Skip to main content

In the canoe again and leaning into breath

Yoga is a river, writes author Rolf Gates in his book Meditations from the Mat. It is not difficult to make the same observation when I practice regularly. The analogy is apt. Today, my practice is easy; everything is flowing. Today, my practice is stuck; must be a mud flat I hadn't noticed. Today, it feels as though I will never reach the surface; the undertow is ruthless in these parts. I have had to navigate all of these river stages in my practice. And I will continue to do so, arriving at familiar shores only to discover something that was always there but hidden to me before. Another breakthrough; another Eureka! evoked.

And so it goes. You were right, my dear Mr. Vonnegut. The river goes; life goes; things happen; we move on. There is a river constantly flowing, and we need to step inside the stream, the flow, the flood, onto the dry patch. Gates uses the image of a canoe for the purposes of all of this navigation. Get into your canoes and push off from the shore and see where your practice leads you. Good advice from this teacher and writer and student of yoga. His advice returns to me now as I push off in my canoe again, this time into another river just as deep and just as magnificent, and potentially just as treacherous. I have joined a group of writers and have agreed to write with them, which means that I have agreed to be exposed all over again and in a brand new way.

Writing has always been pulling me. Yoga, too. They both come from a similar place flowing in me or that longs to flow because it feels as though that is the natural course of things. Maybe they are adjacent tributaries in search of their larger source. It is one of the reasons that compelled me to start this blog. Two disciplines as one. As I dive deeper into each practice, I discover uncanny parallels. Like fraternal twins: same source, different eggs.

Last night, I attended one of the Writers' Salon events organized by our fearless writing workshop leader Barbara DeMarco-Barrett. The evening's panel included three novelists--two women and one man. As they each spoke about the craft and pitfalls of their writing processes, I could not help but think that they could just as easily have been speaking of the rigors and demands and the necessary letting go required in the practice of yoga. I heard, let go of labels, of genre, of initial idea even. In yoga, we're told to let go of ego, of level, of control.

It's Sri K. Pattabhi Jois and his statement "Practice and all is coming" all over again.

E.L. Doctorow once noted the following about the written word: "Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way." It is one of my favorite quotes about writing because that is how I feel my writing most often proceeds--one line at a time. More often than not this could be adjusted to read one slow, tentative line at a time. Yeah, in fact exactly how I would drive in a thick fog. I have seen this quote appear many times on Garrison Keillor's excellent web site, The Writer's Almanac. Imagine, then, how happy I was to hear this quoted last night by one of the panelists as descriptive of her writing method as well. Gayle Brandeis has written several novels. Brandeis is the winner of the Bellwether Prize for fiction--founded and funded by one of my all-time favorite authors, Barbara Kingsolver--for her novel The Book of Dead Birds. Like Brandeis, I am heartened by Doctorow's words. They make me feel better about not knowing what the hell I am doing in this thick fog in the first place. It is an added comfort to imagine getting oneself out of any difficult situation one step at a time. 

Brandeis offered other advice I found a comfort. You have to learn to trust yourself. You have to find that quiet place so that the clear channel inside can speak to you. Learn patience. Be fearless. Open yourself up to what needs to come through. I have paraphrased here. Nevertheless, every word of this, every single piece of advice she provided us--eager writers all--I have read or heard or learned through my yoga practice.

"Open yourself as wide as you can and as deep as you can to the now of your own existence and the endless mystery of it." That is poet and author James Dickey writing about how to read poetry. He might as well be writing about how to approach your yoga practice or what's essential in preparing yourself to sit down to write every time you go to that room, that desk, your chair. I see now that it all comes down to leaning into breath, like one might lean into the oar of the canoe, into the current of the flowing tide. We are here to trust. Trust each breath to take you where you need to go. Trust as well that the next breath is not far behind. I can imagine traveling some distance like that.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Lady chores and essential ingredients

Love recognizes no barriers. It jumps hurdles, leaps fences, penetrates walls to arrive at its destination full of hope. –Maya Angelou Until very recently, an endearing picture of a smiling Neem Karoli Baba greeted me from my computer’s home page. Every time I logged onto the computer that face was a reminder to me to be courageous and strong and tender. While I never had the good fortune to meet Neem Karoli Baba when he was alive, I have read and heard stories of him from some of his more celebrated Western disciples, including Krishna Das, the kirtan singer; Lama Surya Das, the American lama and author who started out as a Jewish kid from Long Island; and Baba Ram Dass, formerly known as Timothy Leary’s partner in LSD research and experimentation at Harvard, Richard Alpert. To a person, these men speak reverently of Neem Karoli Baba or Maharaji, as they affectionately refer to their teacher. According to them, to be in his presence was to be in the presence of capital “...

A Course in Obstacles

"Life is all about living with obstacles. Everything's an obstacle."  When your twelve-year-old utters a statement like this, you cannot help but remain quiet for fear the wisdom will fly straight out of the window instead of settling about you like fairy dust, ready to grant you, not necessarily the next desire on your long list of wishes, but a bit of perspective that had momentarily gone missing. Of course, such an utterance makes you speechless as a parent, too, because you suddenly become aware that your child is doing the thing she was meant to do. Not only is she growing up, she is growing beyond you as her parent, and, one day, she really will be living life on her own, which also means on her own terms. It is a brave and foolish thing, raising children. From the get-go, they are both obstacle and source of transformation. (Not so very unlike all those yoga poses you intend to master.) Throughout your lives together, you are engaged in a dance of guilt and fo...

ANNOUNCEMENT: Out on a Limb, live web show about yoga hosted by yours truly. Begins Sunday, March 2 at 2 p.m.

In Swami Satchidananda’s translation of the Yoga Sutras by Patanjali, the capital “s” sage of the text that explains yoga to the seeker, Satchidananda speaks of the secret of coming together to practice this ancient art. He says, “There is joy in being together, that’s all.” That’s the secret. No attachment, no expectation, and joy. This is yoga. Of course, even joy requires practice. As a dedicated student of ashtanga yoga, I am naturally committed to the physical practice, also known as the asana . While the physical practice has many traditions—Iyengar, Anusara, Yin, Flow, Kundalini, to name a few—it is important to understand that the asana is only one small part—one limb—of the entire eight-limb path that is yoga. The larger journey takes shape as we leave our mats, step out of the studio and into the world. I invite you to join me in a weekly 60-minute exploration of the multiple realms of yoga where we might venture beyond our comfort zones and go Out on a Limb to ...