Fraying at the Seams (and Samskaras)
Filed Under Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice, Community and Family, Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc), Meditation | 1 Comment
I have spent most of the last three days working from home so that I could be on site while repairs ensuing from the earthquake and hurricane were done. I’ve been luckier than most in the path. The damages I sustained from these extreme forces of nature can all can be repaired with relative ease. The leak in the living room was from gaps between the house and the windowsill and the porch roof and the house. The leaks in the upstairs bathroom were from screws attaching the skylight to the roof having been shaken loose. The 100-year old gutter pulled away from the house and sprang some leaks, but can get wait another year or so with just being patched instead of replaced. The cracks in the brick and the mortar dislodged and completely washed away call for repointing before winter, but that was going to have to be done in the next five or six years anyway. Several more things got loosened or lifted up or away from where they were supposed to be, but that is why god made caulk guns and foam sealant in spray cans.
What I find interesting about looking at the damage is that the worst of it was at places that previously required repairs during my 21+ years in the house; some of these, based on the way the ceilings had already bulged or cracked when I moved in were evidently chronic trouble spots perhaps since the house was built. Why those places? It could be the soil on which the house sits, the direction it faces, the activities of neighbors, the presence and absence of trees around the house, the minor, but daily tremor caused by the D6 bus. If something was going to come apart at the seams in the house, it is not surprising it came apart where it is inclined to come apart and even less surprising that Hurricane Irene created more damage because the house was already fraying at the seams because of the earthquake (and the continuing aftershocks). The places that came apart under stress were the places where the old repairs did not reintegrate fully into the integrity of the design and function of the house. Those are still are the vulnerable spots, the places most likely to come apart in a blizzard or a hurricane or an earthquake. The better and more thoughtfully integrated into the rest of the structure of the house a repair, though, the more likely it is to cease to be a spot for future repairs. Some old repairs that were done mindfully have ceased even to be remembered as places where a repair was required.
The same sort of pulling apart at the edges, at the weak spots, at the less than optimal repairs of old injuries, as happened with the house in the past few weeks, happens to me when challenges and opportunities for personal growth pile on, as they have been doing for me for the past several weeks, starting with things wholly unrelated to the weather. Although I am taking things in stride and with ever more flexibility and openness the more I practice, I can feel my familiar default setting–anxiety and sadness–emerging at the stress points. None of the personal things that had come up before the earthquake and hurricane, nor the impact of both and the preparation for the latter, alone would have been enough to shake me up much. As they become a basketful, though, I can feel my old tendencies closer to the surface with each thing that gets added into the experience.
Just like the places where the house tends to come apart, my tendency to get anxious and the triggers for the anxiety are familiar spots. They have been there for decades. Perhaps they came from another life. For the house, the original spots may have started with the materials–the character of the trees and stones and mud and ore out of which the house was built. Some of my stress points I recognize in my parents and my grandparents whether or not they come from previous lives of my own, some are related to my physical make-up, some from the exact place and time of my birth.
These tendencies of ours are samskaras – the ingrained patterns that are the results from our actions, impressions — some deeper than others — in the very fabric of our being that shape how we behave and respond to what comes, thus creating more samskaras. The more we respond in our habitual way, the more imbedded become the samskaras and the more they keep us from being conscious of and aligned with the fullness of being. One of the key benefits of practicing (meditation and other practices) is to lessen how impressionable we are, that is, to make it so that new stresses do not deepen old patterns or create additional patterns that take us out of alignment with the flow of being.
As I feel old stuff getting churned up, I seek to dissolve and benignly release it through my practices, while steadily, and as mindfully as I can, doing what needs to be done to get on with this fully-engaged householder life at this wild time. It is one of my intentions to practice sufficiently so that I will be able to be in the flow and respond in the highest no matter what comes. There will likely be more and greater challenges than what I have already in this lifetime experienced.
Keystone XL tar sands pipeline White House sit-in
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Here is some information about the Keystone XL tar sands pipeline White House sit-in. I am not prepared at this time in my life to get arrested, but I have participated by raising my voice and donating money to organizations more actively engaged than I think I can be. Please participate at the level you believe is appropriate for your current life and how much you care. I hope you care.
More About Eating Local
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Some great reminders and interesting new tidbits of information in this article/book review about globalization and Columbus. With a little help from our friends, some dedicated scholars, and a willingness to learn, we can have a better understanding of the complicated web of being.
It wasn’t so much the Columbian trade that did it as much as other international trade and travel, but our modern Western yoga practice has much of the same cross-culturing, ocean-criss-crossing intermingling as does our diet and agriculture.
Why Did It Make Me Feel Better? (and Pictures from the Middle of the Night with Irene)
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Why did it make me feel better to think it could have been worse? Hurricane Irene revealed a place that probably would not have leaked (into the living room) if mortar had not been shaken loose by the earthquake earlier this week. As I was doing another check early this morning of the house and perimeter to see if I needed to do anything to prevent worse damage from late discovery, I thought that it probably would have been a lot worse for the earthquake to have revealed stresses from the hurricane than having had them do the reverse. I guess it would depend on how the two impacted something to know which sequence would have been easier to weather.
I am appreciating my good fortune in having seen the wind and the rain and come out having no tangible material impact other than memories and relatively minor repairs that need to be done in a hurry. Holding all in the path in the light.
Before the Rain Was Truly Earnest
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The rain started when I was about half way to Union Station to catch the metro to Takoma Park to teach the noon gentle/therapeutics class at Willow Street. Thanks to all the regulars, make=up students, and drop-ins for coming to practice to get ready for the storm. The rain was steadier en route home, but I made it home before it really was coming down fully as it is now and will only get fiercer for several more hours.
Late Summer Newsletter–Web Version (Earthquakes, Hurricanes, and the Three A’s)
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Dear Friends,
After a summer of drought, we just experienced inside the Beltway the power when the earth shudders and shakes in an east coast earthquake of unusual magnitude. Now, less than a week after the earthquake, I take appropriate precautions and follow with deep caring the unfolding predictions, photos, commentary, and human reaction on a collective and individual level to the impending traverse up the east coast of Hurricane Irene.
Watching the hurricane reports has led me to remember what it was like when Hurricane Isabel was approaching DC in the summer of 2003. The day before was gloriously sunny and bright–the way we want summer to be and there was no reason yet to cancel classes nor, once suitable precautions and preparations were made at home. to do anything other than enjoy the day to its fullest. Fewer students than usual came for class; others must have been preparing or attending to other business. The ones who came said that the impending storm made them want to practice together even more than usual.
Though I rarely lead chants other than the Anusara Invocation in class, I was moved to lead my students in a chant to Kali–fierce goddess of destruction. Chanting to Kali allowed us to focus our profound respect for the forces of nature and the dance of the universe throughout the whole of the practice. Our ability to express our awe and our yearning to flow with the currents and eddies of these extraordinary forces instead of feeling powerless or angry was enhanced by sensitive and careful attention to alignment.
Practicing the three A’s of Anusara yoga–attitude, alignment, and action–for me seems to apply profoundly to the way we want to prepare for and experience what comes with events demonstrating extreme forces of nature. When we challenge ourselves on the mat we both honor our edge and seek to expand it. We use the alignment principles in every aspect of a pose to express a perfect respect for the amazing concatenation of abilities and limitations that is human embodiment. For me, taking what I have learned on the mat practicing with the three A’s has helped make it possible to shift how I am able to respond to whatever comes. There is not much that serves as a better reminder of how much will just come, no matter how much we prepare and study than earthquakes and hurricanes. We need to appreciate, though, that while we are not in control, we are not without power. The power is in choosing how to respond, how we are going to put into practice off the mat, as well as on, the principles of attitude, alignment, and action.
I believe to the very core of my being that we must have profound awe and respect for the mystery and power of the dance of the universe (put that how you will) and love for it, too. We should be expanding and using existing knowledge of how most safely to weather a huricane or other extreme forces (I am choosing not to say “disasters”). It is important to take care of ourselves to get into the space where we are most likely to be able to have awe triumph over fear, hopelessness, frustration, or anger because plans have been thwarted and, more important, to find the best path possible in the face of serious loss or harm. Perhaps this is too easy for me to say, knowing that it will be mostly ok for me; my house does well in storms, and we are only on the edge. I am more concerned for friends and family all up the east coast and especially Long Island and New York.
In class on Saturday, with or just ahead of the first band of rain, we will be chanting to Kali. Maybe like last time, we will all have power when the lights around us go out, but that was just a happy side effect (or coincidence, depending on how you look at it) and not the purpose. The purpose of chanting will be to remind ourselves to prepare to the best of our abilities and then let go of outcome and hang on for the ride.
Hope to see you in class soon. My summer class at Willow Street goes through the Saturday of Labor Day weekend, and I will be here. Registration is open for the fall session at Willow Street. My Saturday noon class continues, and I will also be leading the ninth annual Thanksgiving Day fundraiser for Oxfam.
The William Penn House class is an ever-deepening weekly adventure. Come join us.
May all be safe and well.
Peace and light,
Elizabeth
“Good Night Irene Good Night”
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When a hurricane that is predicted to be perhaps the worst in 50 years for the East Coast shares the same name as one’s mother, news of the impending destruction is bound to bring up childhood memories.
I grew up with the song “Good Night Irene” as part of my childhood mythology. My parents met in Greenwich Village in the late 50s, which was a time when folk music was the thing. We all love songs about someone with our own name, so “Goodnight Irene” was one our mother taught us. If memory serves, we had recordings in the house by Leadbelly and the Weavers to which my older sister and I danced around the living room.
A search in You Tube reveals that it has been a popular song to cover for decades. Which is your favorite?
“Do you have an umbrella?”
Filed Under Art and Culture, Community and Family, Gardening | 1 Comment
As I was headed out at lunch, a co-worker in another office whom I know only from the hallway, asked, “do you have an umbrella?”
“Yes, I do, how are you?” I replied, knowing that she was trying to be helpful. So many of us work in spaces without windows, it was not unreasonable for her to think I might not know it was raining.
Another woman who I did not know said, “I heard it might rain all weekend,” revealing herself as one who gets all knowledge of the weather from tv.
I thought, but did not say, “yes, there is that pesky hurricane coming.”
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
A Flash Mob
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My sister shared this video of a symphonic flash mob on Facebook, and I felt compelled to share it with you.
“HerVotes”
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A list of 10 laws critical for the health and welfare of women that are in danger in this election cycle. What does it mean to you and how will you respond?
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