The Way of Love

I designed a heart opening sequence yesterday that I'm tweaking. I am drawn to heart-opening poses because I tend toward closed-heartedness, posturally, anyway, and the reverse can be challenging but can also offer relief from neck and shoulder pain. But what really prompted me to go towards heart-opening was Chapter 12 of the Bhagavad Gita, "The Way of Love". Krishna is describing another way that one can come into his presence and divine love:

One who is impartial, pure,
Capable, detached,
Free from anxiety (uh-oh),
Who has completely relinquished all undertakings -
That one, who offers love to me,
Is dearly loved by me.

One who neither
Relishes nor loathes,
Who neither laments nor desires,
Relinquishing the pleasant
And the unpleasant -
That one, who is filled
With offerings of love,
Is dearly loved by me.

The same toward both
Enemy and friend,
Honor and dishonor;
The same in cold and heat,
Happiness and suffering;
Freed from attachment;

One for whom blame
And praise are equal,
Who is disciplined in speech,
Satisfied with whatever
Comes of its own accord;
Who is without
Attachment to hoeme,
Who is of steady mind,
Replete with offerings of love -
Such a person is dearly loved by me.

One sticking point here, however, is that relinquishing home and non-attachment to loved ones is mentioned repeatedly in the Gita and other texts I've studied. It is part of Buddhist meditative teachings as well, as I understand them. Yet, throughout the Gita, Krishna advises Arjuna, the warrior, to uphold his duties as a warrior in battle even though the civil war he is fighting in has pitted brothers against one another and students against teachers (both big no-nos in the teachings). Arjuna feels heavy-hearted and full of dread at the thought of battling these loved and revered ones, but here is God telling him that upholding his duty to kill is more important than his duty to uphold the lives of ones he has been taught to preserve and defend.

So, my point is that my duty now is to my home and my loved ones here, so, naturally, I'm going to have some level of attachment as a sort of work-related necessity; as I understand it, loving and cherishing my family is one of my duties - and I like to think that Krishna would advise me similarly to Arjuna - that even though the texts say I should relinquish feelings of attachment to home and to my children, in my case, they are understandable and important parts of my Duty.

Of course, then there's the Buddhist argument that any attachment causes suffering and therefore should be let go. I suppose anyone who has raised a child through their teenaged years would understand and feel where that advice is coming from.

Pranayama

Pranayama can be translated as control or regulation of the breath or life force. It is one of the eight limbs of yoga mentioned in the Yoga Sutras. Patanjali describes pranayama as an exercise that prepares one for the concentration of meditation.

In Elemental Yoga, we practice pranayama at the beginning of each class. For beginners, a good first step is just being aware of the breath - this is an inhale, this is an exhale. Then begin to control the length of each - inhale to the count of one, two, three, exhale to the count of one, two, three. One can play with lengthening both inhale and exhale as a next step, then experiment with making the exhale longer than the inhale, particularly if one's mind tends toward agitation (not to rat myself out or anything, but this is my go to pranayama - the 1:2 breathing I mentioned in an earlier entry, where the exhale is twice as long as the inhale).

I just read this passage in the Bhagavad Gita, where Krishna is describing all of the various ways that yogis can come to know him. Just by being aware of your breath, you can come closer to a relationship with the Divine.

Still others offer
The incoming breath
Into the outgoing breath,
Likewise, the outgoing breath
Into the incoming breath.

Having restrained
The movements of incoming
And outgoing breaths,
They are wholly focused upon
Control of the life-breath.

In Elemental Yoga, we also practice a type of pranayama called Climbing Breath, where you increase lung capacity on each inhale, expanding the rib cage, feeling the fullness of the lungs in all directions. Since I have been more dedicated to a daily practice, over the past two years, my primary care physician has noticed a change in my lung capacity. None of my doctors have figured out why, but I have the lung capacity of a ten year old child all the time, and I tend towards asthma whenever I do any rigorous physical activity. But lately, my lung capacity has been registering at low normal for my height and age. My doctor was amazed the last time she checked. She asked what I had been doing differently, and she was surprised that the answer was just yoga. Low normal may not seem that great to a normal human, but for me, this is an incredibly big deal.

Bhagavad Gita

You have grieved for that
Which is not worthy of grief,
And yet you speak words
Of profound knowledge.

The learned grieve
Neither for those
Who have passed on,
Nor for those
Who have not departed.

Never, truly,
Have I ever not existed-
Nor you, nor these kings
Who protect the people,

And never
Shall any of us
Ever cease to be,
Now or forevermore.

This is an excerpt from Graham M. Schweig's Bhagavad Gita - the only reading I brought with me to Georgia. I'm taking a class with Schweig at the Yoga Journal conference in NYC in the spring. I've never enjoyed the Gita this much, but I suppose I've never been this vested in it, either. Still, I think Schweig has done a great job setting up the story and translating and annotating it to make it more understandable to the modern mind.

I'm reading it at approximately 30,000 feet in the air, sealed into a metal death tube with all that I hold dear, hurtling at a thousand miles an hour toward home, away from my husband's family home in a small college town southwest of Atlanta.

This particular passage sings right now, as I tend to be panicky in the air, particularly when with the kids. Flying always made me nervous, then you add in my recent tendency toward panic attacks - particularly when I perceive that the children are in danger - it's a heady fear cocktail.

The kids are sad at leaving - they love being with family. It's a special treat since we live so far away from all of our relatives and see them rather infrequently. They are also sad that we had to leave behind their old broken carry on bags that look like steam engines. They were too broken and ragged to make this leg of the journey with us.

I tried to talk with them about the yogic concept of non-attachment, but non-attachment just doesn't really resound with six and four year olds (or many grown-ups, for that matter).

Our hotel was run by a family from India. We enjoyed the seeming disconnect between being in rural Georgia and Hindu statuary.

I'm also enjoying the connection between my fear of metal flying death tubes and Duff McKagan's fear of metal flying death tubes. He blames his panic attacks and some of his addictions on flying. At one point during a tour, he was taking over TWENTY Xanax pills a day mostly to deal with his fear of flying. I used to take one and it would knock me flat. Still, I never miss them as much as I do when I'm boarding a plane. I also never ramble so much as I do when I've had only about ten hours of sleep spread out over three nights in a cramped hotel room, sharing a bed with my four year old who transforms into the girl from The Exorcist when he's sleeping.

We are enveloped in clouds now. I remember reading in the Globe that people are like clouds - that our cells are constantly dying, being replaced, and rearranging themselves like the molecules in clouds, and that our idea of ourselves as constant, static, physical beings is completely untrue from a scientific perspective.

So, it's good to remember - when flying, when traveling with kids, when leaving behind family or beloved childhood keepsakes - that we all have always existed and shall never cease to be.