Stay in Place, Be Fluid
I taught at Yoga Oasis for the first time in 2003. Twenty years and more than a thousand teaching hours later, I am heading home from Tucson with a full heart after another weekend in what I affectionately refer to as “The Big Room.” We had a group of sincere, committed practitioners and teachers from the local and national yoga community who came live in-person and via the wonders of Zoom. Some people were attending their first ever yoga intensive while others have been rolling out a mat in workshops for well over twenty years. Darren titled the workshop “Support & Sustain Sadhana.” We talked about and around various teachings from our spiritual teacher, Lee Lozowick.
One of the teachings Lee gave repeatedly during the years I spent in his company was regarding the importance of “staying in place” in our personal work and sadhana. I don’t think this was a directive to never shift one’s outer circumstances because he also said “be fluid, stay liquid.” Come to think of it, for every time he said one thing, he also said something direct opposing. Over a decade after his passing, members of our sangha still argue about what “Lee said.” And, on good days, we laugh together about the impossibility of pinning his teaching down to any one thing only.
In the last session of our weekend, I spoke of the importance of stitching together various teachings, whether the teaching in question is an alignment instruction or a life instruction. Even a simple instruction like”‘scoop your tailbone” has people in the blogosphere arguing for years about whether or not this instruction should be retired. For instance, scoop too much and the lumbar vertebrae can overly flatten and the thighs will push forward. Do too little and you will lack stability and the power to root down firmly and find stable length through your core. A person with an anteriorly titled pelvis will need something different than someone with a posteriorly tilted pelvis. Hypertonic v hypotonic pelvic floors will respond differently to the action. And so on. Most instructions are problematic when not seen in the context of who is practicing them, what pose they are being applied to, and what balancing actions are needed. And try as we might as teachers— no matter how well-trained, experienced, and well-meaning we are— we will never say all of the right things in all of the right ways for all of the people in any given class. (Of course, that is a different entry for a different day.)
The same principle holds true for relational teachings. I have a good friend who was a bit of a rager in her intimate relationships. As her personal work unfolded and she unravelled some of the patterns informing her explosive temper, she learned how to “count to ten” and not say everything she was feeling right away. Her marriage improved. Of course, my own marriage went flat and got into difficulties because Kelly and I never argued or said what we were truly feeling. Our marriage improved when we learned how to say what we were feeling which involved arguing a whole lot more than we had been.
For years, I did my best to follow the advice of the various teachings in which I had placed my faith. I am a reasonably decent student and, because I came to the path aware of my suffering, I was fairly teachable. And by teachable, I mean desperate. Part of my desperation involved the loss my connection with my own wisdom and, having betrayed my values many times over the years, I didn’t trust myself. Trusting my teachers and the teachings was an important stage of my growth.
As I grew, I realized that I needed to thread the teachings through my direct experience and my deepening self-knowledge. I discovered that trusting outer authority more than myself— while an important initial stage of recovery— was causing me harm. I got more clarity on what was a principle and what was a specific instruction. I found that while the teachings might stay the same, my understanding of them and their application was changing significantly. For instance, in my early yoga studies, I thought equanimity meant not having strong feelings and that I would, if I did it all right, arrive at this place of being unruffled and unaffected by the vicissitudes of life. Now, I not only see that the notion of “right and wrong” is a trap when it comes to self-knowledge, but that equanimity isn’t so much the absence of strong feelings as it is the lessening of the conditioned judgement of those feelings. I learned there is no way to access deep discerning consciousness and self-trust that bypasses the messy business of my emotional life. And while it seems obvious enough now, I learned that feeling unaffected by the changing circumstances of life, while true at the level of the Spirit, is bad psychological advice.
And the cool thing is that in another ten years, if I stay in place, these insights will be the ground from which new growth and deeper insight will emerge. One of the great things of the weekend was being with so many people who have stayed in place in terms of their yoga practice. No one has done anything perfectly, mind you. We all have had challenges complete with long periods of absence from the mat and from our better angels. Staying in place isn’t so much never wavering as it is the continual returning to oneself. Staying in place isn’t being perfect as much as it is the willingness to turn around when we’ve wandered, to heed the small whispers of conscious and when they fail to get our attention, to be willing to be yanked back to our senses, to ourselves, and to our communities that sustain and support us.
So like that. Stay in place. Be fluid.
Keep the faith. More soon.
