Practice Makes Perfect

I could really tell I had missed a week of stretching during class on Thursday.  Especially while doing downward facing dog, I felt like I was tighter than usual.  It was a good reminder that if I don’t keep my stretches up, I’ll lose everything I have learned and all the flexibility I have gained really quickly.  On the other hand, I know that some of the stretches are getting engrained in my head and body.  I thought it was funny that Cameron mentioned randomly finding herself doing a yoga pose in front of her friends because I also did that this week.  While standing outside my classroom, I had unconsciously grabbed my forearms behind my back (I can’t remember the Sanskrit name).  One of my friends commented, asking me why I was standing like a pretzel.  I laughed, but then I got to teach her a real yoga pose, which was pretty cool.  It made me feel like I really was learning the poses and not just reenacting them in class.  I get self-conscious sometimes about trying to do the poses on my own because I am afraid that I’m doing them completely wrong or might do the wrong set of stretches together, but after teaching my friend one of the poses, I realized that I know them better than I thought.  It was a nice encouragement to continue practicing and learning new poses; like my efforts really aren’t going to waste.  Who knows, maybe I’ll teach my own yoga class one day. 

Omnipresent

I struggle with the idea of Krishna being all things.  To me at least, Krishna describes himself very much like how I have always thought of God, an omnipresent, all powerful being who’s very nature we will never be able to understand.  I have gained what I think is a sufficient, although not perfect, answer to why God created evil.  However, I am trying to figure out how Krishna could possibly be evil itself.  He describes himself as a demon at one point in the chapter, but how could he simultaneously be good and evil?  Maybe I am only taking into account my Christian ideology where evil is the absence of God, the ultimate form of good, and so by that definition it is impossible for good and evil to coincide in God.  I thought that to be inhabited by both sides of morality was what defined human beings, not gods.  I am curious is maybe Hinduism has a different definition of good and evil than other religions, or maybe just a different definition of the source of both that would allow Krishna to be both.  Krishna’s last words to Arjuna in chapter 11 are my favorite so far, “But what use is it to you to know all this, Arjuna?”  I literally laughed out loud at that question because it made me compare my own desperate endeavors to figure out just what the nature of God is and how it pertains to me.  Krishna’s encouragement after the question, to just remember the simplicity that he supports everything,  was still cool to me even though I don’t fully understand it because I do believe God is that powerful, and it’s awe-inspiring to think of him in that way. 

Success!

I cannot express how excited I was when I was able to get up in the headstand by myself on Tuesday.  The biggest obstacle for me with the headstands and shoulder stands is fear because of an incident that happened when I was a kid.  I was quite the little daredevil as a child, and one day during gym in fourth grade, one of my friends asked me to do a handstand.  Never having tried before, I figured, it can’t be that hard.  Miraculously, I was able to get up on my first try and actually held the pose for a moment or two before my arms caved in and my face went crashing into the floor.  I ended up having to go to the nurse for busting open my lip pretty badly, but what scared me more was what happened after my head hit the floor.  In a sort of freak reaction, I attempted to turn my fall into a flip, but instead of saving my face from distortion, I ended up falling strangely on my neck and pinching a nerve.  For those who have never done this before, it’s a very strange and unnerving sensation.  At first it burns and then settles into an eerie sort of numbness, a kind that is different from when your foot simply falls asleep.  Being nine, I overreacted and thought I was going to be paralyzed, and although now I view that as kind of funny, I still cringe at the thought of doing any sort of movement that involves my neck.  

For this reason getting up in the headstand was a really cool moment for me.  It was a step towards conquering a fear I have towards my body as well as a step towards strengthening my neck and back. 

Learning Selflessness

In one of my previous blogs, I noted how stress takes a physical toll on me as opposed to a mental or emotional one. It’s been a pretty hectic semester for me. Alongside 18 hours of school, I am also trying to take the GRE and apply for grad school, apply for internships for New York next semester, directing the music videos for Uproar, and working on more than one of my fellow FDM majors films on the weekends. Needless to say I’ve been pretty busy. Last week, I realized that I was having trouble taking deep breathes. This is a symptom I’ve had before when I was subconsciously overwhelmed. When I realized what was happening, I got frustrated. I have always liked being busy because it keeps me focused and helps me refrain from sitting around watching movies all day, so I didn’t understand why this semester in particular I would be experiencing stress related symptoms. Then, I read this line in the Gita, “The awakened sages call a person wise when all his undertakings are free from anxiety about results.”

I’m not stressed because I’m busy. I’m stressed because I’m afraid of failing. I have more obligations, decisions about my future, and people relying on me than I have ever experienced before. I’m afraid that I won’t get into grad school, and that I will be the first person to ever not get an internship in the New York program. I am afraid that one of my videos will receive poor reviews from my cohorts in the film program. Most importantly, I fear the shame and embarrassment that I know I should experience should any of these events actually occur.

I love that Krishna does not encourage Arjuna to stop working, but rather to change his purpose for doing this work. If my purpose is to be selfless, whether or not I achieve or don’t achieve any of these things will no longer matter, and I will be able to breathe again because the source of the stress will dwindle away as I learn to actually live out this sentiment.

"Waking" Part 4

I must admit that while I have learned that just because I did not grow up with a certain concept does not make it untrue, the whole energy flow language is still a hard one for me to grasp.  When I first heard it, I figured that “energy” was simply synonymous with the electrical current that runs throughout our body via our nervous system, and that perhaps different cultures had just come up with a different series of names for this system.  Then, in one of my Biology classes my sophomore year, the girl next to me began explaining to me that her father was a doctor in China and just how differently medicine is practiced there.  She spoke of how each of the kidneys is a filter of our energy, and how it was important to keep that energy balanced.  I was utterly confused.  Obviously, the tests had been run, the results were in, and then printed right there in front of me telling me that the kidneys purpose was to filter our blood.  It made sense to me that different cultures could come up with different religions and ways of viewing the world, but science?  

I stared at the picture in my textbook of the different parts of the kidney.  Clearly, this thing had been studied by quite a few people for quite some time, and yet here I was getting information that a Chinese medical student, possibly at this very moment, was learning a very different function for the very same organ I was staring at.  My brilliant conclusion: it just wasn’t possible.  I couldn’t understand where this so called energy would be coming from, and even if it was actually there, how could Chinese doctors possibly examine it and figure out which of our body parts control it.

Needless to say I’m that I am reading Matt’s book today instead of three years ago.  Now, I have both felt and witnessed this energy firsthand, and although I still don’t quite understand what it is or where it comes from, I recognize its reality.  

I am still awestruck by Matt’s use of this energy to both connect with his own body and even more so with the fact that he can help other people connect with muscles and tendons that he cannot even feel.  Finally, I am in love with the idea that this energy is what helped Matt reach wholeness.  Not just with his mind-body connection, but also with his emotional and social connection to the world as well.    

"Waking" Part 3 Body Memories

What struck me most about this section was the guilt that Matt’s body memories unleashed.  

The idea of body memories is interesting in its own regard.  I can’t say I have experienced one as powerful as Matt has, but I wanted to understand it.  So, I tried to come up with an experience I had that I thought might be somewhat similar.  

I played organized basketball for over half of my life.  It was hard when I came to Baylor because choosing to come here did not just meant choosing to not play the game anymore, it meant facing the fact that the sport had become my identity, and I was choosing to learn how to rebuild it.  

The first time I breathed the cold air of that first fall semester here at Baylor, I felt it.  A random rush of excitement and nostalgia for which I could not account.  I continued to walk to my class, and decided it was just because I was looking forward to the cold weather.  As I was walking, one of Baylor’s shuttles passed me, and I was struck with the smell of exhaust.  A powerful sensation overtook me.  I felt like I was back in high school, dressed in sweatpants to block the first biting winds of Texas winter while waiting by one of our ridiculously old buses to take me to my first game of the season.

This sensation still happens to me with every first cold day of the year. 

I realize this seems like a trifle example compared to Matt’s descriptions, but it helps me to grasp what exactly Matt is describing: the idea that our bodies live on without our conscious aid.  

I did not ask my body to bank a physical account of what I felt on those days, nor did Matt ask his body to record his.  However, the sensation is more real than any one-dimensional memory I have.  This realization holds the answer to why such sensations would awaken guilt in Matt.  Our bodies work hard towards life.  They desire more than anything to survive, and yet we fight against them.  We desert them, mistreat them, and most importantly, take them for granted.  I’ve read Grey’s Anatomy.  I know (although admittedly don’t completely understand) how complex the workings of a single cell are, let alone that of an entire human body.  I have a fully functioning, healthy, and active body, and yet I hardly ever pay any attention to it.  Despite that fact it keeps me alive on a daily basis.

Matt was distraught by the thought that all of those years his body desperately wanted to live as a whole unit, that it had even saved memories that would be used for his emotional healing as well, but he had given up on it.  He had silenced his body’s attempt to be healed.  What’s incredible to me is after all of those years of trauma and neglect, his body was ready and willing to work with him once again.  

Knowing Matt’s hard work and strong connection to the life his body brings him through his sensations brings me my own form or shame for never stopping to think just how amazing that is and how much I take for granted.    

Aparigraha

There was a sentence in the definition of aparigraha that caught my attention, “the collection or hoarding of things implies a lack of faith in God and in himself to provide for his future.”  

We have all discussed the idea of giving up social media and other things for the sake of limiting our daily distractions, but I have never thought of having an abundance of things as a lack of trust in God.  I always saw it from the point of view that, if I have these things, then God has blessed me with them in order to provide for me in some way, whether it be now or later.  

I do agree with the additional idea of not accepting favors from others that you have not worked for; however, that is due more to my pride and the feeling that one must work for  everything rather than the notion that it is wrong to accept gifts.  I believe that much is gained from working towards something, and that not working for what we receive can cultivate laziness, ungratefulness, and complacency.  Although, there are times I believe that the receiving of gifts is beneficial for both the giver and the receiver.  Giving, especially when one does not have much to give, can in fact encourage the kind of trust in God that aparigraha works towards.  

So, I suppose I would have to take this concept on by a case to case basis in order to agree with it.  I don’t think that people should keep beyond what they need, but I also believe see the blessing in what God gives us, whether it be through gifts or hard work. 

Control of the Toes

The reading of my chose memior somewhat spilled over into my practice this week.  There’s a section where Matt (a paraplegic for those not reading that book) ruminates on the idea that every time we choose to use the dishwasher instead of feel the warmth of the water on our hands or ride the elevator up instead of walking up one flight of stairs, we are encouraging a disconnection between our mind and body for the sake of convenience.  This made me feel somewhat guilty for my groans in class when any one particular muscle is throwing a fit at being stretched that day.  I have a feeling that Matt would suggest to allow myself to become fully aware of that pain, and what my mind and body are accomplishing through it.  Comparing my two legs after stretching one at a time on Tuesday really helped me make this idea tangible.  I could feel the difference between my two sets of muscles, and how one was more relaxed and supple than the other, which also means that I could feel my body’s progress as I work towards reusing muscles that haven’t been stretched in quite some time.  I sense this even more strongly with things I have never consciously tried to control before, like my toes and my breathing.  Looking back at the beginning of this class, I think it’s fair to say that my mind and my toes were almost completely disconnected, and given the amount of concentration it takes for me to completely open my chest and straighten my spine, I think the same can be said for the muscles that control my breathing.  I think it’s really cool that this practice is reconnecting me to my body, and it’s weird to think I didn’t have as much control over it as I thought I did.  

"Waking": Part 2

So, now I come to the point where Matt has divulged the dangers of the silence.  I must admit I’ve never read anything that so acutely describes what I have always viewed as indescribable to those who have not experienced it.  However, perhaps it is still that way for anyone who has not experienced it, and the only reason I understand it is because I have.  Nevertheless, I appreciate his attempt to give words to something I have always avoided. 

Matt’s analogy of the dark room was particularly powerful for me.  The sentence, “and the world might reveal itself once again, only darker” was one I loved because, while choosing the word “darker” gives the analogy a pessimistic connotation, I do not believe that was the way Matt intended his readers to interpret it.  

When one’s world it turned on it’s head, and the future is one of the unknown, darkness is the perfect metaphor.  We all know the feeling of aimlessly grasping the dark, desperately looking for a way to find some source of light, so that we might be able to make our way again.  That’s exactly what Matt was trying to do with his life.  It would be naive to view his situation as anything other than a struggle.  He had to find a way to start over, and, at least at first, was not given the tools to do so.  But more so than any of these explanations, I believe Matt used this analogy to convey the importance of the fact that his life would never be the same.  No matter how he learned to deal with the darkness, the room would always be dark from the day of his accident onward, and this is not necessarily a bad thing.  Nor is it a good thing.  It is just they way things are for him.  His accident imprinted on him a new way of life, a new way of viewing the world, and there was no return to the light for him.  What I love is his decision to embrace the darkness rather than fight it. 

“If I wanted to work with the darkness rather than against it...what if the darkness (the silence) is a fundamental part of us, of our consciousness.  How do we overcome an essential aspect of what we are” (128).

Matt’s choice to work with the darkness forces me to think about two things.  First, we choose who we will be after trauma, and this choice is vital to our survival.  The question of identity is one that we as humans innately struggle with, but what happens when the identity we have spent so much time building is stripped from us?  We are left with deciding where will go from that moment on since, as much as we try to prove otherwise, there is no turning back to the person we were before.  Therefore, there are two options: denial of this fact (or a turn to silence) or an acceptance of the fact that this new future must merge with the remnants of our old self to create a new, whole individual. 

Second, for those that have not tapped into silence through trauma and therefore might not even be aware of its existence, how is it that we learn to positively tap into it.  But this is an answer for which I am still waiting. 

"Waking": Part 1

I relate to Matt in a lot of ways I wasn’t expecting. The closest I’ve ever come to his physical pain is broken bones, and I have never lost a member of my immediate family.  However, when Matt talks about silence, about mentally separating oneself from their surroundings, I know exactly what he is talking about. 

While Matt’s experience of silence, at least so far, seems to be primarily separation from his physical body, my own experience was a separation more like his mother’s.  One of personal, emotional, and even relational silence.  Like Matt, this silence came about as a natural defense mechanism rather than a conscious decision.  The habit of turning inward had imposed itself upon my life before I could really realize what I was doing, never mind understanding why I was doing it.  Only looking back on it can I attempt to fully analyze the experience.  

What’s interesting is I first disagreed with Matt’s definition of silence as both extremely filling and extremely empty.  While going through it, I only realized the empty side of it, but there’s a definite fullness to it as well.  For one, there are fleeting feelings of wholeness of your individual self when you turn entirely inward.  There is also the fullness felt when you give yourself up to complete concentration, and there is the feeling of protection when the only person you are depending on is yourself.  Unfortunately, all of these pros have counterparts, at least with the kind of silence I have experienced.  

I have been told numerous times that we cannot grasp the fullness and entirety of God’s wholeness until we realize our own brokenness and devastation.  This, to me, is the best analogy of realizing your individual self through silence.  It is grasped for a second, only to come back to the reality of humanity’s constant state of depravity. 

Much like grasping this last concept, concentration is fleeting.  We all have at least one thing that causes this silence; the one activity in life that absorbs us, causing us to forget there is a world outside of that moment we are participating in.  For some it is reading, others sports, and so on.  Matt seems to be suggesting, although I have not gotten to this point somewhat purposefully, that this silence, this moment of disconnection (and therefore connection with your entire being), can be controlled, and thus extended.  This seems amazing once you really grasp what silence is; however, I have found that there is a certain danger to learning to fully disconnect and depend on oneself, even if it is through complete concentration.  

We have all taken Examined Life I, so we all know the five dimensions of a person: physical, emotional, intellectual, spiritual, and social.  In order to live fully, we must develop all of these dimensions.  Perhaps my stumbling upon the phenomenon of silence instead of being taught it’s proper uses is the cause, but I found that the overuse of silence as a tool of escape lead to an atrophy of the emotional and social dimensions of my being.  I drew inward often, and while it lent me some peace and comfort in times of need, it cut me off from true emotional healing.  It also inhibited me from trusting others with my process of healing. 

All of this sounds rather pessimistic, but I don’t mean it to be.  I truly believe that something so powerful as silence as Matt describes it, can and should be used in an amazing way.  I am excited to keep reading and learn how.