Couch Surfing - Stability in an Unstable Place

I have made my bed and now I can’t sleep! I am in the midst of major transition. I am no stranger to this. Since last fall, I have been on a journey. Initially it was a journey inwards and I worked hard to create an environment that would support this work. I rented a house close to my job, created a yoga room and planted a garden. I filled the house with friends, but also spent a lot of time alone. I did yoga, sat in silence, read, played with my dog, watched movies, cooked, baked, and drank wine. I felt happy and sad, small and expansive, afraid and brave. Many times during this journey, I found peace. Peace in a stable place that I had created for myself.

The lease on my peace was up a few months ago, literally. The owner of my rental house wanted to move back in. She wanted her share of the peace back. And since I am changing states at the end of this year, I decided not to rent another house but to “couch surf” as I have so flippantly named this way of life. Spring boarding from my peaceful place, I felt confident that I could tolerate an unstable existence for a mere four months. I have lots of good friends who will keep me grounded. I have a good job, great hobbies and a free spirit. I can be rootless for a while.

So I put my dog into foster care (e.g. moved him in with some willing and wonderful friends), put my stuff in storage and started to couch hop. First a two month house sitting gig. Now I am living in the spare bedroom of yet another willing and wonderful friend. Logistically, it is working out splendidly.

And yet, I am feeling my grip on peace, stability and groundedness slipping. For whatever reason, I am not tolerating the uprootedness. My yoga practice has slipped, my diet is undisciplined. I am not exercising. And I am whining about not having a home to anyone that will listen. Physically I feel awful. I am a tense, shallow breathing, bloated whiner.

So where to from here? Take my own advice, right. Refer back to my list of sattvic activities. Practice what I preach to my friends and family. Find groundedness in myself, not in the location where I reside.

What keeps me grounded? In a word (okay, phrase…) – heart connection. A heart connection with my body, my friends, my mom, my sister, my work, my own mind. Writing gives me a heart connection to my body and mind, as does sitting in silence, doing yoga, exercising and eating right. Phone calls, emails, lunches, brunches, happy hours and couch time reminds me of the heart connection I have with my family and friends. Walking into a patient room, taking a seat at their bedside, smiling and lovingly addressing their concerns over their own health, plugs me into the heart connecting potential at work. Planting my feet on my yoga mat and my butt on my meditation cushion strengthens my connection to body and mind. Cerebrally I know how to get grounded. The key is in doing it!!!!!

Bringing Balance

According to Ayurveda, the medical science related to yoga, there are three natures that act on and affect our minds - rajas, tamas and sattva. Rajas means activity, that constantly moving state of mind. Too much rajas creates an imbalance in our lives, and people ruled by rajas are chaotic, crave change and are averse to stability. Tamas, on the other hand, is the heaviness of inactivity. People overcome by tamas are dull, unmotivated and dark. Fortunately for us, sattva is the nature of balance. Sattva is a light, harmonious and virtuous nature. Sattva balances activity and rest, and brings us to a place of clarity and peace. In other words, sattva is a good thing!

Whenever I read about rajas, I can clearly recall times in my life when I have been on fire with activity - moving here, moving there, busy as a bee, never sitting still. While these were exhilirating moments, the pace always burned me out, very quickly leaving me irritable and depleted. My tamasic days also stick out - lazy, dull days which usually include the television, a bottle of wine and chocolate. My sattvic moments are altogether different. These are times when I feel plugged in to the flow of life. My heart feels expansive, my mind is alert but calm, and my outlook is light. I laugh out loud when I am by myself and easily interact with others. I feel a balance between rest and activity, work and play, alone time and time with those I love. This is where I want to live my life - in Sattvic Land!

I recently came across a list of ways to increase the sattva in one's life. This list was part of the book, "Essential Ayurveda" - by far the best Ayurveda book I have ever read. Included in this list are simple, very practical steps that can be incorporated into the way one lives her life. I recognize in this list the wisdom that the way to a happy life is not the more complicated route, but rather a return to the simple path. It's the coming home to what we already know to be true, but have forgotten. It is not the, "If I do this, then maybe I will feel happy," but rather the, "This makes me feel happy so I am going to do it."

Anyway, here's the list, exactly as it is written in Essential Ayurveda:

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1. Indulge in activities that bring you pleasure. When the mind is happy in itself, it wants to spread that joy among others.

2. Conversely, do not indulge in activities that build up toxic thoughts and feelings. Don't watch violent movies or read crime fiction in excess. Don't harbor a grudge.

3. Take time to do a good deed: make a child smile, spend time with an aged person, plant hope in an unhappy heart.

4. Take a balanced approach to your relationships; love but don't nag or cling. Give without expecting in return.

5. Treat yourself gently. Don't set yourself impossible deadlines and goals. Remember, when you look at life through the glasses of materialism, you don't get the true picture.

6. Let there be moderation in every aspect of your life, be it diet, sleep, exercise, sex, work or ambition.

These habits are not cultivated overnight. But if you are mindful of their sattva-enhancing value, you can make positive changes in your day to day behavior.
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I like this list because it addresses the priorities in my life. First and foremost - be in a good place personally. When thinking of what brings me pleasure, I admit that making my bed, using my electric toothbrush and spending time in my garden bring my great pleasure. Likewise, taking time to see my best friends, walk my dog and meditate also brings my amazing joy. If I take time to do the things that truly bring me pleasure, then I start from a place of gratitude and happiness in life.

Second, if I am mindful of what actitivities don't serve me, I can focus on those that do. For example, too much time on the internet saps me of motivation. Nights spent on the couch watching TV do the same. Sitting around worrying is a favorite self sabotaging past time that I try to avoid!

Next, every time I am at work, I have the opportunity to do every one of the good deeds that she mentions. I can make a sick child smile, spend a little extra time with my elderly patients who live alone and crave human contact, and I can reassure a chronically ill patient that they are not alone in dealing with their illness. I am so lucky to be able to do this a dozen times during every work day!

Of course, the author addresses relationships - both with others and with ourselves - and encourages moderation in all activities.

The list ends with the reassuring idea that change does not happen overnight, which made me laugh. I always try to make too many changes at once - blame my imbalanced rajas - and usually become overwhelmed with my inevitable failures. This book gave me permission to go slow in my assimilation of these ideas.

I want to end this post with a challenge to my friends. Pick one of the six items on the sattva list and make it your focus for a month. Write it in dry erase marker on your bathroom mirror, put a post it with this concept over your speedometer ... okay, maybe over your oil gauge! Put it on your cell phone or desk top home screen - whatever you need to do to be reminded of your sattvic goal for the month, do it! Take note of what this practice does for your state of mind. Be a living experiment of the most honorable kind and share the goodness that follows!

Love to you all!

My Body, My Classroom

How many of us relate directly and solely to our bodies. When you think about who you are, what do you think? "I am fat" or "I am thin..."; "I am out of shape" or "I am in great shape"; "I am healthy" or "I am sick." I guarantee that whatever definition you have of yourself, it involves something related to your body.

As I was falling asleep last night, I had a totally random thought, "My body is teaching me lessons." Since I am not prone to profound thoughts, this idea woke me right up! As I pondered it, several teachers appeared in my mind. First was Leslie, my mind-body guru. She is always trying to teach me not to identify with my body. She believes that our soul, or our essence, is merely housed within our body and is not defined or confined by it. She believes that our goal is to stay grounded within our true selves, where we will not be rattled by changes in our physical or emotional bodies.

Then appeared my mentor at work, a meditating physician who also stresses the importance of not identifying with things that change. He believes that since our bodies are always changing, growing older and ultimately dying, we should not identify with them because this will bring suffering. As humans, we often latch onto definitions of ourselves that are merely illusions. For example, "I am my body," or "I am my thoughts." Once we feel as though we are solidly defined by these labels, our bodies change or our thoughts change. And then we are left with an unstable idea of ourselves or an utter void. Without a clear definiton of who we are, we struggle. This is my work mentor's point - bad idea!

Both of these ideas remind me of what I wrote last week - my yoga teacher's reference to the "Projects in our Bodies" that teach us lessons. Woven through the theories of these three mentors is the idea that we should obtain a level of detachment from our bodies in order to have a clearer perspective on our lives.

As is typical with profound thoughts, the idea made perfect sense as it surfaced last night. I knew it with my whole consciousness, albeit with a falling asleep type of awareness. As I woke this morning and rushed to start my day, the idea was less tangible and tonight I continue to ponder it.

So my body is teaching me lessons, right? Imagine if the universe sets us up with our own personal classroom - our body. All of the physical, emotional and mental experiences are meant to teach us about our true path and our intimate connection with others. These experiences are not who we are, but rather lessons that take place for the purpose of our observation and interpretation.

If we are not our physical, emotional and mental experiences, then who are we? My gurus would have me believe that I am merely a witness to all of these experiences. I am a stable, unchangeable entity, or a wrinkle in the collective consciousness with a unique interaction with the universe by virtue of how my body, e.g. my classroom, interacts with its environment. The lessons are not unique, but the way that I arrive at them is very unique because it is my own journey.

This is somewhat comforting as I have always been a vicarious learner. I do not learn well by being told what to expect. In order to truly feel the truth about something, I usually have to experience it for myself. For better or for worse, my knowledge comes from a direct interaction with the universe. My lessons are usually hard earned, and yet once understood they are deeply ingrained.

Maybe someday soon I will end my pursuit of happiness as it relates directly to my body. Maybe I will identify more with the observer than the observee. Maybe my sitting sessions will connect me real time with the witness, and allow me to sit back and appreciate the lessons as they play out in front of me, rather than suffering real time and understanding the lessons in hind sight.

The Projects that Inhabit our Bodies

I went to a yoga class this week with a teacher who calls us, her students, "Beautiful Lotus Flowers" and "Yoga Warriors". I love her spunk and I adore her perspective. The sequence was themed with the idea of listening to your body. She addressed the various health issues that each of us bring with us to class, and called them "Guests" and "Projects" in our bodies. When we would take a certain pose, she would say, "What are the Projects in your body telling you in Warrior two?" - meaning, "Is your chronic knee pain screaming at you to stop doing this pose??" Or she would suggest "Do you need to comfort your Guest in this pose - maybe bring it a blanket to rest on?" - meaning, "Are you making your chronic knee pain worse by ignoring it - how about changing the way you do the pose to comfort your pain instead!"

My inner circle of kindred spirits is comprised of women and men in their 20s, 30s and 40s, all in the prime of their lives. In spite of our youth :-) and overall excellent health, most of us have personally encountered some sort of medical issue - joint or muscle injuries, endocrine disorders, cancer, asthma, digestive problems. In discussions with my friends about their medical experiences, I have learned that there is nothing like a medical issue during an otherwise healthy time in ones life to completely shake his or her confidence! I have also learned that these medical experiences have added an invaluable perspective in their lives that challenged them to clarify their priorities and helped them be kinder to themselves.

As I reflect on my own unique medical problem, the one year anniversary of which just passed last month, I can truly relate to my friends' experiences. Last January, my thyroid began acting up and over the course of twelve months, went from hyperactive to normal and now to underactive. These days, it is perfectly on the mend, and whatever is still healing is well treated with medication. In other words, it really does not affect my life anymore. However, I apparently still carry around some of the emotional baggage related to the incident. Just last week I caught a nasty virus and developed a bad sore throat and painful swollen lymph nodes. I began worrying incessantly to myself, "What if this is my thyroid acting up again?!" I would find myself compulsively reaching up to my neck, feeling for my thyroid, making sure it wasn't tender or enlarged.

These compulsive thoughts and gestures began driving me crazy. I finally forced myself to repeat, everytime these worries surfaced, "If it's my thyroid going haywire again, I will deal with it. I survived the first time, I will survive the second. And likely with more quiet dignity and grace!"

This is why my yoga teacher's message resonated. My thyroid is a Project in my body, forcing me to avoid unnecessary worry and have faith in my own ability to handle whatever comes my way. What a great Project outcome! Would I go so far as to say I am thankful for the Project? The answer is absolutely.

Now on to my next project! I think my hamstrings are dying to teach me a thing or two!