....inserting the pause

Yogis,

The dreaded message on my pc two weeks ago.  Your password has expired……. 

Every six months it appears.  The requirement to create a new sign on password.  And of course – due to security – it can’t resemble anything having to do with you, must have letters, numbers and symbols and can’t be one you used in the last 10 years.   Not sure why it is more secure to have us all writing down, or putting  into our phone, all of these passwords because they certainly can’t be remembered, but who am I to say. 

So I dutifully created the new password.  Ten days later……and still every single time I haven’t touched my computer in 10 minutes and the log in screen appears, I hit ctl/alt/del and then instinctively type in my old password.  All in about one and a half seconds.  No thinking involved.  My fingers just know the way.  A deeply embedded habit. 

‘The password you entered is incorrect.’ – it tells me   I KNOW!!!!!  But I can’t help myself. 

Old habits die hard.

How do we change a habit?  These last couple of days I have observed.  Some of my findings:

• First you have to notice that it is a habit.  Most are unconscious.   For this one my computer did that work for me.
• Then you have to be present enough to at least see when you are doing it.  Observing oneself.  I began to sense that I was typing the wrong password even though my fingers kept moving.  But at least then the error message was no longer a surprise. 
• By observing the pattern over and over you discover where a pause must be inserted.  The log in screen became a trigger to my awareness and as my fingers flew across the keyboard I would stop midstream.  Backspace, backspace, backspace and begin again.
• Finally I inched the pause back over time to right before typing began.  I finally was becoming mindful.
• Noticing that I still occasionally slip backward but each time it teaches me to be more fervent in my resolve to change the habit. To be more present.

This was an easy one without much impact to my life, but I believe the pattern holds true for all habits.  They all require the ability to observe.  To insert the pause.  Changing how we eat -I have been noticing how when I eat certain foods they trigger a craving for specific other foods.  Choosing to lower stress – feeling in the body which sensations signal that anxiety is beginning its ascent.  Sticking to a new exercise program– watching which tricks the mind uses to talk you out of it today. Deciding you no longer want every conversation with a particular family member to end in an argument – watching how you allow their energy to change yours as you have your next conversation. 

They all require us to first become consciously incompetent so we can begin to insert the pause….otherwise they remain an unconscious habit and we begin to believe ‘ that is just the way I am’.   That pause is mindfulness.  The pause is the only time we can choose different.  And how do we learn to insert it? 

For me the answer has been my meditation practice.  Learning to observe myself on a daily basis in stillness, allows me to be able to do the same in the continual motion of daily life.   My meditation has taught me that I am not my thoughts or my habits and that therefore I can choose to change them. 

And speaking of meditation………September is only 2 weeks away!  And you know what that means?  A month of meditation!

This year I will be leading  ‘Thank you September!’  A month of daily emails where as a community we will meditate, practice mindfulness and dive deep into the gift of gratitude.  The cost will be $20.  Stay tuned for the invite and more details!

Mindfully yours,
SARAH

.....a bumpy road

Yogis,

I became a grandmother this week! 

Wow!  A grandmother.  A freshly erected signpost that speaks to where I am in my life.  A new generation below me.  A beautiful baby boy (who all of the other grandmothers have told me I should feel no shame in spoiling.)

I had a vision of what this would look like.  What it would feel like.  Me….arriving at the hospital just after the text saying the baby had arrived.  Going in and holding him/her.  Hugs all around.  Pictures taken.  That instant falling in love that so many had told me about.  I could see it.  I could feel it.  The text arrives.  Baby delivered!

But life has bumps in the road……..  My vision had to be altered.

7lb 7 ozs and 21 inches….just like his dad.   An immediate rush to the ICU….just like his dad.  Memories flooding back as I slept with the phone under my pillow waiting for hourly updates.  Clear visions of myself at 22 years old,  3:30am after a 26 hours labor being told that my son wasn’t breathing right.  The lights.  The noise.  Not holding him to my body for 3 long days.  Not the vision I had then either.

Life does have bumps in the road. 

But here we are now on day 7 celebrating my grandson’s release to go home.  Healthy.  Hearty. Happy.  And so unbelievably sweet…..just like his dad.

Life has bumps in the road……

We hold our vision, but sometimes there are unplanned turns in the path.  This was certainly one of them.  But in most challenges, if we can pause, breathe and look deeply, there is  a hidden joy and learning.  Here are some of my learnings from this emotional roller coaster of a week.

·         Because we live closer to the hospital, my son and daughter in law slept here.  They did 12 hour shifts at the hospital and then came home for a late dinner and sleep.  Having them here under my roof gave me the chance to envelop them in love and protection.  Like a mother bird, I slept better knowing they were beneath me.

·         I was reminded of the fierceness of a mother’s love as I watched my amazing daughter in law navigate this new terrain with purpose, emotion and determination…… all tempered each night by  the raw sorrow of having to leave a newborn behind. 

·         Sitting beside my son in the hospital, holding the baby and seeing him for the first time in his new role of father.  And recognizing what an incredible one he has already become.  A man I am proud to know. 

·         And me on day 3 finally sobbing my way through my yoga practice.  Remembering why I come to the mat each day.  The flood of emotion.  Tears of both sorrow and joy salty in my mouth.  Clearing me out so I can stand up and move forward. 

This week was not what I envisioned.  But life has its bumps.  However as all 3 of them head home to settle into their routine as a newly formed family, the path appears much smoother.   They are bursting with love.   And my love is boundless……..

And I am crying – yet again.

I am a grandmother,

SARAH

...pulling the weeds

Yogis,

I don’t know about where you live, but the summer here in DC has been exceptionally  damp.  For weeks on end we had at least some rain every day.  My garden hasn’t needed a solid visit from the hose since June. 

And with rain inevitably comes a rapid growth of plants…..but also of weeds!  It’s like we live in a rain forest.  Weeds that within days begin to look like small trees.  Grasses along the side of the road taller than me and in full bloom.  The cracks in my walkway sprouting so thick that it is hard to see the flagstone!

Having been away for two weekends, this weekend was left free for me to try to wrestle the property back into some semblance of control.  But on Friday evening as I stood out on the deck and looked out it was overwhelming.  The project appeared to loom so large that I had no idea where to start.  Saturday morning I found myself delaying the inevitable……..doing a little reading, having another cup of tea and checking email one more time. 

Finally I got the nerve to walk outside to survey.   I immediately noticed my small path next to the Vinca was overgrown so I leaned over and pulled out the spreading Shiso plants.  Which led me to the raspberry bush which had sent its sprawling vine like branches across my Comfrey plant.  As I cut them back I could see that the Comfrey had some dead growth in its center which I cleared out………….and on it went.  Little by little.  From one spot to the next.

Just like life.

Often we have a vision of something we want – to move, a different job, learning a new skill, going back to school – only to become paralyzed by what appears when looking at it “from the deck” as a massive undertaking.  Too many steps.  We get wrapped up in the “hows” of getting from here to there.

This weekend reminded me to just do SOMETHING.  Anything.  Drop the plan. Take just that very first baby step, keeping that end vision in your mind’s eye, but letting the Universe guide you from the path, to the bush, to the plant.  No need to know what is next.  That is the Universe’s job.  Just do SOMETHING……and the rest will follow along. 

What keeps stirring within you, but hasn’t moved forward?  What have you always wanted to do but feel too overwhelmed to make it happen?  You know it is in there.  Tomorrow – do SOMETHING!

I now can walk through my garden paths unobstructed.  I can actually see all of my beautiful flowers in bloom and I found 5 new cucumbers growing on the vine. 

I kind of like not knowing what comes next,

SARAH

....a ritual

Yogis,

A ritual is “a sequence of activities involving gestures, words, and objects, performed in a sequestered place, and performed according to set sequence.”  I just returned from one.

This was my 27^th summer of heading south to the Outer Banks with 7 other families for a week.  When you throw in the kids……..it becomes quite a gang. 

 

Mind you, we stay in four separate houses, but the ritual includes us all.  And we each have a role. 

The trip always begins by meeting the family with whom we share our house at a fruit stand four hours into the drive, where at 10:30 in the morning we celebrate by cracking open a beer out of the back of the cars in the parking lot.  We only see each other once or twice a year but the bond grows stronger with age.

We all know what to do.  There is no need for words.  Men get the keys, while the women lotion the boys. Men claim space on the beach early each day, setting out several umbrellas and chairs spread wide enough to accommodate all 35 of us, while the women do the lunches.  Boys, now all young men, do the heavy lifting – meaning they carry all of the beer to the beach.  And no one wants to miss the infamous dance party, where a partner is definitely not required.

Beach bocce, which is not allowed to be played without beer in hand, reading, swimming, napping, fishing, catching each other up on our year and a great deal of laughing fill each day.  As the sun begins to set lower in the sky, beach chairs evolve into a large circle formation, the music is turned on and we pass around whatever snacks remain from the day.   We all know what to do.

When this began, most of these kids were merely a thought.  My boys have now spent a week with this group every year of their lives, not seeing them again until the following July.  But when we all crest the dune and see the group, it is as if not a moment has passed.  And this year, two of the “kids” were there with their new 3 week old baby.   She joined right in.  The ritual goes on.

I gravitate toward ritual.  My everyday life contains many……early morning run, followed by a walk through the garden and meditation.  Each night without fail I perform a self Reiki treatment as I drift off to  sleep.  Friday evenings for 7 years now have included yoga, dinner, dance and bath….always in that order.  This very writing has become its own ritual. 

Some would say life filled with ritual is too rigid or boring.  I find it provides the container in which I can just be.  Knowing what to do, without the need for words.  Letting life fill its form while also providing for the form of the rituals to shape shift as needed. 

As the beach day would wind down, my friend Donna and I would always head back to shower and get dinner started while the guys cleared the beach.  But a few years ago we added a new improved step to the sequence.  We now slip away and head back to the hot tub.  Upper deck under the sky, music playing and the switch is made to “real beer” as we call it (you may have noticed that beer, not wine, is one of the sacred objects).  Two nights we could still be found there at 8:30 pm.  Somehow dinner still made it to the table.

Each year  we all hug each other hello and then goodbye, knowing that in what will seem like a blink of an eye, we will once again be cresting that dune. Not missing a beat. And we all agree – young and old - that this ritual is sacred and we are blessed to be held in its grace. 

Om to that,
SARAH

.....life happens

Yogis,

Life happens……….

On Wednesday I was going through my normal daily routine.  Beautiful day outside so I thought I would take Phoebe for a lunch time walk to get away from the computer screen and out into the summer air. 

I went into the kitchen to get a drink and opened the cabinet under the sink to grab a new sponge and…….wow!!!  There had to be a ¾ of an inch of thick dirty soapy film covering the entire bottom of the double cabinet!!  Oh my lord!  Where did that come from and how the heck was I going to get it out of there!

I don’t know about you, but I have lived in this house for 8 years now and I don’t think I have given that cabinet a good cleaning since moving in.  You know…the kind of cleaning where you take everything out and wipe it down?  it’s too darn scary in there.  God only knows what is hidden in the recesses under the drains and pipes.  Old oven cleaners, car wash concentrate and dirty rags.  And to make matters worse, I had lined the cabinet with tin foil which was now cemented into the wood with dried soap.

My first instinct was to just shut the door and walk away.   But I got the nerve to take a few things out.   Each cleaning product I removed had a hardened soap substance on its bottom.  And cardboard boxes like brillo…… you can only imagine.  Some items were unrecognizable.  Action was needed.   So for the next hour I was down on my hands and knees literally scraping the tin foil off with my fingers nails and scooping out piles of thick gooey soap.  Only when the cabinet was completely empty and two trash bags had been filled did I discover the source.  A hole in the bottle that holds the soap for the dispenser on the sink.  Who knows how long it had been leaking.  Now I know why we were going through so much dish soap!

Life happens……

Often it forces you to do something that would probably never get done without intervention.  The car finally won’t start one morning when you are late for an appointment after ignoring a noise for two weeks.  The doctor tells you should start blood pressure medication after you have been saying for over a year that you were going to learn to meditate for stress.  You have been extremely unhappy in your job for 6 months and have known you should be looking for a new one, when one day you walk in to find HR in your office.  The long dead tree in the yard falls on the garage. 

The Universe is always showing us the way with gentle nudges and hints, but are we listening.   If not, it finally gives us the old “hit on the head”.  I am not saying that keeping my cabinet clean is in the same league as these others, but it did give me an hour to notice.  It just made me wonder what other corners and recesses in my life might be calling for attention.   Can I address them before they are coated in soap scum?

My cabinet has never been so clean,
SARAH

....in the end she gave me a gift

Yogis,

I lost a very good friend this week.  On Tuesday evening my spunky neighbor, co-party planner, yellow beetle driver and beach lover, Karen died in her home surrounded by the family she adored.  She had been living these last 25 years with an uninvited visitor who came and went several times, arriving at the most unexpected times……cancer.  And she lived those years with incredible grace. 

One of the many things that yoga has led me to come face to face with is death.  The impermanence of our stay here on earth.  Every single one of us will die, some time or another, one way or another.   It is one of the only things that is guaranteed yet is also one of the things no one wants to talk about.  That somehow if we don’t dwell on it, perhaps it won’t pay us a visit. 

Not Karen. 

In the Buddhist tradition you honor death, meditate on it and practice for it.   In the Dalai Lama’s book “Advice on Dying” it begins by saying that until you completely accept death you are not truly living.   By releasing the fear of leaving this physical body you open to the fullness that this human existence offers.  When you make peace with death, what is left to be afraid of?

Watching Karen over this last year has been an amazing learning experience not only for me, but all of us that were fortunate enough to share it with her.  A gift.  Over and over neighbors and friends have expressed how inspired they have been.   While we typically hear about “fighting” an illness or “battling” cancer, it never felt like that was Karen’s approach.  She often told me that she didn’t try to look far into the future, but instead just woke each day and did what the doctor was recommending and what felt right to her.  She didn’t struggle against what was.  She lived in the now.  She “lived fully” with cancer.  And she did it beautifully.

Karen’s sense of humor did not discriminate and cancer was not free from her uncensored remarks.  She laughed about many of the changes she went through, looked adorable on her “no hair” days, and would point out that at least now she was thin.  When I went over at times expecting to console her, instead she made me laugh – because that is who she was – and an illness couldn’t dim her spark.  Several months ago she told me that one thing she wanted was to make it to her 70^th birthday.  I assumed she wanted to enjoy her party, but no.  She wanted her obituary to say she was 70 because when people see 70 they say ‘oh she had a good life’ vs seeing 69 gets the ‘oh taken out in her prime’ response! 

She was a lover of greeting cards and would always send you the absolutely perfect one.  While under the care of hospice she received many and they were all lined up right next to her on a table.  But the ones she made her daughter read to me were of course the funny ones.  She loved them and their irreverence toward the disease she had come to know well.  Even the priest got a taste of her spunk.

Laughing about death.  But when you stop and think about it, what is the alternative?  Which will you choose?

No one knows why some of us become ill while others don’t.  Karen never took it personally.  Toward the end when I asked her how she was doing, she replied that she was doing as well as could expected.  She just needed a new body J  And she was right.  But although her body may have been sick and failing, she most certainly was not.  She is free now, yet on the other hand, to me she always was. 

I hope to live my own death as fully as Karen did. 

I will miss her physical presence immensely,
SARAH

....the barometric pressure of life

Yogis,

I find a vacation to be one of the best barometers of life……..

When we are in our day to day lives, we are usually so entwined that we just keep moving with its flow.  No time to step back.  No time to observe.  Very little ability to make tweaks.   Each activity leads to the next, and each day leads to the one after.  A continuous stream of “doing”.

But then we throw in a vacation.  A step away. 

A vacation is like the pause between breaths.  Our “normal” life stops.  We play, we relax, we eat, we sleep.  But knowing full well that just like the next inhale…..life will come flowing back in.  But should it be somehow different?  Are any adjustments needed?

The barometer comes into action during that last day of vacation and on the trip back home.  As we pack our bags we realize we are heading back into our lives as we left them.  We get this sudden view from afar of what our lives have become.  The barometer gives us a pretty accurate reading on how we are doing.

Am I  heading back with dread with a reading of stormy?  Of the job, of the house, of the routine, of an unresolved hurt?  Or am I anxious to get back and settle in.  Have I noticed that something coming up on the calendar is exactly what should be there, or does the needle point to change where I now see that it has to go?  Am I excited, sad or maybe a pressure of fair, resigned to what is ahead as just "how things are".  Did the vacation feel like an adventure where my life seems stuck in a rut?  Or do I yearn to return to the daily rituals that feed my soul.

I clearly remember some vacations when the boys were young.  Spending chunks of time with them.  Relaxed, no homework, no to dos.  And then driving home with a pit in my stomach knowing that the next day I would be heading back in rush hour to my 9 to 5 job and leaving them behind.  I would cry as I walked the beach alone the night before heading home.  It wasn’t that my life was bad, it was just that it stirred up the emotions of not being there with them during the day.  Rainy.   It would spur me to be more present when I was with them in the evenings and weekends.  The vacation would put what was important back into the spotlight.

The complete flip side is rushing through the vacation in order to get back home.  A sense of dread - not of going home, but of going on vacation.  Uncomfortable with a change of routine and that sense that the world back home will collapse without us.  Unsettled.  A little too attached.  Perhaps not wanting to have that pause to observe of what has become, for fear of what we may see. 

A vacation is similar to the third eye.  Detaching in order to observe what is real.  What is there.  Noticing what fits and what clearly doesn’t any longer. 

My drive home this weekend was filled with wanting to say hi to my plants and getting back to classes.  Right now I love my vacations, but I also love returning to my house.  I miss it when I am gone.  I miss my food, my practice and the smells and sounds out my window at night.  To me that says the barometer on life right now is reading “sunny” for me.

But who knows what reading my next vacation with reveal.  Fair?  Stormy?  I will watch and see if the needle has shifted……and will make changes if need be. 

Settling back in,
SARAH