Migrating Blog

Hello friends and fellow blog readers.

I am migrating this blog to wordpress.  Not all of the bells and whistles are functioning yet, but here is the link to the new "Beauty of Everyday Things."

Thanks for following!   I couldn't control the graphics the way I wanted here and my friends had trouble commenting which could explain why I got a lot of hits but no comments. See you at wordpress.com!

The Power of Words

  The goal of right speech is very hard.  The other night after I yelled at my kids for the enormous pile of toys on the train table that in many ways is really my fault because I haven't consistently and realistically taught them how to keep their toys organized and put away, I realized that this type of outburst leads to a bout of self derision.  Even as I chastised them for taking off their clothes and leaving them on the floor, after the words left my mouth I remembered that I have always been just like that, and although I no longer leave my clothes on the floor, I tend to pile them on a chair, the couch, the top of my dresser. Even at work last night by closing time as people suddenly had questions needing answers when I was ready to go home, my speech, my whole demeanor begins to close up like a turtle.  Not rude, not mean, but less than helpful, certainly less than enthusiastic.  And yet I know what power all those words and non-verbal messages have.  My interaction with another person can change their day, could, under the right circumstances, change their life.

So here is another powerful idea, not my own, but it's floating out their in the ether these days.  There are times that I don't want to do this work, this work of continually trying to be a better person, of trying to reign in my temper and my eating habits and all the ways small and large that I am not kind. In my darker moments I think that I am not worth it.  Who am I to think that I could be a good person?  That I could make a difference?  But you don't do this work for yourself to be some kind of a saint.  You do this work for the benefit of all beings, to make the world a better place.  You do this work because your words and actions can affect someone's day, and that can have a ripple effect on a whole bunch of other people/beings as well.  So when I come back to that place, that dark place where I don't think I'm strong enough or worth it, I need to remember that it's not all about me, even if it has to start with me since that's all I can really change.

The meaning of yoga is to yoke.  So the work is not just to get onto my mat, which I need to do momentarily, but also to yoke, to reign in my smaller, petty self, and refrain from harm.  

No Coffee, No Prana

It is almost time to get on the mat.  I am drinking a cup of coffee as part of my pre-practice ritual.  I mean to experiment to see if coffee before practice really helps with the prana.  Sharath Rangaswamy from India says "no coffee, no prana."  Here's hoping he's right.

But I wonder if it is truly an aid.  Certainly it seems to help wake up the body faster, although 5 surya namaskar A followed by 5 rounds of surya namaskar B does a pretty good job of that as well.  I notice my mind skitters around more with the caffeine and it's a bit harder to focus.  But I like it and Sharath says it's okay so.....  to heck with the herbal tea!

But it brings me to the subject of addiction, and addictive behaviors.  There's a lot of addiction in my family and it has exacted a toll. Someone very close to me suffers and struggles with drug addiction and it is very hard to watch someone continually throw their life down the toilet as if it were worth nothing, as if they didn't matter to anyone.  I can't solve that, but when I look to myself I find plenty of evidence of addictive behavior.  Start with the coffee.  The number one thing my friends who suffer from insomnia really don't want to hear is that reducing their caffeine intake is the first step to a better night's sleep.  They look at me in disbelief.  Their eyes glaze over and it's like my children who are beginning to hear me less and less the more I go on.  They don't want to believe it, and yet I can say that when I'm not sleeping at night, when I start waking up at 2AM thinking all those useless circular thoughts, the only thing that helps is reducing the caffeine intake.  And I reduce slowly, by 4 ounces a day, to avoid the migraines that come from abrupt cessation of caffeine intake.  It's certainly worth a try if you're a coffee drinker who suffers from insomnia.  

But that's not all.  I'm an emotional eater, and I've struggled with my weight all my life.  I recently found Claudia's blog (thank you Nobel!) and she wrote an article about losing 30 pounds through yoga (and keeping it off), and she writes about the verbal messages we give ourselves.  She writes that:

When somebody wants to manifest something positive, keeping the vocabulary clean (no curse words, no negativity), is key. It surprises me to no end to see, even in yoga circles, a tremendous denial of the power of the word. There is a reason why I call it “weight release” (except perhaps in the title of this post), and that is because phrasing it that way is more powerful, since when we “lose” something, we usually try to find it again.

And I wonder about this.  Her number one point was about self love.  Combine the two together and you have all the verbal messages and thoughts you tell yourself everyday.  Perhaps it begins before you get out of bed in the morning.  Controlling these messages, the negative thoughts that fill our head space, could be a huge key in controlling our behavior.

So it's back to the mat, and to set an intention this week to focus on right speech, on saying the kind thing, the true (but not hurtful) thing, and avoid the gossip, negative self talk, and above all the less than kind impatient things I say to my family.