Self-soothing

It's what we do to calm ourselves down. It's the step we take—and the steps after that—to help ourselves through the understanding that this surge of emotion isn't all we are. It's a passing storm. It's time spent in discomfort (or bliss, as the case may be), and we can be present and not lose our minds or our sense of self or our awareness of the other important stuff that is happening in that very moment.

It's the skill we're helping our babies to build when we give them a moment or two to feel their feelings when they cry in the middle of the night, or just after we've left the room to help them to bed. I'm just learning this, with my second child. So fearful of my daughter's having to sit in her own distress, I ran to her within seconds of her crying. I wanted to rescue her from herself. I was petrified of crying it out. I had no visceral awareness of what self-soothing really meant.

With our son, my partner and I had an idea, and we gently waded into the realm of 2 minutes...3 minutes of his tears. Maybe even 7 minutes.We sat together, we looked at the monitor, we looked into each other's eyes, and we helped to soothe one another with words of encouragement as we let the boy experience his own feelings.  We began to understand his cries. And we watched together as he calmed himself down with his thumb or with a little change of position and fell back to sleep. If we sensed after a few minutes that his distress was taking him outside the boundaries of what he could recover from himself, we went in. And sometimes he needed to be picked up and rocked and helped back into his sleep. And sometimes he needed to be nursed. But most of the time, after only a few minutes, he created his own calm. He still does, and now he looks to his security blanket as a source of comfort. And we stop everything and listen for him—every time.

It took our daughter about 15 months to sleep through the night. Children are so different from one another. This much is true. But I do wonder whether it might have helped her to have a chance to sit inside of her own emotional storm for just a moment, and to help herself as it passed. When she awoke, she often was still half-asleep. I have wondered whether allowing her to do that sleepy self-soothing would have sunk deeper into her mind and into her heart.

The bright side is this, and it is very bright: Our experience with our second child has helped us to help our first child to soothe herself, to delight in the nourishing comforts around her. I'm now teaching her about essential oils to include in the bath.

And, in combination with the depth of my yoga practice, it has helped me to do the self-soothing I have been longing to do since I was a child, but never truly learned.

It's rather like asana, isn't it? Sitting in these emotional storms?

Historically, I have tried to find a variety of ways to escape. I was horrified by anger and sadness, and found that seeking to send them away only led me farther into them. The subtlety of intelligence and the fortune of loved ones helped me to avoid the darkness of narcotics, but I know that the sources of escape-comfort I chose were not at all nourishing, and looking back at that younger girl who was trying to find a way out of her emotions makes my face melt and my heart hurt. I want to mother her.

I mother her now.

As I sit here and type in a coffee shop not far from where I am going to pick up my sweet babies from school, a delicious spinach empanada sits comfortably in what was a hungry belly—a belly I used to ignore. In the anxious moments of my day today I sang: Natalie Merchant's lovely lyrics as I walked into the nervousness of my first day of class, and Springsteen's "Thunder Road" as I made a beeline away from the noise of administration and toward the bathroom, where I could therapeutically wash the parts to my breast pump. The hot water, the sudsy soap, the pieces of rocking my baby. I used to do work on the bus commute, but now I read the live-giving words of a book. And I try—oh, I do try so gently, so steadily—to listen. And the self-talk: "Shhh...it's okay." "Om, Namaha." I feel the undertow of worry and fear, and I pull myself back and look around. Look! Tree. Sky. Feet. Neighbor. Breath. It is okay. Or even this: "It's not okay right now. But it's okay."

Yes. This is the lesson of asana: to sit in the emotional flood of the pose and breathe. This is the lesson of our children: to love them deeply to the bottom of who we are, and to find ourselves found there.

Fear of Falling

There's a heat wave this week in Philadelphia, and I am consciously aware of where I was and what I was doing exactly one year ago: big belly, moving slowly, on the brink of submitting my tenure dossier...expectant. 

Today, I sit at my desk in my slightly cool office, feeling the twinge of vertebrae talking to one another after a deep practice this morning. My teacher has led me toward Karandavasana, and we are working through it in pieces: taking Padmasana while in the balance of Pincha Mayurasana, then taking the balance on the forearms with Padmasana curled up into my body. Last year at this time, this space is where my baby boy lived. 

I have a keen awareness these days of fears in upside-down postures, and my teacher tells me that it is the wrestling with mortality that comes from mothering. I sit in the amazement of a stronger, more flexible body, accompanied by a mind that is, truly, more fearful. Where between babies I used to jump up into handstand and find the security there, now I feel a need to protect myself from falling over. Today, my teacher asked me to bend all the way back to the floor in Pincha Mayurasana so that I could feel the feeling of falling over. There was the floor. Not an abyss...just a floor.

But the fear isn't really of the floor, is it? It's of the abyss. And the abyss is the mystery of loss. What if... My baby boy has unfolded with both a sweet, delicate nature and a durability that is uniquely his own, and I am drawn into it as his mother to both protect and challenge him. My daughter, now 4, is committed to climbing higher and sometimes wants to let go of my hand. She sits these days in the contested space between wanting to own every skill, and wanting us to brush her teeth for her. This negotiation of fear and security, I find, I am doing in and with my own body. Close to the floor I build strength: in jumping back, in twisting, in back bending. Even in back bending, I can see the floor as I fall toward it, and control the fall. But upside down—especially after seeking the protection of a wall in upside-down poses while pregnant—draws out of me the fear of what I'm falling into. I cannot see it. I want my teacher to help.

And, as mothers, do we not spend so much of our precious energy protecting our children from what we suspect might be lurking? Even if it's unnecessary? And don't we have to let go of that a bit, to have faith that the child will begin to make those predictions himself or herself, and to negotiate falling into the earth below, even if he cannot see it behind him?

Practice is a mirror—in it we see who we are. But it's not just a mirror, but also a physical application of all that we're working through. It's a laboratory to experiment with and examine who we are: the actions we take, the ways in which we identify ourselves, the questions that haunt us. In every pose, we see a relationship to ourselves that is not just about that pose, but also about how we're moving in the world more generally. It forms a philosophical and tangible bridge into the day that leads us into a sharper awareness of how and why we will be in the world. And the next morning, it welcomes us back to journey deeper into that awareness. This fear of falling is real in how it manifests in my practice and in my movement in the world. But practice teaches us that reality is always a product of the mind, and that calming the mind can take us to the edge of how we've created our vision and help us to revise our realities. 

My teacher tells me that the fear will never really go away, and that instead of resisting it and waiting for it to disappear I should instead acknowledge that it is there. A longtime companion. 

A reminder that there is space to move through and around it, with myself, with my children. Space for faith that a fall will not be far.

Tittibhasana

One of my beloved teachers gave me the Tittibhasana series about two years ago.

I remember the heavy difficulty of these poses: the pain in the inner thighs and groin, the lack of access to the low belly, the sound of the noise in my mind as I reached to bind without success. I jokingly told my teacher that it was "sooooo hard." And he responded, with some humor, that I was "in the gauntlet" of the series now. I used a mat towel to bind as I moved through through these poses day after day. I dreaded them as my breath sped up in the panic of what seemed like too much. The weightlessness of Pincha Mayurasana was a great relief after 10 steps up and back, after the intense squeeze of Tittibhasana C.

In order to bring more focus to conceiving our second child, I stopped doing Tittibhasana to free the low belly.

Since having my baby boy, my current teacher has been giving me poses back, one by one. Last week: Tittibhasana, after many, many months. And there it is now, waiting for me: the bind. Fingers find one another, a closed circuit of energy. A giant hug of this little body that has become so greatly swollen in pregnancy and birthed two babies. The breath is measured and strong as the spine reaches down and around, and the gaze follows to the nose as the body lifts low belly and rounds around. Tittibhasana: a little bird, a firefly. Some delicacy in the name of the pose, but the path laid before it reveals a power in the womb that has fiercely and devotedly brought my children into the world and left behind it a sweet lightness. And now to find the bind in this pose: a reverent embrace. The walk, a nimble series of steps, with breath. The closing fold of Tittibhasana C an honoring: of them, of the power of the body, of the humility of our Knowing and unknowing.

Reunion

As is the case with so many jobs, mine poses many challenges. Beautiful, organic, interpersonal, influential, compassionate, creative...yes. But there are days when I leave this job and feel the weight of hurt feelings, political interactions, mistakes, and anxieties about what I cannot predict about future hurt feelings, politics, and mistakes. The job can seem too big on those days, mis-sized in relation to the vast world that surrounds it. I know that I have lost perspective, but I am stuck. As I make my way out the door, across the street, and down the busy sidewalk toward the bus stop, I breathe slowly. On some days, and in some weeks, the heart is heavy, and the process of breathing through and around it is pained and confusing. On many occasions, I do ask, "Is this the right place for me?" Is this the best way for me to give back to the world? Am I doing my best work here? These are questions I might hold on to for days until a mindful process of gathering perspective reminds me that, yes, this is good. I consider the alternatives: I imagine myself in other corners of the world, in other clothes, reading other books, working differently with humans and their complexities. And I re-choose this job of all jobs. But there is the immediacy of the melancholy that can come with the doubt on those tougher days, when we wonder whether we've chosen rightly; and the contorted view of the job's importance, its sense of urgency, its undertow can trap the mind back at the desk (or wherever we locate ourselves in our work).

The fortune of what awaits me at the end of those days is medicine to this melancholy.

With the coming of my second child, I have developed a vicious hold on the hours at home, devotedly turning my attention to family and decidedly not looking through the technological portals that might lead me back into the complexities of work. That walk to the bus leads me to the cross-city journey to reunite with my children after hours away from them, and I find a deep sense of responsibility in sorting through the layers of weight that work worries might give me as I walk out the door. As is often the case, I cannot make sense of it all in the 20-minute trip, and so I try earnestly to tuck it away. I use words in my mind—om namaha—and the fundamental rhythm and sound of the breath to get perspective. But even then, as I walk down the stairs to my children's school, I might still be holding on.

And then I see them. My daughter rushes out of her play, breaks into laughter, and hurls herself into my arms. And I smell her: a tiny, warm, sweet little body that came from mine. I can smell the crackers she ate at lunch, and the paint she used in the art center. I feel her little muscles so alive, the soft clothes that I have washed over and over, her beautiful baby hair. Together, we gather her belongings and I exclaim joyfully as I look at the art she made for me, and together we walk excitedly down the hallway to baby brother, who is often fast asleep in a late afternoon nap. And then I have the delicious chance to walk over to his crib and gently rub his belly as he slowly awakens. He sees me, he smiles, and I pick him up and snuggle into his neck. Pure baby: my milk in his belly, the baby food I have made him in his belly, the sweet lotion we put on his face, the softness of his wispy hair, his little body fitting so perfectly into mine as I carry him. Over and over, like on the day he was born, I kiss him and whisper and press my face into his cheeks. And I watch him look all around the room at his baby friends: proud. My mommy's here now.

And as I push the enormous stroller of babies and bags down the city streets toward their beautiful father, I forget about my heavy heart.

Mala

Eight months after the birth of my second baby, I am re-discovering Second Series. My teacher is re-giving me the poses. It is like a second life inside of this practice, and it is blowing my mind.

At a recent workshop, by teacher Angelique Sandas talked saliently about the practice as a japa mala: each asana is a bead, and we follow these beads around and around, coming back to each one, but never in the same way. It's a perfect analogy—indeed, we have seen the words in Guruji's articulation of the practice. Through the lens of this analogy I daily consider another wise point that my teacher makes about how even inside of this very challenging practice the practitioner must challenge herself so that the practice can continue to give back. Indeed, over several years of daily practice, we can find ourselves in a place of ease. Ease is good, yes? Of course, yes. But if that sacred marriage between effort and ease begins to fall out of balance, if as we become stronger and more flexible and the effort becomes less and less, we must seek out new ways to draw benefits from the practice. And thus, as we go round and round the mala, we find adventurous elements tucked into each asana that we had never before discovered.

Now, starting Second Series all over again, I am discovering new obstacles, much illumination, moment after moment of awe. My teacher believes in the beautiful, complex process of the practice, of the mindful doling out of poses only when the practitioner seems ready, of the weeks and weeks of pause in the sequence. In many ways, progress is up to her: she follows her own mystical instincts, and I give her my trust. She relies on the power of the practitioner's deep engagement in each stage of the sequence to open space in a pose before moving on. I am practicing up to Dwi Pada Sirsasana, and I feel viscerally the challenge of the hip openings, of the spine growing, of the muscles in my back learning to speak kindly to my legs, to my shoulders, to my chest as everything works to lengthen and open and balance. And how challenging to pause here, not only because of the effort required to do these asana, but also because backbending comes right after. My body longs for Yoganidrasana, for Pincha Mayurasana...but I hold here, at Dwi Pada, coming to rest and breathe and be okay in this intense bend in the body. After this, I come to rest, breathe, and be okay in backbending and in dropping back. Then, new this week, my teacher assists me in dropping back, guiding hands to ankles.

I have spent some moments in this space: I am 38, I have two children, and I take my ankles in backbend. Rock on. But I cannot stay there long because I cannot completely understand it beyond how fired up it makes my ego, and the ego is so easily impacted (isn't it?). And even 5 days into that deep backbending, I see much more clearly into the space around the ego: the Self that transcends all of it is practically impossible to understand intellectually because peace is more felt in the soul than processed in the brain. Humility is the fairy dust that falls all around the ego, gently dissolving it like sugar in a glass of water. Wonder is the magic of this practice and the rest for the heart and mind that comes with it. And so, like in those asana where we stay for weeks and months, and rest, breathe, and be okay, wonder sits with us and we don't have to move beyond it.

That is the brilliance of coming round and round again through the mala, that extraordinary chance to wonder, to know ourselves beyond the bounds of understanding.

The Practice of Parenting

I did not know about the tug of war between the waiting and the surprise. It's a secret I would share with folks who are about to have a second baby: You will find yourself waiting. For what, you may not know. But you'll feel it: a constant state of anticipation. And yet, it will all seem new. The waiting comes from an endless string of unknowns that streams out of a first child. The brain now wants to predict. And the heart sits at the ready, but still cannot wrap itself around the raw newness that this child constantly brings.

My brain waits for the next tooth, for that exciting tip onto the belly as the rolling over begins, for the child to sleep all...the...way...through...the...night, for the first word. We have dug out the same script we used before, as the boy has found "Da da da da": just as I did with his sister, I turn to his father and point and say, "Dada? YES! Dada!" But my heart, I find, is surprisingly surprised at everything my sweet boy does, despite the fact that his sister did it all before him and we call up the same scripts we used with her, despite the fact that my brain says, "Look what's coming next!" It's all so strange and new and naked. The brain expects, but the heart feels the visceral reality of what this child presents to us: something altogether baby brother of the first, and altogether his own.

In the pull between the anticipation and the revelation, the confidence of prediction and the humility of the unknown, there is something complex: anxiety, the sound of breathing, certainty of impermanence, lack of understanding. Deep, rich love that is woven throughout with: Yes., How long?, I know., and What if? In moments when the brain wants to lay it all before me in spans of years, I can worry about how quickly it will all come to pass. How quickly it has come to pass now, as I sit here writing and he sleeps soundly upstairs, a creamy, doughy little muffin of 6-and-a-half months. In the video monitor I see a stream of sunlight passing over his little face, his yummy pink cheeks, his lovely peaceful eyelids. [How fortunate that technology does allow us to see our children in their beauty, like this, without waking them.] And I want to stop time.

How many other parents have said that? "I want to stop time." And do what in that pause? Linger and look and breathe them completely in, never to be separated from this moment.

But, consider this. It is a breathing pause, a relaxed holding of position, a balance of effort and ease. These moments, when we parents aim to rest without anxiety in the pure childness of our children and in the pure parentness that is our inexplicable connection to them, are our asana. Yoga teaches us to find rest even in the most challenging of asana, and Ashtanga teaches us that one asana will be followed by another and another and onward forever as long as we practice. Thus, it inspires me to consider whether my panicked moments of trying to hold on to this time with my babies could be likened to that. Vinyasa in, vinyasa out: a breath-led journey into and out of these precious spaces of time that we feel desperate to freeze. Always the awareness of breath that gave us all life in the first place, always the nectar of bliss in those asana. In each asana of my practice I breathe into this whole body that birthed my babies, I smell with my inhale the skin of my son and feel deeply in my heart the perplexity my daughter carries with her in her own. Let us let the worry float away with each breath, knowing that another asana will come. Let us string these asana together and call it the practice of parenting: loving and wise, soft and strong, deep and sweet and humble and forever.

Baby Mudras

While the four of us meander through the haze of sleep deprivation, the obstacle course of identities shifting and egos large and small swelling and shrinking, and the ache and anxiety of early winter sniffles and coughs, we pause with each energetic connection between us. We notice acutely the warmth of love between us when the two children—so beautifully getting to know one another, and yet have known, already, for a long time, it seems—make one another laugh. The baby boy is purely entranced by his older sister, who seems as if she's lived in the world for far longer than her 3.5 years. And our daughter's sweetness pours out of a new place just for him...why, just today she snuck into his sleeping place while he was meant to be napping. And I watched her on the monitor smiling tenderly at him, reassuring him, drawing him into her world with kind words, modeled in part after her parents' words to them both, and drawn in other mysterious ways from a source much larger. In what can be a blur of a day of responsibilities we share —awaken, shower, switch babies, nurse, rock, make breakfast and lunch, take children to school, practice, go to work—these moments of connection create a peace and a silence, so important to the grand project of perspective.


And while we come together in these places of connection, each child navigates his or her own body in baby mudras that are palpably awesome and always instructive. My daughter has learned to snap, a skill that began with watching, then fumbling her tiny fingers around one another, then placing thumb to middle finger...and the tiniest audible snap. And now, after so much practice, a perfect snap, as loud as 3-year-old fingers will allow. Clear, spot on. What does this mudra mean? Thumb to middle finger: shuni mudra. An expression of living in the present moment; the "seal of patience." She uses it to clear her own mind sometimes...a reminder of how simply a mudra can locate us here. Now.

And the baby has found his toes. Ah...this does not get old. It is something to see it again in another child: the parent is wiser, the parent trusts herself more, and thus she trusts her child more. She's not looking, and there he has gone, tracing the hand down the midline—sushumna nadi—toward the toe. The hand finds the toe, and there is the mudra. What does it mean? Judging by his face: strength, grace, joy. It makes him smile. Or, perhaps, it makes me smile and then makes him smile. Either way, the joy of a hand to a toe? I think of Utthita Hasta Padangusthasana...such a challenge. The body shakes with the test of balance. Could I think about it more joyfully?

Yes.