Increments

Increment: “A usually small amount or degree by which something is made larger or greater” (Merriam-Webster)

I think an awful lot about the formation and development of people’s habits. In my job, one of my deep areas of interest and study is about what beliefs and habits benefit students most. In my personal life beyond work, I have devoured books like Mindsets, The Tipping Point, A Whole New Mind, and The Power of Habit; and lately I have been actively working on shifting a few of my own habits. I have learned that habits reveal what you value.

Organizationally, this is pretty obvious. Schools, businesses, boards, working groups, and communities often have explicit norms or agreements about how they interact, and you can tell a lot about what the group values by the agreements they have (or don’t have) about how they approach their work together.

However, I find that it’s a little difficult to take an honest look at some of my own habits and realize what they reflect about my values. What do I choose to do and not do? With whom do I spend my time? How much effort do I expend on each action or interaction? What standards of quality do I have?

When thinking about yoga as an eight-limbed path, I recognize that I am entering the second stage of this path: self-study, which includes turning inward and concentration.

In one of my favorite yoga texts, Meditations from the Mat, Rolf Gates describes turning inward this way: 

“In my own life, this was the point at which I began to…cultivate and honor my own intuitive powers…. We can start by simply becoming aware of the process by which we arrive somewhere. Note the moment, the point, where your experience departs from resistance and moves into understanding. Begin to witness how it is you gain wisdom from your actions.”

Wow. This is big. I have read those sentences so many times, but understanding what they say, and then to applying that understanding to one’s life are challenging. For me, observing and reflecting on some of my habits has been a concrete entry point into self-study. Two habits I’ve been cultivating in the last several months are meditating most days and doing asana practice four times a week. Last week, I wrote about my resistance to meditating. The funny thing is, after writing it down, my resistance was diminished and my meditations came more easily – I had shifted into a place of understanding, shifted from compliance to engagement just by noticing and reflecting on where I was with the habit.

Our teacher Jeff said, “Minor adjustments can lead to big change.” He gave us the metaphor of an airplane making a tiny course correction to end up at a wholly different destination. I hang on to this idea of incremental change like a lifeline as I make slow, yet steady growth.

Taking Time to Tune In

"This being human is a guest house

Every morning a new arrival.

A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness

comes as an unexpected visitor.

Welcome and entertain them all!

Even if they are a crowd of sorrows, who violently sweep your

house empty of furniture, still treat each guest honorably.

He may be clearing you out for some new delight

The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the 

door laughing, and invite them in.

Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a

guide from beyond.” - Rumi

I marvel over how much practice it takes to follow this wisdom from Rumi. Mornings when I meditate, I see and greet my emotions, paying attention to who the “new arrivals” are each day. But when I skip morning meditation, it is much too easy just to roll into habitual actions that don’t demand that I pay attention, basically slighting the “guests” of my emotions. It’s like saying, “Oh, yeah right; you’re here! Help yourself to whatever is in the kitchen— hope it’s sufficient!” I would never treat a guest this way, so why do I sometimes treat my Self this way?

So, my first step is forming the habit again- being consistent with morning meditation. It’s the equivalent of “showing up on the mat”. I’m batting about 50% right now when it comes to AM meditation. I can do better.

And then there’s another step, born out of the first: making it a habit motivated by commitment to my own deep goal rather than a habit of just going through the motions. In the organization where I work, we often speak of students acting “out of engagement rather than compliance”. I find it amazing that I can slip into “acting out of compliance” even when I am my own teacher! I have to *allow* myself to engage. That probably means greeting some surprising visitors. I’m sure I’ll learn from them.

Being busy does not equal being alive. This being human takes practice. 

In & Out: A New Take on Breathing

“As I breathe is how I perceive. What I perceive is what I receive.” ~ Ed Harrold

One of the 8 limbs of yoga is mindful breathing. There is not a single bad thing about mindful breathing. On the contrary, the high-level list of benefits fills a page in our yoga teacher training manual. I sort of intellectually knew this to be true, but I had never practiced mindful breathing until about a year ago, when I found myself in a meditation class mostly by default and ended up really enjoying it.

Pema Chodron, the Buddhist monk whose writings I’ve been delving into lately, has quite a lot to say about breathing. I am learning from her  about Tonglen practice (which Pema describes beautifully in this post). In short, Tonglen is a form of mindful breathing where you breathe IN pain, suffering, struggle, fear—and you breathe OUT pain-soothing relief. 

This approach is antithetical to other messages I recall hearing, like “Let go; just breathe it out; exhale your pain.” Her take surprised me, so I’ve been trying it during short, 10-minute morning meditations to check my own experience of it, and It is making sense to me!

I am a beginner when it comes to learning about Buddhism, but Tonglen is an example of exactly what I appreciate about it and have to learn from studying it: Buddhism is oriented toward what is present and real, simple but not simplistic, generous in intention.

Tonglen exists as a breathing and meditation practice because there IS pain, suffering, and fear - and instead of denying or praying for different, this practice asks us to see it, look at it,drink it in. And then what we exhale and expel is soothing, loving. That is beautiful to me. It reminds me that each of us is capable of processing negativity to ease our own and other’s suffering.