materials, make sure that I could teach this lesson in an hour and a half and think through modifications for those with physical challenges so they had the resources they needed to create. The paintings I did these past four weeks were intrinsic — done just for the love of doing it — and in this way they were healing. Though I’ve shared some with you here, there are others I’ll never share.  They are just for me.

So: two resolutions grown during the summer of breast cancer.  As I’ve gotten better and I’m getting used to new limitations and new body parts (!), I’ve been aware of the healing energy that has shone down on me every step of the way. I’ve soaked up all this love and warmth and I’m ready to give back now. Thank you for helping me get to this place of harvest.

I’ll continue to post about how the practice of yoga can heal, sharing the way my practice as a yogi, teacher and creative shows up for me.  But for now, thank God, no more about cancer.

 

 

Heart Dagger

 

Sternum

Consistently walking is the best thing for my healing. (10,000 steps a day most days this past week!) Another important practice for me right now is living on our screened-in porch from breakfast to past dinner — eating, reading, art-making, and doing sudoku puzzles. The weather this past week has been another amazing gift.

Planting myself in the green has allowed my energy to flow up and around my heart center. I feel joy and gratitude which flows out in my “hellos” and “good mornings” to people I encounter on my walk. Surprisingly, a few have frowned and turned their gaze down after my interaction. And I think, how crusty does a heart have to be impenetrable to this day, this velvet green? Then I remember something my teacher Todd said as I was just beginning my yoga practice. As he cued a heart opener he made an observation that these particular asanas place us in a vulnerable place — where  we aren’t protecting our heart. I try to remember to open, to give, to practice gratitude and compassion, regardless of what I encounter along the way.

Happy girl and her sternumThis is a picture of me when I was in the recovery room. I don’t remember a thing about this part of my surgery, but Tom has told me about it. First, that I insisted that he take this picture (!) Also that I told him that I could feel my sternum so many times it made him and some of the nurses chuckle. Each time the nurses would explain something to me about this feeling I was having. But after hearing this story, I think it was a habit of my mind.

Anyone who has been in my class, knows that I like to cue heart-openers with  an awareness to the sternum. Lots of us with a bit more give in our backs will focus on the curling (and usually dumping) in the spine. But if in preparation, we instead bring our awareness to the strength of the abdominals and the lift of the sternum, we lengthen the back body and our heart lifts up and out rather than down or in.

The sternum protects the heart and the lungs. It is shaped like a dagger. Its three parts– the manubrium, gladiolus and xiphoid process — are Latin words for handle, sword and “sword shaped.”  When we are young, the low tip, the xiphoid process, is soft cartilage.  By the time we are 40, this part of the sternum has ossified into bone.  Perhaps this process is a reason why someone would frown when a stranger smiles and says “morning!”  It is hard to unsheathe the dagger to expose and offer the soft heart underneath.

As I heal from bilateral mastectomy and get ready for the final phase of my reconstruction, I can’t place my body in shapes that open the heart for a while. But no matter. I can place my attention and awareness on my heart and how it shows up in the world. I can choose to remove the dagger. And so on my walks I look at someone, smile, say good morning and mean it.

Grace Comes in a Surgical Vest

Flak Jacket

My new uniform for a few weeks

At the beginning of this week, I explained to my classes that I was going on medical leave. I kept it as La Di Da as I could.

In each class, there was a person who waited until all the other students left so that he or she could ask about my diagnosis. I was honest about breast cancer and my need for a bilateral mastectomy. The reason I didn’t announce this diagnosis and treatment as I sent around the healing stone at those final classes is that I didn’t want to trigger someone with my news. So many women have had breast cancer. Someone in my class has either had a scare, had it, or had a close relative or friend who had it or died from it. In my classes over the years, I have had students who have shown up in their compression sleeves having conquered it or in their head scarves as they lived with its treatment. Soon, I’ll join their ranks as I return to community practice.  (Can’t wait!)

La Di Da doesn’t mean repressing hard feelings. Getting to this surgery wasn’t a breeze. I grieved by painting watercolor portraits of my breasts (yup, never sharing). As I painted the line, the form, the shape I allowed myself to reminisce about how I felt about them as a early teen, how they served me well as I fed my infant children, or of beautiful garments that showed them off. I thought about the meaning of breasts in our culture and in others, about sexuality and objectification. As I finished the last painting I thought about how much space I had created for healing by honoring and packing these old breasts away.

Today, as the grace of healing is just pouring down on me, I’m glad I made some room for it through grief. I have been treated by excellent doctors and compassionate nurses. I have a family and a community of people who call, write, text, and show their love and support in so many ways. Tom has emptied my drains, kept up with my meds and has been a constant companion through all of the prep for the surgery and will be there as we await a call about the pathology, next treatment steps and final surgery to complete reconstruction.

UrsulaI’m even grateful for this white surgical vest with its exaggerated cups and industrial zipper — it looks like something Madonna wore on the “Virgin” tour — and my handy-dandy drain belt in matching white Velcro. The first time I undressed in front of a mirror, I said, “Hey!  Don’t I look like Ursula Andress in that Bond movie?”  And Tom, because he is a beautiful soul, agreed enthusiastically as he prepared my shower.

 

 

Healing Stone

Stone

This is my healing stone, given to me by friends and Iona, who invited me to a lunch last month.  As we parted, Deb invited each person to share healing energy with me by holding the stone in their hands for a brief moment. This past week, I’ve told my students that I’ll be on medical leave for at least four weeks.  This is the longest I’ve been away in 7 and 1/2 years.  I’ve brought this healing stone with me and have had students share their energy with me after a juicy practice.  I will ask Tom to bring it to the hospital room with him when I am in recovery mode so that I can feel the love and light of my friends in the palm of my hand.

This past three weeks, I’ve taught from Yoga Sutra II:16:  Prevent the suffering that is yet to come. How? Find equanimity.  We can use our bodies to find balance. Working to step on the earth in such a way that there is equal weight in each foot. Shaping the breath in equal inhales and exhales. Using the body and breath to step back from your thoughts and be the witness rather than the participant. From this place of equanimity the present moment holds peace, spaciousness, joy. In the beginning of our practice, the glimpse of this space is so fleeting, but with time it grows big enough to hold our suffering and to know that suffering will end.

This is grace.  We’ve got all the  we gifts we need to receive it: body, breath, mind, heart and spirit.

Thank you for your healing thoughts and prayers.

 

 

Awake Curious

Sober Curious
I’ve read two articles about being “sober curious” in my hometown paper in the past month. As someone who chose to stop drinking in April, I feel buoyed by the fact that there are others who are curious about living this way. At the same time, I feel as thought I’ve caught the latest fad, like Whole 30 or mom jeans.

In April I was working with the concept of “awake” in my classes, asking my students to be fully awake to their experiences – not to push them down, deny them, numb them. To meet anything that came up in their bodies, mind and spirits as a gift – a ground – in which to find a path to calming the fluctuations of the mind.

Meanwhile, each weekend, I drank alcohol. Monday morning classes were hard. By Wednesday, I felt better, slept better, had more energy because I didn’t drink during the week (and that was hard!) But then I systematically dismantled this sense of well-being with each glass at Happy Hour on Friday, cocktails on Saturday, and glasses of wine with Sunday dinner. It was a pattern of behavior it took me quite some time to recognize and then even longer to stop.

Each sober curious person has a story about how well they feel when they finally stop drinking alcohol. Mine is this: When my diagnosis came, I received my news with the equanimity that comes from being awake. I’m already practicing letting go and being honest and these practices are really handy in  the face of challenge. I am comforted that my intuition had already started me on a path of healing.

To prepare for healing through art-making post-surgery, I have been practicing with watercolors, something I’ve never quite liked to do. (Kind of like those nemesis poses we hate to do, but those are the ones we need so badly.) With watercolors, you have to plan for the light before you start. A good practice for healing — find the light then work with it as your focus.

When I saw this picture by Tom McCorkle in the in the Food Section of The Washington Post on Wednesday, I wanted to paint it because of the light.  I didn’t want to drink it.

All is well.

La Di Da

La Di DaA good friend gave me this tee shirt off her back. I’m going through a health challenge right now which will mean that I will have to stop teaching yoga and art for a just a little bit beginning in August. My friend is a bit older than me, as are the people I have the privilege to know through the classes I teach for Iona. Older friends have taught me well. Health challenges are part of living with the body as it ages. These challenges don’t define who we really, truly are. They are best met with a “La Di Da.”

My yoga practice of only 14 years is as comfortable and comforting as a worn-out tee and is there when I need it most. I feel grounded and calm, though I’m having to make tough changes in my life to accommodate healing. Every time I find myself worrying about these changes or predicting the outcome of my diagnosis, I label it “thinking,” and return to the beauty of the day outside, or the preparations I’m making for my art class tomorrow; making blueberry muffins or enjoying conversation on the porch with someone I love. Letting go of predicting the future, making plans for the worst or the best or the unforeseen, is a bit “La Di Da,” but it is necessary to healing and wholeness.

Since my life’s work is about helping people find healing and peace through yoga and artmaking and I won’t be in the studio for a while, I’ve decided to turn back here to an online community. It’s been a while since shared connections I found between these practices (like this, and this and even this.) If my energy allows, I plan to teach from the heart right here. Who knows, I might find myself recording the fantasy class I’ll take when I’m able and share it with my friends here. The theme? Living the “La Di Da.”

What to Wear

Dress, Pen and PencilIt was 7:30 pm and I was exhausted from sitting on the studio floor in yoga teacher training; my fifty-something hips and knees crackling  their complaints as I crawled in the car and pressed the gas to make it up Prince Street.  A glow to my left drew my eyes from the road.

The store manager knew not to place anything around the mannequin in the softly lit window as big as the store.  The line, the form, the shine said it all.  A black and white gingham skirt — full, but not too full so as to be a costume,  and of the highest quality silk, I could tell from the shimmer of the threads.  Cinched by a black band at the waist, topped by a sheer black blouse and topped with a white Peter Pan collar, it said classic and whispered sexy all at the same time.

And then: reality as cold as the rainy blacktop that would carry me home.  I don’t go to places that require this kind of dress anymore. I have retired from a life that would require this kind of fancy…or sexy.

When I was 18, I learned how to dress to achieve.  Upon getting my first summer job at American University, Mom took me to get work dresses — 5 of them — from the old Garfinkel’s store on Mass Ave.  I loved one so much I wore it almost every Friday as a celebration.  It was the same silhouette as the dress in the window:  full in the skirt, the top close to the body. This dress was sleeveless and the creamy tan and black polka-dotted cotton with a small white collar and big black bow highlighted my summer tan.  I wore it with red linen peek-a-boo pumps.  The dress was imbued just the type of cloaking mechanism a teenaged needed for her first receptionist job.  When I put on that dress and those shoes, I was efficiency and friendliness personified in my little receptionist box; answering an incessantly ringing phone as big as toaster oven, its big plastic buttons flashing urgent messages to me as I approached my desk in the mornings.

When I hit my stride as a real boss, it was the era of the power suit — long jackets with padded shoulders and short slim skirts above the knee.  I owned one from Saks — again thanks to Mom — that was a creamy pale blush silk with mother of pearl buttons.  I wore it with  an ivory shell and paired it with a pair of nude stockings and nude pumps.  I spent a small fortune on Hanes control top panty hose in those day to wiggle into those body hugging skirts. The suit was pulled from the closet for high level meetings with the president of the college or presentations to the Board.  I was smart, sassy, outspoken and deserving of that big promotion despite the lack of any real experience running an admissions office.  The blush suit telegraphed that I was managing it all — a two year old at home, a new marriage, a big job. The suit was as short-lived as the promotion.  It must have gone to Goodwill after I had my second child.  It had become silent and unimportant in my life.

Maybe it was family life that makes it impossible for me to remember any other fancy clothes as clearly as this suit.  The task of dressing in the mornings was rote; performed quickly after a too-short shower, heart pounding and skipping beats from early coffee and the anxiety of bus stop, dog walk, lunch money and traffic woes.  Maybe it was the fashion of that era.  Nothing seems memorable and shopping was worse than going to the dentist.  I worked for a Catholic women’s college as an executive at this time and everything about that gray place, including my fashion, could be described as “dowdy.”  I made bad fashion mistakes, purchasing a linen suit so that I looked like David Byrne on his big suit tour, or buying shoes from Payless.  Thinking that the cheap white long-sleeved polyester blouse from Loehman’s wouldn’t feel like saran wrap when the static radiator heat pumped into my gothic office in mid-winter.

How many bad black winter coats did I go through?  Why did I feel the need to do such damage to my feet?  Bloody heels, such narrow toe boxes that my feet had to unfurl in in my slippers while I cooked the evening meal.  How come I still can’t find a decent pair of black wool trousers?

This past month I’ve transitioned my wardrobe to winter things, bringing out my remaining sweaters, all six of them, only two worn consistently.  The other four are from my past life working in much more conventional places where I didn’t sweat a lot or have to get up and down on the floor. This year, I’m letting go of those sweaters along with the gray wool trousers with pant legs as wide as Trump’s and a back-gap that lets the breeze into my ass crack when I sit down.  I’ll finally bid adieu to the kicky black wool skirt and the polyester wrap dress from Dress Barn, bought more than 20 years ago. Also:  the open-toed, four-inch strappy heels.

My minimalist dream is that eventually all my clothes will fit in one drawer. It is slowly turning out to be that way thanks to my new life as a yoga teacher.  My clothes are a cross between a uniform and a coverall for a life of practice. I have chosen to dress for my most authentic self. And that beautiful dress in the store window? Not on me, not any longer, but it does take up some space in my imagination and in my journal this week.

 

 

 

Transitions/Transmissions

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Magpie. Mixed media on canvas. 30″ x 30″

Last month, I spent time in all my classes unpacking this quote, which Pema Chodron writes so eloquently about in The Wisdom of No Escape:

Keep the sadness and the pain of samsara in your heart and at the same time the joy and the vision of the great Eastern Sun. Then the warrior can make a proper cup of tea.  

Chodron says that when we can remain aware of suffering — not in a state of denial about it, and not drowning in it — then all of life, everything we do becomes a sacred ritual. I’ve asked my students to view their asana practice from this place, experiencing, living, cherishing each joyful and challenging moment on the mat.

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The Story of Tummo and Abel. Mixed media accordian book.

Now it is time for me to live fully into this practice. Throughout the past year or so I’ve spent my creativity establishing a new way of being in my teacher’s seat and being in sangha. Now that Yoga=Union has been incorporated and I have a Board and volunteers to bring this vision to fruition, it is time to return to my own proper cup of tea and find the time to integrate art-making back into my journey once again.

These are the last pieces I made as I completed by 300 hour certification in 2017. The crows called me to make a nest for a proper practice, to play in the wind of change and pierce the veil between experience and true self.  I followed my heart. More transmissions to come, I’m sure.

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Dhumavati Ma. Mixed media on canvas. 10″ x 10″

Big Mind’s Vision

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The Last Day in the Garden

When Erich Schiffman was in Yogaville, he spoke about his understanding of the connection we all have with what he calls “Big Mind” (what some of us would call the divine, and others might call universal consciousness.)  You can tune into Big Mind  by quieting your own little mind through practices that allow you to get out of your own way and “plug in” to the truth of this connection, and insights and sparks of intuition. As you saw from my horoscope recently, Big Mind has some plans for me.

So let me lay out the vision that has been laid on me and ask for your help, as Big Mind’s penchant for connection demands of me.

The Washington DC region needs a yoga co-operative. 

Yup.  I’ve been visited by a vision of an autonomous association of yoga teachers and practitioners united voluntarily to meet their common economic, social and cultural needs and aspirations through a jointly owned, democratically controlled enterprise.

Kinda nerdy was my first thought.

But though it is very different from the other creative visions I’ve played with here, it seems to fit the bill for a heart that has longed for a bigger, broader, deeper and more meaningful in-person connection with others who practice yoga.  [Nice going, Big Mind!]

I’ve shared this vision with close friends, and friends of friends and each time I’ve seen the spark ignite again, like it did in me. As we’ve talked the vision through, considered all the questions that arise, reached out to even more yoga teachers and practitioners for more listening and conversation, the spark has turned into a small flame.

An initial group met in person a few weeks ago to consider whether a DC Yoga Co-operative could come to fruition.  We decided to continue to reach out, to listen and to gather sometime in January to develop a focused mission.  Who do we serve?  How? What positive change do we hope to bring to our region? How would it benefit those of us who already practice or teach yoga?

As you read this, do you feel the warmth of this spark?  Want to know more? Go to Yoga=Union.   I’ll ensure you are part this connected current.

 

 

 

 

 

All My Yoga Peeps

Image-1(2)

What if the entire DC Metro Region was your yoga community?  What if you felt like you — the unique body, heart and soul that is you —  felt at home stepping into a new place to practice yoga?  That you weren’t just invited, not just welcomed, but that you really, really already belonged?

We all have our own yoga DNA from our studios, our teachers, and training…but we are also yoked by common threads.  We long to create connection. We desire to practice compassion for self and others, to honor the lineage and all the creative, vibrant expressions of the practice in the world. Our yoga peeps are all over this city, this region, this country, the world.

In August of 2017, my creative impulses were called away from the canvas and the pen and notebook by change.  This change wasn’t theoretical — it was really, really real.  My home yoga studio changed hands.  And with that change, I took a look around to see that landscape of the local yoga scene had been changing all along.

So, I did what I do every time I felt lost.  I got on with the business of finding myself here and now, connecting with self and others.  And I found the most amazing vision for our big community of yoga peeps and we worked to make this vision a reality.  Please see where we’ve been together at Yoga=Union.  Want to belong?  You are more than welcome and invited.  In fact, you belong already.

Join me in this adventure.

The Tart Taste of Fertility

Quince

Quince

I painted a picture I took of a quince as a way to keep creating.  We have a huge quince bush in our back yard — it blooms a delicate salmon-pink flower in the spring and then ripens about ten fruit in the summer that are so tart the squirrels won’t eat them.  Not much excited me about the subject as I sketched it, or kept me in a sweet flow as I painted.  Unlike the seed pods, it wasn’t a tortured process, but it felt like practice. Come to the canvas, mix the colors, listen to music, and fill a brush with paint.  Repeat.

But the universe was talking to me, I just wasn’t listening. As I became bored with painting, I grabbed one of my favorite books, An Illustrated Encyclopaedia of Traditional Symbols by J.C. Cooper (Thames and Hudson, 1979), and looked up “quince” on a whim. The quince is an ancient Greek symbol of fertility, the food of brides and sacred to Venus.  Like ancient Sarah, I audibly snorked  and chuckled when I read this — what a strange sign! I am now fifty, so my baby making days are well behind me.  I’m in a phase of my life where I see my children ripening into adulthood.

I put the book down and returned to the canvas  — a verdant sea of green.  As I played with hues and shapes and shades, I realized that the sign for me was that my life is fertile ground, not my body.

That is the lesson of yoga as well.  Asana (poses) is what most people think of as yoga, but it is only one limb of an eight limbed practice.  There are also the ethical disciplines of the yamas and niyamas, the appropriate use of the life force in pranayama, and the abiding in silence and cultivating stillness to deepen an awareness of our connection to true self.

The practice of yoga is a tool to help us till the fertile ground of our being.  Once we have prepared this ground, we can fully bloom.

Conforming to the Box

Outside the BoxSometimes an inspiration or motivation for a creative piece morphs and moves so much that I feel as though it has its own life-force.

As I had just taken a job with First Book, a non-profit social enterprise that gets new, high quality books to kids in need, I had been thinking about some of my favorite books as a child.  Harriet the Spy, by Louise Fitzhugh, came immediately to mind.  As a girl, I loved Harriet.  She was everything I wanted to be:  completely her very own person, an adventurer, confident in her abilities and yet totally tuned into the world around her as an observer and a critic of sorts.  She knows no fear and gets through one of the most devastating things that can happen to an adolescent — a social shunning by peers.

I particularly loved the illustrations of Louise Fitzhugh, and one that jumped immediately to mind was of Harriet in the dumbwaiter, spying on the Manhattan socialite.  I decided to look up the novel online and was drawn into a beautiful journey learning more about Louise Fitzhugh.  She herself was a social renegade and a bit of an outcast because of her rejection of her family, her community and her sexual orientation.  When Harriet the Spy was published 1964,  the book received as much condemnation for a character that defied social norms as it did praise for the creative genius that Fitzhugh demonstrated with her character and the story.  I thought of my mother and how she most likely introduced me to Harriet, just as she had introduced me to other work for children that encouraged individuality and non-conformity, like Free to Be You and Me or Where the Wild Things Are. Mom wanted her children to be able to create their own stories — to question what society dictated for them.

Outside the BoxOutside the Box started from this thinking.  Sometimes who we are makes us very small to the world around us.  We might be seen as inconsequential because we are young, or we are women, or gay or have different religious beliefs.  But the weirdest thing is that when you feel inconsequential, it actually feels as though you are being squeezed into a very tight little box, kind of like Harriet in that dark dumbwaiter. The paintings on the sides of this form come from this place.

But as I meditatively worked painting and plastering this form, I found a much more redemptive place in my thinking.  Yes, we can feel constricted by social norms and they can be an evil force in life.  We can see ourselves as inconsequential.  But we can have the courage to challenge these norms as illusion.  In the eight-limbed practice of yoga, we are disciplined to focus inward, to quiet mind fluctuations, to find the end of duality because it sets up a falsehood that draws us deeper into the illusion.  What we work towards is freedom to understand that we are connected, we are part of the great universal consciousness.  While we remain unenlightened, we are actually just living in the shelter of a one-dimensional house.  Discovery involves some fearless climbing out of and scaling up the illusion of  a place that separates us from ourselves and the other.

A story Pema Chodron uses to illustrate how we gravitate to the security of this box — this illusion:Outside the Box

The truth, said an ancient Chinese master, is neither like this or like that.  It is like a dog yearning over a bowl of burning oil.  He can’t leave it, because it is too desirable and he can’t lick it, because it is too hot….We need encouragement and try [to leave our security].  It’s quite daring, and maybe we feel we aren’t up to it.  But that’s the point.  Right there in that inadequate, restless feeling is our wisdom mind. We can simply experiment.  There’s absolutely nothing to lose.    (From the Shambhala Sun website: http://www.shambhalasun.com)

So to think outside of your box, where must you climb?

Woo. Way too much doing.

More blocks

More blocks

Mother’s day flew past in a whirlwind of doing. Our major fundraiser at work on May 3 was the most successful yet. It required considering the “what ifs” and “what happens when,” reams of paper with seat assignments, thinking through processes of pledges received and acknowledged, of financial reports to file and contracts to sign. I was drained by the time Tom and I got away to celebrate a strange new mother’s day without our mothers or anyone around to mother. But the doing kept us moving forward — there was packing, driving, friends to see, the beach, the great new restaurant in town…then, back at work to refocus on website redesign which has been left too long, teaching more classes than normal, Emma’s homecoming, a weekend workshop with Tias Little at Sun and Moon Yoga Studio…and today, the inevitable wall. Thud.

My body has told me that I must undo the effects of charging my adrenal gland up to the max. I must un-do and non-do.

So how ironic is it that on my day of non-doing, I am pulled to the studio to the 29 blocks in our laundry basket, awaiting transformation? I painted this facade today, inspired by the poem by Wendy Videlock, written for her mother:

Flowers

They are fleeting.

They are fragile.

They require

little water.

They’ll surprise you.

They’ll remind you

that they aren’t

and they are you.

I’d found the poem about a month ago when the flowers for Dorothy’s funeral were fading and I took pictures to remember them. Today, as I painted this facade, I lost myself in the process of painting — in the color and the line. Even though I was doing, I was undoing — undoing some of the sadness of my mother’s and Dorothy’s passing, of the exhaustion I feel today and other negative emotions that have been stuffed and packed in nooks and crannies of my body, mind and spirit. There is no tomorrow and no yesterday. Just this moment, this brush stroke.

As Tias explains in an article he wrote for the Sun and Moon newsletter, in the Taoist tradition, non-doing is “wu-wei,” a highly esteemed way of living life. His workshop helped us instinctually understand that we are “doer devotees” and that this approach is antithetical to yoga. The first session of his workshop started with sitting in meditation, listening for the deep thunderous silence rumbling. Today, I heard a moment of this silence as I became a flower.

Spring Should Be Here Already

There are 29 of these blocks left in my studio...

There are 29 of these blocks left in my studio…

There are some things in the studio that are a beautiful metaphor for how our lives are really going.  My newest project sums up everything about my life as a yogi, a development professional, a wife, a mother, a person of faith.

Years ago, I painted a puzzle — it was eight smaller cubes that fit together to form a much bigger cube.  On the outside facades, I painted apples.  On the other facades of the individual cubes, there were aspects of a human face.  It sold in a show in Tennessee, and I was shocked.  I still miss it, like you miss an old friend.  I thought I would paint another one, but you start to understand the futility of this enterprise.  It is like saying, “I’ll have another child just like the one I just had.” It doesn’t happen.

So, when I started treating myself to a weekly bouquet of flowers, I thought — great idea for the facade of another puzzle piece!  My sweet hubby helped me pick out a beautiful piece of pine at Home Depot and waited as a patient wood-cutter split the beam into 33 pieces of 3.5 x 3.5 inch cubes.  They occupy a laundry basket in my studio.

The pics of these blossoms inspired me and the first painting of my first little cube came out pretty effortlessly in an afternoon.

Then life got in the way.  I subbed a lot of classes at the studio and I learned a lot, but didn’t paint at all. Then I  had a big event for work and didn’t spend any time painting. I wanted to make sure to spend time with the wonderful and giving hubby that would spend time with me in the Home Depot and is a wonderful friend and companion.  No painting — but lots of time with him. The second and the third facades were not as effortless.  The details of the flowers were not fun, they were painful — how many little lines are in those strange little green flowers?  How do you paint a flower that has petals like a cabbage, for God sakes? My back ached in the seat, I kept finding new distractions in the room…

The unpainted cubes mock me from the laundry basket. What was I thinking? Why is this project even remotely important?

Now, still 29 blocks...

Now, still 29 blocks…

Even though I’ve lost my sense of purpose or process with this project, I  must get through these blocks.  I can’t have twenty-nine 3.5 inch cubes in our laundry basket any longer.

Spring needs to come soon, literally and figuratively.  As a meditative prayer, I’ll be painting lots and lots of very complicated flowers. And that’s the yogic/parenting/friendship/spiritual lesson.  Get on with it because we really, really need the laundry basket.  And spring.

Nothing Says Christmas Like Bees

Image

To make a bee beard, one starts with tying the queen to the neck.

For the longest time, I’ve been working on a “prequel” to my painting of a bee beard.  I got serious as my 49th birthday approached.  I found that I was industrious about the task — not getting stuck in old ways of over-thinking the concept, or of perfectionism about the line or form, or becoming bored by the tasks I had laid out for myself day by day.  I just got to work and when I was tired, I laid down the brush.  I was…well, like a bee. The result is here.

When I did let myself ruminate on bees and bee beards, I couldn’t remember why I wanted to paint them at all. I’m sure it originally related to the concept of apples and honey that I had painted as I worked through the Eve and the Garden series so long ago.  Just wanting to keep that alive.  The bee beard painted itself almost,  and remained an oddity — a question mark.  It needed a prequel. Here’s the painting of the bee beard:

bee beard

I looked up the meaning of the symbol of bees in the illustrated encyclopedia of traditional symbols and began to get a murky sign from the universe about why I had chosen the subject, and to my sensibilities they seem holiday oriented. The bee is a sign of immortality, rebirth, industry, order, purity and a soul.  In Christianity, the bee is a symbol Mary, mother of Jesus; in Hinduism, the bee on a lotus is the symbol of Vishnu.

The symbol of the ancient Greek goddess Demeter is the bee.  She is sometimes called the “pure Mother Bee,” and the Greeks worshipped her as the bringer of the harvest.  In ancient times to whisper something to a bee would bring the message to the spirit world.

The way these paintings came to me felt as though they were a whisper to me from a place of collective and universal consciousness.  I found joy in the process of painting them and then in thinking about what I had painted, rather than what I would paint.

Bees, I’m sure, don’t think about the honey either.  Hope I can carry this into the new year.

And now, a beautiful poem about bee beards given to me after she saw the strange bee beard painting by my dear friend and amazing poet and artist Marie Pavlicek-Werhli:

The Girl with Bees in Her Hair

BY ELEANOR WILNER

came in an envelope with no return address;
she was small, wore wrinkled dress of figured
cotton, full from neck to ankles, with a button
of bone at the throat, a collar of torn lace.
She was standing before a monumental house—
on the scale you see in certain English films:
urns, curved drives, stone lions, and an entrance far
too vast for any home. She was not of that place,
for she had a foreign look, and tangled black hair,
and an ikon, heavy and strange, dangling from
an oversize chain around her neck, that looked
as if some tall adult had taken it from his,
and hung it there as a charm to keep her safe
from a world of infinite harm that soon
would take him far from her, and leave her
standing, as she stood now—barefoot, gazing
without expression into distance, away
from the grandeur of that house, its gravel
walks and sculpted gardens. She carried a basket
full of flames, but whether fire or flowers
with crimson petals shading toward a central gold,
was hard to say—though certainly, it burned,
and the light within it had nowhere else
to go, and so fed on itself, intensified its red
and burning glow, the only color in the scene.
The rest was done in grays, light and shadow
as they played along her dress, across her face,
and through her midnight hair, lively with bees.
At first they seemed just errant bits of shade,
until the humming grew too loud to be denied
as the bees flew in and out, as if choreographed
in a country dance between the fields of sun
and the black tangle of her hair.
                                                   Without warning
a window on one of the upper floors flew open—
wind had caught the casement, a silken length
of curtain filled like a billowing sail—the bees
began to stream out from her hair, straight
to the single opening in the high facade. Inside,
a moment later—the sound of screams.
The girl—who had through all of this seemed
unconcerned and blank—all at once looked up.
She shook her head, her mane of hair freed
of its burden of bees, and walked away,
out of the picture frame, far beyond
the confines of the envelope that brought her
image here—here, where the days grow longer
now, the air begins to warm, dread grows to
fear among us, and the bees swarm.

Eleanor Rand Wilner, “The Girl with Bees in Her Hair” from The Girl with Bees in Her Hair. Copyright © 2004 by Eleanor Rand Wilner. Used by permission of Copper Canyon Press, www.coppercanyonpress.org.