Category Archives: Quotes

The Seed of Yoga

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This past weekend during my 500-hour teacher training, Denise Carrico came to talk to us about teaching yoga for people with cancer. Denise is a yoga teacher in the Integral tradition who has been teaching yoga for 20+ years and for people with cancer for 12 years at Seattle Cancer Lifeline in Phinney Ridge and 8 Limbs Yoga in West Seattle. She also leads free retreats for cancer patients at Harmony Hill in Western Washington’s Hood Canal.

Denise stressed the importance of empowering people who have been diagnosed with cancer who may have felt betrayed by their bodies and perhaps even other things, tangible and non-tangible. She then read a poem to us to demonstrate how to use imagery and poetry to do so.

I will not live an unlived life.
I will not live in fear of falling or catching fire.
I choose to inhabit my days,
to allow my living to open me,

to make me less afraid, more accessible,
to loosen my heart
until it becomes a wing, a torch, a promise.
I choose to risk my significance;

to live,
so that which came to me as seed
goes to the next as blossom,
and that which came to me as blossom,
goes on as fruit.
—Dawna Markova

The next morning, on Sunday, our class read the Bhagavad Gita, and in chapter 10 of the translation by Eknath Easwarn, verse 39 read:

“I am the seed that can be found in every creature, Arjuna; for without me nothing can exist, neither animate for inanimate.” BG 10:39

This then reminded me of what Shinzen Young said in the very last minutes of his lectures in The Science of Enlightenment:

“When you let go of the need to know, then you will be able to see how space is produced from the activity of nothingness, and you’ll be able to also see how the activity of the pine tree arises as none other than yourself” – Sasaki Roshi, as quoted by Shinzen Young, chapter 12, the Science of Enlightenment

The image of the seed seems to be coming up a lot everywhere I look recently. How about you? What image do you find consistent in literature, yoga and otherwise?

Patience, grasshoppers, a seed will soon grow into a tree.

Patience, grasshoppers, a seed will soon grow into a tree.

An Open Letter of Grace

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One of my favorite authors, Bill Bryson, once wrote:

Welcome. And congratulations. I am delighted that you could make it. Getting here wasn’t easy, I know. In fact, I suspect it was a little tougher than you realize.

…

To be here now; alive in the twenty-first century and smart enough to know it, you also had to be the beneficiary of an extraordinary string of biological good fortune. Survival on Earth is a surprisingly tricky business. Of the billions and billions of species of living thing that have existed since the dawn of time, most—99.99 percent—are no longer around.

…

The average species on Earth lasts for only about four million years, so if you wish to be around for billions of years, you must be as fickle as the atoms that made you. You must be prepared to change everything about yourself—shape, size, color, species affiliation, everything—and to do so repeatedly… The tiniest deviation from any of these evolutionary shifts, and you might now be licking algae from cave walls or lolling walruslike on some stony shore or disgorging air through a blowhole in the top of your head before diving sixty feet for a mouthful of delicious sandworms.

Not only have you been lucky enough to be attached since time immemorial to a favored evolutionary line, but you have also been extremely—make that miraculously—fortunate in your personal ancestry. Consider the fact that for 3.8 billion years, a period of time older than the Earth’s mountains and rivers and oceans, every one of your forebears on both sides has been attractive enough to find a mate, healthy enough to reproduce, and sufficiently blessed by fate and circumstances to live long enough to do so.

Not one of your pertinent ancestors was squashed, devoured, drowned, starved, stranded, stuck fast, untimely wounded, or otherwise deflected from its life’s quest of delivering a tiny charge of genetic material to the right partner at the right moment in order to perpetuate the only possible sequence of hereditary combinations that could result—eventually, astoundindly, and all too briefly—in you. – Introduction, A Short History of Nearly Everything

After reading that, I usually laugh at the image of myself licking algae, and often get quite emotional and teary-eyed. It’s similar to that feeling that you get when you’re out in the middle of nowhere, you look up, and there’s the whole entire Milky Way spread out above. You feel so small yet so big, and you just marvel at the wonder of it all, and the fact that you are alive and that you can see this incredible sight.

In that spirit, this post is an expression of gratitude.

If you were to look at things from a certain perspective, it has been a very tough year for me personally. (I know most people don’t start counting a new year until January 1st, but for me, the new year occurs in November, my birth month.) I’ve gone through lay-offs, rejections, financial losses, physical injuries, family issues. After having lived on my own for so long, I moved back home, waving goodbye to my dear apartment and the carefree, blithe, “single girl in the city” lifestyle.

In theory, I should have slipped into some sort of depression, or at least periods of low self esteem and pity, given everything that happened, and given that I had been well conditioned to being on the other side of the fence: straight A student in high school, Dean’s list in college, groomed to be in a leadership, fast-track career path, etc.

Yet, for some strange reason, the opposite thing took place. I have been living rather, ecstatically, running around and loving, marveling at life like a goldfish who’s seeing everything for the first time, over and over again.

“Are you okay?”, friends would ask out of concern that I haven’t found a “jobby job”, and I would say, “Oh god, yes! I woke up this morning and went to the bathroom, and there was toilet paper! And a toilet that flushed! I went to turn on the shower and there was hot water! Isn’t that incredible? I’m *more* than okay. I’m like, so lucky to have what I have!” “Um, okay, really now, are you okay?”

I am okay, I am very okay, and I have to say, that I owe a lot of it to yoga.

Now, I know that I may sometimes come across as a bit irreverent, skeptical, cynical, a little disrespectful, even, of “this whole yoga thing”. I know that sometimes it seems like I’m not quite sold on any spiritual context of modern yoga. But, let me say it here and say it now, I am a staunch believer in the transformative and healing power of yoga, for which I could not be more grateful. (And besides, in my humble opinion, doubt is an integral part of a healthy belief.)

Before we go on, I want to emphasize that yoga did not, does not, and will not remove or eradicate any of life’s oopsies and resulting ouchies. It also does not make you numb to life’s realities and ignore your responsibilities. It can, however, help you live more fully in the moment, which is something that all those smart people, living and dead, have been urging us to do since the beginning of time.

“Things are more like they are now than they ever were before”

A little over a year ago, when I started my teacher training at Pacific Yoga in Seattle, little did I know that beyond getting bendy, I was going to be equipped with something akin to a flashlight for the dark and rugged sections of the hike. The flashlight may not tell me where to go and how to get there, but it surely helps me get a good sense of where I’m at, and what’s happening right now.

Right now, I have a father who’s almost 70, in good health, and driving my mom crazy with his landscaping projects. I have a mother who constantly tries to convince me that I need to eat more (of her food, of course), and who will come nudge me every night to set her up in a Restorative yoga pose. I have a brother who’s also my best friend and occasional drinking buddy, and who will come to me when our parents start to drive him crazy.

Right now, I have a boyfriend who is supportive of my dedication to yoga, even though he cannot possibly fathom why anyone would voluntarily go without the Internet for 10 days, and how on earth did I not talk during “Meditation Camp” (it was a Vipassana 10-day silent retreat).

Right now, I have my health. Today, all my cells have agreed to continue to be me.

Right now, I have been transmitted the teaching of yoga, and I have taken on the responsibility of giving it away in the role of a yoga teacher. These are the two things that I will never take for granted.

I think teaching is the most sacred, the most important thing in life. The subject doesn’t matter—yoga, bicycling, whatever —because it is not what you do that is important, but what you awaken in the other person. – Dona Holleman, from Yoga Journal September/October 1982

It is Wednesday, November 25th, 2009. In the context of yoga, I want to send out an enormous amount of gratitude from the bottom of my heart to all my teachers, mentors, peers, and students (who also teach me much more than they realize). I want to thank you, my readers, whomever you are, for coming by and getting to know me “mo’ betta’” virtually.

And of course, since yoga isn’t separate from my life, and my life isn’t separate from yoga, gracious thanks, too, to my awesome family and friends, old and new, near and far. You may not know it, but you help me practice my yoga, and you help me, you know, keepin’ it real. And I’d like to thank the Academy… oh wait, wrong speech.

Thank you, thank you, thank you.

Gratitude, I has it.

Gratitude, I has it.

Yoga, or Transformation

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Lately, it seems like the whole world is going stir-crazy on the commercialization of yoga, or debating what it is and what it’s not, and if it’s lost its soul. I have taken refuge in going back in time, as far as possible, and for some reason found some solace in reading what people who have come before us–people who probably didn’t even practice yoga (as we know it), or consider themselves yogis–have to say about this nebulous thing called yoga.

These are the first and last sentences of Yoga, or, Transformation - a comparative statement of the various religious dogmas concerning the soul and its destiny, and of Akkadian, Hindu, Taoist, Egyptian, Hebrew, Greek, Christian, Mohammedan, Japanese and other magic, by William J. Flagg. Published in 1898 in New York.

An enquiry such as this book attempts, into the nature and destiny of the soul of man, must needs begin with at least a brief review of the theories respecting it which have been offered by the various great religions of the world, of which the oldest of all, so old that it may truly be called the mother of the others, is yet so new also that we now most commonly know it by the name of “modern spiritualism.”

Thus the possibility of improving method by simply intensifying sensation to a degree from which the practicer’s attention will not be able to escape, and where perfect and absolute concentration will be assured, is great enough to permit the conjecture that by this way of the senses alone yoga methods may at some age in the future attain such perfection that all will be allured to practice them, and that too in the thorough way that has heretofore distinguished only two or three in a century of even the thorough-going Hindu sages, and the whole race of man become yogis.

Can you imagine Mr. Flagg telling his friends the title of the book he’s working on, and the reaction he gets? And how beautiful is this writing by Lord Tennyson, that Mr. Flagg put it in on his cover page:

This has often come upon me through repeating my own name to myself silently till, all at once, as it were, out of the intensity of the consiousness of individuality, the individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being, and this not a confused state, but the clearest of the clearest, the surest of the surest, utterly beyond words, where death was almost a laughable impossibility, the loss of personality (if so it were) seeming no extinction, but the only true life.

Apparently you can still buy a copy of this book from Amazon, or, you can read it for free on Google Books.

Why I Teach Yoga

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(I wrote about this in February in a different blog. It was true then, and it’s still true now, so I’ll write about it again :) )

I’ve been doing some research on Seattle yoga studios and as a result been reading a lot of yoga instructor biographies. More often than not, there would be a story on why that person came to yoga: to mend an injury, to find peace, to de-stress, to connect to the Universe, etc.

I don’t have any similarly great reason. I’m often confronted with questions such as, “Why do you do so much yoga?”, and “Why do you want to be a yoga teacher?”, or “How did you get into yoga?”

The real honest answer is, “I don’t know”. I really don’t know. I didn’t have any ground-shaking reason to start yoga. I didn’t have any grandiose “save-the-world-now” reason to want to teach yoga. I can certainly help someone find their sacrum, but I hesitate to proclaim that I can help anyone awaken to their Truth and find Eternal Bliss.

When I think about all the jobs I’ve ever had, I could readily walk away from every single one of them the moment I hit a lottery jackpot. But with teaching yoga, I feel like could do it for the rest of my life. I don’t even necessarily expect to make any money from it.

This sense of conviction actually scares me when I think too much about it, because how could anyone really know that they want to do anything *for the rest of their life*? It’s an immense commitment. (And yes, I may have some commitment issues, but let’s not go there right now :) )

All I know is, I feel most myself when I “do” yoga. That’s all there is to that.

This fact used to bother me a little bit, “But, don’t I need a fancy schmancy awe-inspiring story to tell the world?”, I’d think to myself. After all, if someone asked why I teach yoga, “I dunno” just doesn’t seem to inspire confidence, does it?

One fine day, I came across The Ultimate Anti-Career Guide: The Inner Path to Finding Your Work in the World by Rick Jarow, where he quoted Martha Graham:

There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost. The world will not have it.

It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable it is nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours clearly and directly, to keep the channel open. You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly to the urges that motivate you. Keep the channel open.

No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction, a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive than others.
- Martha Graham to Agnes DeMille

Thanks to Martha, and Rick, I will say this: I do/teach yoga as a response to the direct urges that motivate me.

Today and Tomorrow

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During check-in time at my 500-hr training this weekend, there’s a general consensus that we are all really busy. “Call me in September”, someone said, and the class nodded in agreement.

I have been in massive planning mode, and for sure can feel the pressure of “more faster”. It was perfect timing when I came across this quote by Alan Watts.

“But tomorrow and plans for tomorrow can have no significance at all unless you are in full contact with the reality of the present, since it is in the present and only in the present that you live. There is no other reality than present reality, so that, even if one were to live for endless ages, to live for the future would be to miss the point everlastingly.
…
If happiness always depends on something expected in the future, we are chasing a will-o’-the-wisp that ever eludes our grasp, until the future, and ourselves, vanish into the abyss of death.”

Alan Watts, The Wisdom of Insecurity

Yet It All Seems Limitless

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I used to go running in Volunteer Park in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Seattle. A favorite route was to run to Lakeview Cemetery, go up the hill where Bruce Lee and Brandon Lee are buried, and read the words inscribed on the gravestone of Brandon Lee:

“Because we don’t know when we will die, we get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens a certain number of times, and a very small number, really. How many more times will you remember a certain afternoon of your childhood, some afternoon that’s so deeply a part of your being that you can’t even conceive of your life without it? Perhaps four or five times more. Perhaps not even that. How many more times will you watch the full moon rise? Perhaps twenty. And yet it all seems limitless.”

Paul Bowles, Under a Sheltering Sky

Rest in peace, Moon Walker

Resolution

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I took the 4:30 class, which I barely missed because I barely missed my bus. In class, I found that *dude* next to me, the one who’s always acting like he’s so much better than the rest of us. I kept reminding myself, “do not be offended, do not be offended”. I had read this from the “Last Words” section in the January issue of Seattle Conscious Choice. It was a poem from Aaron Silverberg titled “Resolution”

Forget diets
forget grandiose pilgrimages
forget tantric sex and
the bliss navel of the Universe.
See how long you can go
without being offended.

As if to test how long I can go without being offended, the Universe put this guy next to me. It is not that I had any proof he was a total showoff. It was just a feeling I had. It was my perception. Or maybe it was my projection? I would see him looking over at me, and even if I wasn’t looking, I knew he was looking at my poses and posture, as if checking to see if he was doing better.

Then, towards the end of class, in one pose where our eyes met, he smiled at me, a really big hearted and generous smile, and my heart melted. All my walls came tumbling down. After class, he told me that he thought my poses were awesome to check out. I smiled back, not the “Oh I’m so great” smile, but the “Thank you, I’m grateful” smile. That was the best yoga pose I did that day, and I didn’t even have to do a Chaturanga Dandasana.

Currently I’m burning up feverishly. The yoga felt deceivingly fabulous. I did feel like I had more energy afterwards, but I admit I felt asleep during savasana. The remnants of January are starting to weigh down on me.