Living Your Yoga

“To practice is to pay attention to your whole life: your thoughts, your bodily sensations, and your speech and other actions…each moment of your life is a moment of potential practice.”

~ Judith Hanson Lasater ~

Living Your Yoga, Finding the Spiritual in Everyday Life by Judith Hanson Lasater is one of my all time favorite books on yoga.  It changed my life. This easy to read inspirational book was lent to me by my favorite yoga teacher Angela back in 2008.  

I was a hot mess in 2008.  At twenty-six years old, I was waiting tables at Kerbey Lane Cafe and started Nursing School.  If I wasn’t studying, I was drinking.  Maker’s Mark whiskey on the rocks with a splash of water was my drink of choice.  One black out night, I’m told, I face planted on a sidewalk downtown while attempting to mount my bike.  I recall only waking intermittently while having my forehead sutured in the Emergency Department.  My inner punk rocker wrote a song about it called 7 lives, click the link to check it out.  My childhood dreams of choreographing and performing dance were never going to be realized.  The demise of a long term relationship, the stress of school, and the questioning of a career path in Nursing sent me spiraling out of control.  The words to me by my father echoed through my mind, “I’ll never amount to anything.”  I found solace in Angela’s Hatha yoga class.

“To get lost is to learn the way.”

~ Swahili Proverb ~

One day after class, shy, intimidated me mustered up the confidence to ask Angela for private lessons.  At the time, a seemingly small action was a bound of courage.  My depression was crippling.  A wave of relief washed over me when she accepted my request.  I was in such emotional turmoil during the first session that we barely practiced any poses.  She sent me home with the assignment to stare at myself in the mirror, look directly into my eyes, and repeat three times over, “I deeply and truly love and accept myself” and with that she handed me a copy of Judith Lasater's’ Living Your Yoga.

This book so profoundly changed my way of perceiving the practice of yoga.  For years, I knew yoga was helping me to feel calm and collected on the mat.  I enjoyed the sense of peace that radiates after an hour class.  However, I struggled, as I believe many do, with how to incorporate that sense of peace into my daily life.  Judith showed me how.  Her unabashed revelations of personal trials and tribulations as a young adult woman, spouse, mother, and even yoga teacher helped me feel comfortable in my own skin.  

“Whether we seek something called spirituality, holiness, or enlightenment, the route to it is through our humanness, complete with our strengths and our weaknesses, our successes and our failures.  You might say that we use ourselves to discover ourselves.”

~ JHL ~

Her book is divided into three parts:  1) Yoga within Yourself 2) Yoga and Relationships and 3) Yoga in the World.  At the end of each chapter she provides practice suggestions and mantras to help the reader incorporate the yoga concepts she explores, such as Discipline, Faith and Courage into one’s daily life as well as into one’s asana practice.  The mantras, or short phrases, are important tools that we can use at any time to bring our scattered mind to attention and intention.  Below are a few of the many that resonated with me.  

Mantras for Daily Living

• Life is practice.  Practice is life. 
  

• I give myself fully to each moment.
  

• I am perfect just as I am.
  

• Control is the greatest illusion.
  

• I choose the life that I have right now.
  
  

Practice Suggestions

• “Rather than approaching your yoga practice from an attitude of no pain, no gain, how about no pain, no pain?”
  

• “Cultivate gratitude.  Write a list of all the things about your life or about someone you love for which you are grateful.” 
  

• “Remind yourself about how much courage it takes just to live in today’s world.  Spend a quiet moment in active appreciation of your courage.”
  
  

Judith Lasater is co-founder of the Iyengar Yoga Institute in San Francisco and of the popular Yoga Journal magazine.  She has a Ph.D. in East-West psychology and is also a physical therapist. She has written nine books and continues to teach online and offers workshops across the country.  Notably, she trained with BKS Iyengar who is credited for bringing yoga from India to the West.  Yoga in America today would not be what is it without him.  

Watch this short informative video about teacher BKS Iyengar

https://www.pbs.org/video/religion-and-ethics-newsweekly-bks-iyengar/

Find out more about Judith at judithhansonlasater.com

“It is our dedication to living with open hearts and our commitment to the day-to-day details of our lives that will transform us.  When we are open to the present moment, we shine forth.  At these times, we are not on a spiritual path: we are the spiritual path.”

~ JHL ~

In her book, Judith Lasater references author Scott Peck’s opening sentence of The Road Less Traveled:  A New Psychology of Love, Traditional Values, and Spiritual Growth, “Life is difficult.”  In reading those three words, she confides the comfort and relief felt from such profound validation.  Life is hard.  She succeeds in providing her reader that same sense of camaraderie and support.  Whether you practice yoga or not, In Living Your Yoga: Finding the Spiritual in Everyday Life is a resource that can be trusted to help make this crazy world seem a little more manageable.  Looking back, I’m so thankful to have had Angela generously share it  with me, and I’m happy to be able to share it with you.  May every moment be fresh! Namaste my friends.  

Do the dishes. Don't let the dishes do you. ;)

Welcome to yoga dish!! What better way to start my blog than to dish out a very personal story inspired by dishes.

Many people these days have the luxury of a dishwasher in their home. I, however, do not and have spent the last ten years doing them by hand. Ten years ago, my partner Jason and I took the leap and joined together under one roof. Initially, our lovely 1950’s, 1000 sq foot, two bedroom, 1 bathroom home was easy to maintain. Fast forward five years to 2013, household maintenance became a full time job and plus some. We became proud parents of our son, 3 cats, and a dog. In the following five years to present day, we lost a dog, a cat but evened out with another son. Needless to say, parenthood exponentially increased the demands of maintaining a home and the dishes stacked up. It almost seemed as if the more dishes stacked up, the more my relationship with Jason was breaking down.

New to the demands of motherhood, I heeded parental magazines, friends, and blog advise to just not do the dishes. Baby comes first. The cleanliness of my house came last. I took liberty with the advise and just didn’t do the dishes for days. I’d rather nap. I’d rather shower. But most of all, I’d rather mope. Sleepless nights of breastfeeding, recovering from long 12 hour shifts in the ICU, and the overall general isolation of a mother and her infant were breaking me down. I was mentally and physically exhausted. Debilitated by depression, I hit rock bottom of a self-pity pit and barely contributed to the home. I got away with it for a while because Jason picked up the slack. He is a hands-on dad. He changes diapers. Washes dishes. Does laundry. Cleans the toilet. Cooks fabulous food. He works hard and commits 100% to his family.

It’s a never ending battle…but I’m okay with that now.

One morning, I awoke to find the kitchen counter cleaned and sink empty. A feeling of relief washed over me, assuming Jason had tackled the task again. I went to throw something in the garbage, and there were all our cheap dirty dishes that had been in the sink. “What the fuck?” I paused in disbelief. I opened the cupboard for a mug and was shocked to see the shelf divided. To the left was written my partners name, to the right, mine. A cup, a plate, a bowl for Jason. A cup, a plate, a bowl for me. My heart sunk heavy and I began to sob. Beyond whose fork was whose, the division of our dishes, Jason and I had never been more deeply divided.

The stress of figuring out motherhood, working as an intensive care nurse, and keeping up a home was soul shattering at points and I spiraled in and out of depression. It hadn’t been my first dance with depression and may likely not be the last. It’s taking me all of my life to rise up and BE a positive force, and I know it will take the rest of my life to actively maintain not just the cleanliness of my house, but my mental health as well.

I’m thrilled to say I survived the poor coping skills of my 20’s which involved a lot of black out drinking, and I’ve acquired many healthy skills through the practice of mindfulness and yoga. I enjoy reading spiritual texts from Dietrich Bonhoeffer to Thich Nhat Hahn. These spiritual teachers have saved my life. My current favorite spiritual guide to read is Eknath Easwaran.

Eknath Easwaran, isn’t he dashing?

Yoga Dish is a platform I’d like to use to share the inspirational words of wisdom from literature to everyday encounters. Check out the link to Thich Nhat Hahn’s article so appropriately entitled, “Washing the dishes.” https://www.freepressjournal.in/peace-of-mind/washing-the-dishes-thich-nhat-hanh/1061067

“Each thought, each action in the sunlight of awareness becomes sacred.

In this light, no boundary exists between the sacred and the profane.

It may take a bit longer to do the dishes, but we can live fully, happily, in every moment.”

~Thich Nhat Hanh~

I may not exactly have reached enjoyment while doing the dishes, but by returning to my practice, I have moved away from resentment and closer towards gratitude. Thankful for a roof. Thankful for clean water. Thankful for food. Thankful for the kitchen sink view of tall Pecans, wild weeds, bluebirds and squirrels playing. Doing the dishes can be a spiritual practice. Maintaining my home is a spiritual practice. I serve myself by serving others. Time and time again and to this day, hour by hour even, the dishes will continue to stack up and so will I, with discipline and community support.

Our names in permanent marker in the kitchen cupboard were still visible underneath a shoddy paint job attempt to conseal our woes when the landlord came to inspect its hinges. Rather than erase the evidence of conflict, I enhanced it with a twist, “Jason loves Cyndy with all his heart 😘.” Because he does, and always has through the good times and the bad. We are getting better at this thing called parenthood and adulting everyday. What doesn’t kill us, only makes us stronger. It’s the challenges in life that are true gifts towards spiritual growth and development. How will we react to the challenges? The choice is ours.