What bunny ears have to do with compassion

A Rabbit Noticed My Condition

“I was sad one day and went for a walk; 

I sad in a field.

A rabbit noticed my condition and 

came near.

It often does not take more than that to help at times – 

to just be close to creatures who

are so full of knowing,

so full of love

that they don’t

-chat.

they just gaze with

their 

marvelous understanding.”

-Meister Eckhart

I don’t like to cry in front of people.

My habitual strategy for managing strong feelings verges on Vulcan; you can tell when I feel sad, or angry, or vulnerable because I’ll cock my head to one side and look baffled.

It’s not that I don’t have feelings. In fact, my moods were legendary in our household: “Rachel’s in one of her states again,” my family would say, rolling their eyes and giving me a wide berth. My well-meaning parents taught me to be “nice,” “polite,” and “in a good mood.” Sadness was considered self-pity; anger was disrespectful. I managed my emotional peaks and valleys by trying to hold my feelings in. Sadness became stoicism. Anger was directed inwards: cutting, self-denial, silence.

Re-membering

Part of my journey in yoga has been to “re-member myself:” to seek out my abandoned orphan parts and usher them back home.

When I start to experience my darker feelings – whether it’s anxiety, sadness, vulnerability, fear – I often have a knee jerk impulse to “fix” myself.  I try to lock the feeling away in order to seem okay.  However, “fixing” implies locking something down, freezing it into stasis by gluing it into place. Ironically, by “fixing” ourselves, we make monuments of our hurts and give them a permanence that they don’t necessarily have.

The nature of our emotions is watery; when we “fix” them, we plasticize that which should freely move, and turn our wild and magnificent emotional ocean into a stagnant and settling swamp.  When instead we can pause, feel, and resist fixing (or hiding, or shoving, or icing over), then our feelings are able to re-claim their watery nature.  And in their ebb and flow, they clear away and heal any ragged markings in the sands.

The practice

When feelings surface, can we resist fixation and instead create the space to simply be and feel?  Like the rabbit, can we be so full of love and knowing that we hold ourselves with marvelous understanding rather than “chat?”  Creating space for our own experience without judgment – or even labels – allows us feel the depth and breadth of our humanity without needing to make it right, wrong, or different.  When we are able to be with how we feel – without compulsively justifying or blaming – then we can truly “re-member” ourselves and embrace the fullness of who we are.

Yoga practice:

  • “You are not a problem to be solved.”
  • Embrace feeling, not fixation
  • Allow the practice to be a tool for self-reclamation, rather than a measuring stick.

Life practice:

  • Practice listening to your friends and loved ones without comment or judgment.
  • Be the space, not the solution.
  • When you want to comment, pause, and see if there more power and grace in simply listening.
  • Listen to yourself – your body, feelings, and mind – as you would listen to a dear friend.
  • Sit with your favorite creatures – cat, dogs, rabbits – and just be.

What fake POF profiles have to do with self-love

It began with a text exchange:

Hey Rachel, that’s a sexy, sassy new POF profile!

…What new profile?

…Uh, you’d better call me.

A friendly Fish directs me to the username of the new profile that has cropped up on Plenty of Fish.  “It’s definitely you,” he says with animated concern, “The pictures are of you.  I was surprised, but though, oh well, maybe she’s going in a…uh, new direction?”

The new profile – called “FlexibleRachel” – depicts a sassy and garish – though not entirely unattractive – version of me.  Vaguely demeaning.  Titillating photos. Coquettish posturing. You get the picture.

The first flush of incredulity washes over me, “Oh…my…god,” I say, staring at the insipid captions.  “This took a lot of time.  And this person has obviously been reading my blogs, too. Like, they’ve done research. Wow.”

“Yeah.”

A fake POF profile.

Of course, impersonation must happen all the time.  The world of social media is run on the honor system and people are primarily regulated by their own good sense.  But because I would never think to post a profile of someone else, I just couldn’t have imagined that someone would do it to me.

“Are you okay?” my friend asks.

I search my feelings.  Am I okay?  How much does it bother me to have a ditzy avatar out there in the plenty of fish world?

I had mixed feelings. After all, we live in a world of digital identity.  Our “character,” which used to be revealed through our personal interactions with other people, is now branded, packaged, and tied up in a bow through pithy FB comments and photo streams.  We have replaced our social character – in some ways – with our personal marketing.

However, the question at the bottom of the rabbit hole is simple: where does my sense of self truly come from?  Am I who you think I am?  Or am I who I think I am?

The practice

Our yoga practice sometimes suffers from a similar confusion. While the traditional intention of the yoga practice is to foster a rich, deep, and trusting self-connection, we often turn the classroom into yet another opportunity to compare:

“I can’t do that pose as well.”

“She’s better than me.”

“Damn, I am good, I nailed it!”

“How do I look right now?”

“Don’t fall over…don’t fall over…don’t fall over…”

“I will not take child’s pose! I will not take child’s pose!”

Even our yoga class – which can be a sanctuary for inner nourishment – easily becomes a ground for self-judgment when we practice on auto-pilot.

Reclaim your sanctuary 

It’s time to reclaim your practice as a sacred place for trust, love, and nourishment.  A place to come to our steadiest, deepest  home: ourselves.

  • Let your own inner voice be the loudest,
  • Be an audience of one,
  • Discard “should,” “right,” “wrong,” “good” and “bad” and replace them with “feel,” “trust,” “nourish,” “risk,” “play,”
  • Give yourself permission – for just an hour – to use the tool of your practice as an instrument for deep feeling and love rather than judgment.

And begin to watch your non-practice life transform.

As we begin to trust ourselves more deeply, we can remain steady when the external winds – whether it’s a job change, the end of a relationship, or a fake POF profile  – begin to blow.  Rather than scrambling to protect how we “appear,” our inner trust will support us and allow us to respond mindfully and with integrity.

 

Go to yoga class.  And come home.

What crossing your eyes has to do with gratitude

What crossing your eyes has to do with gratitude.

Cross your eyes.

Go ahead. Do it.

 

“It’s as plain as the nose on your face,” they say, and if you take a moment to cross your eyes, sure enough, you’ll see that there is a big, dark, shiny thing that lives right between your eyes.

Yep, it’s your nose.

And what’s crazy? It’s there all the time. And, if you’re like most people, we don’t even see it.

One of the gaze points in ashtanga yoga is the nose. As I was practicing (and looking at my nose), it suddenly occurred to me that I had never really noticed my nose before. Even in the practice, I wasn’t really taking it in. And yet it’s there. And not only is it always there, but it’s always visible, unlike, say, the back of your knee. My nose lives daily in my line of sight, but I have gotten so used to it being there, that I don’t even register its presence.

 

This is akin to the time I came home and found my roommate in the kitchen.

“What do you think of the new plant,” she asked.

“What new plant.”

She stared at me, “The one by the front door. The large bushy one that you have to practically trip over in order to see it. That large plant.”

“Oh.” Huh. “I didn’t see it.”

 

I’m starting to wonder: what else is always there that I simply don’t see anymore?

The support of friends? The safety of living in Canada? The love of family? Breathing? Being alive? Now?

 

What have I grown so accustomed to, that – like the nose on my face – I’d only really notice it when it was gone. Or – as in the yoga practice – when I’m encouraged to really look at it for a long time, over and over, until I finally see that its there.

 

  • Pause to cross your eyes.
  • Pause to feel your heart.
  • Pause for a deep breath.
  • Pause to be in the sensations of your miraculous body.
  • Pause to be now.
  • Pause to acknowledge who or what support you in your life.

Pause to love.