What we do matters
less than why we do it and how we do it. This is the message rising
from the swirl of ideas lighting through me after the Northwest Yoga Conference
March 7-9 in Lynnwood, Wash. If a pose lacks heart, gets heavy or makes you
grumpy instead of vibrant, then ask yourself why you are practicing it, said
Kathryn Budig, whose inversion trainings are coaxing yogis worldwide to spin
things upside down (limbs and frowns). Asking why is part of intention setting,
and you can often direct intention through your hands, said Eoin Finn, the
self-labeled Blissologist who strives to surf ocean waves, his yoga mat and his
life with the grace of a Pelican. “Your hands are a cue about your state of
mind,” Finn said. So are your eyes, said Theresa Elliot, who blends yoga flow
and dance in her Seattle studio. When your eyes are deep, soft and dark, Elliot
shared, you know you’ve tapped your parasympathic nervous system. If you want more
peace and calm in your life, then you need to build skill at being super chill:
“How you move matters,” she repeated as a mantra.
“Why” requests intention, and that’s how I began the
weekend, with a pause before movement to join a discussion of the Bhagavad Gita
led by Arundhati Baitmangalkar (“Call me ‘Aru,’ like arugula,” said the
articulate and immediately loveable yoga and Bollywood dance teacher who
recently moved from her native India to Seattle with her Microsoft-employed
husband.) In his epic pause, the Gita’s protagonist, Arjuna, asks, Why go into battle? His divine driver
Krishna, a charioteer in the story, recommends that the young warrior buck up
to his dharma and drop the drama. Doing and being cannot be separated, Krishna
advises, and when you know yourself with naked honesty you cannot help but move
forward to fulfill your place in the world. When you think, speak and act from
a place inside that knows its divine role (dharma), you free yourself from
apologies and applause. You stop agonizing about how you might mess up and step
into your life with strength and clarity. The analysis felt relevant and ended
with Aru leading us call-and-response, Kirtan-style through eight verses of the
Gita: Her lovely voice and accent were a treat for the ears.
I stepped into practice that afternoon ready to groove it up
with Finn, whom I studied with on Vancouver Island, B.C., to earn my teaching
certification. His “Life Surfing” session included sage advice such as “Yoga is
the art of getting out of your own way…and becoming a conduit for the wise
guide inside.” With an eclectic stream of rock music as a backdrop, the flow
class had us “getting tubed” on our mats-turned-imaginary-surfboards and
“sliding out” when our mats magically landed at a skate park. Finn’s infectious
energy showed that he’s definitely onto something with his bliss mission: “I want to be a conduit for love…and for love
to be my anchor, sail and compass.”
Stoked from my journey toward fun with Finn, I finished the
first day of the conference with Budig, whose family I had known at the
University of Kansas in the 1980s and ‘90s, when her father, Gene Budig, was KU
chancellor and Kathryn was a child. After the super-charged, sold-out session
of flipping upside-down, aptly named “Altimeter Check,” I complimented Budig’s
ability to stay grounded in humility and humor despite her well-known celebrity
(and multiple advertising gigs) as a hand-stand queen. “You know my family,”
she laughed. “They wouldn’t let me get away with arrogance.” Indeed, Budig’s
homespun style of teaching creates a comfort level for anyone interested. She
uses terminology like “Jackie Chan Arms!” and “Grill a Panini between your
legs!” to help students firm up for flipping booty-side-up and then offers safe
choices and kudos for effort at any level. “It took me a full year to finally
kick up into a full handstand--at the wall,” encouraged this woman who can now
pretty much balance her whole body on her baby finger. Achieving any specific
pose wasn’t the point. “It’s about focus and discipline.”
Bhagavad Gita-style pause: My biggest issue with strong
inversions has always been that I just don’t care that much if I can do them.
Budig’s class led me toward a potential “why bother.” A handstand in the middle
of the room just might give me a tool and metaphor for practicing something
with discipline (from the Yoga Sutras, abhyasa) while remaining non-attached to
the outcome (vairagya), two terms we’ve recently been exploring in my own
classes. Perhaps it’s time to buck up, drop the drama and excuses, and start driving
some intention into my hands…tands. Hmmm. We’ll see about that.
A call to action on a grander scale came through loud and
clear the following day at the conference’s keynote address by Molly Lannon Kenny, founder and director of
Seattle’s Samarya Center for Humankind. “Do not mistake the technique for the
goal,” Kenny pleaded to a roomful of yogis who generally love to geek out about
such pressing problems as proper shoulder placement in chatarunga. “So, what is
the goal?” Kenny asked, then answered. “Love.” She summarized times in history
that consciousness had shifted on a grand scale in the United States and
declared that right now, with stirrings of economic and political turmoil, is a
great time for another grand shift. “Arise. Awake. Stop not until the goal is
reached,” she quoted the Upanishads.
Clarifying how to buoy intention over technique spawned
interesting debate during some of the sessions. At an “Art of Assisting” class
led by Seattle local Lisa Black, participants had wide-ranging views about when
it’s proper for teachers to step into students’ personal spaces and physically
adjust their postures. Known for working the room and touching nearly everyone
during her large flow classes at Shakti Vinyasa Yoga studios, Black defended
her position that healthy touch is valuable and should be offered unless a
student explicitly asks not to be touched.
I offered that in my own experience an unsolicited adjustment has pulled
me out of my personal yoga experience and made me feel like my pose wasn’t
“correct” to the teacher’s eye. Class participants later in the weekend thanked
me for my comment, and I was reminded that we are all students and all teachers
and no experience is complete without everyone participating in their own
unique and full capacity.
The contemplation of one’s place in the cosmos is as old as
fire, said Debbie Murphy, who directed a Saturday afternoon session about
blending ancient philosophy with modern yoga practice. Murphy pointed out that
when humans discovered fire they had a unique reason to sit in circles, face
one another, and converse about the stuff of life: earth, water, fire, air and the
elusive “ether.” The five elements were a theme for the weekend’s conference, and
Murphy, an Idaho teacher and studio founder, mixed them throughout her unique
lecture and practice that called us back and forth between our current
experience and the philosophical underpinnings of yoga. She pointed out that being
a person on the planet hasn’t changed so very much in 4,000 years and quoted
from the Upanishads: “May the human race unite in one fearless friendship.”
The conference’s venue at the Lynnwood Convention Center
facilitated new friendships as faces became familiar and “hellos” evolved into
hugs as we passed in the airy foyer between sessions. There was a table to
share business information and plenty of vendors selling cool yoga stuff like
mat bags, clothing, jewelry, yoga props and groovy shoes. I bought a pair of
hand-sewn pants with birds and flowers painted up and down the sides and
enjoyed greeting other new hand-painted pants wearers with soul-sisterly solidarity.
My new pants made a showing at the Trance Dance Saturday
evening. Although attendance was small (about a dozen participants), the
offering was big on heart, and I was delighted to share the experience with
Eoin Finn and the conference organizer, Melissa Hagedorn, an indefatigable “why
not? Let’s make it happen!” organizer who lives and travels in an RV with her
husband, Chris, an outdoor “adventure
leader.” Leading us in Trance Dance was Kiara
Boch, a yoga teacher in Portland, who has trained with Trance Dance creator
Shiva Rea. She began the evening with chanting and an “experiment” in lingering
hugs (“Make eye contact!”) to pull us outside ourselves. The loosely guided experience
then led us from rolling about like Madonna to twirling, lunging and gyrating
toward a sweaty denouement before
dropping into a sweet savasana. Tired from two long days of yoga, I was pleased
to leave feeling better than before.
Springing forward for Daylight Savings was a bit brutal with
an 8 a.m. session on Sunday, but I arrived
properly caffeinated for “Vinyasa as Dance,” having no idea what to
expect. To my delight, the three-hour session concluded with an IPad
“Show-vasana” (my joke!) of our group dancing together to Michael Jackson’s
“Billie Jean.” Choreographed and taught by Seattle teacher Theresa Elliot, the
routine blended classical yoga postures with playful transitions set to the
beat of the music. The class started slow and easy, with some range of motion
exercises on the floor, and built toward postures with rhythm and steps until
it felt like sleight of hand that our explorations had become a dance routine.
I joked—and got a few laughs—that we should pop into another workshop and do a
flash mob! A dancer since childhood, I was delighted to participate in our
little performance and inspired to blend my yoga and dance more creatively. Elliot
leads regular classes in vinyasa “dance” at her studio, Taj Yoga, in North
Seattle.
Intrigued by Elliot’s creativity and love of movement, I
decided to stick around for her seminar “Vinyasa as Meditation: Accessing the
Parasympathetic Nervous System.” She guided us through her unique adaptation of
a sun salutation that was infused with rocking movements that stimulate the
body’s relaxation response through the vestibular system. “The reason I do yoga
is to take a vacation from myself,” she explained, noting that her knowledge of
the nervous system has helped her understand how to practice in a quiet,
peaceful way even when the movement is strong. She showed one of her more
unique practices with a performance of “Sargasso Sea.” Standing on a heavy
round disc and strapped into ski boots, with a long gown and drapes to disguise
the hardware, she mesmerized with her arcing, flowing and undulating. When she
finished, I felt as though I’d been sitting in deep mediation. To ensure we
left the seminar totally chillaxed, she placed us on hands and knees and head
to head to stimulate the parasympathetic pressure point on the fontanel. Our eyes were deep and dark after the “head push,”
a good trick for helping students into relaxation at the end of class, Elliot
noted.
Finn’s “Blissology Big Chill” finished my conference. The
class included a reprise of his life surfing flow sequences and a long section
of floor stretches and twists. “Yoga just makes me feel so freaking awesome!”
he shared after edging us all into howling like wolves. Finn’s deep regard for
nature is a common theme, and he shared with emotional detail a story about a
whale trapped in crab wires and rescued by fishermen who risked their own lives
to cut him away. “That, to me, is the definition of love,” he said. By the
dozens we puppy piled into savasana at the end of class: I’ve always marveled
at this bliss-master’s ability to turn a roomful of strangers into best friends
and cohorts on a mission toward a better way of living. And when we got up and
danced—and did a little limbo under a rolled yoga mat—I felt my hands had some
new intention. And my eyes were soft. And I was ready to step up my game as a
freshly inspired yogi. What I would do with all of this information would
matter less than how I would do it—and why.
Blissfully beautiful prose!
ReplyDeleteJerri, I love reading all your Poetry, Adventures, and wonderful Philosophy and Joy in your Life!! and I love You!! Mom
ReplyDeleteOnce again your enthusiasm surrounds and inspires. So much good stuff. You are a ventriloquist for my mat; I hear an encouraging, joyful whisper drawing me into my practice. Sweet.
ReplyDelete