.....lessons from the garden

Yogis,

It’s been an odd spring in the Washington area.  Up until last week it has been unusually cool and very wet.  Extremely wet.  A challenging spring for a gardener to know how to proceed. 

I waited.  I watched.  I considered putting my seeds in…….then paused and waited some more.  Until finally I began to worry that if I didn’t plant soon I would not have a chance to harvest this year before fall set in.  The rains had slowed and we were getting some days near 70.  So in went my string beans and celery along with a few seeds of flowers. And I sat back and waited some more.

And while I waited the rains returned.  Flooding rains.  Standing water filled my garden for days on end, only to be followed by drops in temperature and nights back in the 40s.  Oh well.  Guess I jumped the gun.  I checked the garden daily. 

One week, two weeks, three weeks.  Absolutely nothing.  Bare earth.  Sigh.

So on our first truly beautiful spring day as I weeded and planted some perennials I looked over and decided it was time to re-turn the earth and begin anew.  As I walked across the yard to get my shovel I suddenly heard my inner voice piping up. It was repeating my words to me. The ones I myself use when I teach about faith. 

“Faith means the unwavering trust that your visions will manifest. No doubt. Like when you plant a seed and know the plant will come.  You don’t go out to the garden each day and dig it up to see if it is growing.  You ‘know’ it will. Complete trust.”

And here I was about to dig up the seeds. But that doesn’t pertain to flooding rains that had almost certainly destroyed the seeds, I rationalized. Besides it had been more than 3 weeks. I set my shovel and new seeds on the ground and got down on my knees while I slipped on my gloves. Ready to dig.

And that’s when I saw it.  Wait! This slightest bulge in the ground.  So small and insignificant but my eyes locked on it.  I leaned my head down close to the ground so I could observe from the side.  There it was.  There was no mistaking the horseshoe shape of the stem pushing through so that its heavy head would be able to rise up.  I dropped my shovel, sat down and had a good laugh. 

Sarah……ye of little faith.  You won’t get very far with all of that doubt. 

I needed this reminder.  The garden is a microcosm of life.  It teaches me each and every day.  The bean package told me germination would take 7-14 days.  But the seed didn’t follow that agenda.  It grew when it was ready.  When the time was right.  My role was to care for the soil, water it and know it would come. See it.

Like the string bean, our life visions will manifest when the time is right.  When we visualize what it is that we want to create in our lives, our job is to see it with clarity…..often.  Prepare the soil, watch for the signs to follow, and continually take baby steps toward it, but letting go of all attachment to the ‘whens’ and the ‘hows’ along the way.  Not digging up, but instead letting go.  Complete and utter faith.  Doing your part, but trusting the Universe to do its own. 

And I am pretty darn sure I now am seeing a couple of celery sprouts!

Thank you garden,
SARAH

....spinning

Yogis,

You know that voice inside your head?  The one that never seems to be at a loss for words?  As soon as you wake up it begins its monologue, tags along with you all day,  and somehow incredibly hasn’t lost its steam as you lie your head down on the pillow.  If someone could invent internal ear plugs to provide some peace and quiet they would be a millionaire!

That’s your ego and it’s job is to continually reinforce that you are the center of the Universe.  Bolstering up your self-importance is its 24 hour a day job, and it does it quite well.

It has an opinion on absolutely everything, including your body, your hair, each and every outfit you put on and the company you keep.  And your own weaknesses……oh boy can it push those buttons.  Every decision you make creates full blown debates, and for each turn you take in your path it warns you about the possibility of failure – yet 10 minutes later it has you strutting down the street convinced you are better than them (whoever ‘them’ happens to be).  It loves to complicate things.

Sometimes because of the ego’s work I feel like I am the axis of a spinning top with the world circling around me.  But there are two problems with this:

• First the ego, even though it seems to be the only one who gets a word in edgewise, isn’t me.
• Second, nothing else is spinning around me.  I am simply surrounded by millions of other spinning tops, all believing I am spinning around them as an axis.  All of us working hard at staying upright.

A friend sent me a poem this week by Czeslaw Milosz and here was the first stanza:

Love means to learn to look at yourself
The way one looks at distant things
For you are only one thing among many.
And whoever sees that way heals his heart,
Without knowing it, from various ills.
A bird and a tree say to him: Friend.

The line that has been playing through my head all week is – “you are only one thing among many”.   Uh oh, the ego is not going to be happy. 

What if we could live that way?  What if the daily pressure from ‘the voice’ to do more, be a better parent, look younger, try harder, show them whose boss and satisfy others opinions of us took a short break so we could hear a bird and a tree say hi. Calling us friends.

I am testing stepping back to look at myself from afar as if I am a distant thing. Creating space so the voice is more faint.  Noticing it is separate and isn’t me.  When I do this my own top slows down and most likely will tip.  But that is ok.

The true axis of the big spinning top of life is the Universe.  All of us – the many – are swirling around its center.  If we let go, she will continue to hold onto us and we will have our arms free to be able to fly with the bird. Who wants to join me?

One among many,
SARAH

.......whiplash

Yogis,

A few weeks ago when I was describing my symptoms to a friend she said it sounded like whiplash.  Whiplash – a neck injury from a sudden forceful change in direction.   It did feel like that.  As if my upper body had been jarred and was now locked in a new position.  The chiropractor I saw even suggested considering a neck support brace.  But I hadn’t been in any kind of accident.  Why the heck would I have whiplash.

I was telling the story to one of my students this week and mentioned the similarity of the symptoms.  She looked right at me and said perhaps it was ‘emotional whiplash.’

She was right!

Seven weeks ago I had made a large decision and was moving forward full speed.  I was seeing where I was going, feeling it in the body and had this immense clear space in front of me.  If you have seen the movie Titanic, I felt like Rose on the front of the ship.   Arms spread and heart wide open.  Leaning in to life.

In other words I was vulnerable.  “I’m flying!”

……and then boom.  While my eyes were closed there was an abrupt unexpected change of life direction. We had hit the iceberg.  The energy of the ‘NO – NOT YET’ hurdled in through my open chest throwing me back and then ricocheted back out through the front.  Leaving me with my shoulders and neck rounded forward and my chest collapsed. 

The word vulnerable has been coming toward me a lot lately.  A word that I know I personally often attach to the word weak.  I reason that if I am strong I won’t have to feel that discomfort of vulnerability and if something should come at me it won’t penetrate my thick skin.  Nothing will hurt me.  But this is all wrong.

A friend happened to send me this link to Brene Brown speaking on vulnerability.  I had watched it before but this time it spoke to me in a different way.  It is well worth a watch. 'The Power of Vulnerability'    

Every time I teach classes on the heart and throat energy I speak to vulnerability.  These are the most vulnerable energies in our body and my famous words are always – When we live with an open heart we will get hurt.  It is inevitable.  I can hear myself saying them.

But…..what is the other option?  A life worth living is lived from the heart.  Through the times of sailing free on the front of the ship, and through the immense grief that comes from the sudden unexpected slam of rejection, loss of loved ones, and the NO-NOT YETs.  Because without the deep hurts you can’t experience the unbounded joy.  When you protect your heart from vulnerability, you also shield it from love. 

So as I continue to improve and heal physically,  I am also freeing up the heart energy in the  front of my chest again.  Rolling my shoulders back and turning on the inner spotlight.  Shining it on all that comes in my path.  Shining it on all of you.  Becoming vulnerable once again. 

It takes incredible strength to be vulnerable,

SARAH

......going deeper

Dear Yogis,

It's been 5 weeks.  I can now do a mindful yoga practice, go for gentle walks and…..halleluiah! …..sleep on my stomach again for part of the night. Movement is weaving its way back into my life.  Starting to find my flow.

But – have I learned anything?

When someone is going through a challenge our instinct is to want to make it go away for them.  “I hope you get better really soon.”  “This must be so hard for you.”  “Have you tried this treatment or that medication?”  We hate to suffer and so we don’t want others to as well.  We resist and try to hurry it along.  But difficulties are life’s way of asking us to go deeper.  An opportunity to dive into our inner most sense of self and uncover where we are blocked. 

It isn’t that I want to continue in pain or never get well.  I know without doubt that I will physically heal.  But this injury, as all, is only the symptom.  The cause lies below, and if I don’t resolve it, the symptom will simply return in the body, or show itself in some other fashion.  Again and again and again, knocking a little louder each time. 

Is it my posture as I sit at my desk all day?  Perhaps it’s how I hold the leash when walking Phoebe?  Is my chaturanga pose to blame or how I put my arm up under my pillow when I sleep?  One of these could indeed be the culprit, but yet again, they would only be one layer deeper.  I need to sink below the surface.

Millions of people sit at a computer all day and not everyone ends up with nerve pain.  Just as we all leave a party where someone decided to attend even though they had a fever, yet only one or two of us will get sick.  So something is causing me to tense. To hold. To block the flow. 

The other day I was putting away some freshly laundered long sleeved shirts in my bottom dresser drawer.   I noticed, yet again, that in order to close the drawer I had to push down hard on the top layer of shirts so as not to catch one of them in drawer’s edge.  Instead of gliding, the drawer struggling to close against its overstuffed contents.  This drawer has most definitely lost its flow.

When I look into the drawer I see that it is only the top three layers of shirts I ever wear.  As for all of the ones below, when I do decide to pull one out it feels lifeless.  Even having a strange smell to it.  The bottom of my drawer has become stagnant.  No flow.  Yet when I start looking through to clean it out, each shirt has a story to tell.  I am attached to them and don’t let them go.  I bury them back under for another day.  So therefore there is certainly no room for anything new to flow in.

That is what is happening in my body right now and it has made me feel stiff and creaky (hopefully not smelly.)  There are clearly life situations or emotions or ideas that I am holding that are creating a dam – hence tension.  I am not 100% clear on what they are yet but will keep listening.  I don’t want to ‘hurry up and get well’ just to mask the pain.  The true getting well is when I let them go….

I will start by cleaning out my drawer.  Anyone need any long sleeved shirts?

Hi moon,
SARAH

.....what do I want

Yogis,

Water, water everywhere!! 

Here in the mid-Atlantic we are beginning the process of drying out after more than a week of rain.  Drizzle, mist and fog at some points, full sky opening torrential rains at others.  All of the seeds I planted the week before appear to have been washed away along with the mulch and top soil.  The garden looking more like a lake, and new paths forged into my woods by the sheer power of rushing water. A forced rest as we all withdrew back into our houses. 

Funny that in class we moved up to Svadishthana chakra this week….the element of water. 

Our water energy is located in the sacrum – the hips and pelvis.  It is our flow.  Our cycles and tides as we float through life.  It is where we feel.  When balanced we are open to receive all that life offers and we are clear in our wants.  Our desires.  We know from a deep place what it is that will fulfill us.  When this energy is unbalanced we are needy.  When the energy is blocked we experience resistance.  

So what is it that I want?  Really want.  Not wish for, hope to have, or think I want because others have it.  What do I long for? 

The answers can come quickly from the mind.  A different job, a new relationship, a younger looking body, more free time, a new car.   But going deeper, are those truly what I want, or is it perhaps only the feeling they provide that attracts me?  We ‘want’ things on the outside because of how they make us ‘feel’ on the inside. 

There is nothing wrong with wanting the things our incredible world offers.  But when we look to them as the source of the inner sensations, they instead become a source of suffering because they are impermanent.  The feelings they provide quickly fade, leaving us wanting more.  Needing that fix.  And when we struggle against challenges that life unfolds for us, again we suffer.  Resistance breeds persistence.

So I have been thinking that we have it backward.  Instead of asking what do I want, the better question may be how do I want to feel.  Letting that question be the guide. Closing the eyes and imagining already feeling it.  Awakening that inner sense and living from that place, which ironically due to the natural laws of the Universe, will then attract those outer life gifts that reinforce it, toward you.  What you give is what you receive.

Everything you want to feel is already in you.  The outer world can only act as a trigger.  An on/off switch.  But what if we could turn it on at will ourselves?  What if we could ‘feel’ how we wanted by simply choosing it?

I want to feel…….loved, full of joy, vibrant, centered, sensual, strong, wild, fearless and passionate.  How about you?

……..but life also offers up pain and sorrow.  The Universe has been asking me lately if I can want those too.  Can I flow with all of life.  Am I willing to feel it all.  Or will I buy that new outfit instead to make me ‘feel’ good. 

Today I choose to live a passionate day, while acknowledging my frustration,
SARAH

....stuck with doubt

Yogis,

‘You will never get very far with all of that doubt……….’

That was said that to me several years ago, and at the time all I wanted to do was argue the fact.  I don’t have doubt. Caution perhaps. A healthy sense of logic and reason. But doubt?  No. Not me.

But the more the words ran through me the more they rang true, that although I always like to think of myself as confident and trusting , I also had a good amount of doubt mixed in there.  And where there is doubt, fear is sure to be lurking nearby.

This was around the time I was learning the laws of the Universe and the principles of manifesting my own life.  I knew what I wanted, was visualizing it daily, taking baby steps toward it……….. so all doubt was doing was confusing the issue.  Placing a haze around my intentions.  Taking what needs to be crystal clear and fogging it up.

So  I took the words to heart.  Doubt was something that must be let go.  In its place I put faith. The absolute unwavering confidence that I would use my gifts and my passion to create the life I wanted, while serving others .  I forged ahead with my vision of a yoga center named Serenity Circle, a garden that offered healing, and a fire circle that would become a gathering spot. I studied, I wrote, I stepped into the uncomfortable, knowing without doubt that I was supported. It was amazingly freeing. 

But somewhere along the line, doubt crept back in. 

I’m not exactly sure when.  Doubt often wears different masks so as to slip in below the radar. Acting as a friend here only to protect you.  It can appear as simply as ‘I will have Plan B, just in case’ or, ‘I won’t put that out there until I have perfected it more.’  But Friday night as I hung out the window, I suddenly noticed its presence.  Its heaviness.  The way it constricts. Doubt, and its cohort fear, had somehow weaved their way back into my life.  And when they are present, you are stuck. Self-doubt is like a chain.

I have become stuck. My back has become stuck.  My neck has become stuck.  I realize now that I have been doubting my teaching, doubting my writing, doubting my ability to make a difference and to live a vivid wild passionate untamed life.  That feeling of ‘who am I to …..?’  It doesn’t feel good.  So the words have come back to me……’You will never get very far with all of that doubt’. 

So I have work to do again and that is ok.  I have noticed….which is always the first step…..since you can’t draw the map to where you want to be, until you know where you are.  I have done it before – and I KNOW I can do it again.  Time for some more letting go, seeing, and moving toward.  Watch out, here I come!

“If you hear a voice within you say you cannot paint, then by all means paint and that voice will be silenced.” 
― Vincent van Gogh

 

I can….and I will,

SARAH

......reconnecting

Dear Yogis,

Buckle up……….   The doctor’s words as he diagnosed my pain as pinched nerves radiating out from the neck.  This – he said – may take some time. Ugh. 

It’s been two weeks now of my ‘forced stop’ and I assumed by now I would be back in action. Not.  Mind you I am tremendously better than I was, but if I make any attempt to act as if nothing happened, my body doesn’t hesitate to let me know that right now, it is the one in charge. I have no choice but to listen. Less doing and more letting go.  A lot more letting go.

In classes we are on the chakra journey once more, starting at the beginning.  Earth.  Staying low to the ground as we bend our knees and root our feet downward.  Connecting like the tree to the life source below.  Exhaling to empty.  Stopping so that we can notice where we are, because if you don’t know where you are, how can you possibly draw the map to where you want to be?  But as I have been leading – with voice only – I have come to realize that somewhere along the way I have completely lost my own grounding.  First thinking it must be the pain that severed the tie, but then recognizing that it was lost before all of this and was likely one of the sources of this ‘dis-ease’.   Earth has always been my connection, home base, but right now I have gotten lost. 

So……time to find my way back home. 

Nature is one of the best antidotes to being uprooted, unsettled and scattered.  Earth Medicine.  And wouldn’t you know it was Earth Day this week!  An article in the Post caught my eye as it provided the list of ways to “Nurture a Love of Nature”.  Hey, wait a minute!  This sure sounds like I am the one that wrote it. 

See if any of this sounds familiar:

·         Simply be in Nature (Oh garden I have missed lying in you)

·         Sleep Outside (Time to air out the tent and my bedroom window has already been opened for sleeping)

·         Be Inspired by showing awe and enthusiasm for it (I love you trees!)

·         Look to the Skies (The moon is always there for me but I haven’t listened)

·         Plant Something (All of my seed packs have been sitting on my table just waiting for me to able to dig and my nails cannot wait to have dirt under them again)

·         Go Barefoot!  (Mid-week I finally began removing my shoes as I saw the new family from CA taking their evening walk…all barefoot)

But then I realized the article was written for adults to teach their children how to learn to love nature.  What??????  First – we now have to teach children how to play outside?  My most vivid childhood memories are me and my friends spending hours alone down at the creek or in the woods. No published ‘to do list’ or training required.   Second – why the children and not us adults?  Everything above is for each and every one of us. When we forget, we live up in our head – always going but never quite sure where.

This article, although it certainly could have been written by me…. was written for me this time.  To help me remember. To help us all remember. 

So today I have been out here all day. Not a cloud in the sky as I look up.  Picking one plant at a time to sit next to, trim, clean up, touch and talk to.  Barefoot. And as I write this I am back on my rocks, a small spider resting on the tip of my big toe. Ever so slowly finding my way home.

I am buckled in….but will also be rooting down. Somehow I know that at the other end of this I will be wiser. Aaaahhhhhhh……………………

Getting dirty again,

SARAH