It's right about this point every new semester that I begin to drag a bit. I'm an associate professor at a local community college where we have completed week number five, and I'm tired. At home, my youngest daughter, my husband and I have just about adapted to not only my new school schedule but my daughter's, which of course is completely different from mine. And while summer only officially ended yesterday, in Southern California we're accustomed to having our warmest weather throughout the fall. We live close enough to the beach to occasionally make a mad dash for the sand after school and before the dinner hour. Naturally, we have to squeeze in two afternoons of soccer practice, a game on the weekend and an extra game or two where I help out as an assistant referee. Luckily, the after-school clubs at my daughter's school do not begin for another two weeks. I haven't even mentioned my daughter's homework, the lessons I routinely prepare, the student e-mails I cannot ignore, or all of the papers I have to grade. Forget about laundry, making dinner, grocery shopping, walking the dog.
No wonder my lower back has been bothering me in my yoga practice of late.
Rereading this now makes me even more tired. It also serves as a reminder of both how busy our lives have become, and what we have come to accept as normal. How did we get here? I know I am not alone because I have to practically schedule phone conversation time with my friends. We may have unlimited access to multiple social networks, but, let's face it, the participants are all taxed.
In a former life, I like to imagine that I lived on a farm. Yes. I know. Here is someone who has never lived on a farm and knows nothing of the rigors of that particular lifestyle about to romanticize it to bits. Not at all. I imagine farm life to be difficult and fraught with all sorts of hardship that I have not experienced. But, I have had my share of other hardships; and, while I am certain they were not the same, they were no less of a challenge for me personally. What matters is that these difficulties taught me something very important about myself: I am not prone to shrink from obstacles. So, you can indulge me when I say that the reason I like to feed this image of me and farm life from time to time is that I like to rise at dawn. I love the early morning; I always have. (This makes me an ideal ashtangi, I know.) And I really enjoy being outside in the early morning hours. This penchant sustained me for nearly three decades as I ran at dawn every other morning. What makes this time of day unique for me, and why I value it enough to rise before the sun, is that the early morning restores my sense of time. The rhythm and register of dawn reset my personal clock, and remind me that I have time, that time is plentiful, that at this hour I have time to stop and enjoy what the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh says we would all do well to celebrate more, and that is aimlessness.
Right now, I am reading Hanh's book Peace Is Every Step. Hanh's gentle wisdom is presented in this small book through a series of very brief chapters. Each brief chapter reveals a profound lesson. Like a poet, Hanh is able to say much, and beautifully, in a few lines. In his chapter entitled "Our Life is a Work of Art," Hanh addresses our Western sense--or should I say senselessness--of time. He urges us to master the art of stopping. Remember the phrase, "Stop and smell the roses." Hanh suggests we do this, literally. Practice Stopping. By stopping, we go back to ourselves, and when we return to ourselves, we begin to recognize that each minute of our life is a work of art. According to Hanh, it is the being that is essential.
While at work Wednesday evening, I became quite tired. I suddenly felt supremely spent; I had hit the wall; I was running out of steam; the juice was gone. Okay, you get the idea. Still, I had time on the clock. I had work yet to complete. How was I going to get through the last hour, make the drive home, eat dinner, and get to bed at a reasonable hour so that I could get up to do this all over again? I had finished working with my last student for the evening, and I had a few computer-generated items left to generate. All of these thoughts were crashing in upon me when I sat down and turned the computer on. Then, there it was. No, it was not a hallelujah chorus, nor did the clouds part. Instead, my monitor simply flashed "Starting Windows," and I smiled. This was not a smile for the brilliance of Mr. Gates, although, in a way, I suppose it was. Rather, I was smiling because I remembered Hanh's words of wisdom. The prompt "Starting Windows" made me stop, and in that stopping, I welcomed the view through this new "window." The curtains parted, the windows opened (or started), and I relaxed. I came back to the present where Hanh tells us Everything is happening.
When Hanh refers to practice, he is referring to meditation. For Hanh, everything we do is a way of practicing meditation. I learn the same lesson from yoga. Everything we do is a way of practicing yoga. At the Shala, we, too, practice stopping. We stop before we begin with Namaste and an invocation; we stop during each asana; and we stop at the close of our practice in savasana and once again in Namaste. In fact, Namaste, itself, is the pause; it is where we momentarily stop to recognize our lives as works of art. With our hands held at the heart chakra (or the third eye), before we begin the invocation, before even our first breath shared together in Aum, we honor the being in one another. Nama, "bow," as, "I," te, "you": I bow to you. In this place of connection and timelessness, in our energetic union with one another during yoga practice, we are creating a place where the spirit can blossom and remembering how to live in the present moment.
The greatest show on earth? Open the window. It's happening Now. Now. Now.
No wonder my lower back has been bothering me in my yoga practice of late.
Rereading this now makes me even more tired. It also serves as a reminder of both how busy our lives have become, and what we have come to accept as normal. How did we get here? I know I am not alone because I have to practically schedule phone conversation time with my friends. We may have unlimited access to multiple social networks, but, let's face it, the participants are all taxed.
In a former life, I like to imagine that I lived on a farm. Yes. I know. Here is someone who has never lived on a farm and knows nothing of the rigors of that particular lifestyle about to romanticize it to bits. Not at all. I imagine farm life to be difficult and fraught with all sorts of hardship that I have not experienced. But, I have had my share of other hardships; and, while I am certain they were not the same, they were no less of a challenge for me personally. What matters is that these difficulties taught me something very important about myself: I am not prone to shrink from obstacles. So, you can indulge me when I say that the reason I like to feed this image of me and farm life from time to time is that I like to rise at dawn. I love the early morning; I always have. (This makes me an ideal ashtangi, I know.) And I really enjoy being outside in the early morning hours. This penchant sustained me for nearly three decades as I ran at dawn every other morning. What makes this time of day unique for me, and why I value it enough to rise before the sun, is that the early morning restores my sense of time. The rhythm and register of dawn reset my personal clock, and remind me that I have time, that time is plentiful, that at this hour I have time to stop and enjoy what the Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh says we would all do well to celebrate more, and that is aimlessness.
Right now, I am reading Hanh's book Peace Is Every Step. Hanh's gentle wisdom is presented in this small book through a series of very brief chapters. Each brief chapter reveals a profound lesson. Like a poet, Hanh is able to say much, and beautifully, in a few lines. In his chapter entitled "Our Life is a Work of Art," Hanh addresses our Western sense--or should I say senselessness--of time. He urges us to master the art of stopping. Remember the phrase, "Stop and smell the roses." Hanh suggests we do this, literally. Practice Stopping. By stopping, we go back to ourselves, and when we return to ourselves, we begin to recognize that each minute of our life is a work of art. According to Hanh, it is the being that is essential.
While at work Wednesday evening, I became quite tired. I suddenly felt supremely spent; I had hit the wall; I was running out of steam; the juice was gone. Okay, you get the idea. Still, I had time on the clock. I had work yet to complete. How was I going to get through the last hour, make the drive home, eat dinner, and get to bed at a reasonable hour so that I could get up to do this all over again? I had finished working with my last student for the evening, and I had a few computer-generated items left to generate. All of these thoughts were crashing in upon me when I sat down and turned the computer on. Then, there it was. No, it was not a hallelujah chorus, nor did the clouds part. Instead, my monitor simply flashed "Starting Windows," and I smiled. This was not a smile for the brilliance of Mr. Gates, although, in a way, I suppose it was. Rather, I was smiling because I remembered Hanh's words of wisdom. The prompt "Starting Windows" made me stop, and in that stopping, I welcomed the view through this new "window." The curtains parted, the windows opened (or started), and I relaxed. I came back to the present where Hanh tells us Everything is happening.
When Hanh refers to practice, he is referring to meditation. For Hanh, everything we do is a way of practicing meditation. I learn the same lesson from yoga. Everything we do is a way of practicing yoga. At the Shala, we, too, practice stopping. We stop before we begin with Namaste and an invocation; we stop during each asana; and we stop at the close of our practice in savasana and once again in Namaste. In fact, Namaste, itself, is the pause; it is where we momentarily stop to recognize our lives as works of art. With our hands held at the heart chakra (or the third eye), before we begin the invocation, before even our first breath shared together in Aum, we honor the being in one another. Nama, "bow," as, "I," te, "you": I bow to you. In this place of connection and timelessness, in our energetic union with one another during yoga practice, we are creating a place where the spirit can blossom and remembering how to live in the present moment.
The greatest show on earth? Open the window. It's happening Now. Now. Now.
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