Bernie Birney: It's About Yoga

You Again?

 

It is a not-so-secret part of my history that as a young(er) person, I suffered from depression.  And when I say depression, I am talking about the kind of incapacitating despair that made brushing my hair, or my teeth, seem pointless. 

Not feeling inclined to brush my teeth was the least of it, actually.  I did stupid things.  I am fortunate to have survived.  It took a lot of support, a lot of therapy, a lot of time, a lot of drugs, and ultimately a lot of practice--a whole lot of practice--to rewire some seriously self-destructive tendencies.  It could have gone the other way.

It was a long time ago.

Yet, as a teacher, I still draw from that dark time.  As a teacher, the darkest parts of my history are my asset.  I get people who struggle with their darkness because I have struggled with my own darkness. I have hard won wisdom to offer. 

This month has been a tough month.  I am more busy than is comfortable, pushing harder than ever before.  People expect things from me.  Just between you and me, high expectations freak me the fuck out.  Also, I'm dealing with some heavy stuff.  As if that's not enough, there's been a major deadline hanging overhead.

Then, too, there's been the heatwave that's kept me out of the woods I normally run in, and a nasty injury that kills every time I bend my elbow--making asana practice painful.  Add the frenzied pace and the heavy crap to less movement than I am accustomed to, and the result is alarmingly but predictably blue.

A fistful of days without the structure I depend on sure can do one hell of a number on me.

And yet...

My practice has toughened me up.  I know what to do. Slow down without lying down.  Move--every day.  Go outdoors the minute I wake up.  Stand in the clearing in the woods just outside my back door.  Breathe in the morning.  Go outside every night.  Tilt back my head.  Take in the dark sky, and the moon.  Eat things that are alive.  No sugar.  Breathe.  Practice.  Practice.  Practice. 

Old patterns are opportunistic.  They can still creep back in when my defenses are down.  I am not immune.  The difference is that now I have tools.  The difference is that I trust myself to use them.

I can stand in the dark while still refusing to be overcome by darkness.  I can stand in the dark while still choosing hope with every ounce of my being. 

My practice has provided me with an inner compass.  I trust that I will find my way.  I am fall-on-my-knees grateful because I know that, while I may yet visit dark places, I won't linger in them any longer than is absolutely necessary.

 

This Again?

Last night I dreamed I was back on my old college campus.  It was September--the first day of classes.  When I arrived at my dorm the other side of the room was empty as a bottle.  The unoccupied bed was bare, and the industrial, blue and white striped mattress vaguely accusatory.  Where was my roommate?

Oh, right--we'd had a fight.  Maybe she wouldn't be coming at all.  Maybe she’d decided to room with someone else.

I’d have to straighten it out later.  My first class was beginning any minute.  I ran a hand over my pocket, triple checking that my class schedule was still in it.  It was.  Good.  Last year I’d forgotten it, and as a result had spent the first day standing on line at the registrar because I couldn’t remember which classes I’d registered for. 

There was somewhere I was supposed to be.  Time to go.  My first class was an English class in Building B.  Wait--where was that, again? 

I wasn’t a freshman.  I knew the campus well, so why couldn't I remember where Building B was?  Aware there wasn’t much time, I picked a direction, and just started moving.

Campus was alive with clusters of students, exuberant hugs, and high-pitched post summer vacation reunions. Nobody else appeared to be lost. Nobody seemed concerned about getting to class.   

I kept moving, and turned down a corner I’d never turned before.  Weird, I’d thought I already knew every route across campus.  A few steps down an unfamiliar path, it inexplicably became a highway.  Traffic whizzed past, barely missing me.   

How had that happened?  I had to get off this road or I would be hit.  Disoriented, and uneasy, I turned back toward the direction I’d come.  How had I gotten so off course? 

Clearly I had made a wrong turn somewhere. Back on campus, I couldn’t shake my unease.  Where the fuck was Building B?  Signs indicated Building A, Building H, and Building I, but no Building B.

I remembered that some of the buildings on campus had connecting corridors.  Maybe I'd have better luck inside? I walked through the first door I saw.  There were no windows.  Just brick walls, and the faint buzz of industrial fluorescent lights. 

There was a clock on the wall, and just enough jaundiced light to make out the time.  My class was already starting. At best I would be late; at worst I’d entirely miss it. 

I broke into a run but then stopped. 

I wasn’t going to make it. I would not find my way. I would not get where I needed to go.

It was too late.  

That’s where panic always wakes me up.  In my classic, recurring anxiety dream, I never find the class.  I never slide into my seat just before it begins.  It's not always college.  Sometimes it's high school, or somewhere that I need to be for work, but the underlying theme is always the same:  trails are always unmarked, and I am perpetually lost.  I fail to get where I am supposed to be.

Do you have a dream like that?

It's no coincidence that I've been having this dream again.  I've been stalled on a big project (otherwise known as THE BOOK), unsure of where I'm going with it, and so feeling at a loss to navigate.  Like the dream itself, this difficulty choosing a direction has been a recurring theme in my history.

A couple of days ago, I was chatting with president of The Handel Group™, and life coach extraordinaire, Laurie Gerber.  She asked how my project was going. 

"Not so well.  I'm reevaluating the structure.  I could go in two very different directions.  I don't know what to do, and I'm stalled.  I feel stuck.  I don't know where I'm going, or how to get there."

Hmmm.  Sound familiar?

Then she game me some great advice.  "It doesn't matter which direction you pick.  Just pick one.  Either one.  You can always go back and fix it, and the road not taken becomes your next project.  Just keep going."

That's exactly what I'm going to do. 

Do you have a recurring dream?  Can you recognize it as a recurring theme in your life? 

Feeling stuck?  Join Laurie Gerber and I for a one hour call on June 16th at 8:00pm.  Learn how to design promises to keep you moving forward, and how to actually keep them.  Use code "JUNE50" to participate for only $10.  Trust me on this one--it will be worth your time. 

 

 

 

Let's Talk About Leadership

I became certified to teach Anusara yoga® in March 2005. 

It's a big deal to become a certified Anusara yoga® teacher.  In all this time, there are still under 400 teachers who bear this title.  My certificate is numbered 132.  I'm proud to be in such elite company.  

In 2005, the certification process concluded with a telephone conversation with John.  I was far too dazzled to be speaking to John Friend to say anything coherent, let alone intelligent, or witty.  At the end of the call, he congratulated me. 

I was certified.

I hung up the phone, and sat, primly, on the couch, for what seemed like a long time.  There was nobody home to celebrate with, and I wasn't sure what to do with myself. It had been a long process, and I think I'd half-expected lotus flowers to fall from the sky upon my official certification.   

I think I'd thought that becoming certified would make me somehow--different.  Better.  But I just felt like plain old me, and to be honest, I felt a bit blue about that. 

The certification process prepared me to tell people how to use alignment principles, and how to take their thighs back.  It gave me a solid understanding of tantra's power to free minds and crack open hearts, but it didn't prepare me to lead.

I didn't then understand that it would take time to grow into the role of certified teacher. 

Fast forward six years. 

There is now a robust Anusara community in Connecticut, my home. I am awed by the deep roots that have taken hold. Sometimes I feel like I must have planted one of Jack's magical beans.   

Yoga communities often spring up around around certified teachers, with the certified teacher becoming a sort of hub.  Ready or not, these certified teachers are thrust into the position of leadership. 

In my own case, I had no idea what it meant to be a leader.  I had zero life experience preparing me.  In fact, I'd spent most of my life dodging commitment and responsibility, and making sure that no one held me accountable for anything.  I wasn't even particularly good at leading myself, let alone anyone else.  

I have had to get a lot better at it.  Recently, there have been ample opportunities to do exactly that, as a fair amount of local conflict has come to a head.  I believe that I was at least partially responsible for  some of those situations, even if only by being absent. 

It feels good to step up, roll up my sleeves, and take some responsibility for both conflict, and resolution.  I'm grateful to everyone who was willing to sit down with me, and have conversations that weren't necessarily comfortable.  Thank you for helping me grow.  Thank you for being essential to the CT community. 

Consequently, I feel passionately that fellow teachers, and students, have the right to expect things of people, including me, in leadership positions.

I believe it's fair to expect leaders to have:

• Commitment to a vision for a local--or global--community with room for everyone to contribute, co-operate, flourish, and grow
• Clear, frank and skillful communication
• Ability to receive feedback
• Insight as to how, and when, to offer loving guidance to those who haven't yet walked quite as far down the path
• Good conflict management skills 

I used to have an aversion to being called a leader, but no more.  Now, I aspire to continue to grow into my role.  The work I've done thus far with The Handel Group has been of tremendous value to me in this arena.  I would love to see leadership training included in yoga trainings, so that we can all be more effective. It's important.

Recently I read that leadership is ultimately about creating a way for people to contribute to making something extraordinary happen.

I am all about that shit. 

The Art of Not Being Lame

So there I was, doing push-ups, in the narrow hallway of the office building that is home to Virayoga.

Two minutes prior I’d been sitting on the floor with my friend Linda.  We were too early for our class–Life Coaching for Yoga Teachers–and so were waiting outside in the  hall, when I fessed up that I’d been doing it again.  You know–ruminating.  On the same old thing.  Again.

Linda shook her head, and looked professionally disappointed in me.

“Aren’t you sick of this yet?” she asked.

“Yes,” I huffed defensively.

She stretched her legs, leaned back against the wall, smiled, evilly, and shook her head in disagreement.

“What?  I am!”

“No.  You’re not.  When you’re really sick of it, you’ll stop.”

“I am so.  I am.  I’m sick of it!” I grumbled, as I hauled myself up to do push-ups.

Push-ups are the consequence I’ve given myself, a la Handel style, for obsessive rumination on a particular thing that I ruminate about–a lot. Now, when I catch myself–if I don’t cut it the hell out–I’m learning to give myself a consequence.  The point isn’t to punish myself; it’s to shine a light on the way my mind spends time.  Unhealthy brooding does not enhance my life, or my overall state of well being. 

I have promised to quit obsessively ruminating about this particular thing. The push-ups are a consequence, a ridiculous consequence, and even the ridiculousness is helpful.  Laughing at myself helps the needle of my consciousness jump the groove it has gotten stuck in.  I’ve learned the technique from my coaches, and this is one of the places life coaching touches yoga.

When it comes to the whirling dervish of thoughts and feelings, many yogis cite Patanjali’s second sutra:  “Yogash citta vritti nirodhah.” It roughly translates, “b!tch–you are captive of your own tempest of cyclone of twisting thoughts, and emotions, and you don’t even know it!  Learn how to calm your sh!t down.”

The coaching is very in keeping with the spirit of the yoga; if I catch myself ruminating, I have 30 seconds to stop.  Otherwise–I do the push-ups, no matter where; no matter when; no matter what.  Trust me–enough push-ups will nirodhah the crap out of those citta vrittis, all right.  Yes ma’am.

The point of both my yoga, and the coaching, is to get conscious enough to live an extraordinary life.  Living an Extraordinary Life is actually the name of a class on these techniques that’s taught at MIT, so I feel like I’m in pretty good company.  This bad habit of ruminating puts the kibosh on my extraordinary life.  That sucker’s days are numbered.

So, down I went for 10.

Would you believe that the durned push-ups actually made me feel better?  How broody can one really be while doing something so completely absurd?  Taking some action, any action, also reminded me that I am in charge of where my mind roams, where it rages, where it spins, and where it squats down to dither, and brood.  Those push-ups are a call to wake up, and to spend my precious breaths in conscious ways.  Life is much, much too precious to fritter away on crap that makes me unhappy.

What do you ruminate about?  What bad habit is not enhancing your life?  Do you:

1. Lose your temper and regret it?
2. Leave things until the last minute?
3. Obsess about your ex?
4. Snap at your mother and then feel guilty?

When are you going to do something about it?  What are you waiting for?

Later, in class, Lauren Zander, the teacher, and founder of The Handel Group, asked, “when are you going to start treating the promises that you make to yourself, and the consequences for not keeping them, as spiritual? Self-respect is spiritual.”

I wrote that down in my notebook.

I plan to engrave it on my soul.

She also said, “Don’t let yourself be lame.”

I wrote that down too.

Not being lame is an art.  The good news is that it’s an art that can be taught, and learned.

 

PS:  If you want some help living an extraordinary life then join our one hour call tomorrow, Dive Into the Promise of You.  It's almost sold out but there are still a couple of spots left. Register for $10 with the code BIRNEY10 .

Such a Lonely Word

I like to think of myself as an honest person.

Truthful; forthright; candid.  Good words, even words I've received in emails generated by this blog. 

Yoga has its own set of ten commandments and honesty ranks right up there near the top.  It's the second one.  It's that important. 

Must we really be told to be honest?  Being told what to do is sort of a hot button issue for me. I like telling people what to do just a little too much.  I do it for a living:  "Trikonasana.  Step your right foot forward.   Breathe.  Feel the sensation of your feet on your mat, and upon the earth's surface.  Draw strength from your feet up your legs into the core of your pelvis, to cultivate the strength to stand upon your own two feet, etc."

Telling people what to do is fine.  Being told what to do, however--not so much.  I don't cotton to it--pretty much ever.  My typical responses when I suspect someone is trying to control me are, in this order:

1. Hackles up.
2. Howling rage.
3. Rip off head.
4. Eat it. 
5. Rolaid.

(Unless you happen to be my spiritual teacher, in which case, please, please--I am begging--can you, in your supreme wisdom, just tell me what to do?  Pretty please with stevia on top?)

Anyway.

When I practice asana, I don't take my thighs back in alignment because someone tells me to, or because it's the virtuous thing to do.  I do it because it feels good.  It's sensuous.  I get to have the deep recognition, "Yes Ma'am, that has just got to be good for me."

Telling the truth works the same way.  Mostly I'm pretty honest, like I said, but there's a particular part of my life in which I have told some fairly serious lies.  Whoppers that started out as self-deceptions and then grew bigger than just me. 

Being untrue to myself doesn't feel good.  Unwinding the little deceptions, and the big ones, of my own device is terrifying.  I mean, it is really, really scary.  I am just so frigging smoothly persuasive that I can convince myself that my own lies are true. That is not a good thing.  

I can convince myself to maintain the status quo but then I have to live in it.  There's a price for that and it is high. Too high. 

I am so ridiculously fortunate to have had the good luck to literally stumble into the arms of The Handel Group.  They are teaching me how to better recognize, and own, what's true for me. Just last month I whined to my incredible coach, Juliana, who was prodding me on a specific assignment that she'd given me:

"I'm trying."

"I don't believe you," she kindly challenged. 

I was floored.  Not only do my students usually not retort that they don't believe me--although it did happen recently--they generally believe me so much that they take notes during class, writing down what I say in dedicated yoga notebooks. 

I had no idea how to respond to Juliana.  Then I tried to convince her I wasn't lying, so I could remain convinced, but she wouldn't budge. 

Wow. 

I have some work cut out for me but telling the truth feels a lot better than telling lies.  It's one thing to see honesty in a list of yamas and niyamas. It's a whole other thing to learn how to get really clear on what's true for me, and to insistently live from the authenticity of that truth, no matter what. 

It could take some time. 

The Handel Group has a Crash Course coming up, and I can not recommend highly enough that you check it out. 

What Can't be Seen by Eye

Snow on the second day of spring?  Ugh. 

Just yesterday, on the vernal equinox, I taught on the cycles of creation and dissolution by way of Kali, Sarasvati and Lakshmi.  I am now officially ready to put winter behind me. 

Sometimes it's visceral with me. I may hear myself articulate something I've been teaching for a while in a way that's slightly new, and think, mmm, yeah, that's exactly right.  It's telling that I can easily spend a half hour effusing on the ferocious goddess, and then zip over the more civilized and courteous two goddesses in a matter of moments.  

It's that time again.   

Inevitably--when it stops snowing--Sarasvati will triumph over Kali.  Already, the blackness of winter turns daily toward spring.  Beneath exteriors and bare branches, sap quickens the veins of winter trees.  Already, tightly furled bunches of snowdrops and crocuses have driven toward light, broken earth's surface, and unfurled.  Before long, summer's yield of heavy bowers will seduce.  The cycle shall bear fruit, crest, and peak at the height of Lakshmi's extravagant, refined and lush sensuality.  She'll climax in a tangle of blossoms and blooms guaranteed to stun the senses. 

This much I know. 

Kali's horrific darkness is the perfect metaphor for fear of the unknown, fear of that which has yet to be revealed, fear of what's below the surface, fear of what I can't see, fear of buried truths, and what happens should/when they break the surface. 

Within the darkness of my own consciousness lie seeds, potencies that are as yet un-sprouted:  talents, proclivities, abilities and tendencies.  Yoga invites me to purposely close my eyes, and journey to my own dark interior. I'm asked to plant my own seeds and to tend to them, to develop myself, to evolve, and to grow. 

Hopefully, with enough cultivation and some luck, I'll bloom into maturity and bear fruit.  Rooted in the fertile soil of my own consciousness, I may grow into the most cultured, refined versions of myself.

Which sounds all well and good but you see...

I can't actually know what will happen when the seeds of my potential take root.  I mean--right?  What will I grow into?  Who will I become?  What will happen?  I have to wait and see.  Knowing the unknown requires time.  What if I don't even like the taste of my own fruit?  I am journeying in the dark, as are we all. 

Yes, I'm pretty sure that fruit grown in this fashion can't fail to taste good.  Yes, without the darkness we would never see a crescent moon, a supermoon, or a star's light.  Yes, with all my heart, I hold these things to be true but it doesn't mean I don't lose my footing, and stumble in the night.   

I do know with certainty that I can only bloom into the possible--that which is already inherently embedded into my DNA.  I can discover possibilities that already exist there but can't purchase new ones on Amazon--just as a pear tree can't spontaneously yield plums.  The only thing I can possibly hope to grow into is my authenticity.   

The darkest of dark places lies within, and I simply can not use my eyes to pierce it. Literal vision doesn't penetrate.  Before breaking surface to be warmed by the sun's benediction, I must to be willing to grope in the dark.

It's the only way to learn to see by heart. 

 

(Incidentally, if you haven't been there, the Bedford Post Yoga Loft is a gem of a place. My friend Courtney, who is a teacher there, wrote an awfully sweet post mentioning the workshop, and me.  Go check out her great new blog  here.)

 

Telling Your Mind to Shut the Fuck Up

This post is inspired by my friend, the brilliant and incandescent Linda Coletta, owner of Blackbird Yoga. 

(Also, inspired is actually a synonym for stolen.  PotAto; potAHto.)

I wasn't there when she taught an entire yoga class using, "Tell your mind to shut the fuck up!" for a theme but I wish I had been.   I would have totally touched her lotus feet. 

I always feel most at home in tantrika-ville so I'll qualify that, for me, the best reason to tell my mind to shut the fuck up would be because it's not telling me the truth, not telling an empowering narrative, not advocating for me, not serving, and is instead wallowing, blaming, clucking about falling sky and impending doom, and generally up to old, self-deceptive tricks.

My inner rogue vigilante--who has trained in a secret village on a Himalayan mountaintop--and who tells my mind to shut the fuck up, looks something like this:

 

Imagine the possibilities:

Mind:  "Take that risk and you are going to wind up impoverished, alone, naked, and living in a cardboard box on the side of the road without any teeth because you can't afford a dentist."

Rogue Vigilante:  "Shut the fuck up!"

 

Mind:  "It's not really all that bad.  Maybe you should just maintain the status quo..."

Rogue Vigilante:  "Shut the fuck up!"

 

Mind:  "Why not just turn the alarm off instead of getting up to write that book?"

Rogue Vigilante:  "Shut the fuck up!"

 

Mind:  "Maybe you don't still have Celiac Disease.  Maybe it was all a mistake.  Maybe you actually can eat that slice of pizza..."

Rogue Vigilante:  "Shut the fuck up!"

 

Mind:  "So-and-so just does that because he/she has too many responsibilities, is confused, is going through a hard time.  He/she will eventually see the light, come around, and treat you the way you want to be treated.  Tolerate it for now."

Rogue Vigilante:  "Shut the fuck up!"

 

Mind:  "Why even bother finishing this book?  It's never going to get published."

Rogue Vigilante:  "Shut the fuck up!"

 

Like that.

PS:  with very heartfelt thanks to The Handel Group who is teaching me how to tell my mind to shut the fuck up.

Infinite Distance

I was in grade school when a radical concept occurred to me.  I can't remember exactly how old I was--old enough to be walking the three short blocks home unchaperoned.  It was one of those halcyon childhood afternoons--blue sky, warm sun.  The additional boon of an earlier rain had left residual puddles, and I was dragging my feet through, stomping, dallying, thinking whatever I was thinking, and very much the center of my own universe when I had an idea that stopped me dead.

Perhaps if I were not in fact me but some other little girl splashing around in a puddle, I might not be thinking this very thought.  Perhaps I would be thinking something else entirely. This thinking thing that was happening inside of me--it might just be happening in other people, too.

Maybe other people were the centers of their own universes just like I was.

It was so unsettling a thought, so radical, that I wasn't certain it could be true.  Being me was a full time job.  Literally every hour of the day was devoted to it; it required all my time.  What were the odds that other people were their own full time jobs?  It seemed unlikely.  It was too vast.

(I also sometimes wondered if I wasn't a character in a book being read by some other little girl, and fretted over how I could be certain that I wasn't.) 

This idea seemed just as unlikely.  Could the same kind of maelstrom that regularly occurred in me be simultaneously occurring all the time in everyone else, too?  I got tired just thinking about it. 

Sometimes, even now, it makes me lonely.  Each of us a universe that can press close to another universe, bump up against but never truly inhabit it.  Each of us a planet who will have lots of contact with alien life but never be truly occupied by it. 

Of course, most days I know that it's the connections we make that hold life's meaning.  The bonds forged on purpose between ourselves and another are more precious than any house, car, or granite countered kitchen. 

There are relationships, friendships, those who hold us in their gravitational pull, those we orbit around, those who orbit us, those by whom we are touched, and the impressions they leave upon us.   There is of course art:  literature, poetry, music; those great works that take on life of their own, greater than their creators or than just any one person, and make the leap from one heart to another.

Just yesterday I encountered this quote from Rilke:

"Once the realization is accepted that even between the closest human beings infinite distances continue, a wonderful living side by side can grow, if they succeed in loving the distance between them which makes it possible for each to see the other whole against the sky."

Beautiful, no?

No matter how well we think we know someone they remain in ways large or small, a mystery.  We can't ever know the entirety of another heart.  In a world that is always expanding, we can't even know the entirety of our own. 

I take as my premise that everything we humans do we do in attempt to make ourselves happy.  No matter how skillful or misguided, I believe that is what humans want.  I've heard my teacher say many times that we are free enough to make ourselves perfectly miserable if we want to.   All too often we do that in unskillfuly endeavoring happiness. 

Other people, centers of their own universes, want happiness too.  Like us, they may be skillful or unskillful in the ways they go about it.  They may profoundly impact us, or just a little, or not at all. They may ruffle our surfaces, touch us in deep places, waltz with us, change us, lacerate us, break our hearts.  We may be baffled by other humans.  Their actions may be as unfathomable as on that day so long ago when I stomped puddles. 

Republican or Democrat; hedgefunder or yoga teacher.  We're not so very different underneath it all--not really.  We're all living in worlds of infinite distance, seeking points of contact at our edges, and maybe even wormholes to the center. 

 

Love Letter To A Forgetful Friend

How do I begin to tell you, one among the handful of people whom I love beyond reason who has never read The Bhagavadgita, and you-- so exceptional, so smart, so creative and so adept at charming the entire world, that when you tell me you can't imagine what I see in you, and that your plan is to give yourself over to the despondency that has you in its grips, you are following a faulty line of logic and thinking yourself, sweetheart, into a box in which you will have to live for the next thirty or forty years?

(Perhaps you have read The Bhagavadgita after all and this is nothing more than a device. Assume nothing.  I can be tricky that way.)

My dear, you have forgotten yourself. 

You stand as though on the field of battle, between two armies, and your great heart falters.  You can see no possibility for a victorious outcome.

You are weary and despondent and forgetful of your greatness.

(I have this pet theory that it's the greatest of hearts that are prone to be afflicted with this kind of tribulation.)

Do not be undone by self-doubt.  Do not allow yourself to be undone. 

Instead, let me remember, for you, who you are--who you really are, I mean.

Let me tell to you the story of Arjuna, for even the greatest of warriors may be subject to debilitating despondency.  Even Arjuna despaired and sank to his knees, immobilized.

Let me be your charioteer and I will show you that, though you feel small now, you are vast.

Let me be Krishna for you, dearest, and I shall make of myself a mirror before you, reflective, so that you may see yourself as I see you.  Let me be Krishna, he whose name means blue-black, and I shall make of myself a midnight sky so that, star that you are, you may again see your own brilliance.

And if you do not let me do these things, I shall do them anyway.  On this count, Krishna would disapprove.  He would do his best to convince you and then instruct you to do as you please, and so give you back your freedom but I don't care.  I, quite simply, can not help myself. I will shake you until you stop this.  I will drag you physically from this lassitude if need be. 

(Yes, I know I began that last paragraph with a conjunction and that you will likely point this out.)

Don't you see that your story is Arjuna's story?  I know this so well because Arjuna's story has been my story, too.

This wrechedness does not become you. 

I know you.

You are better than you think you are. 

It's time now, sweetheart. 

Stand up. 

 

 

 

Don't Settle For Half A Stick Of Gum And Don't Go Willingly

I'm kind of struggling getting today's post started.  

See--I've got something on my mind but I'm afraid it will come out wrong.  

(By the way, I am now writing this post lying on the floor because my sacrum is tweaked.  Tweaked is yoga speak for, "Bendy Yoga Teacher Girl is completely incapacitated by back pain.  It is unclear whether I'll be going to work tomorrow but don't hold your breath.  I have just taken two tylenol with codeine.  I wonder if I can have wine with that...I wish I could reach that glass of water.  This would definitely hurt much more if I didn't do yoga.  I hope there's something good on t.v. after I finish this post...")

I'm dawdling.

Maybe it will help if I tell you about my grandmother.

I've mentioned that depression is rampant in my family, right?  My grandmother was the only grandparent who I ever knew.  I called her Nooney. Nooney was probably the unhappiest person I've ever met. Instead of saying, 'hello' when I picked up the phone, she moaned.  No joke.  I would answer the phone, hear a moan, and say, "Hi, Nooney."

Poor Nooney.  She had the same kind of stinginess granting a smile, or a kind word, that she had with the peppermint Trident that was always in her purse, but which she parsed out only half a stick at a time. Have you ever tried to chew a half a stick of Trident?  Why even bother?

She also kept a plastic holy water bottle filled with Dewar's in that purse.  When I think of my grandmother I think of rye toast, tea with milk and sugar and that holy water flask.

My mother tells me that, as a baby, I adored my grandmother but it didn't take me long to grow savvy enough to roll my eyes when she announced, for the thousandth time, that today was the very worst day of her life. Attempts to cheer her up were met with combatant scorn and hostility.  It wasn't long before I never wanted to be near her.  

When her relentless negativity drove everyone away, she complained bitterly of her loneliness.  

It might not be the very saddest thing you've ever heard but it's pretty sad, right?  The surge of compassion I feel is authentic.

It's not like I'm the frigging Dalai Lama.  The way my grandmother lived her life doesn't just make me sad:  it makes me angry.  What a way to spend a life, insistently, belligerently focused upon the petty, the small, the mean. What a fucking waste.  

I could shake her for the wastefulness of it.  I could shake a tiny, frail, 96 year old dead woman who was all of four feet tall by the time she died.  

In all the time I knew her, she never pushed back.  I don't know if she would have beat depression if she had. Maybe she would have; maybe not.  We'll never know.  I never saw her try.

I don't know what happens to us when we die but, for her sake, I hope there's more.  I hope there's more than the way she lived.  

All those years ago, when I was clinically depressed, my psychologist asked me why I was objecting to going on anti-depressants.  In truth, I didn't want to go on them because I thought they would work and I didn't want them to.

I didn't want to get better.  

I was past the point of wanting to get better. I wanted to slide right down into oblivion.

Getting to that point didn't just happen overnight, though. It took some time, plenty of time, for my depression to progress to that point, and at no time did I do a whole lot of pushing back against it.  I kept company with my own darkness.  I sought it out in others.  I went looking for it.  

This is the thing I almost never say because I think it will come out wrong, because I'm afraid that it will sound harsh and judgmental to the extreme:

In the beginning I was complicit.  

There was a time I could have pushed back but I didn't. Then it was too late.  At first I wasn't in the grips of something bigger than me.  Then I was.

The thing about depression is that you have to push back against it while you're strong enough to do it. Don't have a cup of coffee with it.  Don't say yes when it asks if you'd like to dance.  Depression can be seductive but ultimately there's nothing romantic about it.  Don't tilt your head and listen when it whispers in your ear.  Don't fall into its arms. Don't embrace it.

I'm not saying you can necessarily push it back with the sheer force of your will but I am saying that you have to push back. There's a window of opportunity for fighting back and if you miss it, the uphill climb will be that much harder.  My grandmother missed her window.  

I'll be damned if I'm ever going to miss mine again.  

Don't miss yours, either.