Diamond Approach – Karen's New York Love Affair

Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

As some of you know, I am currently engaged in study in the Diamond Approach (DA) teacher training program. I recently read Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, and it was such a transformative experience, I’d like to share some of my impressions with you. The impact of nature and the ocean and sky interrelated with the reading, to really open my mind.

I read Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind over the course of about seven weeks. I was renting a house on the coast near Big Sur, with huge open views of the Pacific, sea and sky, and read the book every night before bed. The book and location together impacted my soul by creating a sense of vast openness, not-knowing mind, and spaciousness. I listened to my DA group’s teaching of the blue diamond of the Diamond Guidance (see Spacecruiser Inquiry, by A. H. Almaas, p. 334) during this period as well. This DA teaching evokes that same sense of open not-knowing mind. Awareness, awakeness, freshness, not-knowing, unlimited possibility.

The book blew my mind in so many ways, and I sometimes didn’t understand what Suzuki was talking about at all (“You should be like a frog always,” p. 68; “The blue mountain is the father of the white cloud,” p. 13), but it had the impact of opening my mind to simplicity and unknown experience, over and over again over the course of the reading. It opened me up to not knowing, being okay not to know, even with others—that is, it opened up a self image (of knowing everything, being smart). It increased my openness to life, to not knowing what will happen, what is good to happen—to acceptance of reality.

One example of how it deepened my personal experience is in my personal yoga practice, which continues to have a freshness even though I have been doing the same practice, with some variation but a core set of the same poses, for 11 years. Experimenting with the idea from the book that each moment is unconnected to the previous moment (ashes are not connected to charcoal), I had the experience of each moment of swan-diving forward into a forward fold as being fresh, unknown, not knowing myself, not knowing what was moving, just a sense of awareness, presence, and movement or flow, which became stronger as I went further into the fold. A sense of newness of reality, not just the pose—that all of reality was an unknown mystery, with wonder and openness and a deepening sense of embodied but expansive presence that was filled with white light and colour. It’s a little scary to be that open to not knowing, that open to each moment. “Everything is just a flashing into the vast phenomenal world.” (p. 94)

During this time I did a phone inquiry with my regular inquiry partner and the openness of not knowing was something we explored during our dialectic inquiry. This led to an experience of reality that was totally unfamiliar. The field was a golden amber-orange, reflecting our valuing of each other and of working together, with merging gold, and I could see this in the room I was in. As I invited the inquiry to not know what this was and find out more, my mind was completely gone, no conceptual awareness at all, just complete freedom into something new I had never experienced before. Bringing my thinking mind to the experience in order to describe it, there was a sense of vastness but without a sense of spatial dimension, and absolute cessation of self and concepts, but still with awareness. So free! So that is one example of how the book engaged my inquiry. Overall, the book brought a new sense of curiosity and interest to my inquiry, to see what is fresh in each moment, what will it be this time!? Fresh air into the staleness.

The book also had a big impact on my meditation practice. Suzuki said zazen is enlightenment. The act of sitting is all that’s needed, all there is. This freed me from superego judgement about my practice and striving for it to be a certain way. “Sit without any gaining idea.” (p. 26) Also the instruction to press my diaphragm down towards the hara (p. 8) or kath, to gain strength in my posture—this was a new instruction that I have found very helpful for landing in the kath.

If you’ve never read ZMBM, I envy you, for you still have the option of your own fresh discovery ahead of you! How will Suzuki’s mind impact your mind?

Winter solstice blessings

Turning now to winter time in Vancouver, and the turning of the year and the planet, let’s take a look at the splendid Vancouver beauty after our second snowfall of the winter. Oh, actually, they were both in the fall! For today is the first day of winter! But the snow doesn’t care about the date. And it has covered Vancouver in a soft white blanket. Too bad it will be all gone by Christmas! So often the way here in Vancouver!

I will be heading up to William’s Lake for Christmas, so I will get to enjoy a white Christmas anyway. And it is truly a miracle, but I have already purchased and wrapped all the little gifties that Santa’s going to bring on my behalf this year. Sweet!

As I look at the year behind, it was a year of many gifts and blessings. I sold Monkey Valley, which was a tremendous blessing, especially because it brought so many wonders to the new owners, and they are caring for the land so beautifully. I also had many career blessings, with five wonderful clients, and three of them repeat clients!! That is an abundance of joy! And a lot of hard work, too… But I did manage to take two months off, and go on the vision fast. As well as two Diamond Approach retreats, and my Vancouver DA group met 3 times. I had my share of struggles and painful learnings this year as well, including the fight with Treo. In the end they gave me four free toll crossings! The year concludes with a feeling of connecting to my people around the world with a clear golden light, while held in the velvety black mystery, so strong at this time of year.

May all beings be happy on this winter solstice. And special blessings to our dear earth.

Monkey Valley Moksha

I learned from another yoga teacher at the Yoga Outreach trauma-sensitive yoga training that there is an offshoot of Bikram yoga called Moksha yoga. It is another form of hot yoga that has a gentler pace than the relentless Bikram yoga. Another difference is the teachers have the option of creating variety in the poses. The studios are environmentally friendly, and the source of heat in some studios is radiant heat rather than forced-air, causing the heat to feel different. There is a Moksha Vancouver studio on Alma St. But last night, being at Monkey Valley, I created my own Moksha practice in front of the woodstove.

In the picture above, notice the blue light around the edges of the glass window in the stove. This light is not visible with the naked eye, but the camera on my cell phone captures it. Similarly, I noticed the next morning that the light coming through the window in the living room cast a constantly moving shadow from heat streaming up through the air in front of the stove. But the air itself was not visible to the naked eye; only the shadow cast on the couch was visible. This illustrates for those who might doubt. What does it illustrate? That there is more to life than what we can see with the naked eye! That there are more subtle forces and energies and realities that we can’t necessarily touch with the limited five senses. And I suspect the five sense developed through evolution with a range that we needed to sense for survival. So there’s a reason we are the way we are. But we can learn to use the subtle senses to see more deeply into reality.

Anyway, back to my practice: the heat was rather uneven, being very hot at the end of the mat closest to the stove, and about 10 degrees cooler at the other end of the mat. It was 7 degrees inside the house when I arrived, and the living area had only warmed up to about 14 degrees by the time I started my yoga practice. But it was hot on the mat, and I was soon removing a couple of layers of clothing as the heat penetrated.

Not having internet access to My Yoga Online, I decided to do my regular practice, but more slowly, and taking the time to integrate some of the learnings from recent classes. I held standing forward bend and child’s pose much longer than usual, à la restorative yoga, feeling into what happens as the body settles into the position for a longer period. Different muscles are impacted as the primary ones reach their full extension. In extended side angle, I brought the thigh on my bent leg closer to parallel with the floor than I usually do. It could go there, but I just don’t usually bring it there, because I have gotten into a habit of where the range of movement stops. The Bikram class had taken my body past all the previous limits for range of movement (which is why I was so sore for days afterwards), and now my body knows a new limit. This was a lovely discovery to make.

When I did the final sequence on the floor, I noticed other impacts from recent classes. There was more ease in my upper back from the extended time spent in sphinx in the two yin winter restorative classes I’ve done. As I did the seated forward bend I tried it the way Melina teaches it, with the head hanging forward heavy, and then supporting my head in my hands. It brings the stretch into the upper back and neck in a whole new way. When I did the seated bent leg pose (a half version of the full version taught in the Bikram class), I remembered the teacher making a correction on the angle of my legs, but in this instance, I chose not to go for the all-out form. The comfort of habit ruled here. In happy baby pose, I remembered from the trauma-sensitive yoga class that this is often a triggering pose for people who have experienced particular forms of abuse, and I felt a softening and empathy for them, while appreciating the safety I was feeling in the moment.

Towards the end of the practice I recalled the idea of total movement from the Diamond Approach summer retreat I attended earlier this year, and I began to open my senses in this direction. I sensed the consciousness of my being, permeating through my physical body and beyond, into the totality of being that is all around and through everything—that is everything. So moving beyond the sensing of the physical body, into a more subtle sensing of the awareness that can sense the physical body. And then feeling how it feels as this awareness moves the body. It is a sensation of space moving through space. As I sense into it now, the space-consciousness that is everything feels like a loving and intelligent awareness, which delights in knowing itself by being aware of and sensing itself. It seems that the impact of the many yoga classes I have taken recently has formed a richness of impressions that impact my personal consciousness. The easiest way to recognize the impact is through the physical body memories, but the awareness that holds the memories is actually on a more subtle level, and it is filled with love for the richness and colour of all these experiences. Appreciation for reality.

This might seem bizarre and hard to understand for those of you who have not yet ventured into the depths of your inner awareness. But perhaps it will awaken a flame of curiosity in you—a curiosity to find out what you really are.

Thanks to my friends and family who have pledged 50 cents or a dollar or even two dollars a day for the 30-day Reach Out Challenge. The total pledges is now at $285 dollars! Almost at my goal of $300. If you haven’t done so and would like to sponsor me to raise money for Yoga Outreach, you can use the online donation link. Or phone me at 604.251.6337 or send an email to kyrempel [at] gmail [dot] com. Thanks!

Past Events at Monkey Valley

Monkey Valley Retreat Centre has hosted vision fasts, medicine wheel teachings, teachings of ecopsychology practices, medicine walks, inquiry groups, a yoga and ChiRunning retreat, and, of course, many gatherings of family and friends, too.

For a brief account of the amazingly awesome Chirunning and yoga retreat with Angela James (summer 2010), see here.

In the summer of 2009, we held the second vision fast at Monkey Valley for a solo faster. The valley rang out with the mournful notes of saxophone and the lowing of cows.

The previous year, in the summer of 2008, the grandmothers and grandfathers of this land greeted a vision faster, perhaps for the first time in many years. It is known that the Upper Similkameen First Nation travelled through the valley seasonally, gathering plants. Did the elders of the community put youths out on the land to fast while they sojourned here? I have seen a hilltop that might have been a spot for sacred ceremony…

Kim and I were very pleased that our plans to host a vision fast came to fruition August 1-4, 2008, with a two-day fast. The retreat began with a day of preparing the faster for the solo time. While the guides remained in basecamp, the faster went out into wild nature and spent her solo time with the land and her creatures. The final day was a celebration and time for the faster to tell her story and have it received by her people. Many thanks to the spirits of the seven directions for keeping the faster safe and returning her to us.

In the summer of 2005, the retreat centre hosted a four-day medicine wheel gathering, taught by Joyce Lyke and Tracy Leach. We built a medicine wheel together, and learned how to walk the four spokes of the wheel and work with the spirits of the seven directions (South, West, North, East, Earth Mother, Sky Father, and Centre). Since this gathering, the wheel has been open, available to those seeking guidance from the spirits of the land and the spirits of our ancestors.

The retreat centre has hosted numerous meditation and inquiry gatherings for students of the Diamond Approach, a spiritual path for inner realization. Inquiry is a method for sensing into one’s direct experience in the moment, as deeply as possible. Sensing physical sensations, as well as emotions and thoughts, can lead us to deeper, more subtle experiences of our soul.

Practicing inquiry outdoors in wild nature can open us to different kinds of experiences than occur indoors. We have explored inquiring with each other and with nature beings such as trees and rocks. Several New Years inquiry celebrations at Monkey Valley have involved dancing, sacred ceremony, and inquiry in the snow!

Taking the time to care for the hurt self

I have been describing a process of exploration and healing that occurred on a medicine walk in Eureka Valley. There is one more piece to the puzzle that arose as I explored my intention with Ruth and Larry. I’ve already talked about the defense of anger, and how I was using that to protect my hurt self.

As I described various incidents to Ruth and Larry in which I’d felt hurt, another theme that emerged was time: I felt like people didn’t care about me because they didn’t give me time. They didn’t want to spend time with me, as in the case of the friend who had put me off three times when I wanted to get together with him. And they didn’t give me enough time. This had arisen in a small group meeting with my Diamond Approach group, when the teacher had said I could work for 10 minutes only. I had agreed to the time limit, but it hadn’t been enough time and had led to deep feelings of shame when the time was up and I needed more time but the teacher didn’t let me have the time I needed. And time has often been a sore point in my interactions with friends, when they take up all the time we’re together by talking about themselves, leaving me to feel like I don’t matter. So TIME is an issue, or at least TIME is the way that Being was trying to reveal a truth to me, through the persistent feeling that there is not enough time for me.

Ruth and Larry noticed this theme as I spoke, and drew it to my attention, and this became the final piece of my intention: I am mother and father to myself, and I have the strength and take the time to care for my hurt self. This last bit, taking the time to care for my hurt self, was a crucial piece of the puzzle. For it is I who am responsible for taking the time I need, and asking for the time I need, in my relations with others. But even more importantly, for making this time for self-care in my daily life. It is up to me to value myself enough to attend to my self with curiosity, care, and compassion when I am feeling upset about something. And even when I am not upset about something!

So this was the intention I took out on my walk. I am mother and father to myself, and I have the strength and take the time to care for my hurt self. Next time I will tell you what happened on the walk—how I worked with the intention, and how nature interacted with me to bring healing to my hurt self.

Returning from the retreat: innocence, security, anger, and a good burger

As I mentioned previously, I just returned from the Diamond Approach 10-day summer retreat in California, and I’d like to share some of the learnings from that, because they tie in with the summer part of the wheel. Summer is the time of childhood innocence. In fact, Bill Plotkin writes in Nature and the Human Soul that innocence is one of the gifts children give to the world. And it is the parents’ job to maintain the safety of the home-nest in the early years, to allow this innocence to flourish. Unfortunately, this often doesn’t happen. But we all are innocent at the core of our nature. Even George Bush, Hitler, and Charles Manson. Although innocence wasn’t directly the theme of the retreat, I found that when I was working with people, and being a very allowing, clear space of openness for witnessing their work, their innocence is something I kept seeing, over and over. And I also felt in touch with my own innocence. This is part of the radiant preciousness of who we are. I felt it was a gift from the universe to be able to experience this and know it directly, in myself and others.

So when I left the retreat, I was in quite an expansive, open state, after 10 days of working in a deep way with people during the exercises, meditating, and having many satisfying connections with friends that I only get to see once a year. I arrived at the Air Canada security line at San Francisco airport in this open, friendly state. Although the line was quite long, and only one belt was open, and they kept letting people in first class go around the side and to the front of the line, I was in my open state, had four hours before my flight, and didn’t want to get caught up in my usual reactive judgement about this situation. I spoke to the woman behind me, who was from Calgary, and we shared some airport security experiences. When I got close to the front of the line, a man asked if he could cut in. I asked if he was crew, and he was, so I said sure, and we had a nice conversation too. He was from Montreal, and we talked about different cities. It was very pleasant, and I was pleased to be enjoying this potentially frustrating situation.

I guess this is where the universe wanted to test how grounded and connected to being I really was, because suddenly my bag was halted, brought out, and the security guy asked who it belonged to. I said it was mine, and he said there was a liquid in the bag. I had thought my water bottle was empty, but it wasn’t, and that was why it had been flagged. I pulled it out and dumped the water in the bin, and put my bag back through. Then my laptop was halted, and the security guy asked who it belonged to. I admitted it was mine, and a jerk in the line who was late for his flight said “Have you got anything else in your luggage that doesn’t belong there?”

Huh! Snap! I was totally out of my open spacious peaceful place and into a defensive response that came to the fore automatically. I said “It’s not my fault security is so fucking anal.” Luckily for me, they weren’t actually that anal, because they let me go through and didn’t say anything about this statement. But the passenger continued to heckle me as I collected my belongings at the other end of the belt, and I lost it again and said “It’s not my fault you’re late for your flight.” And he said “It’s not my fault you’re a stupid *&%&!” I said “I didn’t call you names and I would appreciate if you don’t call me names.” He called me another name, and then took off down the hallway.

So that’s it, huh? That’s the limit of my capacity to stay open and nonreactive. Less than an hour from arriving at the airport. Altercation. Irritation. Feeling caught up in reactivity, which is very familiar, and feeling hopeless about being a slave to it. Why am I getting triggered so easily, all the time? Here I’ve just finished a 10-day retreat and I’m totally caught up in what some idiot stranger said to me. It was an attack, but I got caught in it. Where is the benefit of the practice? The openness and spaciousness? If you are familiar with the entity known as the superego, you will notice it at work, making the situation even worse by attacking me for not being more equanimous.

But I have learned something after these many years of various practices, so the next part of the story is how I worked with the stew of anger and reactivity I was caught up in. And, no coincidence, anger is also one of the qualities connected with the red of the south part of the wheel. It is a form of the red essential aspect which can be experienced as strength, and the heat, fire, and aliveness of it can help us to protect ourselves and others. It has often motivated me to take action in the world. But in its less purely flowing form it can be felt as irritation, frustration, rage, and so on. Which is one of the things I worked with over and over at the retreat. The movement, like here at the airport, from openness to frustration or rage.

As I walked down the corridor toward my gate, pulling my well-examined luggage behind me, I saw how I get caught in this uncomfortable place all the time. I felt the discomfort of it and the desire to move away from it. It feels so awful to be caught in this reactivity. And it happens to me all the time. This made me wonder what I’m doing to keep getting caught in this. Is this a familiar, comfortable pattern from childhood? (Well, yes.) Is that why it seems to happen over and over? Am I creating it? And I noticed how much I wanted to escape from the discomfort of it. I don’t want to feel this way. I want to control reality so I never have to feel this way. I wished I’d said something even more annihilating to completely shut the stranger up and stop him from making me feel this way. I spent a moment or two trying to think of what that might have been—what I could have said. I noticed again how the feeling was so uncomfortable that I wanted to move away from it. But it was inside me and I couldn’t. So I went to have a pee, and tried to remember to sense my belly center—the Kath meditation—a practice I had been doing for the past ten days (and nine years). As I was sitting on the toilet, sensing my belly, I suddenly flashed on my spiritual teacher, and how she probably doesn’t get caught up in this kind of reactivity.

The feeling was as if I’d done something wrong and the passenger who attacked me had told everyone about it, so I guess a kind of shame. I am normally very together, and follow all the procedures for passing through security correctly, but this time I was still in a somewhat expanded state from the retreat, floating along a bit, and didn’t realize there was still some water in my water bottle. Also I didn’t know I had to take the laptop out of its case. I had already taken it out of the suitcase, and put it in a separate bin, and I thought that was all I had to do.

So the shame I noticed mainly by the reaction to it—defending myself, as if I hadn’t done anything wrong. In my head telling him my IQ was higher than his, because he had called me stupid. But just seeing that my superego was involved didn’t really shift the experience of discomfort and an inner, red irritation that felt very difficult to be with. But as I was sitting on the toilet, I realized that the difficulty was that I was trying to maintain a self-image. My teacher wouldn’t care what her image was—what people thought of her (or so I imagined). But I was feeling so bothered because my self-image of being together and doing things right was challenged.

Seeing this started to bring me more of a sense of relief, inner space. I still noticed some superego activity as I went on to a bar & grill to have some dinner while waiting for the flight. Feeling sensitive and raw, seeing how many times I’d been reactive in the retreat and carried away by anger. But I noticed the table I was given by a window facing the sunshine was very nice, and the food was quite good, and I felt very fortunate to be in this amazingly quiet place in an international airport. Feeling some sense of the surroundings being safe and supportive helped me relax into my true nature, and the awareness of myself as an innocent and precious being. The reactivity dissolved completely and I enjoyed my meal.

Anger is a very potent doorway for learning for me. In this instance, seeing how it was working to maintain a self-image is what allowed the whole experience to shift from the almost unbearable heat and irritation to shame (which the anger was protecting me from feeling) to a sense of inner spaciousness and quiet enjoyment of my veggie burger.

P.S. The exploration I just described is an example of the practice of inquiry—the main practice of the Diamond Approach. Staying with our experience, being curious about it, and letting it unfold. The movement of the unfoldment, when we allow it to just happen, can go anywhere. In this instance, it went to spaciousness and a good burger.

Final post-script: Another perfect pedicure

I wrote previously about Conflict resolution and perfect pedicures, and I want to let you know how that story turned out. I recently went to the 10-day Diamond Approach summer retreat in California, and before flying south I returned to the spa where I had experienced the traumatic, injury-producing pedicure.

True to his word, the owner had spoken to his staff, and my new aesthetician, Grace, was very careful to make sure I was satisfied with the length of my toenails, asking me to check it was okay before proceeding to the polishing stage. She trimmed them to a nice, short length, rounded the way I like, with no arguments or lectures! Ah, how sweet. In the picture shown here, the sore on my left big toe is from dancing all night in silver sandals at the retreat. Now that’s the way to work a pedicure!

In another episode of conflict resolution, I took my cat Donald to the vet yesterday. He hadn’t eaten in three days, and had just been lying in his den (a cat carrier lined with a towel) without moving for 24 hours. So I brought him to the Blue Cross Pet Hospital, and the vet couldn’t find any external problems such as abscesses or infections, but suggested antibiotics in case of internal infection. He also suggested bloodwork for diagnostic purposes, and keeping Donald for a few hours to rehydrate him and observe him. I agreed to all of this, but when I came back to get Donald a few hours later, the bill was almost $600!

I asked to see the breakdown of the charges, paid the bill, and took Donald home. He ate a little, and though he was groggy from the sedative the vet had given him before taking the blood samples, he was clearly already improved. I looked at the printout of the bill again, and noticed there was a $95 charge for the sedative, plus $145 for a general anaesthetic. Given that Donald had responded to the antibiotics already, it seemed like the treatment and charges were a little over the top!

I felt a familiar sense of helplessness and being taken advantage of. One of the ways that I have habitually dealt with this type of feeling, which I have a hard time tolerating, is to get angry. This is one way of using the red energy of the south, and I will talk about this more next time. But yesterday, noticing how familiar this was (from some inner exploration I’d done recently at the retreat), I just didn’t want to go that route again. But how could I handle it differently?

Perhaps the earlier positive experience with conflict resolution at the day spa helped give me a clue, because what I did was call the pet hospital, and explained to the receptionist that Donald was doing much better and I had a concern about the bill and treatment being over the top. I spoke to her very quietly and calmly, and explained that since he’d responded so quickly to the short-term antibiotic, it seemed overkill that the vet had sedated him, given him an anaesthetic, taken blood samples, and given him a long-term antibiotic. It might have made more sense to give him the short-term antibiotic first and see how he responded. Also I wasn’t happy that the vet hadn’t discussed how much his proposed course of action would cost. The receptionist listened carefully and said she would ask Dr. Hartney to call me.

He did, a few minutes later, and apologized for charging me for both the sedative and the anaesthetic. He said this was a mistake, as the anaesthetic was just for a few minutes, and that they would deduct the $145 from my bill. He listened when I expressed my concerns about the treatment being overkill, and he explained his view of it: that while Donald was sedated he wanted to take the blood samples and give the long-term antibiotic, because there was no way of knowing what the problem was until after trying these things. No crystal ball… I felt satisfied by this rationale, because if it had been a serious problem it was better to know sooner than later. We ended the call on a good note, with discussing how to refund the $145 to me.

The next morning, the vet called me personally to let me know that the blood samples have gone astray, although the BCPH had actually bought the courier lunch to get him to come back and deliver the samples to the lab right away! Ah, life is a mysterious thing. All these little details and human and animal interactions, held within the larger container of nature and true nature. I appreciate being aware of the interconnectedness of all these things. This seems like the perfect, necessary resolution to my old patterned belief that I am alone in the world, which doesn’t care about me (at best) and is probably out to get me (at worst). And it is good to confirm that there are other ways of dealing with situations besides anger, although I am still a firm believer that anger is sometimes the most appropriate response to a situation. But more on that later!

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.

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.