Category: Yoga

Family, Marriage, Meditation, Yoga

Where you belong…

Posted on by kosanford

Ev and Me 1979There is almost nothing more pretentious than quoting the Bhagavad Gita, except for maybe referring to it as “the Gita,” which assumes a level of familiarity I can’t imagine having with an ancient text.  There is however a quote from the Bhagavad Gita that I keep scrawled on a piece of paper in my wallet and pinned by the side of my desk. It serves as a constant reminder not to stray from where you belong.

“It is better to strive in one’s own dharma than to succeed in the dharma of another.  Nothing is ever lost in following one’s own dharma.”

One of my favorite things about seeing someone you love and have loved for a long time is that when they stand in front of you there is a split second flip book that happens, where you see them as all the people they have ever been. This week, my very talented brother published a book called Age of Ambition.  It is about China and is being very well received. When I spotted him last night right before he went on stage to give a talk to a packed auditorium, I saw him as every version of himself. On his face, as he spoke and answered questions from the moderator and the audience, I saw his teenage self, and in his body language, shades of both our parents.  The thing that I saw most of all was a person who is on the right path.  My brother is smart, and charming and would have found success in lots of different fields.  But success and being on the right path are different.  You can be successful and unfulfilled; your success won’t last but the emptiness will.  There is no greater joy than knowing that someone you love is on the right path for themselves.  As proud as I am of his enormous intelligence and the discipline that allowed for this book to exist, I am even more proud that he has found his path and in his wife, the right partner to walk it with him.

People come to me all the time for yoga and meditation.  Sometimes they do want simply to inhabit their body better or to learn to be still.  But more often they are feeling unmoored; their life has moved away from its center.  They have had children, or a partner whose own trajectory doesn’t leave room for anything else. They are feeling ill at ease but they aren’t sure how to get back to themselves.  I can see it in their faces and bodies. I don’t really know how to guide someone back to their center.  I only know what works for me.  I can stay rooted in myself if I am honest about who I am and I do it with kindness.  As soon as I start comparing my mothering skills to someone else, or the state of my house and children, I am lost.  The first moment, I envy how a friend is aging, or feel like my classes should be larger, I am lost.

Every day I sit for meditation, for twenty minutes. I do not collude, placate, engage or respond.  For a brief period every day, I am not an active participant in anyone’s life but my own. This keeps me rooted exactly where I belong.  Right in the center of my own messy, imperfect but perfect for me path.

My greatest hope for my nearest and dearest is that they find their path, and that it includes room for those they love most. I have taken the jacket off my brother’s book and pinned it next to the wall beside my desk as well.  Every day I will look at it and be reminded that the joy is not just in living your own truth but also in knowing that those you love are doing the same.

Family, Marriage, Meditation, Yoga

Fragile and solid at the same time…

Posted on by kosanford

Mae and ColinThis morning I sat down to work my way through a giant pile of mail.  Tucked in with all the other mail was a giant medical bill I wasn’t expecting.  It has been many years of giant medical bills and they should no longer take my breath away, but for some reason this one made me feel like the wind had been knocked out of me.  It was Mother’s Day and Colin knows me well enough to know that thing that I would want most is time to myself.  He and the kids were out hunting and gathering a picnic for later in the day, and as I first sat and then stood in the office, then the kitchen, then outside, then inside all desperately trying to calm myself down, I just wanted him to appear.

In my head I was ticking off everything I have learned in my meditation and yoga studies.  I was going back over all the other massive medical bills we have paid, and reminding myself that it would be fine.  Still my head was spinning, I tried to sit for meditation, to lean into the feeling, to see if I could get at what was really at the bottom of it.  Fear? Why the intense reaction to a problem I don’t want to solve but know I will.

When Colin walked in I was so relieved, I showed him the bill and described my complete and total meltdown at its arrival.  He was calm, he agreed it sucked, he said we will deal with it tomorrow when it’s not Sunday.  He didn’t tell me to calm down, or ask my why I wasn’t expecting it.  I was able to exhale, we will deal with it tomorrow.

Being married is hard. Being married with young children is harder. Being married with a special needs child and all the stress that comes with it is harder still.  Sometimes, I can’t believe how hard it is, but when Colin walked in the door and just his presence made me feel better, I was also overwhelmed by how lucky I am. Sometimes it takes these crises that come up — in this case an unpleasant problem with a solution — to remind me to be appreciative of all that I have.

It can be easy to overlook each other in the same house, or respond to the difficulties of a grown-up life by being nasty to each other.  It is much harder to be honest, and sad, to be overwhelmed, and need help.  I hear all the time from people about how their marriage or partner is different than they had imagined.  When you are dating you never play the “How will you respond to medical bills?”  game.  Or, how about “What will we do if our child has a life long cognitive condition?” I didn’t seek out a partner thinking about the dark moments.  But I am grateful every day that I found someone who sees the darkness and even if there is no quick fix will always keep reminding me that there is light up ahead as well, and just to keep moving forward together.

Family, Marriage, Meditation, Yoga

I might be getting in my own way…

Posted on by kosanford

sit500As both the wife of an adopted person and an adoptive parent I think about identity a lot.  When we adopted Mae there were many families at the embassy that day taking an oath that their child would be protected and safe.  It is a hugely emotional moment, one that most families in the room had waited many years for.  As I looked around the room I saw young Chinese children in the arms of Amish families, Asians, Italians, single parent, families of all shapes and sizes.  Each one of these children would go to a home to its own culture and lessons.  Those lessons would in part shape how that child identified themselves.  I am Amish, or Christian, oldest or youngest, but ultimately it is all just who brought you home.

The same is true for those of us who weren’t adopted.  It is just less obvious.  Over time, we identify as a mother or daughter, lawyer, liberal; we assign labels and qualities to ourselves.  I am flexible, I am a runner, I am terrible at languages, or I am a musician.  Each one of these declaratives serves us somehow. By declaring ourselves  something we relieve ourselves of the burden of the unknown.

Quite frequently someone will say to me “I can’t meditate.”  They are completely convinced that they are incapable of being still, and of course I don’t think that’s true. But as long as they believe it, it is true.  Writing a twitter bio or the bio for this blog felt silly to me because it is a series of declarative statements about who I am and what I believe.  But given the constantly changing nature of who we are, the bio feels misleading as soon as it is out of my mouth.  It is true that I am a mother, and a daughter, and a friend, and a buddhist, but to the teller at the bank this morning not a single one of those details mattered.  I was just the first person in her line on a Thursday.  We smiled at each other, exchanged pleasantries and went about our business.

I once happened to be on the beach when a prominent surgeon drowned in Lake Michigan.  At the moment of his death it didn’t matter that he was a father, a husband, a gifted doctor.  He was dead, and in that moment that became the defining feature of the man.

Our identity is constantly shifting and changing.  My parents tease me that every year they would go to my parent conference at school and every year the teacher would address me by the differing version of my name, selected by me for the year: Katie, Kate or Katherine.  One year I even tried on “Kitty.”  I admire the bravery of children who try out different versions of themselves.  Every year they grow, change and look different so why not shift their identity as well?

I am working these days on loosening my grip on my definite ideas of what I am and what I am not.  I was chatting with a friend recently about how she felt that being a mother was preventing her from taking her career to the next level.  That may be true, or it may be fear of the unknown or fear of failure and motherhood is a convenient excuse that no one can argue with.  I am hoping that by letting go of my very fixed ideas about who and what I am and returning more to that childish notion that my identity can shift and change that I will remove obstacles that I have placed in my own way. I will try to imagine that I am not limited by anything, and see how that feels for a while.  I will let you know.

Family, Marriage, Meditation, Yoga

Push, Balance, Steer

Posted on by kosanford
Push, Balance, Steer
Push, Balance, Steer

When my children were learning to ride bikes this is the mantra we would repeat for them.  In the videos of their first successful two wheeler rides you can hear them whispering to themselves, “push, balance, steer, push, balance, steer.” It became the magic words that propelled them onto two wheels.

I hear it in my own head when I feel like I am on shaky ground.  It has become my own mantra, my own magic formula for reminding myself what I really need.

Push: We need to apply effort in our lives.  Some days the effort can be just getting out of bed.  It requires effort to sit down and meditate every day, or go to a yoga class or exercise.  Even being polite especially to those we love most can be an effort.  Sometimes, it is the effort of not listening to our own defeating chatter, or doing something that scares us.  If you push too fast or far, you will fall, but if you don’t push at all you won’t ever move forward.

Balance: We all use the word, I am not sure we know what it means.  To me balance means mostly follow the rules, but maybe break them a little every day.  Balance means sleeping when I am tired, and eating when I am hungry, snuggling when an opportunity presents itself, and taking every chance I get to make sure I am plugging in to my life.  Balance means showing up to the people who care about me, including myself. The road underneath me is always changing, balance means not thinking it will all be smooth and flat.

Steer:  Being in the moment does not mean that there is no plan for tomorrow.  We need to steer ourselves along a path.  We don’t meditate to become awesome meditators.  We meditate to become better human beings.  We shouldn’t do yoga so that we can be at the front of the class in tight pants balancing on our noses.  We should do it so that we are connected to our breath and body.  We shouldn’t just fill our lives and hearts with people to avoid loneliness.  We should fill our lives with relationships that uplift and encourage us.  When we are steering ourselves in the right direction anything is possible.  When we aren’t we end up on our asses by the side of the road.

Push, balance, steer, push, balance, steer, push, balance, steer….When you feel yourself wobbling, say it a few times, and you will be back on the road in no time…

Meditation, Yoga

I can’t find my zen in this mess…

Posted on by kosanford
I can't find my zen
I can’t find my zen

This morning I lost something.  It has been pinned to the wall in my office for at least two years.  I have never needed it until this morning, when I actually did.  I could picture it, a CD in a pale blue envelope with some writing on it.  It is the record of my daughter Mae’s 24 hour EEG, and I needed to Fedex it, to a doctor in New York.  I waited until 7 in the morning to look for it, because really the optimum time to look for something important is while you are also trying to get your kids out the door for school.

The corkboard in my office where I swear that thing has been pinned, is also home to the kids’ school calendars, my bib numbers from races, important notes and cards from friends, a giant skeleton poster of the muscles and bones, and one of the central nervous system, 6 bumper stickers, a flyer for the first yoga workshop I ever taught, two pictures of me with my parents when I was little, a man made out of a popsicle stick, a tiger made out of a paper plate, and this very important piece of Mae’s medical history that I absolutely needed this morning.

The entire corkboard situation is actually hard to get to because my office chair is in front of it. You can’t actually see the chair because it is camouflaged by remaining christmas cards, snowsuits that everyone has outgrown, a gallon size ziploc bag of lego directions, a copy of the yoga sutras and two old copies of the New  Yorker.  When I moved the chair, all of that stuff slid off it and onto the vacuum cleaner which was perched just behind it.  This caused the vacuum to tip forward, sealing my body between it and the desk.  At this point, my blood pressure was through the roof.

Losing something, especially something which you could swear you see every day is annoying.  Being trapped in your own messy, disorganized office, wasting valuable minutes when you need to be getting your family and yourself out the door, is a recipe for disaster.  I desperately wanted to yell at someone, or something.  Luckily, my family had scattered, either some animal sense for self-preservation had kicked in, or they actually saw me entering the war zone with a take no prisoners look on my face.

There is nothing zen about my office, in fact certain sections of it would land me on the show Hoarders.  Most of the time, the mess doesn’t bother me, until I need something and then it makes me crazy.

This is the same relationship many of us have with our own minds. We are fine being busy, and multi tasking.  We are fine just stacking thoughts and feelings in random piles to be addressed later. That is, until for some reason it all starts to move so fast that we feel like we can’t slow down, we can’t find anything. The corkboard in my office with it’s layers of unrelated papers and other snippets of my life is probably a fairly accurate representation of my thought process.

Just as cleaning and organizing a wildly messy living space gives us a sense of possibility and maybe even ease, so does taking some time to sit and bring a little space into our minds.

Take some time today to sit down and look at the space where you spend the most time: your head.  Just take 10 minutes, find a quiet place to sit. Organize your body in a comfortable, alert but relaxed position, listen for the sound of your breath.  When your attention wanders from  your breath, just bring it back.  It will wander a lot.  That is OK.  You don’t want to clear your mind of thought the same way you don’t clean your office by emptying all the shelves.  You just want enough space in your mind that you can actually see your thoughts clearly, and weed out the ones not related to where your body is and what it’s doing.

If you go months and months without cleaning your office, things will start to build up. Important papers will get mixed up, and you won’t be able to find things when you need them.  The same is true in your mind, it is easier to do a little bit every day than to wait until the day when you really feel yourself stressed and disconnected trying to center yourself on ever shifting ground.

Family, Marriage, Yoga

Youth, wisdom and the state of my boobs

Posted on by kosanford
....early morning
….early morning

When I wake up in the morning after a healthy dinner and seven hours of sleep, I look the same way I did after a two day bender in my twenties. I know that the lines around my mouth are from smiling and the ones around my eyes are from squinting on many a beach day. The state of my boobs is upsetting, but a result of nursing my kids. The roundness of my stomach, a tribute to many a good dinner.  They are all signs of an instrument in use.

The shiny hair and sparkly eyes of youth are like a road with no line down the middle, or potholes. Really great for learning to ride a two wheeler, but hard to maintain. The drugstore is filled with products that are designed to hold off aging. Or, some semblance of it. If you really spend your days in search of youth, and all the beginnings that come with it, would you even recognize your actual youthful self? Would you recognize that real youth is about possibility and not perky boobs? Real youth is about not having met your children yet, or certain kinds of heartbreak. It’s about a future that holds more beginnings than endings.

Youth for me was also about insecurity and the anxiety of whether or not I was fit for adulthood. Each wrinkle and stretch mark has liberated me from that. I never stop trying to be a better version of myself, a better wife, mother, daughter and friend.

“Better” no longer means cute though, it means really listening when people talk. It means letting the enormity of life’s successes and failures sink in. It means celebrating with gusto and enthusiasm when there is cause and rolling up my sleeves and getting to work when I have to. It means not apologizing just so someone will absolve me of responsibility, but always apologizing when I think I am wrong. It means stepping back and looking at how far I have come, and then appreciating my chaotic and beautiful present.

Youth is about possibility, but maturity is about confidence and wisdom. Neither is really marked by age. We all feel youthful after we surprise ourselves; there is no more beautiful expression on the face of a yoga student than when she has come down from her first handstand in twenty years. I hear the wisdom in the voice of my ten year old when he talks about living with a special needs sibling. Neither youth or maturity are available commercially, they are the product of our experiences and our willingness to see them. Or even better, celebrate them.

Family, Meditation, Yoga

I am my goal weight and still get parking tickets

Posted on by kosanford

ImageI am my goal weight and still get parking tickets
*Being your goal anything does not prevent you from getting parking tickets or anything else

You will never have more time after you “just get through this week”
*I have gone months when I say this every week

You aren’t going to yoga class because you don’t have time
*You have time, you are using it for other things

Those expensive pants you bought on sale, will still be too small next year
*No matter how discounted something is, if it doesn’t fit, it doesn’t fit.  If you don’t wear them they cost too much no matter what

Gluten-free, organic, soy-free or dairy-free are not synonyms for good for you
*A bag of potato chips can be all these things, but if you eat the whole bag, you will probably regret it

There is no reason you cannot meditate
*It is OK not to want to, but don’t pretend you can’t

That person’s life is easier than mine because.
*This is never true, every single one of us experiences challenges, you just don’t know about theirs

Every day, I hear myself and the people around me hinging happiness on the future or creating a reason to not engage the present. If you want to develop a meditation practice, then sit down. If you want to have yoga in your life, then go to class.  If you want to be happy, you have to understand what that means when you say it.

Fundamentally happiness is being loving and realistic about what you need and how you spend your time.  You have to look at your habits and patterns with generosity, kindness and most importantly honesty.

There is no future happiness, it is a choice for right now, and you are the only one who can make that choice.

 

 

Family, Meditation, Uncategorized, Yoga

Practice what you preach

Posted on by kosanford

As a yoga teacher I reference the mind/body connection a lot. Encouraging people to notice their breath and to make the connection between what’s happening in their mind and how their body may be responding is central to my teaching. It is impossible for us to be in a state of stress and anxiety and not manifest that in our bodies. The same is true with happiness, when we are at ease, our breath is deeper, our jaws relaxed, and our general overall posture improved. I talk about it all the time, but I didn’t really understand it until this fall.

In September, I went on a week long meditation retreat to Karme Choling in Barnet Vt. My in laws came in to replace me and help Colin with the driving. I left notes all over the house with instructions. The kitchen actually looked like a scene from the movie A Beautiful Mind.  I set up outgoing messages on my email alerting people that I was removing myself from my life for a week.

The retreat itself was wonderful —  not just the meditation sessions and the teachings —  but Vermont in September is beautiful. For six whole days I did not cook, clean, put on anyone else’s shoes or wipe their buns. There were breaks in the middle of each day and I would go for long runs.  In the morning I had at least an hour before breakfast to do yoga in my room with no dog to come in and lick my face or child to ask me to stop because one of their siblings was somehow ruining their life.

The last day I missed my family, and was ready to come home and see them. What amazed me was how easily I had spent the rest of the retreat as a solo act. How quickly I shed my skin of mother, wife, daughter teacher and friend.  All of my  responsibilities fell away and for almost a week I was really connected to the rhythm of myself. I felt great.

For the first few days at home, I continued to feel unusually present and aware. I smiled at strangers and they smiled back, I was not agitated at all and felt very much in sync with my life, not just inside my body and house but out in the world as well.

Then on Sunday afternoon, having been home for three days, I headed with Mae to the grocery store. We were doing a week’s worth of hunting and gathering but for some reason were not at our regular grocery store. I can’t remember why, but we went to one I rarely go to, and don’t have as clear a map of in my head. Either way, she was very well behaved the entire time, despite the fact it was taking longer than usual, as I wandered us up and down aisles in search of our weekly staples. By the time we got to the check out line she had had it. She started fussing a little, and a nice woman whose youngest had just left for college tried to distract her. I am not sure how her empty nest qualified her to engage my special needs six-year-old but she meant well. Mae was done however, and proceeded to launch into a tantrum that wasn’t epic by any means but was dramatic for sure. It is the banging on the side of her head that is horrifying and the inconsolable quality of her screams. I held her in one arm as she kicked and screamed, a perfect illustration of what we imagine an angry kid looks like. I used the other arm to unload the cart.  I know people offered to help, but that isn’t so helpful. The checkout girl for my lane and the the one for the lane behind me both ceased to work. Their jaws actually hung open. Finally, I said to the checker in my aisle, “you know what would be very helpful, if you could continue to check out my groceries so I could get out of here, she will be fine in the car.” I remember thinking that my voice was very calm and in fact feeling very calm. Making a scene is not my favorite thing in the world but we have made way worse…on airplanes..

When we got back in the car I was relieved, and so was she.  Immediately she was quiet and we headed home.  I was about a mile from home, which meant we had been in the car for about ten minutes when I realized my jaw was clenched, my hands were gripping the wheel and my shoulders ached.  Anger was bubbling at the base of my throat and behind my eyes.  I was replaying the incident at the grocery store in technicolor in my head.  Each time I re-lived it my body responded.  I had left the store calm, and by the time I got home I was a mess.  If I had not just come home from a retreat the effects would not have been so noticeable.  Even now, months later I can connect with that extreme shift in my own state of mind.  This drove the point home for me in a very tangible way. My body is very much at the mercy of my mind.  When I revisit unpleasant experiences repeatedly my body responds each time with physical and emotional sensation.

My meditation practice had allowed me to see this connection really clearly.  I have learned to watch my thoughts, to pay attention to the feelings that arise with them.  I am working every day to let go of the ones that do not serve me.  I cannot control how the world responds to me, or my children.  What I can control is how many times I replay the hurts and slights, how many times I let them restrict my breath and sting my eyes.  So for now, I will unclench my jaw and my knuckles, I will relax my shoulders, and take deep breaths, and maybe I will learn something.

 

 

Family, Meditation, Yoga

What is balance?

Posted on by kosanford

Balance is a word that is often used as the vague but necessary ingredient for happiness. The problem is, what feels like balance for me may not feel like balance for anyone else. Balance is all relative to where you start, in college I spent several years living on diet coke and twizzlers, my current lifestyle would not have felt like a move toward balance, it would have felt incredibly extreme. The same with an exercise program, for me, a balanced running program is about 30 miles a week, as well as several hours of yoga, but I didn’t start out there, it happened very slowly over time, and I let go of other things to allow for the time and energy to support my exercise.

The first step towards achieving balance in any area of your life, is to understand where you are starting from. If you are an insane workaholic, then deciding that balance means no working after 4 pm, may be setting yourself up to fail. Recognize that you are a workaholic, and figure out why. Is it truly your job is that busy, or do you use work as a way of avoiding dealing with other things? If your job requires 100 hours a week to perform, and that is wearing on you, then start looking at different jobs, or hire someone to help you. If you are using your job as a safe haven from your life, than really look at that.

If you want to add yoga or meditation, or healthier eating habits, start small, commit to breakfast being a healthy balanced meal, or decide to sit for meditation 3 times this week for 15 minutes. Ask a friend to meet you for yoga, or book a private session with a teacher.

If you try and make these small changes and it doesn’t happen this week, don’t torture yourself about it. That’s not balance, balance is being honest about what motivates you and trying to replace behaviors that don’t serve you, with those that do. It won’t happen overnight, and no one can do it for you. I know that my life is in balance when I am not pretending to enjoy things because they are good for me, but actively seeking them out because they make me feel good. Balance is a life that feels authentic to you, that at the end of the day you can feel like you did our best…..

Meditation, Yoga

One of the other side effects of yoga…

Posted on by kosanford

In addition to eating a diet that is better for me and better for the planet, another unexpected side effect that has grown out of my yoga practice is a daily meditation practice.

I have been practicing meditation regularly for about five years. Meditation has brought a sense of grace and purpose into my every day. On days when I miss my meditation practice, I spend all day with that vague “I lost my wallet feeling”. Over time, and it has taken a lot of hours on my cushion, I have found that I have become softer, more loving, less cynical, and most importantly, aware of when I am not paying attention.

As a busy working mother, wife, daughter and friend, I need and want to show up for a lot of people. No matter what you may think, people know when you’re not present. Even if your body is there, if your mind is elsewhere, they know, and it doesn’t make them feel good. It’s that simple.

If you want to feel good, and you want the people around you to feel like they matter, then pay attention. Listen to them without planning what you are going to say next.

Pay attention to your own mind. Sometimes within an hour I can ping pong ball between joy, anxiety, gloom, song lyrics, wondering what happened to my 8th grade lab partner, and whether or not that Free People dress I am dying for is on sale. While all that stuff is going on, I could be driving, or teaching, or having lunch with a friend. It’s exhausting… What I have found is that no matter what, my mind will wander, but meditation has trained me to bring it back. To settle in to the task at hand, to listen, to appreciate, to lean in to whatever is going on around me.

When I do that, I feel at ease, and even though by making an effort to stay with the ever-changing present, I am giving up “control” I feel more stable. I love better, my connection to the people I encounter is not a pantomime for their benefit, it is really a chance to show up in an authentic way to another human being, no matter if they are your child or pumping your gas.