Tag Archives: yoga teacher training

Jul22

Missives from the Mat #12 — Trapped and Released

Posted on July 22, 2014 by Grass Oil by Molly Field

Who knows why anyone does anything.

I chose to pursue yoga because I knew that I needed centering, healing and quiet.

I was a recent first-time mother, my world was turned upside-down and I had an anger simmering in me that I didn’t understand.

I knew my anger had nothing to do with the baby, but I did feel trapped, as though becoming a mother had sealed the deal: I was en route to becoming my mother, with whom I did not much agree about anything. The only thing I knew how to do was to be Not Her. I did not know mySelf.

Suddenly I had these visions of her visiting endlessly –the proposition of which was absolutely terrifying– and never leaving. Mom would corner priests at the end of Mass; she would close down restaurants. She never said “good bye.” I remember witnessing my parents’ lengthy chats by the car in the driveway when my father would Just Try to Leave for Work. My fears and visions evolved into nightmares and then full-blown panic that I’d never be able to escape her. By giving birth to my son, I’d given Mom a lifetime pass to my … life.

It was all totally irrational. It was all in my imagination. Until it started to happen.

Mom stayed with my first son for several hours a day for nine months after I went back to work as a corporate communications manager for a major telecommunications company. At work, I had it all: stimulating conversations, deadlines, feedback, actual objectives which were attainable and measurable and money. At home, I had none of that, or so I felt. Looking back on all this, now 16 years later, I can see that I had all the measurable outcomes and objectives and goals I needed — they just weren’t mine to attain; they were my sons’. My own personal growth at the hands of my beautiful boys is priceless. No therapist could ever come close to helping me see where I needed to change.

So when I’d heard from my mother that my son was beginning his first steps and that I’d not be there to see it, I had to make a choice: miss out or miss out. I chose to miss out. I chose to stay home.

The morning I decided to leave my job; I had just printed my resignation. This is my beautiful son when he was about a year old.

The morning I decided to leave my job; I had just printed and signed my resignation letter. This is my beautiful son when he was about a year old.

So I quit work. That job… yikes. It was amazing. But I had other things to do; I had to quit my old world to light up my new world.

But I was a mess still and I had to get out. “You have anger problems,” I remember my mother smirking at me in a smirky voice, as though my unexpressed, repressed rage and anger was all about me and not at all about her and her years of addiction, parentalizing and manipulation of me, upside-down mentality, and hocus-pocus “that’s not what happened” revisionist history.

Full disclosure: I am a peacekeeper by training. Still trying to win her graces, I didn’t want to upset my mother. She offered to stay with him that first year when she learned that I was interviewing daycare providers, “I’ll not have my grandson stay in one of those baby bins…” she would hiss. (I didn’t notice at the time, but I think I was being judged.) So we made a deal: she would clean up. No more drinking and no more pills and she could stay with him. But she had a price, I had to pay her. Every day she would take a cab to my house and be his onsite Mimi. Nine months later, when I left my job, she told me her world fell apart. That I had “taken away [her] reason for being.” The guilt of it all: to quit my amazing job, to stay home with my son, to lose mySelf in his mothering and lose mySelf in diaper duty, having no one to speak to but a toddler for hours on end was all a bit too much. This was supposed to be a happy time: MOTHERHOOD! But I had anger issues, right? Who would teach him Shakespeare? She asked. What about how he likes his lunch? She continued to visit daily, but I couldn’t pick her up, I was exhausted. But because I couldn’t pay her way over, or much of anything after I stopped working — we gave up half our income — the visits atrophied. She did teach him his first sentence, “Puck bit Mimi” after my father’s corgi, Puck, bit my mother rendering a dozen stitches in her right hand … much to the chagrin of our relatives and my mother’s friends, my father kept Puck. I could write vast tomes on my mother’s relationships with my father’s dogs.

So I took up yoga at a local rec center on Sunday mornings. I’ve never been very churchy. This was a perfect compromise. It was the conscious breath with movement that was a nice departure, but the ~~nap~~ svasana at the end which hooked me. I remember thinking to myself, “And we get to take a nap too??” when each class was over.

I’m not an athlete, but I am athletic. I’m not a super-still person, but I can meditate. Get someone to tell me what to do and I’ll do my best to make it happen, so it was that people pleaser in me that helped yoga become a successful element in my life.

It was yoga’s subtle push to open my mind to my inner Self and see what’s inside it (rather than what’s outside it) which ultimately made me stay.

If You Go Looking for Crazy …

Anyone can flap their arms and kick up dust when crazy is going on all around. If you go looking for crazy, you will find the crazy. There’s never a shortage of crazy. So… why not try to be the stillness? Why not contribute to the silence?

After a few months of yoga, I realized that how I felt about / related to / fit in with the outside world was a direct mirror of how I was dealing with my inside world.

I’m reminded of those spin-art cards created at carnivals and festivals: you drop colors of paint on a card and then someone sets the card on a turntable which spins. The centrifugal force sends the gobs of paint to radiate from the center and then you have your art.

Instead of being like the spin art, when our inner world starts to leak through to our outer world, I’ve learned that I need to go inward, go inside, and settle down and figure out how to deal with myself instead of oozing on to everyone else. That’s what yoga does for me: it keeps me from oozing on to the people I exist with. Yoga keeps me from being like spin art (which is always left behind at the carnival anyway).

Yoga’s near-compulsory / encouraged mindfulness has taught me to keep mySelf in mind in all of my reactivity. Do I still react? Yes. It just takes longer to happen now and is over much sooner. Also, my apologies are more freely offered. I’m also a much better listener. Not perfect! But better. I also have gained the freedom to be OK with making a mistake or to draw back on a boundary if I’ve spoken too soon. It’s OK to change our minds.

No Longer a Baggage Handler.

Yoga also gives me a more open mind which helps me allow people their baggage if I get static from them. I don’t have to take their baggage either — that’s another benefit of yoga. What’s on my mat is mine and what’s on your mat is yours.

I used to get terribly enmeshed with people. Now, I just smile and nod.

Some people come to yoga because they want better abs. Some people come to yoga because they need to stretch after sitting in a desk all day. Some people come to yoga because it’s cool. Some people come to yoga because they don’t know why, they just know it works.

I teach yoga because it has changed my life.

It’s been quite a year for me. A year ago, I had just written the check to attend a 16-day yoga teacher training retreat which beautifully humbled me. Three weeks after that, my mother suddenly died and the next day, school started for my kids. Three weeks after that, I pushed through to complete my RYT-200 written exam as my birthday gift to myself. Then on a snow day from school, I wrapped up the final stages of my yoga certification. Three weeks after that, I was teaching yoga in this beautiful room:

nice huh? it's a 40'x40' space surrounded by woods. all you hear when it's silent is the ticking of the wall clock, the chirping birds and children at the nearby pool in summer. i can't imagine myself teaching anywhere else.

nice huh? it’s a 40’x40′ space surrounded by trees. all you hear when it’s silent is the ticking of the wall clock, the chirping birds and children at the nearby pool in summer. i can’t imagine myself teaching anywhere else. at night, when the evening class ends and it’s dark outside, you hear the peep toads and crickets. in the winter as the snow falls outside…it’s like a dreamland.

The first time I stepped into that room to take yoga from my own teacher several years ago, I remember saying to myself, “What a gorgeous space. I would love to teach yoga in this room.”

Yogi Bhajan, the man who taught my yoga teachers Kundalini yoga has a saying, “Start and the pressure will be off.” That’s basically how my teaching started: I was trapped.

My first adult class came on the heels of serendipitous and universe-at-work, power of attraction, power of intention woo-woo: I set the intention, I got the room. I got the students. They came with the deal. They have stayed and re-upped and brought friends. It’s all a little too magical to believe, so I just accept it. I don’t try to figure it out.

Practicing Vs. Teaching — Oy.

Teaching yoga is quite different from taking yoga.

When you join a class, you go, you practice and you can leave. When you teach, you teach, you demonstrate and you don’t leave until the last person leaves. I get to lock up the beautiful space.

Last month, I wrapped up an eight-week session teaching children for pay and this coming Monday will mark the end of my first 12-week two-class session of being an actual paid yoga instructor to adults. I pinch myself from time to time. The earnings are very modest, but it lets me take the kids to Starbucks or pay for haircuts, or low-grade car maintenance.

Kids are honest, funny, physically adventuresome, openly competitive and curious. It was a blast to teach them; they were game for anything. The hardest thing I had to do with them was rein them in. Adults are not always like kids: they don’t tell you when it hurts, they keep their expressions to themselves and so it’s largely a mystery how things are going unless they offer a comment. I have learned to accept that if they keep coming back it’s because they like it. I can’t go looking to them for my happiness or fulfillment as that would be completely unhealthy; so I need to grow-up and see the data for what it is: proof.

Part of the Work of teaching yoga is practicing care for our students while also practicing detachment. All of my teachers have privately spoken to me about the varying personalities in a yoga class. I remember myself when I started: I was a super-pissed people pleaser. Somehow it worked out.

For Students: Respect the Space.

I encourage my students to be self-aware too.

The yoga room is a sacred space. When joining a yoga class — whether it be the first time or the 1,000th time — it’s crucial for the success of your own practice as well as your classmates’ that you leave your “day” at the door or at least with your shoes. Why? Because not everyone just got engaged. Not everyone just got fired. Not everyone just lost a friend or dropped the roasted chicken on the floor (guilty as charged). It’s because not everyone lives the same life. I try to do my best to allow everyone’s humanity while at the same time protecting everyone from everyone’s humanity… it’s a delicate balance.

I love that the students mostly know one another — after all, I was the new kid. They were already assembled, I took over the classes. That said, whether the students are adults, children or families: we are there to practice yoga, not share and have coffee — that can happen after or before class. I respect my students enough to begin and end on time, which I think is a rational expectation; everyone pays the same price to be in the room for the same amount of time.

no matter where you practice, at the end of it all it’s just you, your mat and your strap.

The thing is — while these 90 minutes are all we have, everyone’s 2′ x 6′ rubber rectangle mat is all anyone needs to come to terms with themselves. They don’t need me to do it for them, in fact I can’t do it FOR them. They might need me to keep them in alignment, to help them not hurt themselves, to inspire or encourage them to go to their edge, but in the final analysis: it’s all them. I’m just there to hold the door open. They are the ones who step over the threshold.

Get Lost to Find YourSelf.

Many people look to find friends or a Teacher (not just of yoga) at a yoga class or session. That’s not what this is about.

Some of these yoga teachers out there are like rock stars to their ~~students~~ followers. I do not have that ambition. I’m not there to want you to love me. I’m not there to get you to trust me — either you do or you don’t. I’m not there to get you to hold that adho mukha svanasana (downward facing dog) for three minutes. It might be a goal, but it’s about YOU being willing to Listen to YOU and not try to impress anyone. ‘Get lost and find yourself,’ I say to myself when I get on my mat. That mat above is my fourth mat. I’m still looking, apparently.

When I first started this teaching gig, 14 weeks ago, I wanted to be liked. I’ll totally admit that. I also wanted to be The Best Teacher Ever and reinvent yoga and create lasting memories in peoples’ lives about how amazing and revolutionary my yoga classes are… now that I’ve exhausted myself trying to live to that standard, and have realized that people just want to be guided in movement, stretched out and relaxed, I have given myself the gift of my own perspective and have released myself from the crazy expectations I placed on myself. Why? Because I never expected that from ANY of my teachers. I just wanted them to tell me how to move.

Practicing yoga is truly about you giving yourself and your mat the time of day. It’s about you trapping whatever you are dealing with on that mat and then working through it so that you can release it and come off the mat that much kinder to yourSelf.

The best gift I can give people is a moment to help them to find themSelves.

Thank you.

Nov21

Missives from the Mat #8? — Wahe Guru #yoga #serendipity #providence

Posted on November 21, 2013 by Grass Oil by Molly Field

Standard

My mother had a favorite word, “providential.”

She used to say it all the time about how things lined themselves up in certain ways to allow for things to happen. She had an ~~annoying~~ amazing ability to not judge things; part of that vexed me because that made for slippery accountability and empathy.

“It’s providential, Mally, really, how this has worked out. God has shown you how things happen. I can’t explain your past, our relationship and our difficulties any other way than by saying it’s divine providence. One day you will see,” she would sigh into the phone during one of our many heated debates about our choices in life.

I used to get mad at her when she’d say this stuff. I considered it an excuse for the choices she made in her lifestyle, and she would say as much by stating, “Guilt is pointless. I live the way I’m destined.” I still have little patience for those kinds of things; I know we all have challenges, but we must take part in our lives to effect change. Asking for help is one thing; doing nothing with the help is another. She would at times fiercely defend her position, heels dug in and teeth gritted, “These are the cards I was dealt.”

It was hard at times. I saw little sense in any of it. I have been largely a logician most of my life even though I suck at math.

Because I am my own person, I didn’t realize the irony in what my favorite word, “dovetailing,” has shown: it’s a synonym for providential… For years I have used “dovetailing” to describe how everything aligns in our lives — neither “good” nor “bad” as it makes way for something else.

So much of the living we do is unconscious. I thought I was thinking separately than she. I thought I was the maverick in my observations. “Providential” seemed so archaic, so Mom. I used to argue with her, saying it was a cop-out; that bending to what we consider our fate was a mistake. I just wanted her to be well.

Once I woke up to the fact that dovetailing means the same as providential, it was too late, she was gone. It’s a yucky feeling, when it’s too late.

I see it now though, how even that: her being gone, is part of a plan, not just for me though. But as far as I’m concerned (because I really can only speak to any of this from my perspective), everything that lined itself up exquisitely before she died was also part of The Plan.

We think we are powerless.

We think we are victims.

When struggles arise we hunker in our teapots and we shake our curled fists at God, at the Universe in desperation wondering, “When will it change?! Give me a sign!”

And the signs are all around us. Always have been. Never weren’t there.

We miss so many opportunities to see that not only does the world spin madly on, but it spins on with signs.

What’s this have to do with yoga? And my retreat? I’ll tell you. Keeping things chronologically in order would require that I go back to before my birth, but I’ll try to start with this summer.

It’s impossible to do this justice in a humane word count for a blog post and some of you might already know this story, but I’ll do my best to flavor it and keep it tight.

No promises. (wince.)

I’ll start in the spring when I started therapy again because of family discord which rattled some very rusty chains in my psyche which induced very inappropriately placed guilt on to me.

High level:

doing that therapy allowed me to admit some truths about myself, which in turn
created a space where I could reach out and share my talents and gifts (in this case: yoga) with a demographic of people who might’ve never had an opportunity to experience yoga, which then
created a dynamic with a person who wanted to underwrite more of my yoga training, which
spawned research into yoga training classes, which
turned up the 16-day yoga teacher training retreat that I ultimately went on, which
generated such an amazing amount of emotional upheaval, honesty, humility, allowance, forgiveness and love that when I came home I was able to be the forgiveness I had sought for my mother, which I profoundly experienced on the retreat

Scant 23 days later, my mother went to God.

There are other dovetailing / providential incidents :

writing the self-imposed 30 Days of Jung challenge that I created for myself, which
required that I get out of my own way and out of my own head to write about Jung’s quotes with Truth (with a capital T).
During that series, I went on vacation to my childhood beaches this summer where it rained so much that our property was surrounded by a moat.
Usually Mom would go on that trip too to her house, but she couldn’t this year as she and Dad were sick with bronchitis,
Because Mom wasn’t there, I spent more time than usual with my favorite aunt and my cousin and her family which then opened up into a beach trip in North Carolina right after the retreat.
After the rainy vacation, I called Mom and we talked about how awful the weather was.
Mom got me in touch with another cousin whom I’ve always adored, but I hadn’t seen in years who possibly knew of a rental property for next year.
That cousin and I talked a LOT on that initial call about all sorts of family history.
Then I had my parents over for their 51st wedding anniversary; Mom stayed in her chair, Dad ate on the deck with us: it was no more pretending, she wanted what she wanted that night. We gave it to her with nary a protest. I walked her to her seat in the car, buckled her in and kissed her on the cheek — the last time ever for her life — and told her “I love you” as I looked into her ancient, graying eyes. She gave her squinchy nose grin back and they drove away.
The next weekend, my yoga teacher training began and I was mostly out of pocket. We had very little wifi and I’d have to borrow a phone to connect if needed. I was apprehensive on that retreat. Things were going on with my parents that were challenging for them and I was fearful I would be called home for an emergency.
Three days after the retreat ended, I went on the NC trip.
After NC, I talked to Mom more. We had really nice calls those days. I told her about the retreat but she was more interested in hearing about my cousin and her kids and that trip to NC. People she knew interested her way more than people she’d likely never meet.

Sixteen days later: Mom died. Who did we stay with in Buffalo? That NC cousin. Would I have stayed there without the beach trip? Likely, but the “lubrication” of us all being together just two weeks beforehand definitely made the request a no-brainer. Who has been another fierce resource for me, checking in with me? Reading my posts and calling me since Mom died? The other cousin. The one who I connected with after the rainy vacation on Mom’s advice.

Mom loved family. “Family’s all ya got, kid,” she would say in an odd mixture of WC Fields and Truman Capote. It was with her family, her cousins and others that she felt free to be exactly who she was: ethereal and energetically rootless, as frustrating as that was for me.

You see… this was all providential. As are all the events that happen in your life. Everything you experience: be it a job loss or a love loss or a lottery win or a scholarship — all of these things are lined up. We just have to be ready to see them. Even with the good times we might feel undeserving. If we only ask “Why Me?” during the “bad” times, we miss out on asking “Why Me?” during the “good” times too.

On the retreat we learned that “Wahe guru!” is something akin to “thank you — for all of it!” a sense of welcoming, a surrender to what is and gratitude for all of what is, even the so-called “bad” times.

During that retreat I had many moments of release, but they all culminated in the Wahe guru! moment of my entire life. We were accustomed to waking at 5:15 for 6:00 sadhana (“spiritual practice”), but this one time, a Friday morning, we woke at 4:00 for 4:30am sadhana. This time is known as the amrit vela (“ambrosial hour”) — a time when the earth’s angle to the sun is magical and mystical and when creativity and invention peak:

The mother, and queen, of all sadhanas is morning sadhana. Morning sadhana is done in the 2 ½ hours before the rise of the sun. Wisdom traditions of all types have discovered the special qualities of this early time of the morning, these ambrosial hours, in which we can determine our reality and separate ourselves from fantasies, illusions, and even delusions, the denizens of our subconscious. —spiritvoyage.com

At 4:20am it is pitch black, midnight blue dark. In the Blue Ridge Mountains, it’s even darker yet the stars in all their glory and magnificence shine and twinkle and sparkle. In the east, I could see a perfect crescent moon hanging and glowing as if just for me.

Leaning over the side of the deck, to position myself beyond the hang of the covered porch’s roof so I could get a better look at the stars, I began to breathe so deeply, as if guided to do so; as if some cosmic force was impelling me to go further, leave the deck, go on the grass, look up some more, don’t stop, keep looking, spin and look up and drink it all in.

I stepped down off the cold wooden steps, sun worn, cracked, faded. Their rough surface snags my socks, almost pulled one right off!

It was SO dark, but it didn’t matter. I was in a zone. My foot forcefully landed on the gravel, its points digging into my sole. I broke one of my own rules: “no socks on the dirt,” so I could get a better look, see more, keep going… I wanted to hiss, “I’m coming as fast as I can! Hold your horses!” to whatever was calling me out to the space, an oblong spot of grass, about 50′ long behind the house where my views of everything, the moon, the stars, huge clusters of cosmic somethings, galaxies? were completely clear.

I was overwhelmed by my smallness and oddly grateful for it too. I rejoiced, teary-eyed, wet feet, quietly in the chilly valley’s darkness; I felt as though I was one with it all, just far away is all. Chills ran along my body, wrapped in my bed spread for it was barely 50˚ most mornings.

In correspondence we’ve shared about my grief since Mom died, I wrote to my yoga teacher about the moment,

When I am terribly low, I go back to that moment under the stars on the early morning sadhana and how when I awoke, I looked up to the sky and ran down in my stockinged feet and walked on the dewy grass to do nothing but to throw up my arms, to look at that glorious and perfect crescent moon and uncontrollably and silently and humbly weep tears of gratitude as I verbally thanked God, my father, my mother, Jesus and all my woes, challenges, admissions, truths and triumphs for bringing me to that moment. It was my eternal and fixed yet infinite “wahe guru” moment. I was forever changed that morning.

I thought I’d never thank my mother for the life she created that I had to endure. I thought I’d never thank my father either. I understood at that moment that it wasn’t all bad with her, “bad” is the wrong word, but it wasn’t all negative; although like that little poem about the girl with the curl in the center of her forehead, when it was bad, it was awful.

But those tears not only reminded me but they crystallized me. She shaped me. Our souls were graced with one another for a reason; I have no doubt about that now.

So that’s when those moments work: when we can see them all lined up in a row as if they were dominoes ready to tumble. Sometimes they usher unpleasant events, sometimes they usher seemingly regular events until you line them up and look at the stream and see how perfect the cosmic math is — they are all connected.

That morning, I saw one of the most amazing dawns:

My life changed forever that morning to prepare me. I had an odd sensation, I knew at that moment, that Mom likely wouldn’t be here for Thanksgiving. I can’t explain it but I’ve mentioned it here before. A pit in my stomach lurched each time I thought of her, not in an unpleasant way, but in a conscious way.

That lurching stomach pit told me my days of expectations and hopes and wishes for her life to suddenly change (on earth) had melted away, but I was OK with it. I was at peace knowing that I had no control over anything but my own disposition. Complaining about anything now seems ridiculous. I know that sounds so glib as I type this from my home with my husband at his job and my children with their health and our lives the way they are — at this moment — but that’s the truth. Complaints do nothing but keep us stuck.

Wahe guru means thank you. At least that’s the way I learned it. Thanksgiving is coming up. I suspect there will be many tender moments in my home as we celebrate something, all four of us now, together again, without Mom. Wahe guru for all of it: the easy and the difficult; the pain and the comfort; the sad and the happy; the high and the low; the abundance and the scarcity; the resolved and the anxious; the rage and the joy. It’s what makes us who we are.

I believe there is a string that ties us all together, that makes sense of all our experiences once we get out of our own way and shows us who we are meant to be.

Thank you.