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

Truth is What Works

OK. So you may have noticed, like I have, that my blog has come to a screeching halt, as my mom would say. It was about a year ago that I had an experience that made me think of the first yoga sutra and I wanted to write about it on the blog. Then I thought, “Wouldn’t it be cool to start with the first sutra and then go through them all one by one?” I realized that it was sort of a monumental project, but decided to try it anyway, giving myself permission to stop if it wasn’t working out. The posts have definitely been fewer this year, but I enjoyed my process of looking up the words in each sutra, reading commentaries, chanting the sutra a lot and waiting for something to write about it.  But now it has been a while and I keep thinking of a book I read recently where the other quoted William James frequently, “Truth is what works.”

It’s time for a little kriya yoga: tapas, svadhyaya, ishvara pranidhana (aka effort, self-study, surrender or act, observe, be open). In my experience, it is important to do practice, to commit to something and do it regularly (I have talked about this in some of my not-so-recent recent posts). That said, I have definitely had the experience of putting practice above self-study or surrender (I’m thinking especially of my ashtanga days) and I can tell you things get out of whack. We get rigid and become ruled by the thing that is supposed to helping or serving us.

So, with my big idea for my blog, it’s not so hard for me to give it up—I knew it was a long shot. But I spend a little time looking at the situation. Am I giving up just because it’s getting hard? Did I just lose my focus? What do I want to get out of writing here? What do I want to give through the blog posts? And other questions like that. My conclusion is that if I’m no longer posting anything, it’s not working out. Time for surrender.

And when I was doing my questioning, I saw that one of the things I liked about my idea to go through the sutras was that I would study them some more, which I think will be my new commitment. I can still go through and re-read them and look at different commentaries and maybe have some new topics for the blog along the way. So kriya yoga is a circle—you act, observe, be open and then you act again based on what you learned.

Hope to “see” you soon.

Watching the Swatching

Have I written about swatches? (No, not the watches that were so cool when I was in high school, I’m talking about knitting swatches). In knitting, before you start a project, you are supposed to knit a swatch so you can make sure you are using the right size needle and that yarn you are using is right. In order for the swatch to be very useful, it really needs to be a certain size (they usually recommend 4 by 4 inches). And I almost never knit one that big because I am in a hurry to get to the project.

For me, this is a really great example of process vs. outcome, or, as we talk about in the therapy world, process vs. content. Knitting the swatch is an important part of the process of knitting something, it’s part of how you end up with the finished product that you want, even though the swatch itself won’t be part of the item. I cannot tell you how many times I have knit my little mini-swatch and said, “OK, that’s good enough” and started the project only to find out however many hours later that my gauge (number of stitches per inch) is not what I thought.  It just happened to me a couple of days ago and it means starting over.

Most translations of Sutra 1.15 talk about mastery over craving for objects seen or heard. Drshtanushravika vishaya vitrshnasya vashikara samjna vairagyam (click here to hear it). There were a couple of things that were interesting to me when I looked up the words in the dictionary. First, vitrshnasya means “free from desire or content”—the word content caught my attention because it made me think of the difference between process and content. Second, vashikara means “fascinating, attracting, cause of attraction, subduing, subjugation.” (I love these words that have seemingly opposite meanings, which happens a lot in Sanskrit).

Vairagya is non-attachment and I think it is one of the commonly misunderstood concepts in yoga. We take it to mean that we should be totally detached, unaffected, not interested in anything, not wanting or feeling anything—we think that is the way to be peaceful, calm and enlightened. I personally don’t think the goal of yoga is to stop being human, which is what that sounds like to me.

So how do we remain human and not be at the mercy of our reactions to every person, situation or experience? We have feelings, likes and dislikes, desires and all the rest, and non-attachment is when we can take one step back from them. We have our human experience and we get a little perspective on it. One of the ways to do this is to focus on process instead of content. 

I have a desire, for instance, to start knitting the “real project” instead of the swatch. If I put my attention on the content, I will either hurry up with the swatch or tell myself I shouldn’t feel that way and try to convince myself with rational explanations what to do. The alternative would be to become interested in the desire itself: how does it arise? what does it feel like? what thoughts come with it? how long does it last? what happens if I follow it? what happens if I don’t follow it? If I get to know how desire works, then, as this sutra explains, I’ll have mastery over it (which doesn’t mean I won’t experience it, but that it won’t control me) vs. if I focus on the object of desire, then I think I’ll be satisfied when I get it, but then there is just the next thing and the next thing and I am being mastered.

Rather than fostering disinterest as we might think, non-attachment actually feeds curiosity. Life becomes interesting and fun when we put our attention not on what happens but how it happens. I might find myself less focused on getting things right and awaiting the surprise of what might happen next. Swami Venkatesananda talks about this as turning the “compulsive and overpowering craving for objects seen and heard of” on itself—developing an “intense and consuming quest” in understanding the craving itself.

This can be done with any experience, not just desire or craving. I’ve been having a lot of anxiety lately and I want to attach it to something—I look around to see what is making me anxious so that I can solve it. But it just keeps grabbing on to the next thing. What seems more helpful is looking at the anxiety itself, feeling the sensations and simply asking the question, “What is this?” (not answering that question, just asking it). Attaching to that inquiry (process) instead of attaching to getting rid of the anxiety (outcome or content) makes it easier for me to be okay no matter what happens. No wonder vairagya is an important part of yoga! 

For more info about therapy and yoga with Stephanie, go to www.seattlesomatictherapy.com