Tag Archives: psychology

Feb13

A thought regarding chakras and behavior.

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A thought regarding chakras and behavior.

I’ve always been interested in the unseen; stuff that includes science, but that transcends it because even science and proving its truth has to come from something, like a gut feeling, an inner knowing, something that makes us stay curious and interested in the answer or result.

My mother was super smart, talented and clever; she also (like all of us) battled her demons. Sometimes she won, sometimes she lost. Her behavior though, even in the clear-headed days, was something that I now understand as being mostly in the “upper chakras” of 4th (love / boundaries), 5th (voice & truth), 6th (vision & sound: reality) and 7th (intuition). In her escapist behavior (her “demon” side), she also stayed there, but the behavior was focused on herself: what she loved, what she said and heard in *her* truth, what she felt intuitively. Because those concepts were run through an unhealthy filter, her behavior was unhealthy.

And so the loop continues.

As a yoga instructor and someone who likes to investigate sources of pain or observe confusions in myself or others, the chakras are crucial to how I perceive the world. But my knowledge is limited while my curiosity is constantly in bloom.

Recently, I had a biofield tuning session. (It’s woo-woo to some: energy blended with sound healing science but it has real effects on me.) In that session, I discussed some social interactions I’ve endured with people that have left me confused and exhausted. I explained that I’m so tired of this pattern of people and their behaviors repeating themselves in my life. That they’re so familiar to me — the energy reminds me of my interactions with my mother: going around and around in circles when all I’m trying to do is go from A to B to C. Without batting an eye, she said, “They’re in their upper chakras. There’s no grounding. They just want to exist in the fantasy that all is well and they don’t need the things — like health insurance and consistent income — that you and I and others see as reasonable and normal for a solid existence. The truth is too much for them; they’re not grounded. They want to have it come to them because they ‘wish it to.’ To be grounded means that you have accept and know who you are [1st chakra], what you’re responsible for having created in your life [2nd chakra], and the guts to do it or change it [3rd chakra] if it’s not working … if it’s not healthy or balanced.”

It was literally like a window had been opened and a fresh breeze of clean air had flowed into my lungs.

There’s nothing wrong with embracing love and intuition and vision and singing your song… but launching from solid ground and a knowing of your skills and limitations is the only way you’re going to make any sense. Remember: airplanes have wheels, birds have claws, and angels have feet for a reason.

The other risk — not nourishing or tolerating the upper chakras — is anger, confusion, and disappointment because we have to also acknowledge that we don’t know everything about ourselves [1st]; that there are things we have yet to create / we’re not DONE yet [2nd]; and that we must continue to change and do [3rd] in order to live well and balanced.

I often describe Mom as just being capable of landing one toe on the ground for most of her life. Now that she is with God, free and she is safe, I don’t have to worry about how hard she will crash when she would eventually come down. ❤

Mar6

Missives From the Mat 18: When Kids Don’t Like Yoga…

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Below is an actual letter I wrote to a supervisor of an after-school program.  All identifying content has been edited.

For reference, I have the kids bow and say “namaste” to one another for kindnesses AND interruptions; it helps to bring awareness to the habits and personal responsibility for behaviors and it also helps us not hold grudges; it helps us all see that we are connected and we can still be together even if we are disruptive.

This interrupting namaste practice is akin to “careful what you wish for” — in the words of Jerry Seinfeld during a Q&A after “I’m Telling You For The Last Time” who was interrupted by a shout from the crowd, what kind of attention do you want? … It went like this:

Voice: IT’S MY BIRTHDAY.
Jerry: Oh… Well, happy birthday… Which birthday is it?
Voice: I’m not saying.

Jerry: Oh, ok. So you want attention, but not too much attention.

The interrupting namaste bow draws attention and personal accountability to the interrupter in a way that the interrupter might not like. It’s having a positive effect for the most part.

However, if you as an adult JUST LOOOOOVE your yoga, it’s changed your life, and you think it’s what your kid needs, please pay attention to your child, please accept that your child is NOT you and if you still don’t get it, read this first:

“Dear Bipsy,

Disruption prevention initiatives at XYZ school are moving along, but we are at a point where parental intervention is necessary.

All of the children at LMNOP school yoga are wonderful and bright.

As you know, I’ve tried various interventions to bring a sense of personal responsibility and mindful behavior to all my classes, ABC school in particular with mixed results. The sniffing essential oils on the cotton puffs is very popular for most of the kids; they really enjoy it during final relaxation.

Before class at Saturn (Thursday) I went to a craft store to look for more Mandala posters to color. The kids have been working on a poster while we wait for our room to be ready, and it’s coming along. I also wanted to get something to incentivize Bandersnatch and Clementine to lessen their disruptions. I found a rubber hand stamp, a “Sun” for Bandersnatch — so that when she raises his hand (instead of blurting out, shoving students and shouting), the “sun will come up and shine on us all.”

When Bandersnatch walked into the cafeteria to check in, he was energized and defensive, and said in a sing-songy yet robotic way, “Hi. I don’t want to be here.” I suspect it was because she got so upset in the prior class for my mentioning his earning 14 “namaste” bows for interrupting. I showed him the sun stamp and told it I selected it for him, especially. I showed her the other stamps the other kiddos could have — cat, dog, paw, or bee — for their hands. Bandersnatch seemed genuinely enthused about it. She *briefly* joined in the coloring, got interested in something else, and then it was time to line up.

He dashed ahead of everyone and then marched into the room, resuming her defensiveness from 5 minutes prior, and grew agitated and excited chanting “I don’t want to be here… I don’t want to be here… I don’t want to be here…” with increasing intensity again and again and again as she was unrolling her mat. Other kids started to join in. It almost became a mob cry. One time, Bandersnatch hit me in the face with his paw as she was flapping the mat around saying what she was saying; then she RAN to another child’s mat to “help” it with its mat, even though Bandersnatch was not asked.

I get it. She was acting out. But it was verging on dangerous for the other kids and unacceptable in terms of decorum.

I had to stop Bandersnatch, placing my hands on her shoulders and asked him to look at me. “What do you do when you hit someone in the face?”

Bandersnatch said, “Say you’re sorry.”

I said, “Bandersnatch, you hit me in the face when you were flapping your mat around…”

Bandersnatch said, “Sorry.”

I said, “Just like thanking someone for what they’ve done for you, you need to apologize for what you did to someone else; you say, ‘I’m sorry I hit you in the face, it was an accident,’” and so he nodded but didn’t say that and went back to buzzing around like a dragonfly.

I had to look for my chimes, which were a bit hard to find because it all happened so fast, and loudly rang them five times. When Bandersnatch became quiet and we were in circle, she said “I want my mother.” I think he was really afraid of what would happen in class again; that I would count all his interrupting namaste bows like I did last week (when he got to 14) and that upset him. But I promised myself I wouldn’t let that happen again. But Bandersnatch does not like being held accountable.

It’s my impression that Bandersnatch seems to REALLY not like the idea of yoga. Sitting still for him is antithetical to who she is, at this point in his development. But I also get that kids are kids, so I do lots of moving around, but when we do that, she gets very animated and ends up losing his balance / sense of space and her body, intentionally as in “isn’t this fun, let’s fall down! watch me fall down!” way and it’s not good. Her friend Minerva is in the yoga class too, and Minerva is disturbed by Bandersnatch’s disruptions.

Bandersnatch told me his parent meditates and that he wants to meditate too, but his parent says she needs to learn yoga first before meditating. Just so you know, no, that’s not necessary. It’s Bandersnatch’s parent’s preference and likely a learned appreciation based on the fact that yoga was invented as exercise before sitting in meditation … 3,000 years ago. But no, you don’t need yoga to meditate. Some kids just know, and they crave sitting in the quiet.

With the sun stamp, which he was proud of when I placed it on her hand, Bandersnatch was very self-aware and raised its hand. I would smile and high-five him for raising her hand.

Bandersnatch’s “interrupting namaste” score has usually been in the low teens; this particular day, it was at 8, so it’s getting better. It stayed at 4, for about 20 minutes, and then Bandersnatch went a little loopy and blew it… It’s ok, the count stayed at 8 and beat last week’s count by 6, so that’s good.

Clementine is very active and Bandersnatch doesn’t like how she’s very twitchy and makes sounds, regularly gets off his mat, rolls it up, does somersaults when no one else is, and touches / bumps kids and doesn’t pay attention and doesn’t hold poses and simply checks out, so I decided to move Clementine next to Bandersnatch so they can sort of “train” each other. They are mirrors of each other. It sort of works, and so I’ll keep at it. Clementine is sitting next to Percival also, who is very rules oriented, so it’s a peer pressure type of energy.

Clementine’s reaction to the namaste interruption count is laughter. It’s anxiety and I get it. She’s a sweet, optimistic and cheerful child; he wants to have positive social experiences. That said, she makes lots of noises: buzzes, tweets, squeaks, he rocks, he just *won’t* do the poses. He racked up 14 “namastes” on Thursday. During savasana, she made seagull noises (I was doing a visual meditation — they were on a beach) and it scared Teensy, the kindergartener. Then Clementine put her feet in Bandersnatch’s face, so I made him sit up against the wall cross-legged. He’s very compliant, she wants to please, but she’s very animated. Just can’t figure it out.

So the disruption count on Thursday, for a 50-minute class, was 22. Twenty-two times that the behavior was so disruptive that I decided I had to stop what I was doing, lose my train of thought, and had to correct them; 22 times that 6 other kids had to endure.

I apologize for the length of this, but I wanted to give you detail and ask you to step in and communicate on my behalf with Clementine’s and Bandersnatch’s parents to encourage them to sit down with their children, talk to them, and explain to them that their behavior in yoga is unacceptable and that it has to stop. I will text Voldemort the next time it happens and I will ask her to remove the kids; it’s not fair to everyone else.

Thanks for your help,

Molly”

Dear reader: If this letter has helped you see that maybe your child isn’t into yoga yet, your kid, its friends, and a children’s yoga teacher somewhere is thanking you.

Thank you.

Mar3

My Take On Drumpf

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I should be paid millions for what I’m about to explain.

Donald Drumpf is excelling at the polls and at the caucuses and at the debates and at the strip malls because of some very basic things:

He mostly speaks in monosyllabics. His words are not big ones.

He speaks loudly.

He doesn’t answer questions directly, instead, he says something else about something else.

He uses lots of the same words, often empirical, again and again.

He mostly speaks in simple terms: black & white, no nuance.

He makes fun of anyone who disagrees with him. His ridicule is often biting, sophomoric and redundant. He’s like that guy who watches you trip and then points and laughs. And then tells everyone else about it, while still pointing and laughing at you.

He says the kinds of things that one expects to hear at a local bar, while the little wife is at home.

He says the kinds of things that mirror what people are feeling.

He says the kinds of things that people who admire him can relate to.

He often affirms the fear and the rage and the sense of vengeance of middle-class white Americans who’ve lost their sons and daughters to war.

He often affirms the disenfranchisement of skilled laborers who’ve lost their jobs in America to companies or other laborers, often located overseas or “given” to “illegal” workers — not because they stole jobs, but because they are undocumented aliens from other nations.

His comments about the disabled, women, minorities (which is really funny because, well, what was once considered a minority race, i.e., Latinos, or Asians, are now in the popular majority) and other “fringe” outliers are considered privately in alignment with many of the Americans who admire him.

All of these Drumpfisms are very id-oriented. They feel familiar, because we all want to yell about things every once in a while. The id is our earliest psychological state: it’s from our id that we cried as babies when we wanted to be fed. It’s from our id that we cried when we wanted to be held. It’s from our id that we cried when we wanted to be changed. It’s from our id that we cried when we were startled.

The id is what keeps us alive; it’s where the heart of fear lives.

There are always two voices sounding in our ears: the voice of fear and the voice of confidence.
One is the clamor of the senses,
the other is the whispering of the higher self.

Charles B. Newcomb

It’s not anger that Drumpf represents. It’s fear. Fear of abandonment. Fear of famine. Fear of invisibility. Fear of irrelevance. So, in this dynamic, Drumpf is ideal: he mirrors the irrationality and fear of the masses who adore him, and they continue to adore him and tell their friends.

The id is no place to live. You can’t live in fear. Sure, your heart will continue to beat, but you will be miserable. Drumpf has no fears… well, none he will truly reveal.

The GOP establishment, i.e., The Elite, does itself no favors by pooping on Drumpf. The media does itself, nor HRC or Bernie Sanders any favors by pooping on Drumpf.

Why? Because most people who like Drumpf already hate or feel abandoned by the GOP establishment, the media, HRC and Bernie.

So when they poop on him, the supportive Drumpf people will be validated in their sense of isolation and abandonment. The media and its graphs and movies. The GOP Elite with its big words and tax codes and plans.

Where’s my blankie?

Americans who support Drumpf will NEVER support Sanders: as far as they’re concerned, Bernie wants to give everything away, even their daughters, and especially their money.

Americans who support Drumpf will NEVER support HRC: as far as they’re concerned HRC represents Obama, who they clearly hate and who they blame for their job losses and dead service member children (and/or siblings, spouses, friends, neighbors, relations).

Americans who support Drumpf think he’s going to save the day. They think he will be their “Daddy” as a good friend of mine put it; they think he’s going to sit on their veritable front porches, reading a leathered Hustler from the 70s, rocking under the bare bulb with a loaded shotgun resting across his lap.

Americans who support Drumpf expect him to be there, holding the door open when they come home from a date and not sniffing their breath or checking their eyes.

Because he won’t. Drumpf won’t do that to the Americans who support him.

Why?

Because Drumpf doesn’t care about Americans who support him. He just wants to win. Winning is all there is to him. He is a man obsessed with earning peoples’ favor, no matter how it’s acquired. He’s worried about what people think of the size of his hands.

So keep it up GOP Elite. Keep pooping on him and watch the numbers go up. Keep sending in Paul Ryan to continue to say absolutely nothing of substance about Drumpf’s posturing on anything. Continue being unspecific regarding Drumpf’s latent disavowal of the KKK and David Duke.

Paul Ryan handled that almost as evasively as Drumpf did. He was nice and obtuse. He was nice and unspecific. That was manly. Thanks, Mr. Ryan.

And now we have Mitt Romney stepping in with his perfect graying temples, megawatt smile, billionaire tan, Superman jawline, and exquisitely crinkled crow’s feet being specific and proper and starched collared and denouncing Drumpf, whose numbers will ascend like a helium balloon.

Face it, U.S. Republican Party: you’ve done this to yourselves. You’ve disconnected with any remaining centrist, moderate, reasonable members of your electorate who simply want you to balance the budget, mind your own business and get shit done. Instead, you’ve let people like Ted Cruz read Green Eggs & Ham on the floor of the senate (apologies to the late Dr. Seuss). You’ve not reprimanded Marco Rubio for his pathetic voting and attendance record. You’ve let Paul Ryan be beige and you’ve lost your way. Would you like some crumbs to leave on the path back to Grandma Pelosi’s house next time? Because no one will eat crumbs…

I don’t normally get into politics on my blog, but I need to start writing again and Drumpf is as good a nightmare as any to bite into and launch off. It’s a high-level, unsophisticated, unresearched and unverified post likely full of lots of generalizations which to me, boil down simply as: common sense.

Thank you.

Jan9

It’s Not About the Body, Oprah

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Dear Oprah,

I want to york.

I think I’m late to the session.

I just saw a Weight Watchers ad where you made some random, unsolicited confession that you’re not looking to get into a pair of jeans or you don’t have a red-carpet dress to fit into. You lost me at “honey chil’.”

You blathered on about how ‘you’ve been there,’ and how it’s important to “do this together.”

And that you want to “make 2016 the year of your best body.”

I’m so done with you.

You’re so lost. And people look

Up

To

You. 

It’s about accepting the body you’re in. It’s about the spirit. It’s about starting from there … But this approach — making it all about the body, is really what is going to keep people failing and coming back and making you richer. If you examine the root of all these issues, and keep the needle on the health & spirit instead of the body, then people would get better and likely stay that way… but now that you’re a Weight Watchers stakeholder… maybe that’s not so lucrative. Keep the people coming back. Again and again… right? Because nothing says healthy liver and kidney and thoracic system like yo-yo dieting and depression from not achieving.

The reason why you are still dealing with a weight issue is because you’ve made this all about the physical.

Since forever, you’ve made your weight ‘situation’ all about the exterior.

You’ve completely missed the point.

You’re setting the wrong stage.

Just like that time you were wearing your new jeans and you hauled a red wagon full of red meat on to stage, you’re still sending the message that the body is what matters most.

You don’t even talk about it being a “temple.”

Where are the affirmations? Where?!

By the way, what does “Join for free — Purchase Required” mean?

Gah. It all makes me want to scream.

Dearest darling, confused, frustrated, distracted and wanting everyone-to-love-you Oprah:

It’s not about the body. It’s about the health. It’s about the spirit. 

If you believe half the things you spew, the body dies, the spirit lives on. It’s about what’s inside… How many times have you preached that?! 

It’s not about the hips, it’s about the heart.

It’s not about the belly, it’s about the insulin.

It’s not about the bust line, it’s about the pulmonary system.

It’s not about “the points,” it’s about the diastolic and systolic readings.

It’s not about the body, it’s about the life.

Because you talk about “Super Soul Sunday”… I’ll stick with the invisible: the blood pressure, the stress reduction, the diabetes, the insomnia, the heart palpitations, the kidneys, the fears, the inadequacy, the bullying, the abuse, the anxiety, and more which  manifests as our stuffing food / clothes / drugs / booze / risk — whatever the hook — which slowly kills the soul. I think you know what I’m talking about.

When you address the health, when you start talking about drinking more water and eating –anything!– with awareness, and putting your hand over your heart to honor its work, and practicing gratitude, and looking for lessons in life, and transforming stumbling blocks into stepping stones, the health will happen.

It’s NOT ABOUT THE BODY.

When will you wake up and realize that this has teens and mothers and men starving themselves –and dying– for a perfect “body”?

When will you use your powers for good and not to cater to one of the seven deadly sins?

If all we are after is steeped in vanity, we will never succeed.

YOU, of all people, should get that — with the brain trust of philosophical and self-help and spirituality avatars and personalities you have on speed dial — Eckhart Tolle, Deepak Chopra, Pema Chodron, Bréne Brown… these people have spouted consistently that it’s not on the outside what matters but what’s on the inside, that the body is a shell, a container of the soul… and here you go, talking about The Best Body.

I gave up watching you years before you stopped your show. I saw through it all and I couldn’t take it anymore.

Now that you own 10% of Weight Watchers, the jig is up. The stock jumped when you announced your purchase, but it has since dropped 24% — it’s now lower than it was almost a month before you bought. Its price jumped like a yoyo. Similar to the numbers on a scale of someone who isn’t clear or is confused about the reason and the goal of anything worth doing, including weight loss, the direction is lost.

If you want to know how to run this campaign, ask a child of a parent who’s struggling with health.

If you had kids, you’d know: all they care about is having a healthy and present parent. The kids don’t care if Mom looks like a runway model (and a lot of them are super unhealthy) or Jack Sprat’s wife (what was her name?). Kids just want a healthy parent. They want Dad to play catch or to give piggy-back rides. That health is far-reaching: emotional, mental, spiritual, physical — once that is addressed, things will start to dovetail.

It’s not about the body. It never was. It’s always been about the health. Don’t lose sight of that. Stay focused. It’s not about the body. Never was. That’s why people still struggle. It’s about the spirit. 

Thank you.