Getting On My Head and Telling the Truth

Notes on Practice This Week:  My hamstrings finally seem to be loosening up a little.  I can finally touch my toes and stay there for a while without thinking a bad word.  Downward dog is still uncomfortable for me as I try to get my heels lower to the floor.  I'm trying to do dogs throughout the day, as well as in daily practice.

My goal is to get a full practice in every day in the evening, but that hasn't been happening--so far, it has been more like 4-5 times a week.  I'm always glad I've done a practice afterwards, so I'm not sure why it continues to be difficult to start one out.  Creating good habits takes a while.  I've been using Rodney Yee's basic poses video; I like his gentle energy, but he doesn't refer to the Sanskrit names of the poses, so in class I always feel behind in remembering those names.

This weekend I was determined to get into a headstand.  I put a thin foam pillow on the floor against the wall, fit my head into my clasped hands and surprised myself by going right up (yay!) for a moment. However, I crashed right over to the side!  The floor was wood, so it was pretty forgiving.  I tried again and got my legs into the air and was able to hold it by really working the core, but, of course, the wall was holding me up.  I noticed my head hurt, so I tried to put more weight on my arms.  Then I tried to come down gently, floating the legs down; I bent my knees and imagined a beautiful, slow descent.  However (again!), my legs surprised me by crashing to the floor, and I landed on my knee caps.

Okay, that really hurt.

So.  I went outside into the front yard which has a lot of nice soft St. Augustine grass and tried to do it there.  However (again), I couldn't get my legs up and balanced at all in the grass.  Maybe I was tired or not focused enough or thinking about my poor knees.  (And my next-door-neighbor called to see if I was ok--geeez, how embarrassing.) 

My kneecaps are fine and not even bruised. So  I'm gonna try again tomorrow.  (I won't be home at all today.)   Sorry I don't have a photo to share of me splatted on the floor.

Notes on This Week's Reading:
Telling the truth is very hard.  I found this out a few years ago when I read The Four Agreements, by Don Miguel Ruiz.  One of the agreements (with yourself) is to "Be Impeccable With Your Word."  Most of us think we're pretty good at telling the truth, but I realized very quickly I'm not good at this at all.  He writes, "We have learned to lie as a habit of our communication with others and more importantly with ourselves."  That's the hard part--the lying to ourselves.  We create dramas and stories in our own minds and then buy into those.  For example, I might say to myself, "I HAVE to go to that meeting" (no I don't--it's always a choice) or "I don't think that person likes me very much" (I'm probably never even on that person's radar, one way or the other).

How Yoga Works expands on this whole idea of being impeccable with our words.

The second form of self-control

Is always telling the truth. 
(Yoga Sutra II.30B)

This means "striving, as we speak, never to create even the smallest misimpression in the mind of the person listening to us" (How Yoga Works, p. 264).  (I love the idea of getting a bag of black and white pebbles or marbles and keeping track each day through an internal "compassionate observer" of how may times we plant a good seed or a bad seed.)

It is also important when teaching others a valuable tradition to be extremely accurate in what we relate.  For example, if we are teaching someone else yoga, we have to be careful to teach it impeccably, not throwing in some of our own ideas without stating that these are are own ideas, and not leaving out any important ideas that are part of the tradition.  I know I struggle with this myself in teaching my managerial students the Enneagram.  It's so easy to simply toss in some of my own ideas off the cuff, as if they were part of the tradition.

There are three ways to plant good seeds with our words.  The first is to "avoid ever speaking in a way that might split people up--that might make them upset at each other" (p. 290).  The second is to "avoid ever saying something to someone else that would hurt their feelings" (p. 290).  And last, and most difficult of all, is to avoid useless talk.  "Most of us like to talk all day long, whether there's anything important to say or not. . . .  I'm talking about just talking for talking's sake" (p. 291).  

I agree that the hardest way of telling the truth is to avoid useless talk.  I call that chatter.  And I'm pretty darn good at it, and especially comfortable with it when I'm with family and very close friends.  This one is a challenge.  I look forward to exploring the beauty of silence more.  Actually, this is something I've been working on for a few years, and it's always a difficult work in progress for me.  I have noticed that I get very, very tired now when I'm around extended chatter.  I've also noticed that when most people don't have ideas or insights or new thoughts to share, they often talk about other people. 

So my specific goals this week are to practice the asanas on a daily basis, work some more on my headstand, and be very aware of what is coming out of my mouth.  

I saw a great acronym this week:

Namaste