Clear Seeing

They say a picture’s worth a thousand words and I’d have to agree.  I’ve had two images that have stuck with me from summer backpacking trips (well, there are probably more than two, but these seem to have something to say to me). 

The first is my friend standing in a shallow lake pumping water into our water bottles.  It’s the morning and the lake is glassy still except for the rings of ripples moving out from where she is standing.  Now a lake is commonly used as a metaphor for the mind.  The way I have often heard and used it is focused on how when there is a lot of activity in the lake, the water becomes cloudy, but when the lake is quiet, the sediment settles down and we can see clearly.  What struck me that morning watching my friend is that it’s not just that we can see the bottom of the lake more clearly when it is calm (or see a certain object more clearly when the mind is calm), but that we can see cause and effect more clearly.  It makes me think of what I was talking about in the last post—true feedback.  We can see the impact of our actions, we have a better sense of what’s going on, where something starts and what direction it is going.  We can see the relationship of things, of ourselves to our surroundings.

The second image is a wide-open view of Mt. Rainier as we were driving home.  I always love a great big view of Mt. Rainier.  What was especially noteworthy about this one was that we didn’t see it on the way there.  We passed a viewpoint and saw all these cars parked there with people standing and taking pictures and we wondered what they were looking at.  It was a nice view of a mountainside full of evergreens, but kind of a weird place to make an official viewpoint.  On the way home, we caught the magnificent Rainier and said, “Oh, that’s what they were looking at.”  So, it’s good to have a clear mind and be able to see things clearly, but you also need to be looking in the right direction!

This makes me think of satya, usually translated as truthfulness, that I think of as reality, being in reality.  I associate it with the phrase “clear seeing.”  For clear seeing, we have to calm the mind (which is a lot of what yoga is all about)—this doesn’t mean everything is totally quiet and still, but that it is quiet enough that we can see what’s going on.  But just calming the mind is not enough if we are not looking in the right direction.  That may sound obvious, but I wonder how often we are trying to see or understand something and we are not looking in the right place.

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FB, HBD and True Feedback

This is how I remember this story, which is not necessarily what was said many years ago to me or what happened:  Jack Gilbert is a poet who won some prestigious award when he was first starting out, like the Yale Younger Poets Prize, and then didn’t publish anything for a long time.  I even think he moved to some other country.  When he did publish again years later, someone asked him what he had been doing all that time and he said, “Living my life.”  So all that’s to say that it has been a number of months since I’ve posted on the blog and I can only say I’ve been living my life.  Some shit has definitely gone down and maybe you will hear about it in the coming weeks or months.  As my friend and fellow yoga teacher, Megan Carroll, recently wrote in her newsletter, it’s been AFGO (Another Fucking Growth Experience).

But what I’d like to contemplate today is a recent experience with Facebook (yes, Facebook).  Last year, I had a lousy birthday and one of the things that was bringing me down was all of the birthday posts on my FB page.  At that point in time, I hardly even went on FB, but I’d get an email every time someone posted on my “timeline” and there was something about all these somewhat random people who don’t even know me wishing me a happy birthday that I found depressing (like before I even woke up, someone I barely know had posted “HBD,” it took me a while to even figure out what it meant).  So a month ago, my birthday was coming up and I actually was spending more time on FB and I was already feeling kind of lousy, so I was pondering what to do. 

I decided to take things into my own hands.  So on my birthday, I posted this cute photo of me on my first birthday.  And I got lots of comments and wishes and so on and it all felt more real and genuine to me, which resulted in a lifting of spirits rather than the opposite.  This makes me think of tapas/svadhyaya/ishvara pranidhana, which Desikachar interprets as “act, observe, be open.”  I did something different and then could observe the different results.  “Be open” is really referring to being open to whatever the results might be since we don’t really know and can’t control them.  For me, in this situation though, I really made a conscious choice to be open to receive whatever love and kindness came to me that day and I think that made a difference too. 

I have been thinking a lot about something my Somatic Experiencing teacher, Steve Hoskinson, said in a workshop this summer, that the only thing we can really do for ourselves to help with our own regulation is to put ourselves in environments where we get true feedback.  Perhaps the reason this has really struck me is that my main project in the last months has been removing myself from an environment where the feedback was not true, but unpredictable, confusing and inaccurate, where responses were not really responses to me and the present moment, but something else.  I have really felt how disregulating or disorganizing that is.

The question that I have been looking at since my FB experience on my birthday is "How often do I not put enough out there for others to be able to give me true feedback?"  This is not a new question for me, but it is highlighted in a new way right now.  By proactively posting on my birthday, I was participating in a feedback loop.  I had more of a feeling of people responding to me because I took action and this is part of what made the birthday greetings feel more genuine.  In order to get true feedback, I have to show up.  After all the word is feedback.  I put something out and then I get something back.  Act, observe, be open.  I looked up the word “trifecta” a few minutes ago and decided that it isn’t actually the right word here, but now I am going to use it anyway.  Act, observe, be open—this is the yoga trifecta.  I swear it is all you need.

for more info about therapy with me: www.seattlesomatictherapy.com
for more inför about yoga with me: www.stephaniesisson.net

Telling the Truth

Someone this week (not a client) says to me, “I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anyone.” Even when I type the words, I can feel it in my body, the feeling that goes with those words, feeling contracted and small and like you want to hide because there is something so terrible that you just can’t even face it yourself let alone reveal it to anyone. It’s shame that makes us hide things. And it is so powerful. It keeps us locked up. And alone.

So then this person says it, tells me the hidden thing, the secret that’s been ruining their life. And in one moment, so much of the power this thing had is just zapped away. Even though I was on the receiving end, it was a huge reminder for me of how shame works. I could feel the shift in the person, in me, in the relationship between us and the space around us. Satya (truth) is the antidote to shame—shine the light into the darkness and then it’s not dark anymore.

One of my favorite movie scenes of all time is from, believe it or not, 8 Mile, the Eminem movie that came out many years ago. It’s at the end of the movie and since it’s an old movie I won’t worry about spoiling it for you. Also, this is just how I remember it. Eminem is a rapper (as you may know) and the movie is about his life, which was pretty rough. Eventually, he’s making his way up in the rap scene where he lives. They have these rap-offs (not the right term, I’m sure) where they compete, demonstrating their skills but also tearing each other down. We’re at the end of the movie: it’s the big one and he’s up against this really good rapper and Eminem is worried about what this guy is going to say about him because he’s got all kinds of things he’s been hiding. When it comes time, Eminem goes first. And do you know what he does? He just says it all out. He raps about all of the shit in his life and totally owns that that is who he is. It was incredible. I can feel it right now—power and freedom and strength. The other guy didn’t have anything to rap about!

It’s such a great satya story. It takes courage to tell the truth, but it’s the only way to really be free (not to sound too cheeseball).

YOLO

During family time at the holidays, my 14-year-old nephew frequently said YOLO in conversation or the midst of games. Perhaps you, like his square auntie, need explication.  YOLO (pronounced yo-low) stands for You Only Live Once. I was impressed by the fact that, despite using it primarily when making a bold move, in Settlers of Cataan for instance, he understood that there are two ways a person can go with YOLO. One extreme would be to do crazy, dangerous or brazen things—you only live once, so live it up! The other extreme would be to be cautious and fearful and play it safe—you only live once, so don’t take any chances. It’s like someone who has nice dishes but keeps them locked away for a special occasion and someone else who figures they’re going to break anyway, so let’s play baseball in the kitchen.

These two sides match up pretty well with two of Patanjali’s causes of suffering (kleshas): raga (attraction, attachment, greediness) and dvesha (aversion, repulsion, hatred). Which is which you can decide for yourself. It seems to me that both sides of YOLO reflect both raga and dvesha—two sides of the same coin, as they say.

With the end of the year and the closure of the old Samarya and other things going on in my life, I have been aware of the temporary nature of things and questions arise for me: “How do I stay fully present and involved when I know something is not going to last?” “How do I give my best to something that may or may not work out?” “How do I stay connected through the ups and downs, ins and outs and changes?”

If we really distill YOLO down, it becomes a moment-by-moment choice. If this is it, what am I going to do right now . . . and right now . . . and right now? After all, my life is made up of moments. The way not to “waste” my life is to be what I want to be in each moment and then to not be too hard on myself when I’m not. When I really sit with YOLO, I can feel both the urgency and the patience of it. Something wells up in me that I would call tenderness, wonder, gratitude, love.

In my recent newsletter, I happened to write the phrase, “Remembering what’s important” and it has stuck with me. This seems like a good aim. You only live once, so remember what’s important.

You can’t really write about all this without including Mary Oliver’s famous line (which I have surely quoted before in this blog). I will include the whole poem here, as it is lovely and it's only the last two lines that get quoted all the time.

The Summer Day

Who made the world?


Who made the swan, and the black bear?


Who made the grasshopper?


This grasshopper, I mean—the one who has flung herself out of the grass,


the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,


who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down—


who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.


Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.


Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.


I don't know exactly what a prayer is.


I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down


into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,


how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,


which is what I have been doing all day.


Tell me, what else should I have done?


Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?


Tell me, what is it you plan to do


with your one wild and precious life?



—Mary Oliver, The House of Light, Beacon Press, Boston, 1990

Just a Human

Last month, I made a few plane trips. I admit to you here that I like to just mind my own business in these kinds of situations—at airports, on airplanes. I occasionally will feel moved to have some limited friendly interaction, but I’m not a strike-up-conversations-with-strangers kind of gal. In the last couple of years, I have determined that I actually prefer the aisle to the window because I don’t end up looking out the window that much and on the aisle I feel like I have a little more room, plus I can go to the bathroom without disturbing anyone else.

So, on one of these trips, I got to my seat and there was a giant of a guy sitting in the middle seat, like his head was way above mine and he had the build of a WWF wrestler or a football player. He was wearing all black, his head was shaved and he was wearing his dark sunglasses. I notice right away that the armrest is up, which I hate, because as I’ve implied already, I like to have my own space and have that little bit of separation. (I just decided to be totally honest here even if I look like a weirdo, though I have noticed that I am not the only one not making eye contact in the airport).

This guy seems like a nice guy. He helps me adjust my reading light. Still, I notice myself trying to be more compact and leaning a little to the left. Then, he falls asleep and leans a little bit into me. Ahh, geez. And he wakes up and straightens himself out. This probably happens a couple of times before I have the realization that it’s not so bad, that it’s maybe even nice for this big stranger to lean his arm into my arm. I suddenly just feel like a human helping out another human and don’t feel averse to actual human contact. I sort of want to tell him that it’s okay, that he can lean on me when he falls asleep, but that seems like it will be weird. So I just try to send him the vibes that I don’t mind.

I don’t know if this is a yoga story. Maybe it’s about dvesha (aversion), one of the causes of suffering. Or about ahimsa (non-violence), the cultivation of kindness. Or satya (truthfulness), like the truth that we are all just humans. Or svadhyaya (self-study), looking at my own weird habits and investigating if they are useful or harmful. Or just a reminder that the word yoga means connection, so this is what all the practice is for, having more feeling of connection.

Anyway, Happy Thanksgiving. I am thankful for that guy and that experience and I am thankful to all of you who read this blog.

For more info about therapy with me: www.seattlesomatictherapy.com

For more info about yoga or chanting with me: www.stephaniesisson.net