Making a commitment . . .

If you follow my blog, you may have noticed that my 40 day sadhana posts r/t the Advanced Abdominal Strengthening kriya kind of petered out around day 14 or so.  Well, I kept it up 25 days, and then had a little yogini tantrum, where i suddenly became convinced it was wrong wrong WRONG.  After a lot of self-reflection I know that really I was rebelling against having a 40 day sadhana, and I also am at a place where I can admit my choice of kriya was motivated in part by vanity.

My mentor Anterbodh Kaur (Kathryn) has told me numerous times that all the kriyas take you to the same place eventually, and a big part of her struggle is committing to one kriya, meditation, etc, for 40 (or more) days.  She is leaving on a 2-week vacation for her home country, and gave me a copy of The Master’s Touch by Yogi Bhajan.  My assignment being to play around with the different meditations, and then pick one for a 40 day practice.

I’ve already mapped out some parts of my 40 day sadhana.  It will start with a cold shower, then the reading of the Japji; I’ve decided on the Bodily Adjustment for Spiritual Elevation kriya; I will also recite the 18th Pauri of Japji 11x a day, to help overcome some of my self-destructive behaviors and make peace with my shadow self.  As for the meditation, I’m still not sure.  Today I did a celestial communication practice with the Adi Shakti (Kundalini Bhakti Mantra) which was amazing, and I plan to include in my 40 day sadhana.  But I would also like to choose a meditation from The Master’s Touch.  So far I’ve tried Meditation for Opening the Lock of Your Heart Center, Giaan Sudhaa Simran kriya/Guidance of the Soul (because I do love that Tantric Har), and Meditation to Open the Energy Channels and take You to Heights.  I have been eying the Meditation to Get Rid of Fear and Split Personalities, and plan on trying it in my morning sadhana tomorrow.

I think I may begin incorporating an evening sadhana into my practice as well.  I’d really like to revisit the Meditation to Balance the Moon Centers, and I think evening may be the perfect time for it.

I’m planning on beginning my 40 day sadhana on Lammas – which is a celebration not only of the first harvest, but of mothers, too.  So I still have a few days to map it all out.  Things are falling into place.

Notes on 40 Day Sadhana (Day 9)

As of today I am 9 days into a 40 day sadhana.  This is the first time I have made a 40 day commitment to practice a specific kriya.  Even though I practice Kundalini everyday and Hatha most days, the idea of doing the exact same kriya everyday for 40 whole days seemed a little dull.

I selected the “Abdominal Strengthening” kriya from Kundalini Yoga: Sadhana Guidelines 2nd Edition (also appears in Divine Alignment as “Kriya to Build Navel Intelligence”).  I warm up with the Spinal Energy series kriya, and follow savasana with the women’s meditation to balance the moon centers (a variation on the Kirtan Kriya meditation).

I struggled with starting and sustaining a daily meditation practice for years until I began practicing Kundalini.  The Kundalini meditations work for me in a way that sitting did not.

One thing I have noticed is that I have had to decrease the amount of time for each exercise in the Abdominal Strengthing kriya from 2 minutes to 1.  This came as a bit of a surprise to me, since I had been practicing it every other day (alternating with different kriyas) for a while now, with the full time of 2 minutes per exercise.  I almost felt like once I made the commitment to practice it everyday for 40 days, it became harder.  But, I figured, well, it’s a 40 day commitment.  I can dial it down a notch and then slowly build it back up.

It took me a while to get to the point where I was willing to make that 40 day commitment.  After talking with my mentor, I knew I had to.  I felt it was time to take it to that next level, instead of getting lost searching for that “perfect” kriya.  As she so beautifully put it, every single kriya will bring you to completeness, you just have to give it the chance.

12-23-2014: TEETH (take two)

BLOG POST 12-23-2014 I have written 2 posts about some of the dental issues I’ve been having lately. Long posts. Each time, I get to the end of the post, and am all of a sudden like “What am I even writing?! I’m writing about my teeth?! This is the most boring blog post ever!” And then shake my head and never open the file again, or look at the pages from my writing notebook again.

INTERESTING SIDE NOTE: I used to get SUPER ANNOYED when I was younger and people would refer to my journal as a diary. That really got my goat. Later in high school, I heard the term writing notebook, and have used it ever since. I feel like I don’t really have a journal right now, I have a writing notebook. And maybe that says something about how my relationship with writing has become. Something that is not necessarily a good thing. That now I write more for a finished product than just for the love of it. I think my blog posts are a little more informal for the most part, but I do include what I would consider finished –

But oh god, stop, let’s get back to the teeth thing, because I could babble on just about writing and stuff like that for pages.

So the teeth. My dental issues have been primarily with my canine teeth. There is a big long back story about my baby canine teeth never falling out, and the orthodontist encouraged my mother to have the baby teeth pulled when I was 16, then do this big long dental surgery where they inserted pegs into the impacted (adult) canines and then attached wires to the pegs and had them slowly over a period of many months pulled down and into place.   It kind of sucked.   Anyways, so, in my 20’s, both the canines abscessed. It was during 2005 (I think). A period of my life where I was on methadone, using IV cocaine, and working in the adult industry. That also sucked, but not just kind of. (The abscessed teeth AND the state of my life). I never went to the dentist. The teeth would bother me periodically. I did have one root canaled right after my daughter was born, and then never got the other one done, or the first one finished – they had been unable to get all of the infection out.

So, periodically, the teeth would bother me, and then clear up. Anyways, once I began practicing yoga and really improving my health – not just physical, but my health as a whole person, spiritually, physically, emotionally – my health as a complete being, the teeth stopped bothering me. I went through yoga teacher training while I was pregnant with my son, I teach freewill donation yoga classes locally, and I have a daily home practice.

Well, recently, I made some decisions to work on my meditation practice (which I am not as good about sticking to as my asana practice, but hey, it’s a practice). I’ve had some really amazing results and found a new joy and gratitude for my life and my family and my world, but, my teeth started acting up again.   Really bad this time. In fact, I get both of them (plus 1 “innocent bystander” tooth that got infected by one of the canines) pulled on the 29th. So excited. It will be great. Because they have been pretty darn bad for a while. I don’t eat much solid food – mostly apple juice, beet, ginger, and turmeric smoothies and dhal. I know the beet smoothies sound kind of weird, but it was this combination my body just demanded and I feel really great. I drink them every morning.

I read in one of the WAPF books 9and somewhere else, too), that the teeth reflect the life of the soul. This was a childcare book, so they were talking about the baby teeth and the adult teeth coming in, and the “hardening of the soul”, moving into a new plane of being in the world, etc.

So I think it’s really beautiful and fitting that my teeth would finally need to be removed from my body.

I made the decision a while ago to finally let go of a lot of the burdens I still carried from that time in my life, when I used drugs and worked in the adult industry. When I really dedicated myself to my yoga practice, I made the decision to let that go and be healed of it. When I started to focus on my meditation practice, I came to the point where I could actually begin to act on that intention. The teeth were damaged during that period of my life. I feel like I have been releasing a lot of negative thought patterns and ways of being lately. Now the teeth go, too.

And actually, having the teeth issues has been a huge blessing. The reduction in my food intake has taught me to really listen to my body and gives it exactly what it wants. Right now, it wants those crazy beet smoothies. And kundalini yoga. During our Swastha Yoga open house, I took a class from a local kundalini teacher, and got hooked. I’d done 1 dvd before and was a little iffy on it, but after this class, wow. I happened to buy 2 Ravi Singh and Ana Brett dvds before I found out I was pregnant, but never even opened them. So, I’ve been doing the “energy and super radiance” one for the last 3 days and am so into it. I feel amazing.   Despite my tooth pain, I feel so much cleaner. And I am so excited to get them out. It’s great something positive has come out of this, but ouch. Ouch. Ouch. Ready for the ouch to be done.

Untitled 11-17-2014

I got up at 545 this morning. I was so close to getting back into bed in defiance. I realized it would be such a stupid thing to be defiant about. Who I am defying? The part of me that wants something better and higher than what I have now? “THERE SHALL BE NO HAPPINESS OR PEACE INSIDE OF ME”? Tssk. Silly. So I got up and creaked through my somatic cat stretch and 4 rounds of slow methodical sun salutations, shivering in the draft that blew in under our front door. I ran through my prayer beads twice (54 beads a round). Nothing fancy this morning, just “God please help me” 100 times for the practice and 8 times for the sages (as the saying goes). November 17th and already we have frost inside our doors. We have plans to plastic windows with a vengeance this winter, and build temporary wind blocks outside to beat back the winds that hit the northwest side of our home.

I should mention that I lapsed on my daily meditation the last week and it was awful. AWFUL. The overwhelming inner turmoil was what finally convinced me to begin getting up so early. I was taken aback at the rage I felt inside my very bones from just a few days of not meditating. The hurt, the sadness, the confusion nearly brought me to my knees. I’ve heard that before, that if you start meditating and then stop, you will feel even worse than you did before you meditated. I think it’s a little like how each time you relapse on your drug of choice it gets harder to quit.

No students at my 10am class, so I use the time to write and make nit-picky little changes to the Snotter Press etsy shop and type this entry. Tomorrow Claire and I both have dentist appointments. I’ve had some really unpleasant dental issues the past few months, and it’s finally gotten to the point where I can’t just ignore it. I’m not used to having issues with my teeth. I want to have 3 pulled. Unfortunately 2 of them are the incisors the dentist started root canals on, only to discover the roots were too twisty to finish at their location, and I would have to go to a specialist in Fargo that my insurance will not pay for. I do not like going to the dentist. I hate having my mouth wide open for long periods of time. When I had one of my molars fixed in 2012 I cried the last 20 or 30 minutes of the procedure. When the tooth re-broke later that day and I had to go back in, I asked to have it pulled, but the dentist refused. I’m not sure if it was because I am on MA or because I am a woman, but nothing doing. I see no reason I cannot get a tooth pulled instead of repaired multiple times. When my left incisor broke last week I kept tonguing the jagged edge of it until my tongue felt raw as meat. I keep catching myself pulling my very grown-up indoor scarf over my mouth like a gag or holding it between my front teeth.

I weened myself off of my Klonipin and Prozac in mid-August, switched to Ayurvedic herbal supplements. It has been tough at times, but worth it. I keep my last bottle of Klonipin hidden in my bedroom “just in case.” I have not taken any, and do not plan to, but just having the bottle, the pills, makes me feel a little better. I remember when I started therapy in 2013 with D (the most wonderful of therapists) she told me that one day I may want to learn to just sit with my anxiety, but it didn’t have to be today. And I said, oh, of course. But really I had no plans to ever stop taking Klonipin. But now, here I am, sitting with my anxiety. And it is ok. It hurts, and it is not fun, but I can watch it batter my heart the way waves batter the shore, and if I just keep breathing eventually the fear subsides.

Back.

I have been offline for such a long time, I could not remember several key passwords when I tried to log back in to several accounts today.  To be honest, I am bummed I even had to remember them, but computers, I suppose.  Good for many things.

I am wrapping up two essays for my Yoga North teacher training, which has involved reading or re-reading several books.  I am glad to be a procrastinator on this day, because so many things I’ve read this past often agonizing month+ were exactly what I needed to hear and right when I needed to hear it.

I detoxed off of my Klonipin and Prozac mid-August, and the amount of evil chatter my mind has subjected me to defies reason.  Damn you, ego.  I repeat “So Hum” or “Sat Nam” or “Om” in my own head to try to escape the nastiness of what my mind throws at me all hours of the day.

My dreams are technicoloured nightmares.

On the mat I cry in pigeon pose on my left side as my hip loses its vice grip on the tension it likes to save up.  I move through all the variations I know of locust.  My son is almost 7 months old, and the other day I did my full wheel back bend for the first time since I found out I was pregnant.

I want my back to be strong.  I want my core to be solid.  I want to live from my center.

I flip open to a random page of notes from a lecture on meditation that Deborah Adele gave early on in our teacher training and at the top it reads:

“The four D’s

1. Distraction

2. Delight

3. Demons/Dragons

4. The Divine – our true Self.”

I won’t flatter myself to think I’m so advanced that I’ve completed the first two D’s.  Rather, I keep cycling between the first three in my own time, and right now I happen to be at number three.  So many demons.  I’ve read that when you reach a certain point in your spiritual journey you go through an adolescence, a “long dark winter of the soul.”  Mine happened in the bright and heat of MN summer.

But it’s ok.  These things happen.

They happen just as they should.

UNTITLED : THE COLOUR OF FAMILY

Our curtains are gauze, drawn shut, infusing the living room with a soft sort of light that plays against the blue of the birth tub, the dark honey of the wood-paneled walls.  Not quite warm, not quite cool, we shape the light to what we need it to be.

Lavender for relaxation and pain relief, clary sage to strengthen contractions, jasmine to instill confidence.  Kirtan plays in the background – Sanskrit mantras, songs of devotion, love, celebration.  We sing to Ganesh, remover of obstacles; Hanuman, the monkey god; Krishna and Shiva and Rama.

Five and a half years ago, in St. Paul, I gave birth to my daughter.  She was born almost 2 weeks late, my body unwilling to give birth, my child unwilling to be born.  The induction began on a Wednesday, she was born on a Friday.  I was trapped by monitors, IVs, paralyzed from the waist down by an epidural.  But oh, oh, when I held my daughter in my arms, those dark helpless hours melted away.

This time I choose a home birth.  The labor begins slowly, the night before – at 8pm, I feel a contraction, and this one, I tell JB, is different.  An hour later, it comes again.  Then again.

I sleep until 230am, then rise and take a hot shower.  The contractions are coming closer together now.  I doze fitfully til 4am on the couch, and watch the day slowly break outside, light filtering in through the gauze covered windows of my cocoon.

Here I am safe.  Here I can breathe.

At 8am I get into the tub.  Birth is something your conscious mind makes you forget.  Not completely – but it softens the edges, distorts sound, and rearranges time.  If left alone, if allowed to do what it knows in its very bones and blood how to do, your body will give birth.

My memory of my son’s birth is already rendered in watercolour – glowing with delicacy of line and the warm wetness of love; depth of animal knowledge and feeling.

I remember screaming because I had to, letting my own voice circle and follow the sensation that unfolded those closed places inside of me.  I am not contracting, I whisper to myself, I am expanding.  I am opening.

My partner in the tub with me, sweat on my face, I braced against him as I pushed, and always he was there to hold me.  Each push it grows, I feel it: descent.  Ring of fire.  And then – relief.  Utter, glorious relief.

My son was born at 1132am, last sounds of the Gayatri mantra fading into stillness.  He was born in the caul – the water sac never ruptured, so he was born into the water with the membrane over his face like a veil.  The midwife peeled it off, put him to my chest, and the caul floated like a jellyfish beside us in the water – mother, father, son, and daughter leaning over the water to touch her brother’s hand.

And this is our family.  And this is our home.  So sacred, so secret, so open in love.

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Notes on 30 Days of Compassionate Self-Discipline Guided Retreat

I don’t think I mentioned this before, but the night I caught my egocentric karmic condition working me over, I went into the bathroom, and began trying to comb out my dredlocks.  I rubbed olive, coconut, and sesame oils into them.  Wen Intensive Therapy hair mask.  Then I lost the ambition, grabbed a pair of embroidery scissors, and chopped them all off.

I actually really liked my dreds.  I’d only had them for about 6 or 7 months, and they were deep violet black.  But I just didn’t want to take the time to take care of them, and I had that feeling, like it was time to cut my hair again.  

The last time I cut it short was in the winter of 2010, I think.  

I have made it to day 5, day 6, day 7.  Then suddenly I stop, start over again.  I don’t mind failing.  Each time I fail, i feel like some secret piece of a hidden tapestry is being revealed to me.  The image will emerge exactly as it is meant to.