Study Sessions: Nicholas Jon

MindBodyBrew is ultimately about providing a space for written reflection at every step along the yoga path. We hope that by sharing assignments from our Teacher Trainees, we can expand their deep investigation into community-wide dialogue. The following is a piece written by one of our newest, current trainees, Nicholas Jon, about recent yoga classes with TaraMarie Perri and Maggie Gavin.

In classes with both TaraMarie and Maggie over the past couple of weeks, there has been a heavy emphasis on concepts related to the transition from summer to fall, and how this impacts the body, the mind, and the spirit. These ideas really resonated with me, as my life over the past couple of months has felt like one long transition: not only in terms of seasons, but also from college to the “real world,” from a set schedule to an open-ended one, and from being a practicing yogi to being a yoga teacher-in-training. It has taken me a few years to finally feel adjusted to living in New York City, but finishing school has forced me to reexamine and shift my mindset in order to adapt to new ways of experiencing the city.

  The class theme of leaning into transition periods has supported me through this time and informed my daily life. A specific example that I really connected to was a class structure in which TaraMarie had us practice savasana multiple times throughout class. I have always understood savasana as having one specific purpose: allowing the work of class to set in, and relaxing the body while keeping the mind alert enough to process the physical and mental changes that have occurred. But allowing this experience to occur four or five times during one practice enlightened me to some of its other benefits. Every time I entered savasana, I had a more intense experience. The work in between was challenging, so physical exhaustion caused my body to feel more relaxed every time it was still. But at the same time, my mind became more invigorated and alert each time, with a sharper focus and a clearer ability to scan my body and notice any shifts that had taken place.

  This dichotomy was a beautiful reminder of a way to cope with tricky transition periods. Though everyone has different reactions to transitions, I know they tend to overwhelm me. It’s not often that I allow myself ample time to relax and process what I’m going through, let the work I’ve been doing settle in, and get a firm grasp on my state of mind and body before allowing myself to move forward. Rather than forcing myself through transition periods, it’s better to let them happen at their natural pace without focusing on what just happened or what’s about to happen. The transition itself is just as important of an experience, and an inability to exist within it can hinder one’s ability to progress through it.

  In The Wisdom of No Escape, Pema Chodron provides brilliant perspective on this subject. Her discussion of impermanence sparks the idea that our lives may actually be just one long transition from birth to death--“once you are born, you immediately start dying”--or maybe a series of extremely short transitions from our in-breath to our out-breath. In this way, the transitions that we often feel overcome by are just part of life’s natural cycle, and should be taken in stride. If we get caught up in overanalyzing these transitions or trying to escape from them, we may never feel like we've gotten to the other side of them. Even when things seem tumultuous and you might not know how to proceed, what’s important is that “you’re able to recognize [when you have met your edge] because you are open enough to see what’s happening.” If you can identify this and be okay with it, it becomes easier to embrace the fleeting nature of life, and see transitions as what they inherently are: temporary.

-Nicholas Jon

The Puzzle of Home

The following piece was written by Kathy Hartsell, a fellow yoga instructor and mind-body practitioner who studies alongside the Mind Body Dancer® community. She writes from Boston, MA.

For me, the notion of home takes the form of a puzzle. This puzzle teeters on a rickety shelf in my heart, cozied up next to a variety of other mysterious heart contents that ask for attention from time to time. A jolt to my chest has always been enough to shake this puzzle from its resting place and into my lap, where it has many times stumped me with pieces that wouldn't quite fit together.

Having moved to boarding school at a young age, I’ve grown accustomed to the low ache that drifts in with homesickness now and again. As I am sure many people do, I sometimes even feel this ache arise

in the very places and with the very people that I recognize as home.

For a while, I tried on different zip codes, convinced that the right match would surely dissolve the disconcerting tug of longing that kept showing up uninvited in my gut. But as I searched for the "perfect place" to unpack my work and stretch out my soul, I couldn't shove away the gradually growing awareness of chasing a kind of stability that our world does not offer. At tortoise pace, I began to register that my outward quest, while wonderful in its own way, would never satisfy the longing to

move into my own being

. Of course, I discovered that certain spots beneath particular skies built a welcoming space for my life, but it wasn’t until I was willing to inhabit my own housed experiences that I could understand the messages encoded in that longing. I’m sure that I am not alone in these mindful circles when I say that, despite this understanding, I forget said lessons often. I have found that the push-pull of life will quickly sweep away things I thought I had already learned, slyly granting me some kind of “insight amnesia.”

Remembering

 requires not only that I practice on my mat often, but that I find ways to also practice beyond the safety of designated space, and in the context of real life.

The puzzle of home has landed in my lap quite a bit in recent months. As my husband and I search for a house with a little extra room for our growing family, it’s amusing to see the long list of conditions we have created for our supposedly simple abode. Every third day we consider whether laying thicker roots down in the city even makes sense, or whether “home” might actually be somewhere else entirely. Officially waiting to adopt, we fret over how our future child will adjust to the new home we offer, and how we will best help her learn to trust this home.

As we work through these steps, I have been grateful to have Ethan Nictern’s

The Road Home: A Contemporary Exploration of the Buddhist Path

for a companion

.

Thanks to Audible, Ethan has been reading his witty, compassionate and timely wisdom to me as I take long walks in Boston (and ironically resist the expression of impermanence provided by September’s air!) In the book's introduction, Ethan relates a conversation between his father, David Nichtern, and the lama Khenpo Tsultrim Gyamtso Rinpoche:

My father (who loves small talk) decided not to ask a question about the Buddhist teachings. Instead, he asked Rinpoche a small-talk question: "Where do you live?" It was a simple enough question, a little dose of chitchat to blend with all that profundity. "Where do you live?" Dad asked. "When you aren't on the road--traveling, moving around, teaching---where do you live, Rinpoche?

When he heard the question translated, Khenpo Rinpoche raised the brows above his wide eyes and said something in Tibetan to his translator... "Rinpoche says to tell you that he lives in the center of his awareness!"

In a million different ways, Ethan inspires me to return to the hammock in my own heart. From his teachings, for both the literal and figurative suitability, my meditation anchor these days has become “easing home.” I can’t say that I “live” at the center of my awareness (like the Tibetan monk in Ethan’s book), but I’m quite grateful to have become a frequent visitor who can find my way there.

-Kathy Hartsell

Photography by Kathy Hartsell.

Making Meaning

The following post was written by Liz Beres, a NYC-based dancer; dance teacher; and yoga teacher, certified by The Perri Institute for Mind and Body. Liz currently teaches yoga privately and at various gyms, including that of the Federal Reserve Bank of NY through Plus One. She is continually intrigued by and appreciative of the power of mind/body practices, and is grateful for the chance to share her musings on MindBodyBrew’s digital platform.

"Life is not inherently meaningful. We make meaning happen through the attention and care we express through our actions." - Donna Farhi, from "Yoga Mind, Body and Spirit: A Return to Wholeness"

That first sentence stopped me in my tracks the first time I read it. I found myself reading it through again, and again, and again, pouring over the words in an effort to gain some hold over them. I couldn’t get beyond the idea that our lives—at their very base—are utterly blank canvases. But as I began to consider the trajectory of a life—from infant to toddler on up—the varied and deep layering of intention and purpose in a life slowly struck me.

Having been dealt a largely fresh slate from the universe after a summer of bold decisions and equally weighted repercussions, I was met this fall with an opportunity to take action in such ways that could renew or redirect the steps along my life story. I knew that I wanted to commit to moving forward with raw candor, and I knew too that I endeavored to make and follow through with choices that lay outside my comfort zone. But to decipher what all this meant—how I could successfully meet my truest self—required much reflection, and through that consideration, an intense stripping down of layers that no longer served me. Our choices so expressively seal our identity, but are those choices ones we want to reinforce, or must they shift to meet us at our present?

For whatever reason, I imagined myself landing at a point where I was clear and streamlined in a certain sense; contradictions would fall away, and I’d be standing there so solidly as this one being. It hasn’t happened. In fact, I’ve realized how unrealistic such a vision is, for we all exist as such complex creatures, full of disparities that are no less valid or true in spite of their variety. I’d walked the earth for years attempting to fully embody my differing roles in whatever environment I found myself in; dancer, teacher, student wasn’t even the tip of it. Was I a contemporary dancer or a musical theater performer? A dance teacher? A yoga teacher? A creator? A collaborator? The web of it all spun out for miles.

I’m discovering that trying to distinguish between all these pieces of ourselves becomes complicated and unnecessary when all these diverse parts of us already coexist; we are blended beings, rich and full of nuance. Our lives are not homogenous events, as Donna Farhi so poignantly notes. Life changes, and we too must adapt and change along with it.

So I’m drawn back to this question, or call to action: if our lives are not meaningful in and of themselves, how will we give them meaning? What meaning do we want to fill our stories with? What meaning do we want to fill our stories with in this present moment?

With so much to tackle and pursue all at once, it seemingly becomes necessary to parse through all that surrounds us in order to choose and follow what is most valuable to our growth at a given time. I would use the word ‘prioritize’ to distinguish this act, but prioritizing sounds too black and white and too logical when such choices to follow certain goals over others emerge, I imagine, most sincerely from intuition and the depths of our souls. And in any case, regardless of what we do choose to pursue, we must recognize that our paths usually are not linear ones. The roads we set out on inevitably wind through experiences we couldn’t have even envisioned, and numerous forks in the road present themselves, or even force themselves, upon us.

One of the ethical principles of Yoga’s eight-limbed path is particularly relevant in considering these matters: aparigraha, or non-attachment. As much as we habitually seek out certainty and security, one unavoidable fact of our human existence is that impermanence permeates our lives. Impermanence serves as our one constant. Trying to hoard what we have only leads to suffering, as those people or objects or ideas will, in time, fade, or in some situations even vanish.

So then, how are we to acquire meaning if such uncertain transience exists as a base of our lives? I would extend the hope that we still plant seeds of growth in whatever arenas we aim to nurture, but perhaps as we harvest those same seeds, we can assess what is honestly in front of us, so as to recognize and interact with the reality that has presented itself to us, rather than the dream that lay in the backs of our minds or hearts. Because while we drive so much of what occurs in our day-to-day lives, there are countless variables that shift our actions and thoughts into unpredictable realms—and with all of that comes, I would suggest, even more meaning than we could have achieved on our own. I believe that it is that stark openness to our communities—those that are tangible and those that are less so—that enables us to transcend what superficial steps we take through our day and fills us with such a sense of connection and comprehension as to where we are in each moment.

Getting the chance to meet so many new people over the course of the summer embedded within me a desire to commune with strangers (in the safest of ways, Mom!). I have attempted to actually look at people I pass by and toss out a soft smile or converse with those who are serving me or surrounding me when it feels appropriate. What has been amazing in this experiment is the sense of intimacy and ease that has suddenly emerged in environments that otherwise had felt cold or purposeless. From this seed that I planted upon my return from time in a smaller town with a tightly bound community of friends and colleagues has come more curiosity and openness on my part, and the potential for even more growth in my interactions with those I don’t know. It has built meaning in my life, and simultaneously expanded my comprehension of the rich interconnectedness of our individual paths. It has reminded me too of how significantly our moods and mindsets can shift from acting upon one outwardly small but specific intention. There are so many choices to be molded, so many possibilities to choose from and subsequently learn from.

Just the other day, a friend of mine suggested that once she leaves New York City, she hopes to live an entirely different life—one set in a rural locale, where she can live not by a clock but by the ever-changing light of day and night, where she can focus less on survival and more on filling the artistic, intellectual, and spiritual potential that lives within her. Such a beautiful vision that I too similarly share. So many other layers of meaning that could come into being, a largely new iteration of a life’s story.

Dreaming of the future is a beautiful practice that serves to inspire and egg us on towards our utter fulfillment, but in light of all these thoughts—and to not get ahead of ourselves—what is it that we, in this very moment, aspire to pursue? What seeds can we plant to set such growth in motion, and how can we then step back, even as we nourish the seeds, to witness what actually emerges? As much as we seek to make meaning out of life, if we could be more present, giving more attention and care to what lives right in front of us, could we derive whole other layers of meaning and depth that we previously could not have conceived possible? Perhaps ‘making meaning’ in our lives need not be such an active endeavor; meaning will materialize effortlessly, if only we are brave and open enough to meet it in its truest forms.

- Liz Beres

Off-Kilter

In yoga we learn to accept that the body is not always symmetrical. The way in which we inhabit our bodies creates all sorts of imbalances and differences from side to side, from hip to hip, from arm to arm. This is an essential lesson in teaching and in practicing, because it encourages both loving-kindness and awareness of the present moment that can dispel goal-oriented thinking.

I like to think of myself as someone who knows her body, someone who understands the tweaks and the twinges, as well as the strengths, and understands that achieving balance is not merely an attempt to be the same from side to side. After all, a lifetime of dance and regular movement practices would indicate a certain level of body awareness, yes? Well, this may be so, especially in comparison to the average person who spends most of his or her day sitting and doesn’t know the difference between a scapula and a sternum. Lately, though, my body has been teaching me more about what I don’t know than what I do.

My close friends and dance colleagues will tell you that I’ve spent a deal of time the past few years complaining about my “broken wing,” also known as my left shoulder. First aggravated during some rigorous dancing in college, my shoulder has pained me for years. As many young (read: unwise) dancers do, at the initial onset of pain, I danced through it by popping ibuprofen and pretending it would go away once I had some time off. And the pain did disappear sometimes, but only intermittently, coming back to annoy me once or twice a year and leaving me with some weird tension and muscle weaknesses in between.

This is a common story I think. Dancers become used to injuries of overuse, and as long as motion is still possible, the tendency is just to keep on moving. We deal with the discomfort, rest when necessary, and mostly just accept that this pain or tightness we feel is just one part of our relationship with our own body. If you ask any dancer if they have any chronic pain in their bodies, most can give you a lengthy description of their ailments. For myself, I accepted long ago that my left big toe, my right hamstring, my lower back, and my famous “broken wing” were probably going to irk me for most of my life. In a way, these little pains become part of our body identity, a map that we travel through from step to step, continually finding ways to accept, problem solve, balance, and sometimes, compensate for the little quirks that make our bodies uniquely ours.

Late this summer I became aware that my broken wing was feeling more broken than usual. Worried by a sudden acceleration of symptoms that haven’t changed in years, I finally took myself to the doctor at Harkness Dance Center to have my shoulder checked out. Buoyed by my anatomical knowledge as a dancer and yoga teacher and, let’s be real, some self-doctoring via WebMD, I felt confident that I would get a vague diagnosis of impingement syndrome, bursitis, maybe a minor rotator cuff injury, and then be referred to the wonderful world of physical therapy.

For the most part, my self-diagnosis and treatment predication were correct. However, what my preconceived notions had not predicted was the profound muscular weakness in my left arm that became apparent during my exam.

After performing several exercises to test my strength, pain tolerance, and flexibility, my doctor asked me to extend both of my arms forward in front of my chest with the palms of my hands face down. He then proceeded to press down on my forearms and asked me to resist. My right arm: strong and sure. My left arm: instantly swung down by my side like a pendulum. I had absolutely no ability to resist the pressure my doctor was giving, and more to the point, I had not expected that to happen. My jaw, literally, dropped. I laughed out loud and said, “whoa! I had no idea!” We tried it again, and got the same result. I was floored.

Other than begrudgingly accepting the obvious lesson that we should see the doctor occasionally instead of relying on Web MD (ego check!), I left that appointment feeling a little off-kilter. My broken wing, a term I had comically applied years ago, was not only, indeed, “broken” in a sense, it was also a very, very different ailment than what I thought it was. The idea that I was capable of standing on my head, but not of resisting a little arm pressure, and didn’t know it, was disconcerting to me.

This experience has not only reawakened the mystery of the body to me and its wondrous ability to adapt, it has also thrown the concept of balance into the forefront of my mind and my practice. I think sometimes, in our practices on the mat and our outside life, we are so determined to strive for balance, for equanimity, for everything to work as a whole, that we miss crucial lessons that could, with time, propel us forward instead of holding us back. How can we learn what we truly need to balance if we never allow ourselves to fall, to be off-kilter, to really experience the pain and discomfort that, in the end, will teach us what we need to do to be stronger?

Balance is not the same as standing still. It isn’t equivalent to maintaining the status quo. Balance can only be achieved by learning how to adapt to the constant fluctuations in our bodies and our lives, not by trying to prevent those fluctuations from happening. I needed someone to show me how seriously weak and out of alignment my shoulder was in order to accept that it was time for some serious change in how I was practicing and thinking about my shoulder alignment and movement.

We are now moving into late fall, a busy, off-kilter, unbalanced time for many people anyway. I’m wondering: what if we lean into that imbalance instead of resisting it? Will we start to fall? Maybe. Will we crash to the floor and never get up? Doubtful. Somewhere between standing upright and laying on the ground in a heap are important lessons we need to realize, lessons that will teach us about our strengths and our weaknesses, lessons that will show us where to take risks and where to back off.

My broken wing and I are headed to PT for some serious re-acquainting. Where will you go?

-Katherine Moore

Warming Winter Lentils

Lentils and rice are a fantastic combination for this time of the year when, as the air gets drier, our bodies need foods that contain moisture. This is my go-to lunch for late fall. It’s vegetarian: a good balance for those meat-heavy holiday meals. The spices are warming and stimulate good digestion. You can eat the pared down version or embellish it, making each meal feel like a special preparation even though the leftovers take no time to throw together. Convinced yet? Here’s the recipe:

Warming Winter Lentils

Ingredients

1 cup long grain basmati rice (I prefer white with this recipe, but brown is fine if you’re looking for that extra nutritional punch)

6 ½ cups water

1 tsp. cumin seeds

2 Tbs. unsalted butter (or ghee!)

1 cup onion, diced

4 cloves garlic, minced

1 tsp. powdered turmeric

2 Tbs. fresh ginger, peeled and minced

2 cups dried red lentils, rinsed

Coarse salt to taste

Preparation

1. Rinse rice with cold water and then place in a medium-sized pot with 1 ½ cups of water. Bring to a boil; while you’re waiting, pre-mince the ginger & garlic and pre-dice the onions. Once the water reaches a boil, reduce to a simmer and set a timer for 20 minutes if using white rice, 35 if using brown.
2. Place a medium-sized saucepan over medium heat. Add cumin seeds to toast, shaking the pan every few seconds for about 1 minute, or until fragrant. Transfer toasted cumin to a plate. Add butter to the pan and once heated, add onion, garlic, and ginger. Stir ever few seconds with a wooden spoon for about 5 minutes, or until tender, being careful not to burn. Add turmeric and toasted cumin. Stir to combine.
3. Add the lentils and remaining 5 cups of water to the spice mixture. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and partially cover. Cook until mixture thickens, about 15 minutes. Stir in coarse salt to taste.
4. To serve, spoon out some rice and top with lentils. Embellish as you see fit!

Embellishments – put these on top!

• fresh cilantro
• mango chutney (store bought or homemade)
• plain yogurt
• sliced avocado
• oven roasted carrots
• diced cucumber mixed with a splash of salt, sugar, and white vinegar

-Liz Montgomery