What is Truth?

I have always been one to delve inward, as far back as I can remember I was curious about myself. I wanted to know or understand why I did what I did. Sometimes, that was trying to figure out why I was lying. I have an early memory of telling a big tale as a child about the rat, Snowball, that resided in my kindergarten classroom. For weeks, I carried on at dinner time about this rat, pregnant with babies, then having the babies, how cute they were, elaborate details, no less. When it came time for conferences, my mother shared with my teacher just how much I loved Snowball and how neat it had been for me to watch this process of her having babies. A bit stunned, Mrs. Brown, my teacher, says "Snowball hasn't had babies. Snowball is a boy." My mom was embarrassed, I'm sure and my sister enjoyed tormenting me through my elementary years anytime I told a story, asking "Is this a 'Snowball' story?" I lied a lot as a kid, I don't know why...actually I do, but that is another blog entry for another time. Back to the truth....
I heard someone say recently, actually it was on an ad for a TV show on FOX, can't think of the name of the show, but a guy being sworn in, in court, says "Well that is impossible to tell the whole truth" or something like that and proceeds to say something about it being dependent on perspective. Kind of like beauty is in the eye of the beholder, I suppose, truth is in the eye of the beholder. Let's just say that there is a difference between truth and honesty. Back to the truth, my truth...
As I have been thumbing through these old journal entries from 1997, I came across a quote (from me) that grabbed me. "What is truth? It is in my heart, awaiting exposure to the rest of me." Even back then, I had the notion that we know everything we need to know, sometimes it is just a matter of uncovering or recovering it. We so easily stray from it and sometimes it is really hard to find our way back. We feel the most when we expose our truth, when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable, to be honest with those we love.
So, to speak my truth...As much as I'd like this blogging to be about the process, my process, it is often about the response, hoping to get something in return, hoping to inspire, to make laugh, to provoke thought or connect with someone even if its secondhand (hmm, hmm cybersnooper). The truth is, I love that somebody, anybody reads this, and it is what keeps me writing, coming back to the keyboard, wanting to expose the truth, MY truth, to the rest of me, and the rest of you. I want to be "seen". My heartfelt thanks for reading and most of all for seeing.

I want my body back

I have 15 minutes until my son comes home from grandpa's house, I am going to try and crank this out....
I want my body back. It's kind of an odd thing to say, but I have probably said it umpteen times in the last couple of months, post pregnancy. Whose body do I think I am residing in? If it isn't mine, whose is it? Quite frankly, I'm starting to get a little irritated with myself. I am healthy, strong, agile, what is it I want? A bikini body? Don't we all.
The one thing we know is constant in life is change. We get so attached to the way things are, we begin to suffer when they change. At least that is what happens to me. I don't know if I thought once the baby popped out, magically my body would return to it's prior form, but I feel like I am a little delusional if I am thinking it is going to go back to the way it was before I had 3 babies.
I have been reading Meditations on the Mat...a book of 365 readings, simple, fairly short ones, that give me a focus for the day. I came back from my "run" today (I am not a runner, I was out for a walk, but Elsie was crying, her first time on a walk in the baby jogger, and she was not happy, and I wanted to get some exercise, you know for this body I want to exchange for another) and remembered I had not read my meditation for the day. I went to take a shower first and on my way stood naked in front of the full length mirror, marveling (with some disgust) the parts of my body where I tend to store my fat, or excess, as I like to call it. It was red, blotchy from the running, yes, just those parts. The jiggling must have got the fat all in a tizzy or something.
After my shower, I sat down and opened my book and what do you know, today's meditation is all about what to do when we find ourselves snared in a negative behavior (mine being... not embracing, loving, accepting my body). Here is the pearl of wisdom: "We do not need to enter a showdown with our self-destructive behavior, nor can we deny its existence. We must simply come to know it, and move on. We learn to focus wholeheartedly on positive behavior." Duh.
So for today, I will work on recognizing this negative self talk about the excess I feel in my body, and will replace it with doing things for my body that feel good, being grateful for what my body does for me, that it sustains another little life and that I am healthy. And tomorrow and the next day, I will remind myself, again, to focus on the positive.

Weed and Feed

I have been spending my "down" time in the yard lately. With the nicer weather, I can't help but to be drawn outside the walls of my house. Down time for me is when Willis and Elsie are napping and there are house chores I don't want to do, or work I am avoiding. When you are a stay at home mom, wife, contract worker and part time (even if very) yoga teacher, I don't think down time really exists, but I have learned to create it nonetheless. Back to the yard...when we first moved in to this house, it came with a clean slate in the front yard. A large bed around the perimeter with weed barrier and bark and absolutely nothing planted in it. I remember going to town that summer, I planted something like 40 plants between the front and back yards. I would go out there after Ruby went to bed and work until it was too dark. I remember my body being physically exhausted when I would come in at night, hands and feet dirty and loving that feeling. It was much more satisfying than sitting in front of the television. Those garden beds 4 summers later are pretty low maintenance, except for the crazy weed grass that makes its way up through the weed barrier.
As I pulled up the weed grass, slowly making my way around the yard yesterday I was struck by the symbolism in pulling weeds. It's really like life. You can put up any kind of protective barrier you like in life, but inevitably, weeds find their way in. Weeds are really just these negative patterns we get in to, they happen in all aspects of our life, relationships, parenting, yoga, driving, our work lives, etc...and we have to diligently wage battle against them to keep ourselves from letting them take over.
This week I was reminded of one of my weeds with yoga teaching. I taught class on Monday. I have several regulars that are committed to their yoga practice, come to class faithfully and are not what I would call beginners. And then, I had an 81 year old woman, the mother of a regular, that had never done yoga before, and had difficulty getting up and down on her mat. I began to question what I was doing teaching, feeling extremely ill equipped to be teaching between the two extremes in one class. My ego was getting the best of me. I slowed class way down and got through it and when it was over, self doubt continued to weed its way into my mind. Wondering if I should just give up teaching for awhile, if I should really go through teacher training again, or what? This isn't an unfamiliar pattern, I periodically roll through these seasons of doubting myself as a teacher and wondering who I think I am to be calling myself a yoga teacher...I know it is all just my ego.
And then Thursday rolled around and we had a teacher meeting. By this point I was kind of over my Monday shake up, but as I sit with the other 3 teachers and listened to everyone's various struggles and challenges in life it dawned on me. What happens with this whole ego thing is that I compare myself to someone else. I take classes from the other teachers and rather than celebrating the unique gifts they bring to my practice, I begin to self doubt, thinking I don't have those gift and therefore I must not be a good teacher. Silly, I know.
So, as I drove home from the meeting Thursday night, I sat with this and realized, I know who I am as a teacher and the self doubt only comes in when I start trying to teach like someone else does, or try to change who I am. I can't really. I am who I am. What I love about yoga is that it brings me into my body, I love the movement, I love the clarity it brings in my mind. I really am not so concerned about alignment, I just want to create an environment where people feel like they can dance their way through my class and feel a little more liberated, a little more free to be who they are when they walk back out the door.
So, I am committing to myself, as I continue this yard work to apply this same principal to myself...weed out the bad stuff with consistency, the negative habits, all that takes me away from feeling like my Self and feed the Self, nourish myself in all the ways I know how....weed and feed. It's my new mantra.

Compassion and Expectations

I started out on edge today, not sure why, but the morning, getting out of the house with 3 kids, going two different places, was not smooth. My 5 year old said she didn't feel good, didn't want to go to school. I sent her anyways. She was resistant through each step of the process getting ready, I had to tell her to get dressed 14 times (okay maybe 3 really) before she actually did it. My almost 3 year old changed his clothes 12 times (or maybe 1) and I felt like I was going crazy as the volume of my voice escalated with each minute. We finally made it out to the car and by that time everyone was happy.
I was headed off to yoga class, as a student, not a teacher, which is such a treat these days. I paused for a few minutes when I dropped the little two off at grandma and grandpas, taking a breather, gathering myself into a more centered space before heading to the studio.
The teacher today gave a talk on a yoga sutra (I.33) and our meditation was to breathe in compassion and breathe out expectations. Today when I arrived and settled down on my mat, I could feel in my spirit I have been off. I have been feeling on edge all week really and haven't taken the time or wasn't ready to delve into what this is about. I had an aha in the midst of inhaling compassion.
I have been beating myself up all week over an interaction I had this weekend with my brother in law. I was not my best self in it. I think sometimes when we seek to point out someone else's "faults" or what we perceive as shortcomings...its really just a reflection of ourselves. It's really just putting a mirror up and reflecting something back to ourselves that we might be struggling with or perhaps they embody a quality we wish we had and haven't done a good job of cultivating in ourselves. It dawned on me as I reclined in savasana at the end of class, my yoga today is about forgiving myself....showing myself a little bit of compassion when i don't live up to my own expectations and letting this one go.

Sutra I.33
In daily life we see people around who are happier than we are, people who are less happy. Some may be doing praiseworthy things and others causing problems. Whatever may be our usual attitude toward such people and their actions, if we can be pleased with others who are happier than ourselves, compassionate toward those who are unhappy, joyful with those doing praiseworthy things, and remain undisturbed by the errors of others, our mind will be very tranquil.

Easier said then done, eh?

my slice of the pie

i might be making a habit out of this...i hope so.
I love being a stay at home mom. I love having 3 kids, am enjoying the baby stage and am also thankful for the work outside the home I get to do - a little bit of yoga and a little bit of "real work". (Yoga doesn't feel like work, because I would probably be doing it whether or not I got paid to.) Lately, I have had this sense though that something is missing in all this. I find myself checking email way too often throughout the day, cybersnooping (just wanted to use this fun new term I learned last week), texting people...in essense, I think I just want to feel connected to something. To feel like I am something other than a MOM. During the day when I am busy, kids are awake, trying to get house work done, etc...I am not so aware of it, but when I sit in the quiet of the day, chores done, kids asleep, I am often at a loss as to what to do with myself. Maybe it is just this time in life?
My husband and I regularly watch the show Parenthood. It always seems to strike a cord with us in terms of parenting, family dynamics, or as a couple. In last week's episode, Adam's wife (I don't remember her name), a mother of 2 children, one autistic, and one in high school, considered leaving her full time job as a mom and going back to a job similar to what she did before kids. I could so relate, watching her get so excited about the possibility and then as the reality of what that would mean for their family set in, she said "no way, what was I thinking." I feel like that sometimes. The effort to get my needs met, at times, seems like more effort than its worth. I know in the end, it probably is not, BUT its hard to remember when you spend your days tending to someone else's needs. Some weeks I am better than others at carving out a little slice of the pie for myself. And sometimes, you just have to take what you can get...you can't always get what you want, but you get what you need....ah yeah.

Dharma and Grace

get it? it's a play on dharma and greg..maybe not that funny and I didn't watch the show..anyways...all two of you readers don't faint that I am writing again so soon.

Being the yogi that I am, I have heard this word dharma thrown around a lot. Over the years I have been studying yoga, I have never really understood what dharma means, at least not in a way that I could explain it to anyone else. I believe it is a Buddhist term or teaching and the other day in an on-line yoga magazine there was an article about dharma. I thought to myself, here we go again, I wish I could "get" this but as I read it to my surprise I got it. Your dharma is your life path.
For me, yoga draws me closer toward my dharma, it helps me be centered, in tune with myself and more aware of what is happening right now. It helps me begin to quiet my mind or at least begin to create enough separation that I can listen to what is circling through my mind as opposed to just being the thoughts, or letting them run wild. Some might argue that our life path is whatever path we are on, but you know when you are on your life path and when you are not. It's that little voice inside your head that reminds you, after you said something not nice about someone or did something deceptive, etc...that you should have made a different choice. So, in my great epiphany of what dharma is I had this aha moment of knowing what at least a piece of my dharma is...listening to people's stories. It may sound simple enough, but I think sometimes its hard, to sit with someone in a time when they are struggling and just listen, without judgement, without expectations, without needing to fix it...just listening. I find I am often times a magnet for this (which sort of drives my husband crazy). But, I don't mind (the being the magnet part that is). I feel like I embody the most grace when I can carve out the space in my life to give someone else just what they need and for me, I feel like it's something beyond me. I get to feel connected to something greater than myself, and I think that is really what dharma is all about...staying on our life path because it helps us to be our best self.
Which brings me back around to my last post about facebook, I sort of think there is a correlation here...I think people want to feel connected to something bigger than themselves, isn't that why we are here? And so, facebook, in our busy lives, moving so quickly in so many different directions at the same time, gives us the opportunity to feel connected to someone or something else, even if its in a quick, sometimes superficial, kind of way.

Journal Through Time

For much of my adult life, I've had the idea that I want to write a book. It's a thought and sometimes becomes action, I type paragraphs into this document titled "the book" on my computer, little snip-its of stories, ideas, musings. I began journaling today with the thought of what is missing from my life? I realized as I wrote, that it is this creative expression, the way we express our divine Self. We come from a creator, how ever you define that, and we must continue to express that creator through ourselves, to recreate to stay connected to this source of great energy. We do it in little and small ways. I've had this "thing" for lack of a better word, brewing in me, waiting to be unleashed, and I realized as I journaled that what stops me from taking on this journey of a the book, is fear. Fear it won't be well received, fear no one will want to publish it, fear I'll be laughed at for thinking that I was capable of writing a book. You know the tape recording that play in our minds when we choose to live out of fear not love? Everything could go wrong, or everything could go right. I have stacks and stacks of journals that I have kept over the years. I am fascinated by what I read when I sift through them, poetry, words of wisdom, the tales of painful struggles, broken heartedness, immense joy and discovery of my Self. And so, I realize, I need to commit to myself to write, to find time, regularly (and I'm not entirely sure what that means yet) to work on this, to birth this thing inside of me. It's been calling me to for years. I have to trust that the process of writing it is what I need, not the fame or fortune I might dream will come out of it. I have visions of an Oprah appearance, a national book tour. You never know, BUT, I realize, wholeheartedly, I have to do it for what I will uncover, discover and recover of myself. It's all about the journey...