Opening to Grace

I am in the middle of a yoga workshop with John Friend. He is the founder of Anusara yoga, a worldwide yoga practice whose first principal is opening to grace. I had an experience of opening to grace today. There are over 100 students in the training. Weeks ago I e-mailed the workshop logistics guy Roger about my hearing challenges and asked him if John Friend could use my special microphone which sends the speaker's voice directly into my hearing aids. He said he would work with me and even asked me for the name of the company who makes the microphone and called them.
I got to the workshop very early to work out the details and Roger put the microphone on John Friend's shirt. I was so excited anticipating being able to hear clearly without straining or trying to do what the person next to me does. My microphone placed where it was got deactivated by John's other microphone to amplify his voice to the group and wouldn't work. I kept thinking I was doing something wrong and urgently adjusting the devise I wear around my neck that streams the microphone into my hearing aids. Nothing I did made any difference. For two hours I strained to hear and was always one step behind except when John came in front of the group and I could read his lips. Mostly he walked around the room and didn't demonstrate the poses. All sorts of thoughts ran through my mind. What was I thinking signing up for an eight hour training when I didn't know for sure if it would work for me? I felt so sad and discouraged and disabled. I made it through the two hours and in shivasana or relaxation pose I remembered my present moment activating statement from this week of the presence process. I feel unconditionally. I lay there with tears streaming down my cheeks feeling my sadness and anger.
I became aware of the tight place around my heart where I hold all of my evidence that there is something wrong with me. I held myself in love and cried. I could see that my hearing loss or tight hips or difficulty getting jokes do not make me a defective human being. There is nothing wrong with me. I could just accept that this training was possibly going to be very challenging for me to hear and that it would be a loss to miss John Friend's sweetly spiritual and funny comments and wise yoga cues. Even with all of my feelings I would be OK. When we were done Roger said he was so sorry it didn't work and that he was willing to try again after the break.
I spent my break with my two friends Linza and Eric. I was able to be honest with them about my disappointment and get loving support. We had fun at lunch and then went for a walk around the lake at City park. It was a cold crisp walk and the gorgeous mountain view, clear blue sky and the warmth of the sun brought forth my gratitude for being alive.
We returned to the afternoon training and I decided to sit in meditation and ask for help from all of my spiritual support to have things work out and to be able to meet whatever happened
with grace or at least some level of acceptance of all of my feelings. I asked for guidance and help and I could feel my breath slow down and deepen and the anxiety and shame of the morning dissolve even more. Roger found me and put the microphone on John in a different way and it worked perfectly. I was able to hear every word. I felt so much joy in my soaring heart. I could feel the part of me that is afraid to trust that things work out well and is always waiting for the other shoe to drop. I gave that space too, feeling it unconditioinally and it stepped into the backgroud like an understudy in a play. The rest of the afternoon was filled with hard practice that didn't seem hard because I was so happy to be able to hear well enough to do it. It was a pleasure to learn from someone who has been teaching for 31 years and knows so much about how bodies work and how minds and spirits work with them. His passion for teaching and yoga was so inspiring and fueled my desire to continue to practice and to grow as a student and a teacher. I am so grateful to have opened to grace. ( I just realized as I am writing that opening to grace means opening to Grace which is the name of one of my spirit guides. Thank you Grace.)
In the relaxation pose at the end of the day I felt such a sense of the blessings in my life. I get to have experiences that stretch me and allow me to let go of my beliefs in my own unworthiness and embrace all of who I am. This is what I also wish for you.
Many blessings to you all at this holiday season. May you all continue to stretch and grow and open to all of who you are in all of your beauty. Andrea

We grow

Now I am used to writing in plain black. I remember when my blog settings changed for no reason I could figure out and I couldn't write in color anymore. I was so upset and felt like there was something wrong with me for not being able to be tech-savy enough to figure it out. That has been a good teaching for me because now it doesn't matter. Maybe part of progress is that things that used to be upsetting and that I reacted to strongly no longer are triggers. Being willing to get underneath the story of my inadequacy to the felt sensation in my body allows the spaciousness to integrate formerly upsetting things.
I am now doing the Presence Process for the third time. I love Michael Brown and I wish I could sit at his feet drink in his wisdom which thankfully he would hate. He is so committed to people learning to increase present moment awareness by practicing it themselves that he put his message in a book rather than training facilitators to teach his process. It all feels new to me as if I had never heard a lot of what he is saying before. I think that is because I am in a different place and can absorb and integrate differently. Last week I walked around saying, " this moment matters" whenever I thought of it. It was a powerful way to bring myself out of my thoughts into my body. Doing the fifteen minutes twice a day of connected breathing gives me a structure that I appreciate. The last two times I went through the Presence Process I struggled with doing the evening breathing meditation and this time it is easier. Even if I am tired I do my connected breathing and not in my bed. When I let myself do my breathing session in my bed at night I usually fell asleep. I am being kinder to myself this time and more realistic about honoring my limitations.
I never pushed the right button to publish this blog and the other two thirds got erased somehow. Of course I have no idea what I wrote about nor what I want to write about now. If I use this moment to be with what is I notice tension in my shoulders and a too full feeling in my belly. That moment of stillness brought back to me what I had written about. I wrote about the very difficult time Gary and I had reconnecting. We had a values conflict to work out and my world was shaken for more than two weeks. It's so interesting to me that all of my angst didn't get saved and the whole blog didn't get published. I had the sense as I was writing that I needed to continue to work this out with Gary rather than blogging about it. Tonight I had the intuition to re read the blog because I couldn't remember what I wrote about. I discovered most of it had disappeared into thin air a week ago.
We are past our conflict now and I got a chance to soothe myself when I was in a very threatened place, reach out for support and clarify my boundaries. Gary got a chance to look at what was important to him in a deeper way. Together we grew closer. I am grateful that we do repair work so well even if it isn't pretty. In relationships there is harmony and disharmony. What determins the health of any relationship is how well repair work is done to bring disharmony back to harmony. Gary and I are committed to repair and that's the main thing I love about our relationship. On our first date we agreed to support each other in our spiritual growth no matter what. That is the definition of a spiritual partnership. That may even mean agreeing to change the form of the relationship if that is what best supports the spiritual development of both people. I am glad that the romantic partnership we are in now is the one that best supports both of us. A spiritual partnership embodies the conscious knowledge that we each trigger each other so we have the opportunity to heal. In the middle of being triggered it is hard to remember this and even harder to see beyond the messenger to the message. The definition of a trigger is something that reminds us of unresolved pain from the past. It's a challenge to stop and breathe and own the past pain. It's easier to blame the other guy and go for the jugular.
Out of this conflict that Gary and I faced he got to look at his tendency toward craving and I got to look at my tendency toward aversion. Both of them come from our attempts to protect ourselves from painful experiences in the past. I think this past two weeks has enabled both of us to peel away layers of the painbody and to trust each other in a deeper way. I am grateful. I'd like to paraphrase the words of Rumi, Beyond craving and aversion there is a field. I will meet you there. We are all spiritual beings in human bodies making mistakes and deserving of forgiveness both our own and each other's. Out of acknowledging each others' humanity and forgiving mistakes, we grow.

Reunion

Gary and I have been apart for three and a half weeks and will reunite tomorrow. He was in Mexico on an art buying trip and vacation. I chose not to go because the timing of the trip didn't work out with my work.
He sells hichol yarn paintings which he gets directly from the artists. He loves their vibrant colors and spiritual meanings. His whole collection burned up in the fire. Now he is beginning to replace it. In addition, Gary travels to shows to sell his stones and his art for at least two weeks twice a year. In the past when we have been separated for long periods of time it has been really difficult for me to feel connected and to keep my heart open. It was my intention this trip to take care of myself and work with my emotions so I could stay open. Although I appreciate our time apart I start to get triggered into my abandonment issues after about two weeks. This time I did really well. I allowed myself to miss Gary and to show up for myself with the discomfort of it. In some ways it felt good to miss him when I let myself let go of resisting it. It is a validation of how much I care about him. Then last weekend I was up in Boulder in our house by myself. During the day I appreciated the view and the spaciousness of the house, yet at night it felt big and cold and scary. Also he planned this trip without considering my schedule making it was even longer that we wouldn't see each other. He called me when he got back to Boulder and I told him how hurt and angry I felt. I really appreciated that he listened to all of my feelings without getting defensive and then said he was sorry. Neither of us are used to being team players. We agreed to consider each other more when making our own plans. The flip side of not being very skilled at being team players is that we both are very supportive of each other doing what we want to do separate from each other. We are good at supporting autonomy and less skilled at supporting interdependance.
I have been fiercely independant most of my adult life. I have seen being dependant on another person as being a weakness. In the past years of being with Gary I have been learning that it is OK for us to depend on each other. Underneath my fierce independance is a little girl who is afraid she will be left if she shows her vulnerability. I have learned to comfort the little girl inside me and allow Gary to help me. It has been so healing for me that he has stuck around through all of my attempts to withdraw. I feel safe being in a commited relationship with Gary because he has shown himself to be trustworthy by the steadfastness of his love. I have learned so much for him about being solid with a committment. I am learning that loving another person and chosing to be with him as a life partner doesn't mean he has to fit my pictures of my ideal mate. That person is a fantasy who distracted me from opening to the beautiful kind loving person standing right in front of me. Letting go of my fantasy of my ideal mate has allowed me to open to what is and to appreciate the day to day workings of being with a nice man who I love.
I am grateful to have a partner who will work on a relationship with me. We have gotten skilled at resoving conflict. We can be pretty consistantly respectful of each other even in the midst of a heated discussion. This did not use to be the case. It is mostly because we are each willing to deeply listen to each other and to validate the others' truth.
I know that our reconnection tomorrow might be awkward and uncomfortable for a while and I know we'll get through it just as we have gotten through everything else that has come up in the last six and a half years. Maybe reconnecting will just be exciting and fun. I know it will be what it is whatever that is and we will use it to get closer.
What do you notice about yourself in terms of autonomy and interdependance. Which part of the dance do you do better with?

It's OK to be afraid

Wow, it has been a long time since I wrote last. I have missed writing. I just returned from a five day women's silent meditation retreat. The retreat started last Wednesday on the day of the first snowstorm. I was supposed to teach yoga at noon and then leave from there. Tuesday night listening to the voice of doom from the weather predictors, I got scared about whether I would be able to get to the retreat leaving after my class. I left a message for Satya, one of the owners of Whole Yoga, voicing my concern and asking for the number of a teacher who I knew lived in walking distance from the studio. Satya called Lauren herself and Lauren subbed my class. Thus began my web of support from loving women. Because of my food sensitivities I was preparing five days of food for myself and I had time that morning that I needed to prepare my meals.
The day of the retreat I left ten minutes later than I wanted to and I decided that that was a pretty good job. Being kind to myself about time when I leave later than I want to is way favorable to berating myself. Being kind actually helps me access my prefrontal cortex or the reasoning part of my brain so I can look at what I might have done differently or could do differently in the future. I realized a while back that I am late because I have to do one more thing. I tell myself that whatever that one more thing is is essential to do at that moment. I play a game with myself now as I am driving somewhere late or with barely enough time to see if I can remember what that one more thing was. Lately I have been able to catch myself in the middle of doing something like putting the clothes away in my laundry basket, and remind myself I could easily do it later. I am getting kinder about my reminders. Sometimes I have even been able to catch myself in the thought that all my plants need watering right that minute and interrupt the action before I start to do it. I don't like being late and I get to look at how I create it.
So, ten minutes seemed easily forgivable as I drove to the retreat in the snowstorm. I was heading for Estes Park where the snow was supposed to be the heaviest and I was scared. I had just purchased really good snow tires and that helped my confidence. I bought them because I got stuck in my Boulder driveway and had to be towed out last winter when Gary was out of town. This year if it snows I am parking at the top of that steep Boulder driveway even though I have good tires.
Driving to the retreat, the roads were plowed and in good condition. As I began to relax and know I would be OK, I started to enjoy the drive and notice the sparkling beauty of the the snow laden trees. Even though there was close to a foot of snow in Estes Park by the time I got there I was breathing easier. I knew it was OK to be afraid and to breathe into the fear and that I would be OK.
This was the first lesson of the retreat about bringing my breath to my fear and embracing myself with my fear. During the five days of sitting meditation many fears arose. Some were about my body's discomfort like, " I don't think I can handle sitting here for one more minute. I think I need to run out of the room. " Others were part of my internal process about my fear of relaxing around other people and worrying about being judged or shamed. When I was growing up I had two Moms. One was loving and the other one would move into a rage and hit me. I never knew which one my Mom would be. It wasn't safe for me to relax. One night in my bed at the retreat I breathed into the fear of the little girl inside me about relaxing and being herself around other people and let her know she was safe now. The terror was very strong and I brought in Grace my spiritual support being to help. She is a round african american woman in purple diaphonous robes. I and the little girl inside me felt safe to feel the fear and to be comforted. I moved into the fear and trusted my breath to help me heal. A deep spaciousness opened up within me and I heard a voice say, "Welcome home." It was a blissful peaceful moment of knowing I could embrace deep fear and experience spaciousness and connection with all there is. Fear can be a vehicle for creating safety and coming home to the sense of oneness that is our true home.
What do you notice about fear and safety in your own life? Might you imagine breathing into something you fear and allowing yourself to feel held in love for feeling that fear? It's OK to be afraid. It is safe to be afraid.

The fire revisited thirteen months later

I want to write and I don't know about what yet. Gary and I went up to Gold Hill to see his land on Monday. The debris from the fire had been removed and the foundation had been dug up. Two giant dumpsters contained all that was left of the house and the life he had for 35 years. During the five and a half years that he lived in Gold Hill when we were together I had a lot of resistence to being up there. The drive was long and difficult and the last twenty minutes was ungrated dirt. When I got to the dirt I was always impatient, ready to be there. Our arrangement was that Gary spent weekends in Denver in the winter and I spent weekends in Gold Hill the rest of the time. I think he had an even harder time coming to Denver than I did to Gold Hill. He hated diving in traffic as much as I was challenged with mountain driving. There were things I appreciated about being up at Gary's house. The main thing I valued was being immersed in nature. It was peaceful and beautiful and we often had families of deer for neighbors.
My favorite thing to do was to hike on the land across the road from his house. I so appreciated stepping out of his door and being able to hike in a spectacularly lush forest. There were also meadows full of colorful flowers and almost always no other people. I began to do the hike myself sometimes. After I got over my fear of getting lost by getting lost and finding my way it became a great pleasure to go by myself. My landmark were two huge trees joined together near their base. I knew if I headed in their direction I would find my way home. It was the perfect hike on those days when I felt like I would jump out of my skin if I didn't move my body around and Gary didn't want to go. The hike led up to a rock outcropping with a peak mountain view beyond the beautiful trees. Many birds would come to roost in those trees. Although I mostly couldn't hear their songs I enjoyed sharing their company.
Monday we went up to the land because Gary hadn't seen it since it was leveled. I wanted to go with him to support him. A lot of sadness anger and grief came up for him. There was something so final about the level dirt where the house had been. We went for a walk to the crow's nest which was what we calledf the rock outcropping at the top of the hike. I think we had both fantasized about coming up to the land and hiking there in the future and maybe sharing it with Gary's kids and grandkids again.
The land bore the scars of the fire. One whole side of the mountain was all dead charred trees. As we walked Gary noticed our landmark trees were no longer there. They had burned down to a charred hole with burnt tree roots protruding from it. The devastation was so widespread and stark, more than either one of us had imagined. We did see a small grove of aspen saplings beginning to grow, which was very hopeful and inspiring. We could feel the power of mother nature both to create and to destroy. When we got back to our lovely home I felt a flood of gratefulness that our owning my dream home was made possible by the fire. We had found a place that satisfied Gary's need to be in the mountains, both of our love of nature, and my need to be close to a health food grocery store and a yoga studio. Gary had recently found a plot map of our area that a real estate agent had included in the flier on a nearby home for sale. We had never known the exact boundaries of our land so we came home and walked the boundaries of our land. There was something so healing for me to walk on unscorched earth and to feel the green grasses rustling against my legs. Everything felt so alive and reassuringly whole. It brings to mind ganesh, the hindu elephant god who is the creator and remover of obstacles. I guess obstacles have to be created to be removed. Someday I'd like to be able to appreciate both. I am in the process of integrating our visit to the land yesterday. Writing this blog has helped me to do that. Thanks for listening. Andrea

self-acceptance

It's been a while. Gary and I just returned from a week in Breckenridge. The leaves were amazing and we got along really well most of the time. I am actually starting to experience what it's like to accept my partner as he is. That doesn't mean I have to like everything about him. I certainly don't like everything about myself either. I used to say that being in a committed relationship meant liking another person's pleasing qualities enough to be willing to gag down their other stuff. Gary would look at me archly and say, "Gag down?" He was on to this acceptance thing way before me. I think one of the things I love about him the most is how accepting he is of me. This quality helps me to feel safe with him and also has taught me to be more accepting of myself. Gary brings lots of non-judgemental acceptance into our partership. I bring lots of motivation to change and grow. When I get impatient with how slow he moves when we are hiking, I remind myself that I have found a partner who loves the mountains as much as I do. I move ahead honoring my own pace, coming back to say hi often.
On our trip he got pissed at me because he wanted to lead the way down a tricky trail that he had done before and I wanted to go ahead of him and go faster. He said I was controlling and I hate that. Being controlling is one of my least attractive qualities and I especially hate having my being controlling pointed out by another. I proceeded to get really angry defending myself and telling him that I wanted to go at my own pace and he was impeding me with his need to go first.
Then I pushed ahead and slipped, landing on my previously injured wrist. Visions of repeating six more months of physical therapy and teaching yoga with no down dogs floated through my mind. I still held on to my defensiveness and he got triggered too. Soon we were in a beautiful place, oblivious to the present moment, caught up in both being right. It made things worse that three other hikers had come along to witness our raised voices. (well mostly mine) He tried to reconnect and I was still attached to feeling separate. We hiked back up and I asked for help to let go of my ego's strong desire to off him on the spot. I breathed and asked for help to feel the universe holding me and the little girl inside me (who sometimes goes apeshit when I am criticized) in love for being exactly as I am. That included being controlling, defensive, and mean- a tall order. We were walking through a magnificent forest of golden aspen trees and slowly I began to see them. This is one of the reasons why I love nature so much. Self-acceptance is much easier for me to experience if I am in a beautiful natural place. Gradually
I opened to the ego trance I was in where Gary looks like my enemy, and held myself in love.
This was powerful for me to realize how deeply caught I was and to acknowledge this to Gary.
Being vulnerable with him opened my heart and I was able to feel love for myself and for him.
I am grateful to be with a man who is willing to work on our relationship. We both acknowledged our unskillfulness and began to reconnect. It's hard for me to accept how angry and threatened I get. Even though I know that relationship as a spiritual path means using everything that comes up to get closer it's hard to include those qualities that I least accept in myself as teachers. And teachers they are. I am grateful to be on this journey toward self-acceptance and acceptance of Gary even though sometimes it is anything but pretty. I so appreciate sharing my path with a man who values my healing, his own healing, and our healing. I am grateful to you for listening to this. I hope it contributes to you and to your process of self-acceptance.

gratitude

Gary was supposed to come to my house in Denver every evening this week after the Denver Gem show. He has a booth there selling his rocks and cabs. Last night he came over and struggled with rush hour traffic. I was working for another hour and fifteen minutes after he arrived. He was very tired and worried about getting enough sleep with the noise at my house in my smaller bed. He is a mountain man who thrives on quiet. I also was concerned because I am used to having my house to myself after I am done working. I think I have been making our relationship and each of us wrong because we need so much space. I was imagining it meant we weren't really committed. That is part of my negative core belief that there is something wrong with me. We all have a negative core belief that is a story we made up and that we use our lives to prove true. The good news is that becoming aware of the core belief and bringing compassion to myself when I notice that the story feels true, is the vehicle to begin to unravel the story and see what is really true. My story is that there is something wrong with me. Right now I am playing out this story by judging myself for how unclearly and redundantly I am expressing myself. The crossroads is: support the story that that means there is something wrong with me and spin off into proving that to be true or recognize the story and celebrate that I have recognized it. I am learning that the remedy to the core belief isn't the opposite. Telling myself that there is nothing wrong with me is working on my personality with my personality. The antidote to my core belief is awareness and gratitude. If I can notice the core belief and bring kindness to myself for noticing, I feel grateful that I have pulled myself out of my brain rut. Feeling that gratitude gets me in touch with the wellspring of gratitude in my heart. That wellspring of gratitude is a feeling I call "Thank you God. I feel it in my third eye and see the colors of green and magenta. When I feel the thank you god feeling I experience my connection with god. That connection supercedes whather I am doing anything right or wrong or if there is something wrong with me or not. In that place of connection with God I know God to be everything that is and that I am part of that. From that place all of who I am and all there is, is included in what OK is. It is now possible when I notice I am stuck in my story to ask for help from god or the universe or all there is. I know if I am trying to analyze myself out of my stuff or bully myself out of my stuff I am trapped in my stuff. If I work on my personality with my personality I am screwed. When that seems like the only option I can ask for help and breathe and bring my own awareness to whatever I am feeling. I can imagine feeling gratitude for noticing what I am feeling underneath my story. I can treat myself with kindness for having exactly the experience I am experiencing. So back to me and Gary. Both of us were feeling less than expansive about him being in Denver all week. So, we ate dinner and then he drove back up to Boulder. I felt so grateful that we were able to tell each other our truth and be understanding. The benefit for me was that I got to go for a long moonlit walk and have a lovely nights' sleep. Also I had set aside every evening to be done working by around 6:00 and now I have all those evenings to myself. It was such a pleasure to have several hours to do what I wanted and needed to do tonight. I am grateful to be able to embrace what is and know that Gary and I have a great relationship partly because our optimal level of distance is very similar. He doesn't think I'm wierd because I want to have half the week apart. It works for him really well, too. I don't have to feel smothered or rejected and neither does he. Some say we have the best of both worlds. Today I think so too.
I am grateful for my life and for the time I have to work on myself and work on my relationship and have work that I love. My growing awareness of my connection with god and the possibility of asking for that connection in the midst of my stuff fills with with gratitude. Thank you god. Thanks to you for reading these blogs and having whatever experience you are having.