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Category: Practices
Meditation on impermanence
Sweat lodges, vision fasts, smudging with herbs: whose practices are these?
As I continue to tell you the story of the sacred time in the sweat lodge, I am troubled by a recurring theme that has arisen over the years, about cultural appropriation, or misappropriation. I just came across this article from 1993 in the New York Times, Spiritual Seekers Borrow Indians’ Ways.
Clearly, this has been an issue for much longer than 16 years. Tibetan Buddhism borrowed from the earlier nature-based tradition called Bon, appropriating symbolism and ritual practices from Tibetan peoples into this branch of Buddhism. Early Christianity appropriated pagan symbols and ritual into Christian practices. Throughout history, conquerors have incorporated spiritual and cultural elements from the people they conquer. It is a method that helps to overcome the conquered people, and it is also a form of theft. And, it is part of the mysterious process of combining different groups of people together into something new. This happens also through the intermarriage and mixing of blood of the two peoples.
Then there is the question of reincarnation! When I was learning yoga, I had the definite feeling that I was doing something very familiar, and I knew that I must have lived in India in a previous life and practiced yoga then. If so, as a Caucasion woman born in Canada, of German Mennonite parentage, is it cultural misappropriation to teach yoga to others? Or do I have a legitimate claim to this teaching, through my own past life knowledge?! This is a delightful idea to contemplate, in part because I know how ridiculous it will seem to some readers, for numerous reasons.
I have a similar feeling of homecoming when I sit in circle on the earth, and the sage bowl is passed around to purify each person in the circle. I feel I have landed. My heart opens to the earth and the people in the circle, but also to something even bigger. Perhaps it is to a stream of history, people, and events that have gone before. Perhaps it is to the beloved mystery that is the oneness of the universe that we live in. Something about this sacred practice of purifying with sage brings a feeling of lightness and connection into my soul.
When I studied ecopsychology at Naropa University, we had a short course on cultural misappropriation, to make us aware of this danger. We were encouraged to study our own family and culture’s ancient traditions. I know that for me, with German Mennonite heritage on both sides, I have been influenced by this flavour of the sacred. The strongest value I am aware of, the defining characteristic of the Mennonites, is the practice of non-violence. The refusal to fight in wars. And stories about how my ancestors have followed or failed to follow this practice were told to me as a child. It is one of the strongest values I hold today, yet the way that I really learned to practice it was through the practice of ahimsa or non-harming that I was exposed to when I attended a Buddhist Vipassana meditation retreat and when I studied to be a yoga teacher!
I personally cannot identify as a Christian, whether Mennonite or otherwise. Too much harm has been done in the name of Christianity. Too many wars have been fought, and people and cultures destroyed by the followers of this religion. The idea that a single book contains all that is true, which is used as a weapon of hatred and suppression against people who are different (women, people of colour, lesbians and gays), is crazy! So when enjoined to look at my own family and culture’s traditions, at first I come up against a block. But if I look a little further, the picture opens up. If I look at my extended family, which includes relatives by marriage, I find we are German Canadian, Chinese Canadian, African Canadian, Italian Canadian, Austrian Canadian, and First Nations. I have American relatives too. And these are just the connections that I know about. The deeper truth is of a global connection and interconnection.
And I believe this is also true of earth-based practices. Before the advent of the monotheistic religions of Judeo-Christianity and Islam, which are only a few thousand years old—much younger than the lifetime of humanity—people lived on the land and practiced sacred rites that fostered connection to each other and the land. Sitting in circle. Sitting on the earth. Fasting alone in the wilderness. Smudging with herbs (think of the use of incense in Catholic rituals if you doubt what I am saying about appropriating the practices of earlier sacred rituals). Building stone circles. All peoples in all lands have done these things. It is in our DNA as people on this planet to resonate with these ancient ways. These ways belong to all of us.
That is one part of the picture. Another part is that the sweat lodge ceremony 
that I will be writing about comes from the First Nations and Native American people of this continent. Some of the words are from the language of the Lakota people. Aho matakwe-asin! All my relations! It opens my heart to hear these words, and to say them.
The ways and values of the people who are still close to the land are ways we all must learn, if we are going to stop the destruction of the earth in time to make continued life on earth possible for the species that remain. May it be so.
This doesn’t mean everyone should go to a sweat lodge, or on a vision fast. But it does mean everyone needs to understand that we are interconnected, with each other and with the earth. We are interdependent. I just came across information about a workshop that helps modern, “scientifically-minded” people to understand this! Originally developed for the World Wildlife Fund, this workshop is unlike any other you may have experienced. In a few short hours, you will develop a deep appreciation of the complex links between diverse global issues such as population, wealth, consumption, pollution, climate change, natural resources, species extinction, and even war. More importantly, you will learn what we can do as individuals and as a society to build a truly sustainable future. The May 21 evening workshop is called Systems Thinking… About Our World. Check it out!
Inside the yoga studio
Exciting news… My ten answers to the famous Inside the Actors Studio questions have been posted, with a twist… inside the yoga studio.
Warning, these responses are not for the faint of heart! Or men named Dick. But they have been approved by the YogaBC moderator!
Prison guard blues
I taught walking meditation to my two classes at the youth correctional institute on Monday night. The first class consisted of three young men. A male guard was in the room, the library, for the first part of the class, working on the computer. So I introduced the meditation, and as we began slowly walking around the room in a circle, we heard the magical sound of Windows starting.
But actually, this shows me how accustomed I have become to the prison environment. For while this new sound (of Windows starting) seemed intrusive, I didn’t even notice the enormous clanging sound of the heavy prison doors in the hallway outside the room slamming shut repeatedly throughout the class, which had seemed like a shock to my soul-body when I first started teaching there.
We made it one and a half times around the room in the five minutes, and the young men seemed to be in a calm, quiet space after the meditation. The guard left, and the rest of the class was tranquil and flowing. I explained that they could use the walking meditation when they are feeling upset. The focus on the feet, which usually are not upset (unless they happen to be sore or injured), helps the meditator to shift into a more positive state. At least, that’s the theory!
The next class was the young women. This time a female guard came to the class and participated in it too. This is a wonderful development, which, as teachers with Yoga Outreach, we are encouraged to promote. For the guards no doubt can benefit from the yoga as much as the students.
But this time, the presence of the guard presented a new challenge, which I had never encountered before. For she had done yoga before (from a video) and thought it was appropriate to offer corrections to the students during the poses, as well as to give orders to maintain discipline in the class! So during the silent walking meditation she gave orders to the students to be quiet when they were giggling. And it went downhill from there. I totally lost control of the class, and it was a complete disaster! A new learning for me.
A few days after the fact, I can feel some appreciation for the universe bringing me this opportunity to learn new skills as a teacher. I now know that if a guard joins the class, I need to take her aside and lay down the ground rules; she is there as a student only, and must leave the class control to me!
The final straw was when the students and guard were lying in savasana (corpse pose), the final resting pose that is the traditional way to end a yoga class. The guard took a call on her radio headset (which she had been wearing throughout the class and which occasionally emitted noises), and started speaking into it, from her mat. (Rather than leaving the room so as not to disrupt the students who were in a quiet, resting state after being very rambunctious throughout the class.) Then she said to the students, “OK, time to go get your meds.”
At this point my strength arose, and I took back control of the class. I have a strong sense of ritual and there are certain things that MUST be observed, such as ending the class in the traditional way. I said “I am not finished. I am ending the class, and need one more minute.” I gently brought the students out of sivasana, and we closed with the traditional Namaste salutation (which means “the divine light in me greets the divine light in you”). After saying Namaste to the students and thanking them for sharing their practice with me, I turned to the guard (who left the circle and did not participate for the closing) and said Namaste to her. After they all left I put away the equipment and drove home, furious with the guard for undermining my authority in the class, and with myself for not knowing how to handle it.
I must say, I felt much more compassion and understanding for my Diamond Approach teachers, whose classes I have interrupted and disrupted many times. Now the shoe is on the other foot! And walking meditation did not help me to regain my ground. It took a strong talking-to to my superego, who was having a field day with me for not handling the situation well, before I started to calm down.
The joys of being a wild woman and putting myself in situations where the unpredictable can happen! Of course, this is where learning and growth can occur. Even though it didn’t help me right in the moment, I still recommend walking meditation, for it will help us all develop a connection with something that is deeper than our emotional state. And in spite of all the disruption in the class, it was beautiful to see how one of the young women in the class really connected with the earth energy through her feet from doing this meditation.
So keep practicing!
If you are interested in more information about the benefits of teaching yoga and meditation to people in prison, check out this link to the UK organization The Phoenix Prison Trust. Once you’re at the site, click Why we do it.
Delightful feet
Well, how did it go? What did you notice as you did the walking meditation I described yesterday?
I did it in my apartment, and found that in five minutes I just made it from one end of my apartment to the other, and back. I have a small apartment! So that gives you an idea of how slowly I was walking.
I noticed my mind wandering numerous times, mostly with “to do” items. The feeling in my feet was delicious. A warm cozy feeling, in warm socks and slippers. Walking on the carpet added to the feeling of coziness. Some people find they almost lose balance when walking that slowly, and I did notice my gait and balance felt much different than usual. I felt the alignment of the bones in my legs and hips and ankles in a different way than I’m usually aware of. A sense of the weight of my body and how the bones move to support it.
The cushy feeling in my feet is was most delightful. It felt like the earth was a resilient force, receiving and yielding then slightly pushing back. Of course my mind wanted to get involved with theories about connecting with the earth, and how this is a step on the path to connecting with the entire universe. But the actual act of walking has a simple feeling that really felt innocent and delightful.
Now, after the meditation as I write this, I notice my feet feel more open, and I can sense the earth’s energy entering my feet through the soles, where they touch the floor. It seems like a white light entering my body. Wow, the vastness of the earth as a being feels like a huge energy, and as I sense the energy through my feet I start to notice that the energy field of the earth is all around my body too.
This totally blows away my notion of being a small separate self that is completely cut off from everything else and unsupported in the world. My body feels like a permeable spacious entity that is connected with the space and energy around it, so that the energy of the vast earth is through me as well as around me, and I feel a gentle humour and delight in the quality of the vast energy. As I sense into the quality of the energy, my mind activity stills, and I enter into the unknown of what is arising. Blissfulness, pleasure, but there isn’t the usual sense of “I” to experience it.
The usual I has faded more into the background, but I notice she has some fear about being with the unknown. I am part of a much bigger awareness, and my usual I wants to go back to the usual activities of my egoic mind. What will this bigger awareness require of me? What is happening in it? What is it? The collective energy of my neighbourhood? I hear the birds and cars outside, and someone hammering. There is peace in this vastness. An imperturbability, that seems to be reminding me of its truth. The vastness informs me that I can be aware of that imperturbable peace as I deal with a problem I’ve been irritated by since yesterday, that my egoic mind finds annoying. And curiousity can be there too. Hmm, why is this person I’m annoyed with behaving this way, and what is arising out of the vastness through their actions? What boundless generosity the universe has, to not only make me feel supported as part of something much larger than myself, but to also help me with a very minor problem in my life!
So, I am sure your experience of the walking meditation might be different than this. I have had a daily meditation practice pretty steadily for about 10 years, and I use a practice called inquiry to notice my experience and follow it into the depths and breadth of reality. Plus Saturday morning relaxation, tea, and chocolate allow me to shift out of my usual awareness and pay attention to a bigger reality in a way I don’t usually take the time to do.
I invite you to share what your experience was of the walking meditation, and what you were aware of at the end of the meditation. If you don’t want to share it on this blog, maybe you’d like to write about it in your journal or tell a friend what you noticed. I invite you to use this practice every day this week, for 5 or 10 minutes. Keep seeing what you notice. It’s never the same day twice! (Except in Bill Murray’s Groundhog Day, but that’s another story!)
Walk your blues away
You’ve probably heard that walking is good for you. It’s one of the most highly-recommended forms of exercise. It’s gentle on the body, and good for the psyche. The physical activity can get the juices flowing and even create a little endorphin high. Going for a walk is good for clearing the mind, and it’s also a great technique to use for controlling anger. Just being outside for a while and touched by the sky can lift the spirits. But this isn’t the kind of walking I’m talking about.
I’m talking about a simple practice called walking meditation. It’s different from regular walking, in part because the pace is slower. Its benefits are more profound than regular walking. It is a spiritual practice, and like many spiritual practices, the purpose is to support us in a different kind of awareness than our usual consiousness.
Our usual consciousness involves a lot of thinking! It is sometimes called our egoic mind. We use it to function in the world—planning how to talk to a coworker about a problem or new idea, deciding what to make for dinner, remembering a warm moment with a friend. As you can see, the egoic mind is usually oriented towards the past or the future. Don’t get me wrong—the egoic mind is useful, and developing a healthy ego, which includes a sense of being a separate self and other characteristics that ego psychologists have listed, is an important developmental achievement for humans. But it doesn’t stop there!
We are much more than our egoic minds, but unless we are remarkably lucky or have done a lot of inner work, we may not be aware of what that “more” is. Actually, we may not be aware THAT there is more. I believe that the midlife crisis is a waking up moment when we realize that the life of the egoic mind is not entirely satisfying. Perhaps we’ve raised a family or achieved career success. Relationships may have ended or they might be continuing, but somehow didn’t bring all that we hoped for. Maybe there’s a feeling that something is missing. A richness and aliveness that we remember life having when we were children. Or a sense of being at peace. There are many qualities to our being and to the nature of all that is that we might long for and sense are possible, but don’t experience as often as we’d like.
Walking meditation is a way to drop out of the busy thinking activity of the egoic mind and open our awareness to what else is true in the present moment. It can be a doorway into a more expanded awareness of reality. I’ve learned different forms of walking meditation over the years, at Naropa University, at Diamond Approach retreats, and elsewhere. I taught walking meditation as part of a meditation class I taught in Merritt, in which I introduced students to a variety of meditation techniques. I think having a daily meditation practice is very difficult, and also very important for developing our capacity to be aware of more than the egoic mind. I think it is so difficult that without a context such as a spiritual understanding to give meaning to the activity, and without the support of a spiritual community, it is probably not possible. But I could be wrong—if you disagree, or have had a different experience, I’d love to hear about it.
I stopped teaching meditation because I felt that without the support of a spiritual path, people wouldn’t be able to sustain their practice. But on the other hand, even meditating once and never meditating again might have a benefit. So I’ll invite you to try this for yourself, and see what you make of it. Whether or not you have a spiritual practice or want one!
Preparation: Choose a place to walk where you can walk slowly without worrying that people will think you’re weird. This could be in your home, or outside. Decide how long you’re going to walk for; I suggest 5 or 10 minutes the first time.
- Let your eyes rest gently on the ground about six to eight feet (two to three metres) in front of you. Soften your gaze so your eyes aren’t focused on the details. Walking at night is good too.
- Clasp your hands loosely in front of you, with your arms relaxed and hanging naturally. One way is to insert your right thumb between your left thumb and forefinger, so your left hand clasps your right thumb, and the rest of your right hand clasps your folded left hand.
- Bring your awareness down out of your mind and into your feet. Feel your feet. Feel how they feel in your socks and shoes, or sandals, if you’re wearing any. Feel how they feel making contact with the earth.
- Begin to walk slowly, keeping your awareness on the sensation in your feet. If your mind wanders, gently bring it back to your feet.
- At the end of the time you have set, increase your awareness to include the space in and around your body. Take a few moments to notice what you are aware of.
Blessings on your journey.
Wild women teach yoga
Exploration of wildness
A lot has changed in my life since I started to explore what it means to be a wild woman. My work life usually involves cerebral pursuits, such as accounting and writing computer software manuals. The exploration of wildness brought my body, heart, and spirit into my work life in a more obvious way. One of the ways, which I want to talk about today, is that I volunteer teaching yoga—a body-based and spiritual practice—to young adults in prison.
The classes I’ve been teaching are at an “open” facility, a less restrictive facility that is for youth who are incarcerated for a short time, or who have already been in a more secure facility and have been promoted to the open facility on their way to full release. The class sizes are very small—a maximum of 6 students. Some weeks I have only had the young men’s class because there were few young women left in the open facility and none wanted to come. So the students in the class change every week. For example, last week I taught five young men, of whom three had been there before, and three young women, one of whom was a repeat student. The first time she’d been to class she was the only student!
Teaching yoga poses to youth
I have been teaching a “daily dozen” of basic poses, beginning with seated meditative time learning and practicing the Ujjayi (victorious) breath, and finishing with Savasana (corpse or resting pose). There usually isn’t time to do all 12 poses, and now that I’ve been doing it for a few months I vary around those ones in response to what’s happening in the class.
I’ve never taught youth before, but from what I’ve since learned talking to other teachers, it is not unusual for these students to need to chat almost constantly! This was a shock at first, as it is very different from adult classes. But I’ve gotten used to it. It helps to know it is not a sign of disrespect, and not to take it personally. Another thing is that many of the students have injuries, conditions such as ADD or ADHD that make it difficult for them to sustain focus, or chronic physical problems. So usually not everyone can do every pose.
What works is to be really flexible, keep it fun, not be too serious. For me having the frame of the daily dozen, which is my own daily practice, helps as a reference point. And from there I respond to what the students are interested in. For example, last week one student was resting and doing a twist lying down on her back, so I added that pose at the end. She said “I was just doing that!” and it tickled her to have the class do it.
So that’s some of what I’ve been discovering. The kids are great. They are very appreciative of the class, and notice the difference it makes in their state of being: how it calms them, makes them feel better. And I find that working with them makes a change in my state of being as well—opening my heart and also deepening me into a ground that is big enough to hold the space for the class.
A couple nights ago something happened in class that is still moving me when I think about it. One of the young men had been in a class where the teacher uses aromatherapy fragrances on the students’ faces during Savasana. He asked if I was going to do that. I didn’t have fragrance with me, but offered to massage their temples instead—something I have learned in teacher training and that one of my favourite teachers always does at the end of class. I asked each young man first if he wanted the massage, to make sure I wasn’t impinging on any body boundaries, and they each did. My heart usually opens towards the students during Savasana anyway, as the students I’ve been teaching for an hour each lay on their backs, covered by a blanket, quieter than they have been throughout the class. But this time, seeing how much each young man longed for a woman’s soothing touch, I felt a new sad tenderness arise.
Hungry ghost realm
When I ran by the river after class I thought about Gabor Maté’s In the Realm of the Hungry Ghosts
I don’t know if attending one yoga class will make a difference in their lives. But maybe, for that one hour, it did. I know that that one hour made a bigger difference in my heart and life than an hour of writing computer software manuals. It is riskier. Wilder. Each time I’m a little afraid to go, not knowing what will happen. And each time, I am opened in an unexpected way. And somehow rise to the occasion, making mistakes and hopefully also facilitating what is needed as being moves through me.