each person that ever was or is or will be has a song.
it isn’t a song that anybody else wrote.
it has its own melody, it has its own words.
very few people get to sing their own song.
most of us fear that we cannot do it justice with our voices,
or that our words are too foolish or too honest, or too odd.
so people live their songs instead.
~Neil Gaiman, Anansi Boys
Be careful how you are talking
to yourself because you are listening.
~Lisa M. Hayes
At the beginning of the month, Sangha decided our aspiration for study and practice in February would be (1) to dissolve the inner critic and (2) to awaken the voice of self-love.
We all have experienced the harsh self-defeating tones of an inner voice that chastises, doubts, belittles, and discourages us. We may struggle to hear the gentle voice of compassion that encourages, nurtures, assures, and reminds us of our strengths, gifts and possibilities.
This two-step process of dissolving self-criticism and awakening self-compassion invites us to first shine the light on the deep roots of that oppressive, self-defeating commander.
Can we see the seeds of fear, unworthiness, shame? Can we see all the hands that planted and tended them? These internal and external messages that feed and strengthen that critical voice?
To identify these embedded roots may also unveil a cycle of self-abuse that we easily trap ourselves in. As one practitioner pointed out, we recognize that we’re beating ourselves up and then reprimand ourselves to be better and nicer to ourselves! But how will such self-lecturing ever help us eliminate self-judgement when the critic thrives under abrasiveness?
Thich Nhat Hanh encourages us to “cradle” our suffering (in the form of anger, fear, pain, judgement etc.) as a mother would a child. So when the critic begins its denigrating rant, we neither silence nor strengthen it. We embrace it with a gentle acknowledgment, “Ahh! I see/hear the suffering.” We do not abandon ourselves, convinced that we’re being weak or wimpy. We whisper words of kindness to soothe that wounded voice. I understand. I am here for you. You are hurting. I love you.
Receiving such tenderness, the raging critic begins to soften and relax—to exhale its relief at being seen, heard and understood. Now there is room to sow and water seeds of compassion. We keep exercising the voice of compassion by speaking to ourselves in a hushed and soothing tones. We retrain our inner critic by filtering its skills of observation and analysis through the four gates of speech (a Sufi and Buddhist practice I wrote about in a musing about mindful communication in motherhood) asking, Is it true? Is it necessary? Is it helpful? Is it kind? We learn to assess our choices and decisions honestly, using words that nourish and support rather than berate us. With skillful effort, we develop a booming voice of wise and compassionate discernment.
So practice gently, relentlessly, and lovingly to awaken and constantly feed the voice of self-love. What’s been helpful for me in moments of self-doubt is to remember what another friend in sangha shared. Inspired by a story she’d heard about Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, she echoed his words of encouragement in a tender lilting voice: “Don’t be afraid, you can do it.”
To stop and communicate
with yourself
is a revolutionary act.
~Thich Nhat Hanh
Last week I shared a reading from Sandra Ingerman‘s Medicine for The Earth (a going-away gift I’d received from a friend when I left Brooklyn, NY in 2003), which provides a template for the transmutation—or ability, as Ingerman defines, to transform poisons in the body and environment—of negative, self-destructive communication to healthy, harmonious self communication:
Words and thought forms create a vibration that goes far into the universe, creating musical notes. We need to look at whether we send out harmonious notes into the universe, which in turn create harmony, or whether we send out disharmonious notes, creating chaos and illness. We call down the powers of the divine and call into being with our words…The seeds planted will decide what kind of plant grows.
We rarely pay attention to the power of the words we use. In our ignorance we end up calling into being a great deal of chaos and pollution. We do the same with our thought forms. If the divine created us in its own image and the divine is perfect, then we are perfect. If we say things about ourselves that is against our perfection, we move out of harmony with the divine inside and outside us, which can cause illness. For example, if you say that you are not good enough or if you believe you are not worthy, your words are out of harmony with divine creation.
You must work on bringing your words and thoughts back into a song of harmony. Without this harmony there can be no union. Without harmony and union there can be no transmutation. The universe sings glorious harmonious notes. Is the song of your life and beliefs harmonious?
EXERCISE [an excerpt]:
Imagine your life as a garden. What seed words do you want to plant, nurture, and watch grow? Choose your seed words carefully.
As you begin to notice the energy and vibration of words, be more conscious of the words you use in your conversations with others. Think about what you are calling down for yourself and others. Think about what plant will grown out of the words you planted.
To heal the earth through transmutation, you must speak to yourself and others with words that create a vibration of love, harmony, and union with the divine. With words you can decree that pollution be reversed. Parts of the formula for transmutation used here: Intention: Words create intention to heal or create illness.
Love: Words that have the power to heal embrace the vibration of love. Love heals.
Harmony: Harmonious notes sent out into the universe will create harmony reflected back to you in your life and the environment.
Union: Where there is harmony, there is union. Union is the energy behind transmutation.
Focus: You must have strong focus to create the intention to use healing words.
Concentration: It takes a great deal of concentration to be aware of the words you use in your self-talk and your conversations with others.
Imagination: You must be able to imagine the energy and vibration that is sent out with the words you use.
I begin every class by asking practitioners what their bodies need that day. I invite them to make requests: 1) for particular poses that they’ve either found helpful or challenging and wish to explore; and 2) for parts of the body that need attention, making special note of any new injuries or sensitivities.
There are times when this invitation is met with blank, self-conscious stares and silence. (Typically when it’s a brand-new group or when I’m subbing for another teacher.) When this happens, I pose it another way: Where are you holding tension? What needs to be stretched? What needs to be strengthened?
Finally, a quiet murmur from a hesitant voice dares to reveal in a room (most often) full of strangers a perceived weakness: a knee or shoulder, lower back, neck or hamstrings that chronically and persistently ails. Now come the echoes of agreement! Oh, the relief at knowing we’re not the only one suffering.
I’ve been teaching for 7 years, and it puzzles me that, in a yoga class of all places, people (read: adults of all ages, beginning and experienced students alike) appear reluctant to respond to this invitation to fully participate in creating their experience on the mat.
________________________
Is it the awkwardness of public speaking?
Is it just wanting to turn off the efforts of the thinking mind after a long day to simply enjoy being led?
Are students deferring to the skill of the teacher because they have no preference?
Or, do they really not know/understand how to listen to what is happening in their body?
Do they not feel empowered to ask?
____________________________
Naturally, beginning students feel like they don’t know enough to ask. But then I think: Well, what would you say to a massage therapist or medical professional who asked you to describe the sensations in your body and where you’re feeling them?
What about experienced practitioners who are reticent? Are they keeping quiet because they think the teacher should have a plan or because they don’t wish to appear as if they are challenging the teacher? Have they never been asked to consider these questions before?
In far too many instances, I suspect that it is the latter reason. Some teachers are either not approachable or are not creating an atmosphere where questions and curiosities are openly welcomed. It may not be intentional; however, the lack of awareness and connection between such teachers and their students becomes apparent when those students reveal, through the questions and observations they pose to me, disparities in teaching (philosophy, skill, etc.) and communication styles.
In a recent conversation, a practitioner expressed concern about her physical discomfort when doing a particular sequence of movements in class taught by another teacher. After guiding her once more through modifications I had just taught the group, I asked whether she’d ever talked with the other teacher about this. She paused thoughtfully and realized that she hadn’t–in part, because she was deferring to that instructor’s style and because of the well-noted rigor of the class itself.
My question gave her new perspective. Instead of outright dropping the class, she agreed to first speak with the instructor. I encouraged her to then base her decision on how that instructor received her questions and, when tested, whether that answer ultimately served to eliminate her discomfort and enhance her practice. I added that such feedback helps us learn how to teach our students!
Situations like that are common. So it has long been my practice to encourage students to respectfully approach any and every teacher to inform them of their injuries or sensitivities, to ask questions, and to make requests. It is how we teachers learn to listen, observe, instruct clearly, and respond skillfully to students–whether by modifying poses or by offering an all-together different pose option to accommodate the diversity in body type, range of motion, skill level (to name a few) in our rooms. It is how we teachers continue to develop our skills.
So it is important for me to invite practitioners to co-create the practice with me. When that connection and openness has been established, requests will pour in before I can even ask…sometimes the moment they walk in the door! I do this with the intention to empower students to make the practice their own: to help them discover how to listen and respond skillfully to their bodies on and off the mat.
We feel different in body, heart, and mind everyday. So–even if we move through the same poses time and again–our yoga practice is different! Honoring what we are experiencing in the present moment not only keeps us safe in our practice, but also deepens our intimate understanding of ourselves, strengthens our intuitive powers, and nourishes in our hearts the sense of compassion, resilience and trust we have for ourselves.
At the end, I thank everyone for helping to create the practice. Yes, I am an experienced teacher who offers them tools to stretch, stabilize and strengthen the body as well as to relax, understand, sort, settle and honor the heart and mind. But it is very rare that I come in with a pre-planned sequence. (Why? Inevitably, a new student will show up without any previous experience or a regular student will have a new ache or injury. Whoosh! Out goes the plan.) Instead I arrive with the intention to teach spontaneously from a mix of intuition, knowledge, and observation. What I teach then is inspired by the present-moment needs of the practitioners because they are the experts of their own bodies and, as such, the co-creators of their yoga experience.
{originally published 22 aug 2013 now-defunct dharma yoga arts blog}
“He who argues for his limitations gets to keep them.” ~ Richard Bach
Wow! To be “committed to stuck-ness”…
Such a powerful statement about an equally powerful position to be caught in:
gripped by pain, fear, anger, self-doubt, feelings of helplessness and defeat.Constantly hearing the voice of the inner critic calling out our flaws and weaknesses. We wince and turn away. Our vision now obstructed, dimmed.
To reframe this question (to refresh our perspective and broaden the view) is to unravel what has us so tightly bound.
This is a timely contemplation for our practice of awakening the voice of self-compassion and love. This voice speaks in gentle and reassuring tones with discernment and wisdom.
We open our eyes to witness the illusions dissolve, remembering that what makes us whole and free is not always visible to the unskilled eye.Related
Yogic concept + practice of Pratipaksha Bhavana
This post was written several years ago. I’m feeling great these days and ready to post some of the things written in darker moments…
From January 2010
I’m lying in bed and the right side of my body is frozen. I’m right-handed. I want to get up and the thought alone isn’t getting me there. I remember something my doctor said, “When you wake up, pay attention to what is working. Put all your attention on that.”
I scan my body. My left arm is great. Okay, left arm, show me what you can do. I reach to grab one of the headboard spindles, and use my left arm to roll over and hoist myself up. My left leg is working pretty well, too. I lean against the wall and drag myself into the bathroom. Home run. I may be right-handed, but my left arm rules.
A few…
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essential food
nothing can survive without food.
everything we consume acts to either heal us or to poison us.
we tend to think of nourishment only as what we take in through our mouths, but what we consume with our eyes, our ears, our noses, our tongues, and our bodies is also food. the conversations going on around us, and those we participate in, are also food.
are we consuming and creating the kind of food that is healthy for us and helps us grow?
when we say something that nourishes us and uplifts the people around us, we are feeding love and compassion.
when we speak and act in a way that causes tension and anger, we are nourishing violence and suffering.
…nourishing and healing communication is the food of our relationships.
~ Ven. Thich Nhat Hanh
The Art of Communicating
toward which direction is your heart stretching?
know that this organic force, opening and guiding your heart, is the seed of intention
what are you breathing life into?
know fully that the breath is the fuel growing into aspirations.
connect with and align your thoughts, words and deeds with the seeds of intention blossoming in your heart.
nourish and energize your hopes and visions with the compassionate wisdom of breath.
each inhale grants space for each blossom to stretch out and unfold.
each exhale invites those roots to merge with every fiber of your being.
with such loving awareness, tend to your heart.
bathe it in the sweet, steady flow of breath.
as the petals of intention bloom, they will stretch open your hands, heart and mind.
every breath, thought, word and deed becomes a flower,
saturated with the fragrance of clear intention.
your aspirations — a beautiful thousand-petaled lotus.
I’ll be slowly working on the 3 Jewels site, determining which features to change and which to transfer from dharma |yoga arts.(feel free to keep digging into this archive). Your patience is appreciated!
ALL NEW POSTS WILL APPEAR ON THE NEW SITE + THIS WILL REMAIN AN ARCHIVE.
PLEASE FOLLOW 3 JEWELS FOR THE LATEST MUSINGS ABOUT MOVEMENT + MINDFULNESS + MEDITATION!
I offer my deepest gratitude to all who have supported +
followed my journey as dharma yoga arts over the years.
Snuggling up with my “guru” in SnowBound-Asana!Exercise the utmost mindfulness with your movement today, dear ones. The county officials have declared it a snow emergency and, with winds, drifting snow, and temperatures plummeting toward -30°F, are urging everyone to avoid unnecessary travel.
Live your meditation: Honor the forces of Nature + this gift of shamatha–stopping, being snow bound + grounded, stilled.
Be present with those you love. Be grateful for your safety + shelter.
Be compassionate for those who are without such basic needs. Offer help when you can.
I’m grateful for my mate who, by clearing our sidewalks + those of our neighbors, has inspired others to share shoveling duties. Our neighbor + her kids cleared the pathways to the back entrances while he cleared those at the front.
I’m grateful for the dedication of our community of practitioners, who showed up to yesterday’s dharma discussion + meditation practice, before the storm hit hard. And, to those who helped shovel the walkway to the studio, dig out a yogi’s car when it got snowed in during class, + who drove others home who traveled by alternative means!
I’m grateful to B, my friend + the founder of Just B Yoga, for putting the safety + security of teachers + practitioners above revenue. And, trust, for a donation-based studio (as well as for those full-time teachers like me), every offering counts! It keeps the doors open so that we can fulfill the mission to serve. Not merely by making these practices for health and well-being accessible to all, especially those who may not otherwise be able to afford it. But also through nurturing relationships in the community: we teach, learn, share, collaborate, mentor, trust, laugh, cry, bitch, moan, hold each other accountable, laugh some more, hug, love, feed each other, eat, give, receive…We grow friendships, ideas, gardens, refuge…Together we are wise + strong.
This is the sacred space of sangha.
It’s present even when we roll up our mats. We don’t have to be within in the walls of the studio to touch + nurture this sacredness.
So light a candle tonight, in honor of our Yin+Yang Yoga class, and gaze into its flame. Breathe in its warmth + radiance. Breathe out, offering these gift to yourself + others.
tscottmiller 