Turning Down the Heat

My friend Claudia wanted me to write a post about this recent experience I had. Being lucky enough to live in a well-maintained New York City apartment building, my apartment gets a lot of heat in the winter. In particular, my bedroom gets very hot. I try to sleep with the window partially open, but because the winds can be very high and noisy (or because sometimes they cause the door to bump around in its frame, also noisy), I often have to sleep with the window closed, making it even hotter. Ever since I moved here, I've had a small fan attached to my mirror, pointed at the bed,to offset the heat, and I use it every night, even in winter. Sometimes it helps, sometimes it's still too damn hot.

The other night, as the temperature rose outside, it was SO hot I couldn't stand it anymore and I did something I never did before.

I TURNED OFF THE HEAT.

Did I mention I have lived here for FIVE years?

I am indeed the kind of person who can tolerate a lot of things for a very long time without change -- but why the unwillingness to make a simple shift that ultimately makes life a lot more pleasant and bearable?

I wish I could find a great spiritual lesson in this one, but I'm afraid it might just be an example of one of my less attractive eccentricities.

If you do want to take any lesson from what I've said here then I would urge you...if you get too hot...turn off the heat.

Enough said.

A Note on Guidance and Faith

Today I saw a blind woman carrying a newborn baby navigating her way around the chaos of the Times Square subway station with the help of her seeing eye dog. If that's not an exercise in listening for guidance and having the faith to follow it, nothing is.

I watched them briefly (she moved fairly swiftly and for me to stand around would have found me swept up in the chaos myself) as the dog narrowly missed the crowds and the columns and she simply held the leash and the sleeping baby in her shoulder pouch and followed. I realized she must have had to practice a lot with that guide, and it was a process of communication -- she had to learn her guide's cues and vice versa and they probably had to do a lot of conscious traveling together in order for her to feel confident enough to trust him with not just her safety but that of her newborn. I love a good metaphor, but really, we're doing the same with Yoga, aren't we? Learning to listen, testing it out in small ways and developing the faith to really let the guidance take us? That's my interpretation anyway, and if I can borrow from her courage (or any of the brave folks I've met lately) then I'll be lucky. Om shanti.

Blessings in Disguise

If you were diagnosed with a brain tumor, do you think you would say it was the best thing that ever happened to you?

Billy did. Billy took my class at Hope Lodge yesterday, a class I volunteer for cancer patients and caregivers. Afterwards, we spent some time talking and he told me about all the amazing things that have happened in his life since his diagnosis. Meaningful people have come back into his life, including one of his children, who had not been speaking to him for some time. Events have lined up and doors have been opening, and his perspective on what is important now and what he wants in his life once he finishes his treatment (which, thankfully, is going well) has understandably changed. His sense of appreciation is humbling and his attitude is nothing short of remarkable.

We didn't talk about what is enabling this attitude or this course of events. It could be, at least in part, a true sense of surrender to the flow of the universe, combined with a willingness to see the best of everything. Oh yeah, wait a minute -- that's YOGA, right? Hmm. Let me wake up a for a minute and once again acknowledge that teachers and the teachings are everywhere if you just open your eyes, ears and heart. Blessings in disguise. Om shanti.

When You Give, You Get

I think my favorite thing about teaching Yoga is the amazing people I've gotten to mee, and yesterday is the best example of all. I was teaching my volunteer class at Hope Lodge, a residence for people from out of state who need a place to stay during cancer treatment. Few people come to this class but yesterday I had the privilege of meeting Barbara, a 72-year-old immigrant from Poland who has been battling cancer for 19 years, through five different places in her body -- colon, uterine, both breasts and now lung -- and who is a Holocaust survivor. Since she had surgery a few days ago on both lungs and can't move or breath very well, our Yoga was extremely gentle and she spent most of the time sharing her incredible experiences with me. How a person has the strength to withstand a lifetime of such intense challenge must truly be from a deep, hard-wired instinct. Later on in the session we were joined by her husband of 54 years, Abe, also a Holocaust survivor, who had survival stories of his own to share. Barbara and Abe live in Florida and they go around to high schools there talking about their experiences. They were gentle, sweet and humorous, and it was deeply moving and humbling to have them share themselves with me. It reminded me once again that so often when I give through teaching, I receive so much more. Om shanti.

Listening for Guidance

One of my favorite teachers, Erich Schiffman, describes Yoga as being about listening for guidance from the universe, and daring to do what you are prompted to do. I agree completely with this, and it corresponds to the thread about "allowing." The difficulty I always have is with understanding what the guidance is and following it -- in as much as I am a body person, I am also very much a head person; that head will take over so quickly it will...well, make your head spin! The thing is, intuition is often subtle and I'll start to analyze it and doubt it and efectively kill it pretty quickly. However, I think the antidote to this is to simply stay clear -- i.e., keep practicing and keep asking and, as Erich says, really WANT to know -- and the guidance will keep coming. And then following becomes a matter of courage and faith. So, meditation -- getting still and quiet and going within -- is indispensable. I've got some big questions out there, and I'm trying to be patient as I wait for the response.