Hey folks.
I realize I am a little bit late with my Brahmacharya post. I have been travelling and also perhaps avoiding writing on this topic. Or, rather, I have been a little unclear about what to write on with regards to this chapter. I still am a little bit. But I'm just going to write anyway, and see what comes out.
Ah, now you're itching to hear what the sutra is. Here ya go.
brahmacaryapratisthayam viryalabhah
brahmacarya continence, chastity
pratisthayam well established
virya energy, vigour, potency, valour
labhah gained, obtained, acquired
When the sadhaka is firmly established in continence, knowledge, vigour, valour and energy flow to him.
I would very much like to have "Let's Get It On" playing in the background of this blog post. It's actually oddly appropriate, now that I think of it.
Continence in this context refers to self-restraint of sexual activity, rather than controlling your bowels, just to clarify.
Ok, now that we've lightened the room up a bit, let's get serious and discuss Brahmacharya.
Traditionally, sexual energy and spiritual energy go hand-in-hand, and are arguably considered the same thing. As Iyengar states in his interpretation of Brahmacharya,
"The celibate transforms the energy of procreation into spiritual energy (ojas), creating lustre...Sexual energy is the most basic expression of the life force. It is immensely powerful, and it is essential to control and channel it. In no way should we despise it. On the contrary, we must respect and esteem it..."
First I should mention, as Iyengar also does in his interpretation, that this idea of Brahmacharya as sexual control is often misunderstood. The idea is not that we abstain from sex at all in our life, but that we cherish and esteem it. For myself, I am interpreting it as using it wisely. Putting it in the right place, so to speak. Traditionally, in yoga, men lose spiritual energy when they ejaculate, so must be intentional with where they choose to express their sexual energy. Women gain sexual energy upon orgasm (hooray for us), but I think the idea of controlling and channeling definitely still applies.
Personally, I want to be intentional with where I put my energy, in all aspects, not just sexually. This relates a lot to my last post, actually. I have a tendency to become overly excited about a project, and give it all my energy before I sit with it and fully put my intention into it, before I know its what I really want to do. And then I realize I've taken too many things on, or I realize I may have wanted to do this initially, but upon reflection it's not actually the best use of my time and skills. When I realized this pattern in myself, I came up with a plan. Every time I have a potentially life-altering idea, or just a significant change of plans, I will not do anything about it for a week and meditate with it. I've realized that I need to ground myself in these situations, to make sure it's really what I want to do. Not to overthink it or discourage my spontaneity, but to feel my feet on the earth and move with intention. To save my energy, so I can best use it. In a lot of ways, this is brahmacharya.
Ok, time to get really personal. Cue Marvin Gaye.
This idea of keeping my feet on the ground and staying present applies to sexuality and dating as well. Enormously. I have frequently gotten myself into a nasty pattern of finding someone attractive, and then letting my fantasies about them get out of hand. What happens after that is either I get hurt, because I was projecting my fantasies onto the situation and it doesn't go anywhere, since the other person doesn't feel the same way, or I get with the person, and I realize they are not the person I fantasized they were (surprise, surprise) and I freak out. Either one is not fun. The third option, which I am playing with now, is completely letting go of the fantasy. Fantasizing is fun. It's the Disney, Hollywood-inspired love story we all want. But it's not real life. So lately, if there's someone I find attractive, I pursue them, but let them go. Attempt to stay present with what's actually happening, rather than engage in a fantasy.
I'll point out here that engaging in negative self-talk, such as "they probably don't like me in that way", or "I'm not good enough, who I am kidding?", blah blah blah, is also engaging in fantasy. Fantasy is anything that is not clear and obvious with what is actually going on. Not feeding any theory or grand scheme that is either a projection of what we want or a fear of what we won't get. So engage not with fantasies about all the amazing things or worries about the horrible things.
We've all been young and made stupid, drunken decisions at parties. I am no exception to that rule. I have been in lots of situations that are the complete opposite of brahmacharya. But you have to find out what doesn't work in order to know what does, right? I look back at some of the decisions I made about sexuality, and realized they weren't really decisions. I wasn't acting on intention. I was acting out of fear of being alone. Fear of "this being my only chance." Or I was just drunk and not thinking. I was acting on impulse, but not in a good way. I didn't feel grounded in myself when I made those decisions. I somehow work myself up into a state of immense insecurity, almost paranoia, where I don't feel solid enough in myself to say no when that's probably what I want to say. I don't have the courage to be alone in that moment.
So instead of trying to achieve "getting with the person" on a date with someone, release my expectations and just be in the moment. Get to know the person. No acting out of fear or fantasy.
This reminds me of the idea of true consent. Hmm, just to be safe, I should say this part may possibly be triggering. Yes, there is something to be said for being spontaneous and having a fun night. In my early twenties that would have been okay, or I would have been okay with not being okay for a couple days. Now, I don't think I would let myself do that, unless it was very unusual circumstances. It's not that I wouldn't let myself sleep with someone I just met, but I wouldn't let myself go ahead with it unless it was something I felt 110% good about. That's something I used to do in my early 20s that I simply won't do anymore. So what does it mean to truly consent to having sex with someone? It's one thing to just say the word yes and another to really mean it, to mean it with your whole body, mind, and soul. Consent is a topic that needs to be discussed more in our culture, from an early age. To me, brahmacharya and consent are more or less interchangeable. We need to be teaching our kids (and each other) what it means to say yes, to anything, sex or not. Are we doing it because we really want to, or because we think we should, or because it's better than being alone? What are our motivations? We need to really listen to these answers in ourselves before we make these decisions. Because there is nothing worse than the moments after making a decision that was based on fear, and realizing I didn't have the courage to say no.
So how will I control and channel my sexual energy? Or creative energy? Or just, simply, energy?
Keeping myself grounded, first of all. Keeping my feet on the earth. Checking in with my motivations. Disengaging with fantasy. Acting out of desire, not out of fear. Get to know the person first. Take things slowly. Save it. Notice my excitement, but don't act out of a projected fantasy. Release expectations and attachment. Be in the moment. Only give my energy to people and situations that give back to me.
Feel my energy, enjoy it, but check in with myself before I act on it or not.
To conclude, I want to leave you with my amazing and talented friends, West My Friend. They have a wonderful song which I think screams brahmacharya. Here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-20BmZxt7HI
Namaste.
-Elysia
Thursday, December 19, 2013
Sunday, December 1, 2013
Asteya, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Moment.
It is seeming more and more that something is aligned with the universe with my focus on the yamas. Each week so far, something big has occurred that has brought the lesson of the yama I'm focussing on more deeply into my awareness on a personal level.
The third Yama, which I focussed on this past week, is Asteya. Asteya is the concept of non-stealing, but, as always, its meaning extends far further than that. I'll give you the sutra:
asteya non-stealing, non-appropriation, desirelessness, non-covetousness
pratissthayam well-established
sarva all
ratna gems, precious things
upasthanam approaching, coming up
"When abstention from stealing is firmly established, precious jewels come."
Iyengar's interpretation of the sutra is as follows: "Upon the man who does not take what does not belong to him, all riches are showered. Being without desire, he effortlessly attracts what is precious, materially and figuratively, including the gem of all jewels, virtue."
What does it mean to abstain from stealing? Of course, as with all the yamas, one could read the literal interpretation: don't steal things. But stealing is so much more than just sneaking a grape in the produce aisle at the grocery store. A few words jumped out at me when I read this sutra. First, the word mis-appropriation. To me, this conjures up images of faux-moccasins, "Indian costumes", Lululemon...the list goes on: the famous cultural appropriation. I bring up the Lululemon thing because it seems appropriate given that I'm writing on Yoga. I have often wondered, as someone involving myself in yoga, how to best honour and respect the ancient practice and wisdom, as see it as something that is infinite in its scope and also something that I will never possess or own. I have often wondered, as someone who practices yoga and who now will embark on teaching it as well, how I am benefiting from the colonization of India. In the end, I believe the issue comes down to respect: I will not mis-appropriate the sacred teachings of yoga. I will honour the ancient practice and attempt as best I can to incorporate it into my life. I won't get into Lululemon here. You get the gist.
The word that jumped out at me the most while reading this sutra, however, was the word desirelessness. At first, it confused me. What does desirelessness have to do with abstention from stealing? And as soon as I asked the question I knew the answer. If we go so far as to steal something, whether it's an object or energy or attention, we desire to have it, to own it, to possess it.
What does it mean to own something, to possess something? Can we actually do that? It seems as though the desire to possess something is rooted in attachment, in ego. We want something more than what we have right now. I don't think it's bad to desire things. It's good to know what you want and feel hopeful. But it's an entirely different matter to be attached to the things you desire. How can we own anything? That idea of possession was obviously created by the mind and ego. It's an illusion. We are made of earth and stardust, and so are the things we want to possess, so how can we possess them? I don't own my bed, I purchased it with something called money, contributing to a made up system which somehow makes people richer and also causes much suffering around the world. The concept that I own it is illusory. It's not mine. We don't own anything. Not even our own bodies.
This concept of desirelessness stayed with me throughout the week, and eventually hit me like a concrete block. Well, at first the timing was fascinating as I read about the Black Friday deaths that happened in 2008. Apparently, if you agree to work at Walmart, not only do you get paid minimum wage, but if you're lucky you'll receive the ultimate perk of death by a stampede of crazed consumers. Unbelievable. Are our souls so deeply hungry that we will actually push a crowd into a store so hard that someone will actually die? To me this is so deeply sad it is almost funny. After reading about this, I wondered, what are our souls so deeply craving? Are we this far removed from our own humanity? We are like hungry wild dogs, smelling a fresh flank. Our souls are malnourished so we need to fill the void with every new shiny, plastic wrapped toy that comes our way. We're all little caffeinated drones, with spiked blood sugar, finding the next flashy thing to "need to have", to keep us entertained so we don't fall apart.
But it's not just about consumerism. Even for those of us who don't care about the latest iPhone or what have you, we are still subject to this messy cycle of looking into the future and desiring everything but what is in the present moment. I know I am. Even if what I'm desiring is a coffee, sex, a relationship, alcohol, chocolate, I am still taking my focus away from what is present and alive in this moment, which is, in itself, full. Not that I shouldn't want those things. But it's the needing to have them, the attachment, which consistently fails me. It's that feeling that I'm filling a void.
And this is where the concrete block comes in. Without getting into too many details, this week I realized that I have been entrenched in a pattern of creating grandiose plans that I cannot actually follow through on. I allow myself to enable my joyous enthusiasm for ideas and grand projects, and promise a whole bunch of things I can't keep. Anyway, long story short, I realized that these grandiose plans of mine are my version of the iPhone 5s. They are my new shiny toys that I see, want, then realize I can't do, and then throw away. This high, this excitement I feel from creating these plans, is what keeps me from what I perceive to be the emptiness of the present moment. It keeps me from depression, from the dark thoughts that catch up with me if I am still for too long.
Anyhow, all this came crashing down on me the other night when I had two pretty massive panic attacks. The next day, I felt like I had been hit by a truck. I was stiff, sore, exhausted and emotionally worn out from such a blow to my nervous system. Like people who survive a car crash or terminal illness, I felt as though I was picked up by a great windstorm, shaken up, and thrown mercilessly back down to earth. I was understanding the world the next day the way a baby would, taking in experiences moment to moment, because I was too tired to do anything else. When I observed the effect this experience was having on my body, I knew that if I did not break this pattern I would make myself possibly very seriously ill.
The answer?
Well, number one is always, forgive myself.
Secondly, no more grandiose plans. For the past few days, the moment I begin to daydream, to create plans that aren't rooted in what's actually happening, I close my eyes, feel my feet on the ground and breathe. It's good to have dreams, but if I'm not manifesting them into reality, then they just remain fantasies. Little castles in the clouds. Come back to earth, to what I can actually accomplish. Baby steps.
Next, I release drinking coffee. Sad, yes, I know. I love it so. But I realized that drinking coffee brings me out of my body and into my head, and gives me this false energy to dream up all these grandiose plans that I can't fulfil. It's also something that I am attached to in a way that I feel, at first, slightly sad when I don't have it. It makes me feel like superwoman, like I can do absolutely anything, without actually supplying me with any energy to do these things.
Finally, I will work on releasing expectation from my life. This is a big one. It's great to recognize what I want, but if I have an expectation for what that will be, then I will be blind to the amazing things that will actually come of it, even if it's nothing. If I go into a situation with no expectation or attachment, in a way I have nothing to lose. Of course, for me this keeps coming back to my relationships with people. Have you ever created a fantasy about someone, and in doing so created such a grand expectation of your relationship to them, that you cannot actually function in real life around them? I have been refusing to do this for a number of years now, but every now and then I find myself heading in that direction. When that happens now, I will consciously divert my mind back to the present moment. If I engage in a fantasy about someone, then I've created a trap for myself where nothing but the exact re-enactment of the fantasy will satisfy me. And perhaps the fantasy is not actually what I want, it's what I think I want. Perhaps releasing the fantasy and experiencing the actual person is a better option, because I will allow myself to be surprised by what actually happens, in real life.
And while I'm on that, doesn't releasing your expectations of something make the thing more interesting and enjoyable? I have a neighbour who I think is pretty cute (I think I've already mentioned this), and even though I know they have a partner, I am still enjoying my interactions with them. In some ways, I think because I do not expect an actual outcome of this situation, the desire for it is ruled out, and I can actually just be in the moment and enjoy it anyway. How freeing.
And hey, is it just me, or does releasing expectation, attachment and desire make you more bold and daring? I am more likely to say what I want to say when I have no attachment to what comes from it. Because the act of speaking my truth is enough of a gift. Each moment, in and of itself, is full.
If I have no desire or attachment, I allow myself to receive all of the precious jewels that Patanjali is talking about.
A fascinating example of what I am about to write about just happened. I finished writing my post a few minutes ago, feeling quite proud of it, then I pressed Publish and closed this window. I checked my blog to see if it had been published, and it had not. So I went back to the writing page and discovered that two-thirds of what I had written was gone, that the page had stopped saving it after a time. At first I was frustrated and angry. And then I realized, what a beautiful example of Asteya. It was amazing, at first I was pulling my hair out trying to remember what I had written, and then I realized, here is a perfect opportunity to just breathe with what is. So, began to write some of what I remembered, as well as some other thoughts, but I released my attachment that it had to be exactly the same as what I had written previously.
I'm interested to see what happens next week.
Namaste.
The third Yama, which I focussed on this past week, is Asteya. Asteya is the concept of non-stealing, but, as always, its meaning extends far further than that. I'll give you the sutra:
asteya non-stealing, non-appropriation, desirelessness, non-covetousness
pratissthayam well-established
sarva all
ratna gems, precious things
upasthanam approaching, coming up
"When abstention from stealing is firmly established, precious jewels come."
Iyengar's interpretation of the sutra is as follows: "Upon the man who does not take what does not belong to him, all riches are showered. Being without desire, he effortlessly attracts what is precious, materially and figuratively, including the gem of all jewels, virtue."
What does it mean to abstain from stealing? Of course, as with all the yamas, one could read the literal interpretation: don't steal things. But stealing is so much more than just sneaking a grape in the produce aisle at the grocery store. A few words jumped out at me when I read this sutra. First, the word mis-appropriation. To me, this conjures up images of faux-moccasins, "Indian costumes", Lululemon...the list goes on: the famous cultural appropriation. I bring up the Lululemon thing because it seems appropriate given that I'm writing on Yoga. I have often wondered, as someone involving myself in yoga, how to best honour and respect the ancient practice and wisdom, as see it as something that is infinite in its scope and also something that I will never possess or own. I have often wondered, as someone who practices yoga and who now will embark on teaching it as well, how I am benefiting from the colonization of India. In the end, I believe the issue comes down to respect: I will not mis-appropriate the sacred teachings of yoga. I will honour the ancient practice and attempt as best I can to incorporate it into my life. I won't get into Lululemon here. You get the gist.
The word that jumped out at me the most while reading this sutra, however, was the word desirelessness. At first, it confused me. What does desirelessness have to do with abstention from stealing? And as soon as I asked the question I knew the answer. If we go so far as to steal something, whether it's an object or energy or attention, we desire to have it, to own it, to possess it.
What does it mean to own something, to possess something? Can we actually do that? It seems as though the desire to possess something is rooted in attachment, in ego. We want something more than what we have right now. I don't think it's bad to desire things. It's good to know what you want and feel hopeful. But it's an entirely different matter to be attached to the things you desire. How can we own anything? That idea of possession was obviously created by the mind and ego. It's an illusion. We are made of earth and stardust, and so are the things we want to possess, so how can we possess them? I don't own my bed, I purchased it with something called money, contributing to a made up system which somehow makes people richer and also causes much suffering around the world. The concept that I own it is illusory. It's not mine. We don't own anything. Not even our own bodies.
This concept of desirelessness stayed with me throughout the week, and eventually hit me like a concrete block. Well, at first the timing was fascinating as I read about the Black Friday deaths that happened in 2008. Apparently, if you agree to work at Walmart, not only do you get paid minimum wage, but if you're lucky you'll receive the ultimate perk of death by a stampede of crazed consumers. Unbelievable. Are our souls so deeply hungry that we will actually push a crowd into a store so hard that someone will actually die? To me this is so deeply sad it is almost funny. After reading about this, I wondered, what are our souls so deeply craving? Are we this far removed from our own humanity? We are like hungry wild dogs, smelling a fresh flank. Our souls are malnourished so we need to fill the void with every new shiny, plastic wrapped toy that comes our way. We're all little caffeinated drones, with spiked blood sugar, finding the next flashy thing to "need to have", to keep us entertained so we don't fall apart.
But it's not just about consumerism. Even for those of us who don't care about the latest iPhone or what have you, we are still subject to this messy cycle of looking into the future and desiring everything but what is in the present moment. I know I am. Even if what I'm desiring is a coffee, sex, a relationship, alcohol, chocolate, I am still taking my focus away from what is present and alive in this moment, which is, in itself, full. Not that I shouldn't want those things. But it's the needing to have them, the attachment, which consistently fails me. It's that feeling that I'm filling a void.
And this is where the concrete block comes in. Without getting into too many details, this week I realized that I have been entrenched in a pattern of creating grandiose plans that I cannot actually follow through on. I allow myself to enable my joyous enthusiasm for ideas and grand projects, and promise a whole bunch of things I can't keep. Anyway, long story short, I realized that these grandiose plans of mine are my version of the iPhone 5s. They are my new shiny toys that I see, want, then realize I can't do, and then throw away. This high, this excitement I feel from creating these plans, is what keeps me from what I perceive to be the emptiness of the present moment. It keeps me from depression, from the dark thoughts that catch up with me if I am still for too long.
Anyhow, all this came crashing down on me the other night when I had two pretty massive panic attacks. The next day, I felt like I had been hit by a truck. I was stiff, sore, exhausted and emotionally worn out from such a blow to my nervous system. Like people who survive a car crash or terminal illness, I felt as though I was picked up by a great windstorm, shaken up, and thrown mercilessly back down to earth. I was understanding the world the next day the way a baby would, taking in experiences moment to moment, because I was too tired to do anything else. When I observed the effect this experience was having on my body, I knew that if I did not break this pattern I would make myself possibly very seriously ill.
The answer?
Well, number one is always, forgive myself.
Secondly, no more grandiose plans. For the past few days, the moment I begin to daydream, to create plans that aren't rooted in what's actually happening, I close my eyes, feel my feet on the ground and breathe. It's good to have dreams, but if I'm not manifesting them into reality, then they just remain fantasies. Little castles in the clouds. Come back to earth, to what I can actually accomplish. Baby steps.
Next, I release drinking coffee. Sad, yes, I know. I love it so. But I realized that drinking coffee brings me out of my body and into my head, and gives me this false energy to dream up all these grandiose plans that I can't fulfil. It's also something that I am attached to in a way that I feel, at first, slightly sad when I don't have it. It makes me feel like superwoman, like I can do absolutely anything, without actually supplying me with any energy to do these things.
Finally, I will work on releasing expectation from my life. This is a big one. It's great to recognize what I want, but if I have an expectation for what that will be, then I will be blind to the amazing things that will actually come of it, even if it's nothing. If I go into a situation with no expectation or attachment, in a way I have nothing to lose. Of course, for me this keeps coming back to my relationships with people. Have you ever created a fantasy about someone, and in doing so created such a grand expectation of your relationship to them, that you cannot actually function in real life around them? I have been refusing to do this for a number of years now, but every now and then I find myself heading in that direction. When that happens now, I will consciously divert my mind back to the present moment. If I engage in a fantasy about someone, then I've created a trap for myself where nothing but the exact re-enactment of the fantasy will satisfy me. And perhaps the fantasy is not actually what I want, it's what I think I want. Perhaps releasing the fantasy and experiencing the actual person is a better option, because I will allow myself to be surprised by what actually happens, in real life.
And while I'm on that, doesn't releasing your expectations of something make the thing more interesting and enjoyable? I have a neighbour who I think is pretty cute (I think I've already mentioned this), and even though I know they have a partner, I am still enjoying my interactions with them. In some ways, I think because I do not expect an actual outcome of this situation, the desire for it is ruled out, and I can actually just be in the moment and enjoy it anyway. How freeing.
And hey, is it just me, or does releasing expectation, attachment and desire make you more bold and daring? I am more likely to say what I want to say when I have no attachment to what comes from it. Because the act of speaking my truth is enough of a gift. Each moment, in and of itself, is full.
If I have no desire or attachment, I allow myself to receive all of the precious jewels that Patanjali is talking about.
A fascinating example of what I am about to write about just happened. I finished writing my post a few minutes ago, feeling quite proud of it, then I pressed Publish and closed this window. I checked my blog to see if it had been published, and it had not. So I went back to the writing page and discovered that two-thirds of what I had written was gone, that the page had stopped saving it after a time. At first I was frustrated and angry. And then I realized, what a beautiful example of Asteya. It was amazing, at first I was pulling my hair out trying to remember what I had written, and then I realized, here is a perfect opportunity to just breathe with what is. So, began to write some of what I remembered, as well as some other thoughts, but I released my attachment that it had to be exactly the same as what I had written previously.
I'm interested to see what happens next week.
Namaste.
Thursday, November 21, 2013
Satya: "It's not my mind, but my cells that tell the truth, those little bastards"
I am a bit late for my entry this week, I apologize.
The second Yama is Satya. Satya is truthfulness, honesty, sincerity, genuineness. Here is the sutra on Satya from Patanjali:
satyapratisthayam kriyaphalasrayavam
satya truth, sincerity, genuineness, honesty
pratisthayam firmly established
kriya action
phalah results
asrayatvam substratum, foundation, dependence
"When the sadhaka (practitioner) is firmly established in the practice of truth, his words become so potent that whatever he says comes to realization."
When I read this, I observed the goosebumps permeate my entire body. Not only because, holy crap, it's true, but because it resonated so much with what I am personally struggling with in my life right now, this week.
BKS Iyengar's interpretation of this sutra is none short of brilliant. He says, "If the stated intention is totally whole-hearted, not one cell dissembling, then we create the reality we desire. It is not our mind, but the inner voice of our cells which has the power to implement our intentions."
So, yeah, remember those goosebumps I talked about? They were more like goose-mountains when I finished reading that sentence. I re-read it over and over again, as it made so much sense to me, but I didn't really understand it intellectually (which is, ironically, what the sutra is telling me to avoid doing). It reminded me of my 5-week experience at Canada's National Voice Intensive. In short, the Voice Intensive is a deep exploration of the physical body and the voice, and how we may fully breathe into each experience and simply be, rather than organize or intellectualize it. I think this is in essence what this sutra is on about. Or, at least, what Iyengar's interpretation is on about. When do we really allow our bodies to tell us the truth? Our mind may say one thing, but our bodies tell us differently. If we really tap into what our body, our cells, are telling us, and we act with impulse and our body's intuition, then we are really being our truth.
How do we manifest our dreams into reality?
As a Pisces, with a so-called "water triangle" in my astrological chart, I struggle with this question every day. I have no problem dreaming my butt off about this or that, but when it comes to sharing those dreams, or making those dreams a reality, I could use a bit of assistance. That's why this sutra so deeply resonated with me. This sutra tells me that in order to create my desired reality, I have to simply be truthful. Iyengar goes further than this by telling me that in order to create my desired reality, I must fully embody my truth, not just in my mind, but in my cells. If every cell in my body is not fully on board with what I want, chances are lower that I will get what I want. Once again, the real truth of this Yama is deeper than what superficially meets the eye. Someone reading about Satya for the first time might think, "oh, so, don't tell lies. Say what you mean." Well, yes, this is true. But there's being "truthful" and then there's being truthful. What would it be to speak the absolute truth, speak everything our cells were experiencing, for one week?
I'll be honest, I didn't do that. In fact, that is one of my main motivators for writing. I had an experience this week that really brought home the concept and practice of Satya. I'll just come clean about something I'm struggling with in my life these days. Here it goes- I'll share my cells with the blogosphere. If I am in the presence of someone I find attractive, I observe my body retreating into sleep mode. I completely freeze up, something with the texture akin to cottonballs gets caught in my throat, I feel everything tighten, and I can't really speak at all, let alone let the person know what I feel about them. Yikes. So, here I am at Cornerstone Café the other day, sitting next to a young man that I've had several pleasant interactions with at this point. He came up to me several weeks back, introduced himself, said he recognized me from the shop. Anyway, here he is sitting next to me, we exchange a few words, laughs. It suddenly comes into my awareness that I could, at this point, ask this person out for a drink. I sit with that for a moment. A moment turns into a few moments, a few moments turn into an hour. I sit with this idea, the concept of this action that would undoubtedly alter my self-perception, perhaps make me feel awkward for a moment, but in the end, due to my capacity to release attachment to these situations, ultimately add jet-fuel to my somewhat punctured self-esteem around this issue. This action wants so badly to propel forward, but somehow I can't muster up the courage to turn around, face this person, and speak what I want to say, so it sits there. And this horrible feeling comes over my body, that I'm on the cusp of turning 27, and I still feel like a 12 year old girl when in these situations. My mind is racing, telling me things like, "Lisi, if you don't get up the courage to do this, you're going to get old with the knowledge that you lived your life in fear" and several other debilitating thoughts like that. Sara Bareilles' song Brave came to my mind, particularly the lyric:
"Don't run, stop holding your tongue.
Maybe there's a way out of the cage where you live,
Maybe one of these days you can let the light in..."
That was a good description of what I have felt in these situations: like I'm in a cage. I feel like the terrified child I used to be, afraid of everything around me that moved, debilitated by anxiety. I overcame all my fears from when I was four years old: this is not really all that different. How did I overcome those fears? I wasn't tossed off the deep end and expected to swim, but I was gently encouraged to face my fears, one by one, and eventually overcame them. This is really no different.
Obviously the universe was trying to tell me something that morning, because while I was sitting there, stuck in my cage, another man I find very attractive came into the café. The funny thing about this was that I have never seen this person come into the café. I have only ever seen him and interacted with him in front of his house. I very much want to tell this person I find him attractive, even though I know he has a girlfriend. But I know that I want to express these things not because I have an attachment to the outcome, but because I want to feel empowered to say these things when I feel them. Through telling other people I find them attractive, I tell myself that I am attractive. But here I was, in the same room as two men I find attractive, stuck in my chair, unable to move.
So, what does this have to do with Satya, you ask? Good question. Well, I realized that Satya is basically the law of attraction: I attract that which I am. If I embody my truth, fully believing it to be true, not one cell dissembling, I will undoubtedly attract what I want into my life. This idea took me through a journey, then, of what my cells were actually telling me. I know intellectually that I'm attractive, that of course I am worthy of being happy and being loved. But what do my cells say? In those situations, my body goes into a state of fear, and, without even thinking about it, the thoughts that run through my body tell me I'm not good enough, for any number of bullshit-ridden reasons. Because most of my cells are telling me I'm not good enough, my body language is likely projecting that idea out there, and I'm telling the world "don't look here, you don't want this." That is when I realized that our thoughts become the way we are externally perceived. Holy crap.
When someone is truthful with their whole body, allow themselves to resonate in their truth, they may manifest whatever they express. If you are honest with yourself with what you want, and communicate it, you will probably make it happen. Perhaps not right away. But at some point, something will manifest. I have been on either side of this. Either I have communicated too much of what I think I want, before I've really checked in with the entirety of myself to see if its what I want, and have later regretted acting before I was sure. On the other hand, I'm honest with myself with what I want, but I can't communicate it. This is where I am with my situation in the café. Because I'm too scared to communicate what I want, nobody knows what I want. The truth that only resonates within a few of my cells would vibrate my whole body if I communicated it. Because I am fully being my truth. If its just my mind telling me I'm attractive, then most of my cells are communicating that I'm not. Ergo, my cells are vibrating that I'm not attractive. Those little bastards.
Perhaps just communicating what I want will get me there. If I fully believe in my whole being that I am attractive, then I will be attractive. But the only way I will fully believe it, I'm starting to realize, is if I go act on my impulses and go after what I want.
Unless all the cells in my body resonate with my truth, I am not being truthful.
I leave you with that for the week. In short, Satya is awesome.
Namaste,
Elysia
The second Yama is Satya. Satya is truthfulness, honesty, sincerity, genuineness. Here is the sutra on Satya from Patanjali:
satyapratisthayam kriyaphalasrayavam
satya truth, sincerity, genuineness, honesty
pratisthayam firmly established
kriya action
phalah results
asrayatvam substratum, foundation, dependence
"When the sadhaka (practitioner) is firmly established in the practice of truth, his words become so potent that whatever he says comes to realization."
When I read this, I observed the goosebumps permeate my entire body. Not only because, holy crap, it's true, but because it resonated so much with what I am personally struggling with in my life right now, this week.
BKS Iyengar's interpretation of this sutra is none short of brilliant. He says, "If the stated intention is totally whole-hearted, not one cell dissembling, then we create the reality we desire. It is not our mind, but the inner voice of our cells which has the power to implement our intentions."
So, yeah, remember those goosebumps I talked about? They were more like goose-mountains when I finished reading that sentence. I re-read it over and over again, as it made so much sense to me, but I didn't really understand it intellectually (which is, ironically, what the sutra is telling me to avoid doing). It reminded me of my 5-week experience at Canada's National Voice Intensive. In short, the Voice Intensive is a deep exploration of the physical body and the voice, and how we may fully breathe into each experience and simply be, rather than organize or intellectualize it. I think this is in essence what this sutra is on about. Or, at least, what Iyengar's interpretation is on about. When do we really allow our bodies to tell us the truth? Our mind may say one thing, but our bodies tell us differently. If we really tap into what our body, our cells, are telling us, and we act with impulse and our body's intuition, then we are really being our truth.
How do we manifest our dreams into reality?
As a Pisces, with a so-called "water triangle" in my astrological chart, I struggle with this question every day. I have no problem dreaming my butt off about this or that, but when it comes to sharing those dreams, or making those dreams a reality, I could use a bit of assistance. That's why this sutra so deeply resonated with me. This sutra tells me that in order to create my desired reality, I have to simply be truthful. Iyengar goes further than this by telling me that in order to create my desired reality, I must fully embody my truth, not just in my mind, but in my cells. If every cell in my body is not fully on board with what I want, chances are lower that I will get what I want. Once again, the real truth of this Yama is deeper than what superficially meets the eye. Someone reading about Satya for the first time might think, "oh, so, don't tell lies. Say what you mean." Well, yes, this is true. But there's being "truthful" and then there's being truthful. What would it be to speak the absolute truth, speak everything our cells were experiencing, for one week?
I'll be honest, I didn't do that. In fact, that is one of my main motivators for writing. I had an experience this week that really brought home the concept and practice of Satya. I'll just come clean about something I'm struggling with in my life these days. Here it goes- I'll share my cells with the blogosphere. If I am in the presence of someone I find attractive, I observe my body retreating into sleep mode. I completely freeze up, something with the texture akin to cottonballs gets caught in my throat, I feel everything tighten, and I can't really speak at all, let alone let the person know what I feel about them. Yikes. So, here I am at Cornerstone Café the other day, sitting next to a young man that I've had several pleasant interactions with at this point. He came up to me several weeks back, introduced himself, said he recognized me from the shop. Anyway, here he is sitting next to me, we exchange a few words, laughs. It suddenly comes into my awareness that I could, at this point, ask this person out for a drink. I sit with that for a moment. A moment turns into a few moments, a few moments turn into an hour. I sit with this idea, the concept of this action that would undoubtedly alter my self-perception, perhaps make me feel awkward for a moment, but in the end, due to my capacity to release attachment to these situations, ultimately add jet-fuel to my somewhat punctured self-esteem around this issue. This action wants so badly to propel forward, but somehow I can't muster up the courage to turn around, face this person, and speak what I want to say, so it sits there. And this horrible feeling comes over my body, that I'm on the cusp of turning 27, and I still feel like a 12 year old girl when in these situations. My mind is racing, telling me things like, "Lisi, if you don't get up the courage to do this, you're going to get old with the knowledge that you lived your life in fear" and several other debilitating thoughts like that. Sara Bareilles' song Brave came to my mind, particularly the lyric:
"Don't run, stop holding your tongue.
Maybe there's a way out of the cage where you live,
Maybe one of these days you can let the light in..."
That was a good description of what I have felt in these situations: like I'm in a cage. I feel like the terrified child I used to be, afraid of everything around me that moved, debilitated by anxiety. I overcame all my fears from when I was four years old: this is not really all that different. How did I overcome those fears? I wasn't tossed off the deep end and expected to swim, but I was gently encouraged to face my fears, one by one, and eventually overcame them. This is really no different.
Obviously the universe was trying to tell me something that morning, because while I was sitting there, stuck in my cage, another man I find very attractive came into the café. The funny thing about this was that I have never seen this person come into the café. I have only ever seen him and interacted with him in front of his house. I very much want to tell this person I find him attractive, even though I know he has a girlfriend. But I know that I want to express these things not because I have an attachment to the outcome, but because I want to feel empowered to say these things when I feel them. Through telling other people I find them attractive, I tell myself that I am attractive. But here I was, in the same room as two men I find attractive, stuck in my chair, unable to move.
So, what does this have to do with Satya, you ask? Good question. Well, I realized that Satya is basically the law of attraction: I attract that which I am. If I embody my truth, fully believing it to be true, not one cell dissembling, I will undoubtedly attract what I want into my life. This idea took me through a journey, then, of what my cells were actually telling me. I know intellectually that I'm attractive, that of course I am worthy of being happy and being loved. But what do my cells say? In those situations, my body goes into a state of fear, and, without even thinking about it, the thoughts that run through my body tell me I'm not good enough, for any number of bullshit-ridden reasons. Because most of my cells are telling me I'm not good enough, my body language is likely projecting that idea out there, and I'm telling the world "don't look here, you don't want this." That is when I realized that our thoughts become the way we are externally perceived. Holy crap.
When someone is truthful with their whole body, allow themselves to resonate in their truth, they may manifest whatever they express. If you are honest with yourself with what you want, and communicate it, you will probably make it happen. Perhaps not right away. But at some point, something will manifest. I have been on either side of this. Either I have communicated too much of what I think I want, before I've really checked in with the entirety of myself to see if its what I want, and have later regretted acting before I was sure. On the other hand, I'm honest with myself with what I want, but I can't communicate it. This is where I am with my situation in the café. Because I'm too scared to communicate what I want, nobody knows what I want. The truth that only resonates within a few of my cells would vibrate my whole body if I communicated it. Because I am fully being my truth. If its just my mind telling me I'm attractive, then most of my cells are communicating that I'm not. Ergo, my cells are vibrating that I'm not attractive. Those little bastards.
Perhaps just communicating what I want will get me there. If I fully believe in my whole being that I am attractive, then I will be attractive. But the only way I will fully believe it, I'm starting to realize, is if I go act on my impulses and go after what I want.
Unless all the cells in my body resonate with my truth, I am not being truthful.
I leave you with that for the week. In short, Satya is awesome.
Namaste,
Elysia
Tuesday, November 12, 2013
Ahimsa: the subtlety of non-violence
ahimsapratisthayam tatsannidhau vairatyagah
ahimsa: non-violence
pratisthayam: standing firmly, firmly established
tat: his
sannidhau: presence, vicinity
vaira: animosity, hostility
tyagah: forsaking, abandoning, deserting
"When non-violence in speech, thought and action is established, one's aggressive nature is relinquished and others abandon hostility in one's presence."
An important piece in studying the Yamas and Niyamas is looking beyond their superficial meanings, and looking at the intricate ways in which they play out in everyday circumstances. I thought about this all week when integrating the concept of non-violence into my life. And boy, it is subtle.
,
Well, what is violence, to begin with? The sutra says that if one understands the nature of violence, one can truly be non-violent. This means investigating the many subtle ways in which violence plays out.
Because I'm a word geek, and have a particular weakness for etymology, I looked up the word "violence" in the dictionary. It comes from the Latin violentia, meaning vehemence or forcibility. It comes from the roots vis, meaning force, and fero, meaning to carry. Thus, the original meaning of violence is to carry force.
The dictionary then gave me the definition of violence as "physical force used to inflict injury or damage", "a great destructive force or energy", "intense, turbulent, or furious and often destructive action or force", and my personal favourite, "vehement feeling or expression."
Holy wow. I wonder how many people see the word "non-violence" and skip over it in their minds, thinking, meh, I've never really hurt anybody, hey I've never caused physical harm to anyone, I'm good. I know I have. But this week really got me thinking about how many subtle ways there are to be "violent". It's not just hitting people. Of course, I've been exposed to this idea before, as I have some training in non-violent communication (NVC). Those of you who have not read Marshall Rosenberg's Non-Violent Communication: A Language of Life, I recommend you do so. It's an incredibly life changing book. It explores how by identifying our own and each others' feelings and needs, we move away from a reactionary, "violent" way of communicating, and towards compassionate communication. One of the most challenging yet rewarding things to do is to listen to someone and not judge, react, or give advice. Simply being a witness can be extremely challenging, especially for Type A personalities. Those of us who like to be in control, always be right, and fix everything, feel extremely challenged by "just being a witness to experience." As the sutra says, one must be non-violent in speech.
However, it is not enough to abide by the adage of kindergarten, "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all." If we want to work towards being non-violent, we must let go of the judgements that pervade our thoughts. Before I "don't say anything at all", I must first stop the judgemental thoughts that run through my head. Oh, and the word "judgement" doesn't mean a bad judgement. It just means an analysis of someone else's experience, thinking that we know something that they don't. For myself, I had to consistently fight that overwhelming desire to give sagely advice that I myself don't even act upon, rather than simply bearing witness to someone else's experience. It's removing an assumption that I somehow know better than someone else, it's wiping the slate clean and approaching another person's experience as a baby would. I have no idea how someone else experiences the world, what kind of a life they have lived, in order to be saying the things they say or doing the things they do. It's understanding that everyone is doing the best they can for where they are at, and to move away from judgement entirely. Even making the judgement that something is "good" can be violent. Heck, think about how damaging the mainstream education system can be with its external rewards system, getting a gold star every time we do something "good." Even then, I just recognized I made a judgement about the education system, rather than understanding where that system came from and why. And then I may judge myself for having a judgement, and the cycle continues.
This is not to say that we can never, ever have thoughts about something, or ever give advice. But for me, its being aware of the intention behind my thoughts or advice. It's stepping back and re-evaluating these thoughts and deciding whether its best to let them out of my mouth, or let them go and just be a witness.
This comes back to the definition and root of the word "violence", as a vehement force. Giving advice, or trying to change someone's viewpoint or action, is, in many ways, an attempt to force the situation. It's moving against the flow of the universe, if I were speaking in Taoist terms. Now, of course there are times in which this is necessary. If someone's about to hurl themselves in front of the subway tracks, I'm not going to say "meh, don't want to force the flow of the universe". Hey, I might even encourage someone to think differently about something or give advice once in a while. So what's the difference? I think it's my attachment to the result of my encouragement or advice. I have to accept that everyone is where they are at, and I personally am not going to change them. People only change on their own. They may be inspired by someone else, but the actual change occurs within, when they are ready to make that step.
This brought me to my most important conclusion this week, that I have heard over and over again in theory, but only really understood through examining ahimsa these past seven days. "Be the change you wish to see in the world" is a phrase that has been thrown around a lot, and one I've heard for most of my adult life without really understanding. Rather than preach to someone about how they should change, realize that by pointing one finger at someone else I point three back to me, and simply be in my truth and do my best to evolve myself. Let people do what they will do, unless it deeply affects you or others in some extreme way. Once again, I say all this within reason. Usually when I want to change someone's behaviour, it is something that I have not made peace with in myself, and is in fact something I need to work on. This is not only non-violent, but makes my life a whole lot easier to manage.
And then I came to the even more intricate and subtle elements of violence: that which we inflict upon ourselves. If we are inflicting violence upon ourselves, how can we practice non-violence toward others? We must first have compassion toward ourselves. How many times a day do I have a violent thought directed toward myself? How many times a day do I judge myself? Expect too much of myself? Not forgive myself? A whole heck of a lot, is the answer.
I'm not really, overall, what you would call a Type A personality. But there are some aspects to myself that certainly are like that. I can have quite extreme patterns that rotate in a binge-purge type cycle that goes on until the end of time. I lack patience for myself in making changes in my life. We humans are creatures of habit. We develop habits because they serve us in some way, and they are comfortable. We can't tell ourselves to pack all our bags and leave all of our possibly destructive habits at once. We can't, and yet I've attempted this several times in my life. After several days, weeks, months or years of lax eating habits, watching too much TV, laziness, not reading enough, etc etc, I decide to burst forth from my room and wipe the slate clean. I want to run a marathon, eliminate every so-called "bad food", write a novel, join the circus and of course, save the world. And then, after less than 24 hours, I'm even worse than before, because we humans simply are not able to change that much that fast. There comes a time, and for me that is my late 20s, when we can no longer repeat our patterns, because they are too damn obvious. Yes, I could make the argument that feeding myself food that isn't nourishing, or sitting in front of a screen rather than reading or exercising, is doing violence to myself. However, it is also violent to expect myself to change overnight. As they say, Rome wasn't built in a day. Or, a thousand mile journey begins with a single step.
Make simple changes, Lisi. Not grand ones, because, remember all those other times you tried that? You bounced back. It didn't work. Be nicer to yourself. It's okay if you aren't perfect. If some of them fall through, don't worry about it.
So the other day, when I was too tired to do anything except lie in bed and watch TV, I released my guilt and enjoyed it. Actually allowing myself to do that for a day was actually what I needed. Yes, I could have been reading instead, or writing a Dostoyevskian novel, or working on my plan to solve world hunger, but my body needed rest. And the next day, I felt so much better, especially without all the guilt hanging around, too. Gevalt.
There are many ways in which we could look at the violence of our actions. This includes the way we treat ourselves, our friends, people we don't know. It also includes our consumer choices and personal habits. We are so disconnected from our consumer choices that we may be inflicting violence when we have no idea we are. I wanted to talk less about this because I've spent a good chunk of my life talking about the consumer choices we should make, and, frankly, I'm tired of it. Though it might be violent to eat factory farmed meat, it is also violent to yell at someone in a fit of didactic rage that they should be more conscious of their meat choices. I would rather do that work myself and share what I've learned about how to practice non-violence in my thoughts towards myself and others.
Namaste.
Elysia
ahimsa: non-violence
pratisthayam: standing firmly, firmly established
tat: his
sannidhau: presence, vicinity
vaira: animosity, hostility
tyagah: forsaking, abandoning, deserting
"When non-violence in speech, thought and action is established, one's aggressive nature is relinquished and others abandon hostility in one's presence."
An important piece in studying the Yamas and Niyamas is looking beyond their superficial meanings, and looking at the intricate ways in which they play out in everyday circumstances. I thought about this all week when integrating the concept of non-violence into my life. And boy, it is subtle.
,
Well, what is violence, to begin with? The sutra says that if one understands the nature of violence, one can truly be non-violent. This means investigating the many subtle ways in which violence plays out.
Because I'm a word geek, and have a particular weakness for etymology, I looked up the word "violence" in the dictionary. It comes from the Latin violentia, meaning vehemence or forcibility. It comes from the roots vis, meaning force, and fero, meaning to carry. Thus, the original meaning of violence is to carry force.
The dictionary then gave me the definition of violence as "physical force used to inflict injury or damage", "a great destructive force or energy", "intense, turbulent, or furious and often destructive action or force", and my personal favourite, "vehement feeling or expression."
Holy wow. I wonder how many people see the word "non-violence" and skip over it in their minds, thinking, meh, I've never really hurt anybody, hey I've never caused physical harm to anyone, I'm good. I know I have. But this week really got me thinking about how many subtle ways there are to be "violent". It's not just hitting people. Of course, I've been exposed to this idea before, as I have some training in non-violent communication (NVC). Those of you who have not read Marshall Rosenberg's Non-Violent Communication: A Language of Life, I recommend you do so. It's an incredibly life changing book. It explores how by identifying our own and each others' feelings and needs, we move away from a reactionary, "violent" way of communicating, and towards compassionate communication. One of the most challenging yet rewarding things to do is to listen to someone and not judge, react, or give advice. Simply being a witness can be extremely challenging, especially for Type A personalities. Those of us who like to be in control, always be right, and fix everything, feel extremely challenged by "just being a witness to experience." As the sutra says, one must be non-violent in speech.
However, it is not enough to abide by the adage of kindergarten, "if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all." If we want to work towards being non-violent, we must let go of the judgements that pervade our thoughts. Before I "don't say anything at all", I must first stop the judgemental thoughts that run through my head. Oh, and the word "judgement" doesn't mean a bad judgement. It just means an analysis of someone else's experience, thinking that we know something that they don't. For myself, I had to consistently fight that overwhelming desire to give sagely advice that I myself don't even act upon, rather than simply bearing witness to someone else's experience. It's removing an assumption that I somehow know better than someone else, it's wiping the slate clean and approaching another person's experience as a baby would. I have no idea how someone else experiences the world, what kind of a life they have lived, in order to be saying the things they say or doing the things they do. It's understanding that everyone is doing the best they can for where they are at, and to move away from judgement entirely. Even making the judgement that something is "good" can be violent. Heck, think about how damaging the mainstream education system can be with its external rewards system, getting a gold star every time we do something "good." Even then, I just recognized I made a judgement about the education system, rather than understanding where that system came from and why. And then I may judge myself for having a judgement, and the cycle continues.
This is not to say that we can never, ever have thoughts about something, or ever give advice. But for me, its being aware of the intention behind my thoughts or advice. It's stepping back and re-evaluating these thoughts and deciding whether its best to let them out of my mouth, or let them go and just be a witness.
This comes back to the definition and root of the word "violence", as a vehement force. Giving advice, or trying to change someone's viewpoint or action, is, in many ways, an attempt to force the situation. It's moving against the flow of the universe, if I were speaking in Taoist terms. Now, of course there are times in which this is necessary. If someone's about to hurl themselves in front of the subway tracks, I'm not going to say "meh, don't want to force the flow of the universe". Hey, I might even encourage someone to think differently about something or give advice once in a while. So what's the difference? I think it's my attachment to the result of my encouragement or advice. I have to accept that everyone is where they are at, and I personally am not going to change them. People only change on their own. They may be inspired by someone else, but the actual change occurs within, when they are ready to make that step.
This brought me to my most important conclusion this week, that I have heard over and over again in theory, but only really understood through examining ahimsa these past seven days. "Be the change you wish to see in the world" is a phrase that has been thrown around a lot, and one I've heard for most of my adult life without really understanding. Rather than preach to someone about how they should change, realize that by pointing one finger at someone else I point three back to me, and simply be in my truth and do my best to evolve myself. Let people do what they will do, unless it deeply affects you or others in some extreme way. Once again, I say all this within reason. Usually when I want to change someone's behaviour, it is something that I have not made peace with in myself, and is in fact something I need to work on. This is not only non-violent, but makes my life a whole lot easier to manage.
And then I came to the even more intricate and subtle elements of violence: that which we inflict upon ourselves. If we are inflicting violence upon ourselves, how can we practice non-violence toward others? We must first have compassion toward ourselves. How many times a day do I have a violent thought directed toward myself? How many times a day do I judge myself? Expect too much of myself? Not forgive myself? A whole heck of a lot, is the answer.
I'm not really, overall, what you would call a Type A personality. But there are some aspects to myself that certainly are like that. I can have quite extreme patterns that rotate in a binge-purge type cycle that goes on until the end of time. I lack patience for myself in making changes in my life. We humans are creatures of habit. We develop habits because they serve us in some way, and they are comfortable. We can't tell ourselves to pack all our bags and leave all of our possibly destructive habits at once. We can't, and yet I've attempted this several times in my life. After several days, weeks, months or years of lax eating habits, watching too much TV, laziness, not reading enough, etc etc, I decide to burst forth from my room and wipe the slate clean. I want to run a marathon, eliminate every so-called "bad food", write a novel, join the circus and of course, save the world. And then, after less than 24 hours, I'm even worse than before, because we humans simply are not able to change that much that fast. There comes a time, and for me that is my late 20s, when we can no longer repeat our patterns, because they are too damn obvious. Yes, I could make the argument that feeding myself food that isn't nourishing, or sitting in front of a screen rather than reading or exercising, is doing violence to myself. However, it is also violent to expect myself to change overnight. As they say, Rome wasn't built in a day. Or, a thousand mile journey begins with a single step.
Make simple changes, Lisi. Not grand ones, because, remember all those other times you tried that? You bounced back. It didn't work. Be nicer to yourself. It's okay if you aren't perfect. If some of them fall through, don't worry about it.
So the other day, when I was too tired to do anything except lie in bed and watch TV, I released my guilt and enjoyed it. Actually allowing myself to do that for a day was actually what I needed. Yes, I could have been reading instead, or writing a Dostoyevskian novel, or working on my plan to solve world hunger, but my body needed rest. And the next day, I felt so much better, especially without all the guilt hanging around, too. Gevalt.
There are many ways in which we could look at the violence of our actions. This includes the way we treat ourselves, our friends, people we don't know. It also includes our consumer choices and personal habits. We are so disconnected from our consumer choices that we may be inflicting violence when we have no idea we are. I wanted to talk less about this because I've spent a good chunk of my life talking about the consumer choices we should make, and, frankly, I'm tired of it. Though it might be violent to eat factory farmed meat, it is also violent to yell at someone in a fit of didactic rage that they should be more conscious of their meat choices. I would rather do that work myself and share what I've learned about how to practice non-violence in my thoughts towards myself and others.
Namaste.
Elysia
Tuesday, November 5, 2013
Yamas and Niyamas: An Exploration: Introduction
I am currently in the midst (or, rather, more toward the endst), of my 200hr yoga teacher training. This has been an incredible experience for me in a number of ways. I have practiced yoga for about 10 years now (holy cow), on and off, but this training has been a great way for me to deepen my practice, as well as just get to know better the philosophy of yoga on a deeper spiritual level.
Taylor Lewis, my housemate and great friend for 8 years, has inspired me, once again. He's embarking on an 81-week intensive on the Tao Te Ching. You can follow his blog here. Anyway, his blogging got me thinking. Yogic philosophy is extremely expansive and complex, and I would be writing until I'm 100 if I decided to blog about it in its entirety. Essentially, and this is an incredibly watered down explanation, the aim of yoga is peeling away the layers of self, from how we act in the world to our inner life, until we reach the glowing light that is in all of us, Atman. Atman is the divine light within each of us, the universe contained in our soul. I have always been slightly uncomfortable and disconnected from the words "God" or "soul", but I can get behind the idea that within all of us there is a place of joy, of connection, of non-attachment and of stillness. This is Atman.
In traditional Yogic philosophy, we peel away these layers of self so we may one day (in this lifetime, or the next), reach Samadhi. You may have heard of this as Nirvana, or Moksha, or enlightenment. This is where you have peeled away all the layers of self and come to the true self, or Atman. It is where Atman, the soul, unites with Brahman, which is the universe. In this state, we want nothing and do nothing except for sit in meditation and be with our Atman. Few people practice yoga anymore to reach this state. Personally, that is not my goal. It's not even really a goal. Samadhi cannot be reached by trying to reach it. Observing each layer of self and working through them is the goal. For me, the purpose is not to reach some divine state but to live my life more fully and presently, and to be a continually evolving human being, letting go and releasing attachment to habits, patterns, and thoughts. This is my version of Samadhi.
There are many aspects to this peeling away the layers of self, many explanations of the same thing. One of these paths is the Eight Limbs of Ashtanga Yoga. Most people think of yoga as just postures (asana), or, I shudder to think, a workout. It is actually only one of the 8 limbs of yoga that are the path toward Samadhi. These limbs include the Yamas (universal morality), Niyamas (personal observances), Asana (postures), Pranayama (breath work), Pratyahara (control of the senses), Dharana (concentration and inner awareness), Dhyana (meditation), and, finally, Samadhi (union with the divine).
For this series in the blog, I am going to focus on the Yamas and the Niyamas for now. When studying the Yamas and Niyamas, it is key to look past the superficial understanding of them, and seeing the intricate ways in which they play out in our actions, interactions, and even thoughts. They are worlds within themselves, I could spend my whole life focussing on each one, so I figure its a good place to start. They are the first layers of self. I will be sharing each one, then spending a week with it, observing and integrating it into my life, then at the end of the week sharing my experiences. There are 5 Yamas and 5 Niyamas, so this will take me 10 weeks, and into the new year. I have been spending the last two months working on Asana, so I figured I'd go back to the top and start with the Yamas.
The Yamas are universal codes of morality. They deal with how we interact with the world around us. If we can work to purify our actions with our interactions with the world, we can then more effectively move inward towards ourselves. Rather than provide a list of the Yamas, I will leave you with the first Yama, Ahimsa.
Taken from the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, this is Ahimsa:
ahimsapratisthayam tatsannidhau vairatyagah
Ok, you got that, right? Kidding.
ahimsa: non-violence
pratisthayam: standing firmly, firmly established
tat: his
sannidhau: presence, vicinity
vaira: animosity, hostility
tyagah: forsaking, abandoning, deserting
"When non-violence in speech, thought and action is established, one's aggressive nature is relinquished and others abandon hostility in one's presence."
See you in a week for my observances of Ahimsa in my life.
Namaste (the light within me bows to the light in you).
Elysia
Taylor Lewis, my housemate and great friend for 8 years, has inspired me, once again. He's embarking on an 81-week intensive on the Tao Te Ching. You can follow his blog here. Anyway, his blogging got me thinking. Yogic philosophy is extremely expansive and complex, and I would be writing until I'm 100 if I decided to blog about it in its entirety. Essentially, and this is an incredibly watered down explanation, the aim of yoga is peeling away the layers of self, from how we act in the world to our inner life, until we reach the glowing light that is in all of us, Atman. Atman is the divine light within each of us, the universe contained in our soul. I have always been slightly uncomfortable and disconnected from the words "God" or "soul", but I can get behind the idea that within all of us there is a place of joy, of connection, of non-attachment and of stillness. This is Atman.
In traditional Yogic philosophy, we peel away these layers of self so we may one day (in this lifetime, or the next), reach Samadhi. You may have heard of this as Nirvana, or Moksha, or enlightenment. This is where you have peeled away all the layers of self and come to the true self, or Atman. It is where Atman, the soul, unites with Brahman, which is the universe. In this state, we want nothing and do nothing except for sit in meditation and be with our Atman. Few people practice yoga anymore to reach this state. Personally, that is not my goal. It's not even really a goal. Samadhi cannot be reached by trying to reach it. Observing each layer of self and working through them is the goal. For me, the purpose is not to reach some divine state but to live my life more fully and presently, and to be a continually evolving human being, letting go and releasing attachment to habits, patterns, and thoughts. This is my version of Samadhi.
There are many aspects to this peeling away the layers of self, many explanations of the same thing. One of these paths is the Eight Limbs of Ashtanga Yoga. Most people think of yoga as just postures (asana), or, I shudder to think, a workout. It is actually only one of the 8 limbs of yoga that are the path toward Samadhi. These limbs include the Yamas (universal morality), Niyamas (personal observances), Asana (postures), Pranayama (breath work), Pratyahara (control of the senses), Dharana (concentration and inner awareness), Dhyana (meditation), and, finally, Samadhi (union with the divine).
For this series in the blog, I am going to focus on the Yamas and the Niyamas for now. When studying the Yamas and Niyamas, it is key to look past the superficial understanding of them, and seeing the intricate ways in which they play out in our actions, interactions, and even thoughts. They are worlds within themselves, I could spend my whole life focussing on each one, so I figure its a good place to start. They are the first layers of self. I will be sharing each one, then spending a week with it, observing and integrating it into my life, then at the end of the week sharing my experiences. There are 5 Yamas and 5 Niyamas, so this will take me 10 weeks, and into the new year. I have been spending the last two months working on Asana, so I figured I'd go back to the top and start with the Yamas.
The Yamas are universal codes of morality. They deal with how we interact with the world around us. If we can work to purify our actions with our interactions with the world, we can then more effectively move inward towards ourselves. Rather than provide a list of the Yamas, I will leave you with the first Yama, Ahimsa.
Taken from the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, this is Ahimsa:
ahimsapratisthayam tatsannidhau vairatyagah
Ok, you got that, right? Kidding.
ahimsa: non-violence
pratisthayam: standing firmly, firmly established
tat: his
sannidhau: presence, vicinity
vaira: animosity, hostility
tyagah: forsaking, abandoning, deserting
"When non-violence in speech, thought and action is established, one's aggressive nature is relinquished and others abandon hostility in one's presence."
See you in a week for my observances of Ahimsa in my life.
Namaste (the light within me bows to the light in you).
Elysia
Sunday, June 2, 2013
Today is Day 6 of the Community Raw Food Cleanse.
It is challenging to find things to write about every day of the cleanse, so I've decided instead to write whenever I feel inspired, usually between 2 or 3 days, to review what has come up during the experience.
A number of things have risen to the surface these last few days. Whether they are related to the cleanse or additional I'm not sure, but I believe they are coming up as a result of the purge of certain foods.
The purging of certain foods, mainly sugar, caffeine, bread, and dairy, has forced me to re-assess my attachment to food. As I said in an earlier post, I have used these foods to deal with boredom, anxiety, and depression, or as a way of avoiding things I have to get done but I'm afraid to start. They are used as a way to stall my growth in one direction or another. As a result of this purging, the things that I would otherwise be avoiding with food are coming to the surface, and I'm having to deal with them. However, I've realized that in order for me to actually deal with these things, I have a couple of other things to purge.
Like many of my generation, I have an addiction, and it's a bad one. I often wonder what I could do with the hundreds of hours I have probably spent uselessly on Facebook. If I look at this, I will understand that it is truly an addiction, inside and out. I will check Facebook if I'm bored. If I'm depressed. If I don't want to think about something. If I want to start something but I am afraid to. If I don't know where to start on something. If I'm feeling resistance. If I'm anxious. I know there could be millions of things I could be reading or doing, but it all overwhelms me so much that instead what do I do? I go on Facebook.
Whew. Ok, there we go. The first step is admitting you have a problem.
What makes it even more of an addiction? The fact that I don't feel any better at all after I've looked on Facebook. I mean, it relieves something, very temporarily. But that's just on the surface. Underneath all that I actually feel way, way worse, because I know I'm not doing anything. I'm just watching the time go by, idly. When you keep going back to something, even when you know its not good for you, when you know it doesn't make you feel good, that's what I would call an addiction.
So, I've decided to release that from my life. Not Facebook, entirely. See, I like certain aspects of Facebook. It's a great tool. If I need a tool, some compost, or information on something, I just post onto one of my Permaculture groups, and usually within the day I'll get an answer. That's what Facebook is really useful for. Probably many of the things I'm doing and involved with are as a result of me finding out about it on Facebook. So I'd like to keep that aspect.
What I don't want to keep is all my old photos. Old statuses. People that I've remained "friends" with on Facebook but never, ever talk to them because we have nothing in common. I want to get rid of all the excess data. And then I thought, what if that's it? What if there is just too much data in my brain? No wonder I have so much trouble meditating or "being in the moment". I'm high on too much useless data.
I'm not sure exactly how to proceed with this. Do I completely delete Facebook? No, because I want to find out about events and have the ability to network with a bunch of amazing people. Who do I add as a friend? Who don't I add as a friend? Perhaps I don't really need Facebook. Perhaps if I don't have it, it will force me to be more involved in the community, go out and talk to people and find out about events that way, rather than by sitting at my computer.
So, I'm unsure. But I think one thing I will do is delete my current account. Completely. For about a week. Then I will create a new account, add all the people I'd like to network with, and friends from out of town that I'd like to stay in contact with....
I don't know. All I know is, I will spend less time on Facebook. If I go on, it is to check the time of something, to ask a question, to post an event. That's not the addictive stuff. I will remove the looking at people's photos, the endless scroll down on a news feed, the turning off of my brain. Because, really, I think it's about my fear of my brain. I'm afraid to start something due to my capacity to overthink things and get all anxious about it. So I choose not to do it. And turn off my brain instead.
Checking Facebook and email frequently allows me to feed anxiety. I'll check frequently, to see "oh, maybe so-and-so has responded to that", maybe I'd better check. Just filling the time with things to do so I don't actually have to do anything. And also, I'll add, it feeds a fear of not being good enough, not being liked, if I keep checking to look for a response.
So, anyway, how does this relate to cleansing?
All of my emotional crutches are becoming startlingly clear. What are the things that are keeping me from growth, keeping me from being present in the moment and joyful? Well, it's not Facebook. It's not sugar. It's not bread. It's not dairy. It's nothing other than me. But I, the one who creates, has used these things to prevent my growth, my joy, my calmness, my presence in the moment, my clarity of thought.
So, why was I so scared of those things? They are way better than Facebook. May not be as tasty and delicious as a brownie, but they are ultimately more fulfilling. More nourishing.
This blog post wasn't really about food. But what we put in our bodies has so many connections to so many other things, that really, it was about food.
Until next time.
-Lisi
It is challenging to find things to write about every day of the cleanse, so I've decided instead to write whenever I feel inspired, usually between 2 or 3 days, to review what has come up during the experience.
A number of things have risen to the surface these last few days. Whether they are related to the cleanse or additional I'm not sure, but I believe they are coming up as a result of the purge of certain foods.
The purging of certain foods, mainly sugar, caffeine, bread, and dairy, has forced me to re-assess my attachment to food. As I said in an earlier post, I have used these foods to deal with boredom, anxiety, and depression, or as a way of avoiding things I have to get done but I'm afraid to start. They are used as a way to stall my growth in one direction or another. As a result of this purging, the things that I would otherwise be avoiding with food are coming to the surface, and I'm having to deal with them. However, I've realized that in order for me to actually deal with these things, I have a couple of other things to purge.
Like many of my generation, I have an addiction, and it's a bad one. I often wonder what I could do with the hundreds of hours I have probably spent uselessly on Facebook. If I look at this, I will understand that it is truly an addiction, inside and out. I will check Facebook if I'm bored. If I'm depressed. If I don't want to think about something. If I want to start something but I am afraid to. If I don't know where to start on something. If I'm feeling resistance. If I'm anxious. I know there could be millions of things I could be reading or doing, but it all overwhelms me so much that instead what do I do? I go on Facebook.
Whew. Ok, there we go. The first step is admitting you have a problem.
What makes it even more of an addiction? The fact that I don't feel any better at all after I've looked on Facebook. I mean, it relieves something, very temporarily. But that's just on the surface. Underneath all that I actually feel way, way worse, because I know I'm not doing anything. I'm just watching the time go by, idly. When you keep going back to something, even when you know its not good for you, when you know it doesn't make you feel good, that's what I would call an addiction.
So, I've decided to release that from my life. Not Facebook, entirely. See, I like certain aspects of Facebook. It's a great tool. If I need a tool, some compost, or information on something, I just post onto one of my Permaculture groups, and usually within the day I'll get an answer. That's what Facebook is really useful for. Probably many of the things I'm doing and involved with are as a result of me finding out about it on Facebook. So I'd like to keep that aspect.
What I don't want to keep is all my old photos. Old statuses. People that I've remained "friends" with on Facebook but never, ever talk to them because we have nothing in common. I want to get rid of all the excess data. And then I thought, what if that's it? What if there is just too much data in my brain? No wonder I have so much trouble meditating or "being in the moment". I'm high on too much useless data.
I'm not sure exactly how to proceed with this. Do I completely delete Facebook? No, because I want to find out about events and have the ability to network with a bunch of amazing people. Who do I add as a friend? Who don't I add as a friend? Perhaps I don't really need Facebook. Perhaps if I don't have it, it will force me to be more involved in the community, go out and talk to people and find out about events that way, rather than by sitting at my computer.
So, I'm unsure. But I think one thing I will do is delete my current account. Completely. For about a week. Then I will create a new account, add all the people I'd like to network with, and friends from out of town that I'd like to stay in contact with....
I don't know. All I know is, I will spend less time on Facebook. If I go on, it is to check the time of something, to ask a question, to post an event. That's not the addictive stuff. I will remove the looking at people's photos, the endless scroll down on a news feed, the turning off of my brain. Because, really, I think it's about my fear of my brain. I'm afraid to start something due to my capacity to overthink things and get all anxious about it. So I choose not to do it. And turn off my brain instead.
Checking Facebook and email frequently allows me to feed anxiety. I'll check frequently, to see "oh, maybe so-and-so has responded to that", maybe I'd better check. Just filling the time with things to do so I don't actually have to do anything. And also, I'll add, it feeds a fear of not being good enough, not being liked, if I keep checking to look for a response.
So, anyway, how does this relate to cleansing?
All of my emotional crutches are becoming startlingly clear. What are the things that are keeping me from growth, keeping me from being present in the moment and joyful? Well, it's not Facebook. It's not sugar. It's not bread. It's not dairy. It's nothing other than me. But I, the one who creates, has used these things to prevent my growth, my joy, my calmness, my presence in the moment, my clarity of thought.
So, why was I so scared of those things? They are way better than Facebook. May not be as tasty and delicious as a brownie, but they are ultimately more fulfilling. More nourishing.
This blog post wasn't really about food. But what we put in our bodies has so many connections to so many other things, that really, it was about food.
Until next time.
-Lisi
Thursday, May 30, 2013
Community Cleansing: Why Wild Foods are Awesome
When the idea of doing this cleanse first came up, I was pretty fresh out of a food forest seminar. One of the most fascinating things I learned during the seminar was how different the level of nutrition is with food that is grown in a food forest or the wild. It is the absolute highest level of nutrition possible. Not only has the food not travelled, but the plant is operating in a closed-loop system that is self-sustaining, so there are no nutrients lost in the soil due to tilling or other annual gardening practices. The plants are getting highly nutritious food, so we are too!
During the course, we were told about a man who served dinner guests some food from his food forest. His guests were baffled, and somewhat annoyed, because he only served them a small plate of food. Colourful, yes it was, but it was not the mountain high mound of food that we are used to being served at a standard North American dinner. However, much to the surprise of all the guests there, they were absolutely stuffed after only eating a few items. This is because the food was so densely nutritious that they didn't need anything more. Because the food we eat is so nutrient deficient in comparison, we need more food to feel satisfied. But here's the catch: we're not actually being more nourished if we eat more. We may feel fuller, but full doesn't mean nourished.
So clearly, all this was on my mind before starting this cleanse. If I'm going to be surviving mostly on fruits and vegetables, I want them to be as nutrient dense as possible, so that I feel nourished and not as hungry all the time. If any of you out there are planning on doing a raw food cleanse, I would highly recommend getting to know your local wild foods. In my neighbourhood in Victoria, I'm lucky enough to have a food forest right down the street that I can go harvest from whenever I want. These are some of the things I got. These will make your cleanse a heck of a lot easier:
Stinging Nettle
This is one of the most amazing plants that exists. I can't believe that to a lot of people it's considered a weed. It contains more iron than spinach, and is nutrient dense in Vitamins A, B, C, D & K, calcium, magnesium, cobalt, potassium, zinc, copper, and sulphur. It is also relatively high in protein and very high in chlorophyll. It's a diuretic, it's stimulates the kidneys and the liver, supports lymph drainage, and is an excellent thyroid support. Oh, and it's DELICIOUS. It's great steamed like kale or spinach (while not on a raw food cleanse), or in smoothies, as the sting goes away if you grind it up. I always feel amazing after eating nettles. The best thing that I heard about nettles was that it helps you "let go of your shit, literally and figuratively."
But watch, cause it stings! Actually, while I'm on the stinging, I heard once that it is actually good, believe it or not, when you're picking nettles, to let yourself get stung a little bit. The best time to pick nettles is early spring, late March to early April. A gentle sting from this plant will give you actually quite an energizing boost. I thought that was hogwash until I stung myself this year and felt a surge of energy run through my body, all the way down to my toes. So don't be afraid of the sting! (I wouldn't recommend falling into a nettle patch, though, that would hurt.)
Lovage
Also known as "poor man's celery", this is an extremely nutritious, flavourful plant. In my opinion, lovage is what celery is trying to be but fails. The flavour is quite strong, and when cooked down a little it adds a lovely flavour to soups, stir fries or stock. I've been throwing them into smoothies and I find it very cleansing. Fun fact about lovage: it is actually a deodorizing plant! Eating it can help your B.O. It's also a remedy for digestive difficulties, flatulence, and certain skin conditions. (I just learned that if you make a decoction- boil the crap out of it for 15 minutes- then pour it in the bath, it will help heal some skin conditions.)
Miner's Lettuce
This is for those of you living in the Pacific Northwest, though it may be elsewhere, I'm not sure. It's called "Miner's lettuce" because the miners used to nibble on it to fight of scurvy. It's highly rich in Vitamin C, A and Iron. You can throw it right in a salad. It's like lettuce, but more nutritious. It can also be boiled or steamed.
Black Mulberry
I have been drinking gallons of Mulberry leaf tea in the last few days. It has a subtle, very pleasant flavour, and is wonderful for levelling blood sugar. This has been really useful for me, because it keeps from having those cravings for bready, sugary things all day long. Helpful for a cleanse!
The berries are really good too! And highly nutritious.
Sea Buckthorn
I mention this because it's becoming my new favourite plant. The berries come out in summertime and they are delicious. They are also high in anti-oxidants (apparently if you leave them out overnight they won't turn brown), vitamin C, and....believe it or not....essential fatty acids! You don't need expensive fish or flax oil....Just go down to Dallas Rd (if you're in Victoria) and eat a few berries!
I have been drying the leaves and using them in tea. They have a nice green tea flavour, also contains many minerals, fatty acids, and protein. They help lower cholesterol, improve blood pressure, and are generally really flavourful and delicious. I could go on- the medicinal value of this plant is never ending!
I'll leave you with that for now. There are many, many more plants I could write about, but I would be here for several years if I embarked on that journey. The moral of this story: learn about your local plants. So much knowledge has been lost about our local sources of food and medicine. We have the power to heal and feed ourselves, if we just do a bit of learning and walking in the woods (or, sometimes, just the boulevard outside the house!)
Until next time,
Lisi
During the course, we were told about a man who served dinner guests some food from his food forest. His guests were baffled, and somewhat annoyed, because he only served them a small plate of food. Colourful, yes it was, but it was not the mountain high mound of food that we are used to being served at a standard North American dinner. However, much to the surprise of all the guests there, they were absolutely stuffed after only eating a few items. This is because the food was so densely nutritious that they didn't need anything more. Because the food we eat is so nutrient deficient in comparison, we need more food to feel satisfied. But here's the catch: we're not actually being more nourished if we eat more. We may feel fuller, but full doesn't mean nourished.
So clearly, all this was on my mind before starting this cleanse. If I'm going to be surviving mostly on fruits and vegetables, I want them to be as nutrient dense as possible, so that I feel nourished and not as hungry all the time. If any of you out there are planning on doing a raw food cleanse, I would highly recommend getting to know your local wild foods. In my neighbourhood in Victoria, I'm lucky enough to have a food forest right down the street that I can go harvest from whenever I want. These are some of the things I got. These will make your cleanse a heck of a lot easier:
Stinging Nettle
But watch, cause it stings! Actually, while I'm on the stinging, I heard once that it is actually good, believe it or not, when you're picking nettles, to let yourself get stung a little bit. The best time to pick nettles is early spring, late March to early April. A gentle sting from this plant will give you actually quite an energizing boost. I thought that was hogwash until I stung myself this year and felt a surge of energy run through my body, all the way down to my toes. So don't be afraid of the sting! (I wouldn't recommend falling into a nettle patch, though, that would hurt.)
Lovage
Miner's Lettuce
This is for those of you living in the Pacific Northwest, though it may be elsewhere, I'm not sure. It's called "Miner's lettuce" because the miners used to nibble on it to fight of scurvy. It's highly rich in Vitamin C, A and Iron. You can throw it right in a salad. It's like lettuce, but more nutritious. It can also be boiled or steamed.
Black Mulberry
The berries are really good too! And highly nutritious.
Sea Buckthorn
I have been drying the leaves and using them in tea. They have a nice green tea flavour, also contains many minerals, fatty acids, and protein. They help lower cholesterol, improve blood pressure, and are generally really flavourful and delicious. I could go on- the medicinal value of this plant is never ending!
I'll leave you with that for now. There are many, many more plants I could write about, but I would be here for several years if I embarked on that journey. The moral of this story: learn about your local plants. So much knowledge has been lost about our local sources of food and medicine. We have the power to heal and feed ourselves, if we just do a bit of learning and walking in the woods (or, sometimes, just the boulevard outside the house!)
Until next time,
Lisi
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
Community Cleansing: Day 1
Well, hi there!
I told you I was terrible at blogging. Fortunately, I don't have an audience base yet, other than myself, so the only person I'm letting down is....myself. The problem is that I think I forget I even have the blog, after a few days. Anyway, enough about that, and more about how I remembered I had it again.
Have I mentioned that I live in a collective house? Well, I do. We do things like cook meals for each other, eat together, make silly jokes (sometimes on the line of 'that's inappropriate!'), have house meetings, go on 10 pm chocolate adventures.... Well, this time, one of our five members, Nina, piped up with an idea: going on a raw food cleanse. She shared with us the 21-day program developed by a young woman from Vancouver, called "Young and Raw". After much joking about the innuendo and slightly creepy connotations of the title (see: inappropriate jokes), 4 of us in the house decided to embark on the journey.
Basically, it's 3 weeks of eating entirely raw and vegan. It's not as boring as it sounds.You might ask, 'what do you eat?' Well, the meal plans are all laid out, so theoretically, all you have to do is follow the recipes for 3 weeks and you're golden. This is the basic structure of what you are supposed to eat in a day:
Lemon and water
Juice (home juiced veggie/fruit)
Smoothie
Lunch
Smoothie
Dinner
Tea/water
With a bit of tweaking here and there (we eliminated the juicing and added in a raw breakfast item, like granola or porridge), this is pretty much what we're doing. Well, so far. It's only Day One.
So it was this morning that I remembered, "oh yeah! I have a blog!" and I decided I would write about this experience. I've never 'cleansed' for this long, this intensely, so for me this will be an interesting exploration of food, health, and particularly emotional eating habits. I'll get to that later....
Of all days, Day One had to fall on the same day as that glorious, beautiful cycle of the moon decided to lay it's course on me. (Too much information? Oh, grow up everyone, it's just nature.) So today was...a bit of a struggle. I am a meat eater, a Type O+ blood type, so I generally need more animal protein than most, though I was a vegetarian and vegan for a number of years. However, during my "time", nothing looks more enticing than a hunk of animal. The combination of generally eating less, with also not eating meat, eggs, or any other large protein source, plus my body giving birth to its iron sources by the second, made for an.....interesting most of the day.
But, despite feeling faint and sleeping away a good chunk of the day, I admit I feel generally fantastic already. This morning, I made a smoothie for everyone with homemade almond milk, cucumber, lovage (I should probably explain this food, as spellcheck doesn't even recognize it), frozen berries, banana, and coconut water. My housemate Tanya made a quinoa porridge, and these two items together made for a very filling breakfast. For someone who has eggs every morning, this was a pleasant surprise (normally, a porridge breakfast fills me up for the first 20 minutes then proceeds to completely vanish from my system and I must find the most immediate source of animal within my reach).
I was preparing myself for this cleanse a couple of days early, by eating smaller portions, and also staying away from sugar and bread. So, my system was already starting to re-wire itself to not rely on empty, sugary carbs for the illusion of nourishment. For those of you thinking of cleansing in future, I would definitely recommend 'easing' into it. Don't indulge on fudge brownies and pizza the day before you start a cleanse, unless you want to create a living hell for yourself. For the next few hours, I did some stretching and voice work, and I found myself letting go of some bodily tensions and unnecessary emotional baggage (what we in our house call our emotional 'poo'). I then got exceedingly tired and faint, so I had a hot bath, then fell asleep for two hours.
Oh, and I had lunch somewhere in there. Lunch was an amazing salad prepared by Nina the night before. The meal plan calls for a very simple lettuce-y salad with not very much in it. I like to think of lettuce as 'crunchy water'. If I'm going to eat a salad, it's going to have kale, spinach, spicy greens, and all kinds of flavours. Which is what this salad was. And then I discovered, at the bottom of this leafy party, a treasure more exciting than rum to a pirate, the holy grail, the shining beacon, the archangel at the gates of Heaven: Avocado. A hallelujah chorus ensued.
In addition to all the food we had to buy for this cleanse, I also went out and harvested a bunch of wild items at our neighbourhood food forest (yeah, that's right). These items generally have a much, much greater nutrition content than most produce you buy (especially at larger grocery stores), so I felt much more full eating this salad than I would have by eating the one in the recipe. I'll do another post about wild food later on, because I think it is really important for a cleanse like this.
After my nap, I prepared an amazing afternoon smoothie with a whackload of nettles, strawberries, Oregon grape, banana, almond milk and coconut water. It was very energizing (nettles have more iron than spinach), and kept me going for the rest of the day. I also found that snacking throughout the day helped me. Another piece of advice to people wanting to do this: don't starve yourself. That's not the point of a cleanse. You are making dramatic changes to what you are putting in your body, so be nice to yourself. Give yourself a break. If you're hungry, 'eat, eat, eat', as my Ukrainian Jewish grandmother would say. She would think this whole idea was meshuge anyway.
This brings me to a couple of interesting thoughts I had today. First of all, I think one should always ask oneself thoroughly, before beginning or even thinking about an endeavour like this, the question why. Why are you doing this cleanse? What do you want from it, really? Examining that is really, really important. For me, if there is any more than a shred of "to lose weight", I hesitate. In my mind, that can be a nice side effect, if you are carrying extra pounds that are weighing you down, but it should never, ever be a reason.
In my mind, the purpose of a cleanse is to reset your organs, to get the body's systems moving at their best, and to let go of some emotional patterns. It is an exploration, an examination of an emotional dependency on food, on specific foods like sugar, caffeine, and carbs that attempt to fill a bottomless pit. Anyone else eat when they're bored? If I'm working on a project, or avoiding something, I'll eat, check my email, futz around on Facebook, or watch a TV show. With eating, it's always bread, cheese, sugar, or caffeine. "Exciting" foods. Not boring old fruit or nuts or veggies. And you know what's funny? Rarely during those times am I actually hungry, even remotely. I'm hungry for something that no delicious buttery toast will ever give me. I'm searching for that "excitement" in my life, but if I'm not feeling motivated to embark on those things that truly excite me, I'll eat something that I find exciting to give me the temporary thrill. And then, ironically, with all of those foods I mentioned, after I eat them I have even less motivation to pursue projects, because I experience THE CRASH. So those foods that are supposed to give me the feeling of being excited ultimately make me feel depressed.
And here's the interested point: even after I've eaten a very nourishing meal, about 10 minutes later I'll feel a pang of hunger. I think, no, I can't be hungry, I just ate, and no it wasn't just a plate of celery. It was a full meal. But I closed my eyes, looked inward, and realized my body wasn't hungry. I feel the illusion of hunger, but it's not my body wanting more. It's my mind, my soul, wanting to be occupied and engaged. Either that, or cinnamon bun.
Funny though, after a couple of days of no sugar, and I don't crave it at all. Same with coffee or cheese. Yes, you have to replace those foods with other favourites, but perhaps they are healthier options like avocado. I find that after a couple of days, other items become the "exciting" foods, things that weren't that exciting before.
The moral of the story is, when you feel that pang of hunger, or feel the need for a 'snack', ask yourself, what do I really want? And do that instead.
Until Day Two,
Lisi
I told you I was terrible at blogging. Fortunately, I don't have an audience base yet, other than myself, so the only person I'm letting down is....myself. The problem is that I think I forget I even have the blog, after a few days. Anyway, enough about that, and more about how I remembered I had it again.
Have I mentioned that I live in a collective house? Well, I do. We do things like cook meals for each other, eat together, make silly jokes (sometimes on the line of 'that's inappropriate!'), have house meetings, go on 10 pm chocolate adventures.... Well, this time, one of our five members, Nina, piped up with an idea: going on a raw food cleanse. She shared with us the 21-day program developed by a young woman from Vancouver, called "Young and Raw". After much joking about the innuendo and slightly creepy connotations of the title (see: inappropriate jokes), 4 of us in the house decided to embark on the journey.
Basically, it's 3 weeks of eating entirely raw and vegan. It's not as boring as it sounds.You might ask, 'what do you eat?' Well, the meal plans are all laid out, so theoretically, all you have to do is follow the recipes for 3 weeks and you're golden. This is the basic structure of what you are supposed to eat in a day:
Lemon and water
Juice (home juiced veggie/fruit)
Smoothie
Lunch
Smoothie
Dinner
Tea/water
With a bit of tweaking here and there (we eliminated the juicing and added in a raw breakfast item, like granola or porridge), this is pretty much what we're doing. Well, so far. It's only Day One.
So it was this morning that I remembered, "oh yeah! I have a blog!" and I decided I would write about this experience. I've never 'cleansed' for this long, this intensely, so for me this will be an interesting exploration of food, health, and particularly emotional eating habits. I'll get to that later....
Of all days, Day One had to fall on the same day as that glorious, beautiful cycle of the moon decided to lay it's course on me. (Too much information? Oh, grow up everyone, it's just nature.) So today was...a bit of a struggle. I am a meat eater, a Type O+ blood type, so I generally need more animal protein than most, though I was a vegetarian and vegan for a number of years. However, during my "time", nothing looks more enticing than a hunk of animal. The combination of generally eating less, with also not eating meat, eggs, or any other large protein source, plus my body giving birth to its iron sources by the second, made for an.....interesting most of the day.
But, despite feeling faint and sleeping away a good chunk of the day, I admit I feel generally fantastic already. This morning, I made a smoothie for everyone with homemade almond milk, cucumber, lovage (I should probably explain this food, as spellcheck doesn't even recognize it), frozen berries, banana, and coconut water. My housemate Tanya made a quinoa porridge, and these two items together made for a very filling breakfast. For someone who has eggs every morning, this was a pleasant surprise (normally, a porridge breakfast fills me up for the first 20 minutes then proceeds to completely vanish from my system and I must find the most immediate source of animal within my reach).
I was preparing myself for this cleanse a couple of days early, by eating smaller portions, and also staying away from sugar and bread. So, my system was already starting to re-wire itself to not rely on empty, sugary carbs for the illusion of nourishment. For those of you thinking of cleansing in future, I would definitely recommend 'easing' into it. Don't indulge on fudge brownies and pizza the day before you start a cleanse, unless you want to create a living hell for yourself. For the next few hours, I did some stretching and voice work, and I found myself letting go of some bodily tensions and unnecessary emotional baggage (what we in our house call our emotional 'poo'). I then got exceedingly tired and faint, so I had a hot bath, then fell asleep for two hours.
Oh, and I had lunch somewhere in there. Lunch was an amazing salad prepared by Nina the night before. The meal plan calls for a very simple lettuce-y salad with not very much in it. I like to think of lettuce as 'crunchy water'. If I'm going to eat a salad, it's going to have kale, spinach, spicy greens, and all kinds of flavours. Which is what this salad was. And then I discovered, at the bottom of this leafy party, a treasure more exciting than rum to a pirate, the holy grail, the shining beacon, the archangel at the gates of Heaven: Avocado. A hallelujah chorus ensued.
In addition to all the food we had to buy for this cleanse, I also went out and harvested a bunch of wild items at our neighbourhood food forest (yeah, that's right). These items generally have a much, much greater nutrition content than most produce you buy (especially at larger grocery stores), so I felt much more full eating this salad than I would have by eating the one in the recipe. I'll do another post about wild food later on, because I think it is really important for a cleanse like this.
After my nap, I prepared an amazing afternoon smoothie with a whackload of nettles, strawberries, Oregon grape, banana, almond milk and coconut water. It was very energizing (nettles have more iron than spinach), and kept me going for the rest of the day. I also found that snacking throughout the day helped me. Another piece of advice to people wanting to do this: don't starve yourself. That's not the point of a cleanse. You are making dramatic changes to what you are putting in your body, so be nice to yourself. Give yourself a break. If you're hungry, 'eat, eat, eat', as my Ukrainian Jewish grandmother would say. She would think this whole idea was meshuge anyway.
This brings me to a couple of interesting thoughts I had today. First of all, I think one should always ask oneself thoroughly, before beginning or even thinking about an endeavour like this, the question why. Why are you doing this cleanse? What do you want from it, really? Examining that is really, really important. For me, if there is any more than a shred of "to lose weight", I hesitate. In my mind, that can be a nice side effect, if you are carrying extra pounds that are weighing you down, but it should never, ever be a reason.
In my mind, the purpose of a cleanse is to reset your organs, to get the body's systems moving at their best, and to let go of some emotional patterns. It is an exploration, an examination of an emotional dependency on food, on specific foods like sugar, caffeine, and carbs that attempt to fill a bottomless pit. Anyone else eat when they're bored? If I'm working on a project, or avoiding something, I'll eat, check my email, futz around on Facebook, or watch a TV show. With eating, it's always bread, cheese, sugar, or caffeine. "Exciting" foods. Not boring old fruit or nuts or veggies. And you know what's funny? Rarely during those times am I actually hungry, even remotely. I'm hungry for something that no delicious buttery toast will ever give me. I'm searching for that "excitement" in my life, but if I'm not feeling motivated to embark on those things that truly excite me, I'll eat something that I find exciting to give me the temporary thrill. And then, ironically, with all of those foods I mentioned, after I eat them I have even less motivation to pursue projects, because I experience THE CRASH. So those foods that are supposed to give me the feeling of being excited ultimately make me feel depressed.
And here's the interested point: even after I've eaten a very nourishing meal, about 10 minutes later I'll feel a pang of hunger. I think, no, I can't be hungry, I just ate, and no it wasn't just a plate of celery. It was a full meal. But I closed my eyes, looked inward, and realized my body wasn't hungry. I feel the illusion of hunger, but it's not my body wanting more. It's my mind, my soul, wanting to be occupied and engaged. Either that, or cinnamon bun.
Funny though, after a couple of days of no sugar, and I don't crave it at all. Same with coffee or cheese. Yes, you have to replace those foods with other favourites, but perhaps they are healthier options like avocado. I find that after a couple of days, other items become the "exciting" foods, things that weren't that exciting before.
The moral of the story is, when you feel that pang of hunger, or feel the need for a 'snack', ask yourself, what do I really want? And do that instead.
Until Day Two,
Lisi
Saturday, February 23, 2013
The journey begins...
Hello, blogging world.
So, I have a confession to make.
I've never succeeded at blogging. Phew. Ok, that's done.
Over the years, I've started a few blogs. Looking over my Google page of "Lisi's blogs" is somewhat depressing, as there are 3 or 4 posts on each of the blogs I've started, but then it stops. I always begin with the intention of posting a lot, but then I run out of things to say on whatever topic I choose to write about, so the blog fizzles out. I could go on about how this is a pattern in my life, starting something, then abandoning, but that's a little heavy and this is only the first post.
So, then I realized. Maybe I shouldn't limit myself to ONE topic. I've been noticing recently that there are many aspects to myself that I wish to cultivate. Hence the tree metaphor: many branches, going out in all directions. Screw society that says I need to focus on one thing, to specialize. Bullpoop. I wanna do them all! At least for now.
There is one topic that I will not run out of posts to write about: everything.
Around the turn of the New Year, I made a significant discovery- there have been parts of myself that I have been ignoring, things I haven't dealt with, that are causing me anxiety and pain in the present. I became acutely aware of all of my negative patterns that I thought I was through with (oops), but that I found myself repeating again. What fun. I went through about a week where I felt some intense anxiety and sadness, that I thought I had dealt with that year. Turns out not. Oh well.
One morning, I began to climb out of this tunnel of darkness, and as I walked around my beautiful neighbourhood I knew what I needed. I needed the space and time to completely focus on me. To give myself love, focus on my mental and physical health, to learn, to breathe, to discover. Who am I, really? I am just about to cross over the midway point through my twenties, over the hump toward 30, so I believe this is defined as a 'quarter-life crisis'. Or, 'just-over-quarter-life-crisis'.
The purpose of this blog? To share with the world (or, just, you know, the interwebs) the discoveries I make, journeys I embark on, projects I work on, things I learn- as a record, and a way of reflecting. I have never really liked journaling. I don't want to journal. I want to write. Writing is one of the things I do, one of the things I love. I want to share, even if it's just for myself, my thoughts, journeys and explorations, and attempt to describe them in a unique, succint, creative way. With humour. Always with humour. Maybe, the challenge is to write these things with an audience, so that I can find that clarity I am desiring in my life.
I recently made the decision to leave my job at the small shop I've been working at for the past six months, in order to give myself the space and time to do the things I want to do, to follow my passions, to learn, to discover, to focus on me. It's scary, to think that I will be living on savings, not making any new money, not having financial security. But it's scarier to live my life waiting to follow my passions, rather than actually living them. It's easy to fall asleep in life, to get comfortable in a routine without questioning it. Then you see a glimpse of who you really are and panic sets in, with the realization that you're not living the life you want. As someone scrawled inside the bathroom stall I happened to be in this afternoon:
"Today is the first day of the rest of your life."
Bring it.
So, I have a confession to make.
I've never succeeded at blogging. Phew. Ok, that's done.
Over the years, I've started a few blogs. Looking over my Google page of "Lisi's blogs" is somewhat depressing, as there are 3 or 4 posts on each of the blogs I've started, but then it stops. I always begin with the intention of posting a lot, but then I run out of things to say on whatever topic I choose to write about, so the blog fizzles out. I could go on about how this is a pattern in my life, starting something, then abandoning, but that's a little heavy and this is only the first post.
So, then I realized. Maybe I shouldn't limit myself to ONE topic. I've been noticing recently that there are many aspects to myself that I wish to cultivate. Hence the tree metaphor: many branches, going out in all directions. Screw society that says I need to focus on one thing, to specialize. Bullpoop. I wanna do them all! At least for now.
There is one topic that I will not run out of posts to write about: everything.
Around the turn of the New Year, I made a significant discovery- there have been parts of myself that I have been ignoring, things I haven't dealt with, that are causing me anxiety and pain in the present. I became acutely aware of all of my negative patterns that I thought I was through with (oops), but that I found myself repeating again. What fun. I went through about a week where I felt some intense anxiety and sadness, that I thought I had dealt with that year. Turns out not. Oh well.
One morning, I began to climb out of this tunnel of darkness, and as I walked around my beautiful neighbourhood I knew what I needed. I needed the space and time to completely focus on me. To give myself love, focus on my mental and physical health, to learn, to breathe, to discover. Who am I, really? I am just about to cross over the midway point through my twenties, over the hump toward 30, so I believe this is defined as a 'quarter-life crisis'. Or, 'just-over-quarter-life-crisis'.
The purpose of this blog? To share with the world (or, just, you know, the interwebs) the discoveries I make, journeys I embark on, projects I work on, things I learn- as a record, and a way of reflecting. I have never really liked journaling. I don't want to journal. I want to write. Writing is one of the things I do, one of the things I love. I want to share, even if it's just for myself, my thoughts, journeys and explorations, and attempt to describe them in a unique, succint, creative way. With humour. Always with humour. Maybe, the challenge is to write these things with an audience, so that I can find that clarity I am desiring in my life.
I recently made the decision to leave my job at the small shop I've been working at for the past six months, in order to give myself the space and time to do the things I want to do, to follow my passions, to learn, to discover, to focus on me. It's scary, to think that I will be living on savings, not making any new money, not having financial security. But it's scarier to live my life waiting to follow my passions, rather than actually living them. It's easy to fall asleep in life, to get comfortable in a routine without questioning it. Then you see a glimpse of who you really are and panic sets in, with the realization that you're not living the life you want. As someone scrawled inside the bathroom stall I happened to be in this afternoon:
"Today is the first day of the rest of your life."
Bring it.
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