While I'm on the topic of spiritual self-exposition, I might as well talk about my rotten weekend. I had plans on Saturday to go hang out with a friend who was in town, but I went to bed in tears late Friday night, slept restlessly, and then awoke for good at about 6:30, again in tears. I didn't think it was really fair to burden her with my sour mood. So, lonely though I have been, I called to cancel. I took the day off and hermited myself away.
Several years ago, when I was researching the poems in my graduate school manuscript, I found myself plucking piecemeal through Stephen Cope's book, Yoga and the Quest for the True Self. A good chunk of the poems in the manuscript use yogic philosophy to sort through some issues of sexual identity about which I was thinking as I was debating about whether to leave Michelle, my amazing ex-girlfriend who loved me a lot. Surprise! I was feeling all too aware of my raging cock-lust and I was having a hard time keeping up a charade of lesbianism. Such concerns were infiltrating my writing. Of course, that's all subtext to the poems themselves-- she'd read them several times and still claims to have been blindsided by my abrupt departure from our shared home. But anyway, at the time, parts of Cope's book spoke to me more than others. And some parts of it have stuck with me more than others.
In particular, Cope describes a strategy for dealing with powerful emotions. It's one that's served me well in these intervening years, so I'm posting it here as something of a PSA. The following is a technique that Cope calls "Riding the Wave of the Breath":
Here is a simple, yogic-based practice designed to use the breath to help integrate physical, emotional, and energy experience. It is a five-part technique which helps us remain present for the experience of the wisdom of the prana body.
1. Breathe. The first step in the process of connecting with the wisdom of prana [Sanskrit for "energy"] is conscious breathing—using the full yogic breath, or diaphragmatic breathing. The breath immediately penetrates the frozen structure of the false self. Says the poet Lao Tsu:
The softest of stuff in the world
Penetrates quickly the hardest.
Insubstantial, it enters
Where no room is.
Anything that brings us back to the switching station of breath has the potential to loosen our identification with the gross body and heighten our connection with the prana body. What happens when we redirect our attention to breath is that we immediately enter the world of energy, of movement, of arising and passing away, of constant change. There is no distance to travel to this world. We are right there. The technique of riding the wave both evokes this level of experience and helps us to be with it more and more fully.
Since the breath is the switch that integrates the emotional body/prana body with the physical body, conscious breathing opens parts of the body that may have long been shut off from the life force. And when the wave of breath moves into these exiled areas, the results can sometimes be instantly dramatic.
2. Relax. Muscular tension in the body can inhibit the flow of energy, sensation, and feeling, keeping areas of the body defended against the wave of energy. While intentionally riding the wave, it is usually best to find a comfortable posture that allows full, deep breathing and an open chest and heart, a posture into which the body can relax, and keep relaxing.
The most effective area to begin relaxing is usually the belly. I have found it helpful to repeat the mantra: "Soft belly." It’s so simple. In the midst of the waves of life, just soften the belly. This is a brilliant device, because when we think, "soft belly," we immediately soften our breathing and take deep, diaphragmatic breaths. This automatically shifts our entire energy experience, cutting through obsession. It grounds us. We can feel energy flowing all the way down to the lower part of the body, to our feet and legs. Suddenly, what appear to be dense and solid thoughts and feelings become permeable to the wave of energy. They’re broken up. They become transparent. They move. We feel alive again.
Full yogic breathing will help the muscles relax and will automatically cut through any "fight or flight" response. Areas of the body that continue to hold tension and constriction, and unconscious visceral attempts to choke back intense sensation and feelings will become obvious. We can move our awareness directly there to explore and to consciously relax as much as possible.
As the wave of breath and energy intensifies, we will surely want to get off, and we may repeatedly "tense up" in order to defend against it. We must remember that the tension of the false self is chronic and unconscious and that it constantly works against the spontaneous energy of prana. We must, therefore, consciously remember to relax and keep relaxing in order to stay with the wave.
3. Feel. "Feeling" in this technique is an active state. It does not mean just "having feelings;" it means moving actively toward the sensations, the energy, the emotions, and into them. We "breathe into them" as if we could send breath right into their epicenter. We develop the acuity of our awareness so we can begin to feel the whole range of sensations—their color, their texture, their intensity, their mood.
Actively feeling means turning our attention minutely toward our moment by moment experience—dropping what we think about what is happening, our evaluations and judgments about it, and becoming fully absorbed at the level of sensation, feeling, and energy. Learning to focus deeply on sensation in this way develops our capacity to be with sensation and feeling. We develop curiosity so that we’re interested in the exact topography of the feeling. "Where in the body is the feeling most intense? What is the exact texture of the sensation? Are there patterns of movement?"
This kind of pro-active feeling reveals one of the central laws of the energy body: energy follows awareness. As we bring awareness to exiled aspects of our energy body, we open these previously unconscious areas to the flow of prana. Consciousness and energy are deeply linked. More consciousness results in more wave of life.
4. Watch. There now can be a profound and natural shift to witness consciousness, to the zone of neutrality, where we’re not choosing for or against any kind of experience, but just being with experience exactly as it is. As we become absorbed in the witness, we’re free both to participate in and to stand apart from our experience. We no longer fight with what is. As we drop into witness consciousness, we may experience some intuition arising from deep within our cells—a knowing that cannot be experienced through the mind alone. "Watching" is a special place we can stand vis-a-vis our experience, where we just "let life be" the way it is. In the zone of the witness, our attention is focused on "how is it?" rather than "why is it?" or "do I like it?"
It is important to remember that the "watcher" or observer is also the coach of the entire experience, the part of us that remains unidentified with the "problem" and remains able to coach us to stay on the wave of energy. It is the abiding voice constantly repeating the mantra "breathe, relax, feel, watch, allow." It is the still point at the center of the storm of energy, and it is the seat of our trusting in the wisdom of energy.
5. Allow. When we don’t try to control our energy experience, we’re free to surrender to the wave of sensation, of feeling, and of energy. In these remarkable moments of freedom, we can let life as it is touch us because at our core we know that "everything is already OK." We know that the energy moving in the prana body is intelligent. We know that it is moving in just the right way for healing and full integration to happen. We relinquish our resistance. We let the whole, natural process happen to us. Somehow, we trust that all we need to do is support the process in these simple ways, and it moves itself to full integration. The key to the fifth step is this: We don’t have to make the wave of life happen. We can just let it happen. As we learn this kind of trust in the process, our capacity to ride the waves of life increases dramatically.
An essential aspect of the fifth step is this: We must allow the process to happen without necessarily understanding it. Insight may come later, but it will come always simply as a by-product of being present for experience. In this final step is a quality of surrender, of "falling into the
This simple technique of "riding the wave" can become for us a kind of bridge that we can use at any moment to cross over from isolation and separation to relationship with the phenomenal world—the world of the senses, of nature, of the heart and the body. It can become one of the boats that we row as we traverse the wild inner river of feelings and life.
Normally, when I arise on a Saturday morning, I'll make myself a cup of coffee, fuck around on the internet for a little while, maybe read for a bit... and then launch myself into a full-on, hour-and-a-half ashtanga asana practice. This past Saturday, however, I rapidly assessed that I felt soul-sick and I figured I'd better forgo the asanas. I opted, instead, for this other, more meditative sort of yoga practice. It took me all day, but I did, in fact, ride a wave. On Sunday morning, I was still kinda feeling sorry for myself, but, just as Cope describes, I felt the solidity of my wretchedness loosening and lightening.
You know, the first time I tried this practice-- probably 5 years ago, now-- it felt totally self-indulgent. There I was, giving myself permission to do something that felt kinda like moderated moping. Really? I was just gonna sit around and feel my feelings? Until they went away? Until they felt better? Until I understood them? It took a while for me to convince myself that my time wasn't better spent doing other things.
But I realized-- I'm naturally pretty obsessive. Perhaps I've mentioned this. Several times. I'll spin something 'round and 'round 'til both it and I are totally dizzy. In other words, if I don't take time out to dedicate my energy to sorting out whatever it is that's bothering me, whatever it is that's bothering me will infect absolutely every other thought I try to have. In the end, I decided that it's just more efficient if I just take the time to hash out whatever's going on in my head, all in one concentrated cram-session-y sitting. This is not to say that a few hours of emotional surfing will resolve all my problems, but it definitely does clear some space for other thoughts.
Also, I certainly can't claim that "riding the wave" is a pleasant experience, necessarily. Allowing yourself to really feel things means making room for some self-pity. And I don't know about you guys, but self-pity feels really, um, undignified to me. Allowing yourself to feel it also means not judging yourself for going there. Throwing pity parties for yourself now and again is part of being a person and as such, there's no shame in it. Or, at least, so long as I don't inflict it on anyone else, I feel no shame in it. But it's taken me a while to let go of the embarrassment of it. But now? I keep conical hats around the house for just such occasions! They say "Waaaah!" in purple ink.
In all seriousness, though, really stewing in negative emotions is just plain ol' tough. As I've developed my practice, I've watched how my crying has changed. I've always been a pretty free weeper. I would probably be an even freer weeper if I weren't so vain. I get blotchy and swollen and snotty almost immediately. I wish I could maintain my complexion like girls in movies somehow manage to do, but no. When I cry, I'm pretty much an instant Quasimodo. And because I want people to think I'm pretty, I'm not too crazy about the fact that my tears are such a finely tuned and readily accessible instrument. Over the years, I've developed a habit of staunching the flow so that, if I simply MUST cry in front of another person, it'll be a scant handful of tears. Of course, that handful will still make me look like Quasimodo, but, you know, it's the effort that counts, right?
Anyway, in my "riding the wave" practice, part of the deal is abandoning myself to the tears so as to make an endrun around the vanity. Sometimes this makes both the breathing and relaxing steps kind of hard. When I first tried the technique, I was actually surprised by how vocal my real, from-the-depth-of-my-soul sobs really are. This sort of crying is not quiet. The vocalizing is anything but calculated. The relaxing is hard because, when one of those sobs is has you in its teeth, it feels like a train rumbling through a tunnel. Or like a weather system. Your body responds-- it's not easy to keep your belly soft. And the breathing? Well... this is the kind of crying like babies cry. Unadulterated and inarticulate. You know, when they get all red and you're just positive they're gonna asphyxiate -- right up until they let out a passionate yawp of frustration? Sometimes the sheer force seizes you up. It is necessary to remind yourself that respiration is not optional. It's like that.
But by the time you get to the "watching" part, it's like those cheesy medical-show renditions of the out-of-body experience. You see yourself from the ceiling or from across the room. You're still wracked and wrecked, but you get to this point of remove that's like a shelter. If you can watch yourself feel things, you realize that the actual feeling is less scary than you thought it would be. You exist above and around the feeling. You are bigger than it, rather than the other way 'round.
This is also not to say that you won't wake up the next morning and still want to cry a little. It doesn't fix any problems. It's just a coping strategy. But I do think it's a healthier one than, say, drinking oneself into oblivion, or abdicating responsibility for one's emotions and positing them as the fault of some noun (let's face it-- it's usually a person, rather than a place or a thing) outside of the self. You chose your emotions, either consciously or unconsciously, and they are no one's "fault" but your own. (And yes, the real trick is not seeing them as faults at all.)
So, I spent Saturday crying. And then I felt like myself again. I suppose I could have spread my expressions of anxiety out over a few days or weeks or whatever, but that concentrated, bitter elixir is a far more potent medicine.
Try though I might, I shan't shatter.
My belly is soft. Prana is intelligent. I am learning from it.
Namaste.
No comments:
Post a Comment