People talk about yoga being a moving meditation. It helps us be present in the moment, helps us connect to our bodies, emotions, thoughts and experiences. I feel great after every yoga class I take, and yet,,,when I'm going through difficult times in my life I avoid yoga like the plague.
Being present is the last thing I want to do when I'm feeling sad or upset. I want to focus on things that will get me out of my sad state of feeling instead of settling down into it to really 'experience' it.
1) because I'm not a masochist
2) because my inherent nature is to be delighted by the world and people around me and gravitate toward optimism, humor, hope and positivity.
3) because my ego keeps intentionally forgetting what buddhism has taught me - that true freedom and peace are found in the middle ground between extremes. As JD Salinger put it 'I can't be running back and forth forever between grief and high delight.'
So despite my reluctance to be present with myself this winter, I went to yoga at least once a week. I made some existential discoveries via handstands . I started going to a class with a teacher who occasional curses and consistently plays music by The Cure.
Last Friday in this class, while Morissey was singing 'Love Cats' I put my mat against a wall and got ready to fight with handstands. With my palms flat on the mat, I watched my feet walk towards my hands then struggle to kick up into the handstand. This fight against gravity and physics and my concept of my capabilities went on for a few minutes. Then I remembered a teacher at some point in the past year telling me that I was supposed to look at my hands - look down at my mat. So I tried it and to my astonishment my legs kicked up into a handstand like there was no fight at all, like gravity was on their side. It felt light, natural and easy.
I flipped out of the handstand and thought for a moment. It worked once, but maybe that wasn't the only thing that was different. So I tried again, palms on mat, eyes on mat, bam- feet in the air.
It's now four days later and I've been testing this method every day in lots of different places. My kitchen, the living room, at work... each time it's the same. If I look down at my hands, my upper spine is stacked in a way that gives the legs a stable foundation. In handstands, like in life, my gaze was always on where I was going- movement, the future, hope. The idea that there was something to be gained by looking down at where I was in the moment felt counter intuitive. It felt limiting. And yet, as I learned in yoga - there is stability, strength and lightness in being present.
Which brings me to Kung Fu Panda.
And how much I love Master Oogway. The sweet old tortoise zen master tells his student 'The past is history, the future's a mystery but today is a gift, that's why it's called 'the present.'
Not being enlightened, like Oogway, into a beautiful shower of cherry blossom petals, I must point out that while there is wisdom in this quote, it has also been my experience that sometimes the present moment sucks. Sometimes it feels like quicksand and if I hang out too long, I will just get stuck in that experience forever.
The wisdom of that quote, from a buddhist perspective, is that the past consists of millions of present moments and so does the future. In the present moment, we have the ability to experience not just pain but also healing. We have the ability to apply something we learned months ago to the present moment and witness how it alters the physical experience as well as the mental experience.
This is where mindfulness comes in. Mindfulness is 'the intentional, nonjudgmental focus of one's attention on the emotions, thoughts and sensations occurring in the present moment.' Throughout the winter, I felt too overwelmed by my sadness to allow myself to be mindful of it outside of designated moments - in meditation or yoga classes. I struggled with the 'nonjudgmental' part of the definition.
My struggle, my resistance to my sadness was in part because I felt like if I was present in the sadness, I would lose perspective. That by being present in the present moment, I would be overcome by sadness and lose sight of the positive aspects in life that I knew were all around me.
I was always afraid to focus too much on the present moment because I thought I'd miss the big picture. If I just focused on today, I would feel trapped. But at the same time, if I just focus on tomorrow, it's ungrounded and I miss the chances the present moment offers for change.
If I were an enlightened tortoise, perhaps I'd be able to recognize in the present moment how my experience was created by the past and how what I choose to do in this moment will help shape my future experience. For now, I will keep doing handstands to build up muscle memory. And more importantly - the ego memory, that despite the strong energy of my habitual tendencies, it is possible to be grounded, balanced and upside down all because of a small change in perspective.
And I will remind myself that the present moment may include feelings of sadness, but it also includes experiences of growth, it also includes 'Love Cats', it also includes hope.
