Artwork by Anne - August 2005
Swami Kripalu said, " The highest form of spiritual practice is self-observation without judgement. "These days, those words of Guruji are my mantra.
It is my third week of not teaching yoga and my focus has shifted from my own yoga practice and being a studio owner to the many seemingly small but very necessary details and responsibilities of preparing my children for going back to school. This Thursday was the big day for my 8 and 6 year old with the event of the first day of school. In my opinion, Manchester Public Schools opened on an almost cruel early date. Both of my children are entering into milestone years. My son entered first grade ( his first full day of school) and my daughter entered 4th grade, but more significantly, she entered a new school.
This was the week of school clothes shopping. This was the week of running around and buying all the school supplies that various letters from teachers, which arrived in our mailbox in early August, have required of us parents to get by the first day of school. One letter stated the following items should be had by the first day: 5 different colored pocketed folders (red, blue, green, orange, and purple), 2 glue sticks, a box of #2 pencil, a box of blue or black pens, left-handed scissors, 1 laminated folder ( different in color from the above 5 folders), a ruler with both inches and centimeters, 4 high lighters, a lunch box, a back pack without wheels, shoes that are not open in the toes and have backs on the heels,. In addition to all of this, I shopped for lunch necessities: plastic sandwich size baggies for lunches, juice boxes and snacks for lunches. This was also the week of filling out emergency fact forms. Each kid had approximately 12 pages of information and all was due by the next day. I needed to be able to have at least 2 emergency contacts for each child. Not only do I need to know the designated emergency contacts phone number and address, but this year they also asked for cell phone numbers and dates of birth for each contact person. This was the week of going to our pediatrician and having him fill out paperwork for an inhaler to be used if necessary. This was the week where I filled out paper work okaying Tylenol or Ibuprofrin if my kid has a headache with no other symptoms. This was the week of ensuring that each of my children has signed the papers stating that he or she will not bring a knife or gun or weapon of any kind to school. This was the week where both children had to have their Governor's reading list brought into school showing all the different books they have read over the summer. (At least 20 is
recommended.) My 8 year old also had to turn in 2 papers for 10 percent of her first marking English grade. This was the week of back to school haircuts. This was the week where my 8 year old is very unsure about her new school and needs a lot of hugs and understanding.
In addition, I have agreed to volunteer at the library one day per week. I have been dutiful and put down in writing on my kitchen calendar all of the important meetings that I must attend in early September: First grade night, 4th grade night, Highland Park back to school BBQ and Odyssey Parents Meeting.
This was the week where both of my children and myself came down with strep throat. This required 3 visits to the doctors on my family's part and 2 visits to the pharmacy.
Did I mention that I also bought a new used car this week as the one we have is on the outs. It needs to be jumped each time before you start it. With 170,000 miles on it, I guess I am due. So on top of all the back to school craziness, I shopped for and found a new but used Suburu Forrester that will be adequate for driving my children to and from school this year.
Now I know for many mothers, the first week of school is a much welcomed time. A week when our schedules and routines can be put back into place. I know that for me, the summer has had its own variety of stresses as I juggled ways to have my 8 and 6 year old watched (teen age baby sitters, day camps, etc. ) so that I could get into the studio and actually do some work.However, even with the baby sitting issues complicating my summers, I still find the week of my kids going back to school more daunting. This is the week that my harsh and judgmental voices grow loud. This is the week where I strive to be the "perfect mom" with the "perfect children." This is the week I am crazy.
Being a mother can be very vulnerable and many times we feel on
display. I find the first few days of school to be like that. I feel as
if all of my shortcomings are hanging out there for all of society to see. Here is how my brain works: If I get my child late to school, that shows that I am disorganized. If I have too much junk in my child's lunch box, that shows that I am neglectful, if my children don't have their sneakers on for their designated gym day, that shows that I am too busy, etc. If I don't have a clean house and the most delicious wholesome dinners when my children arrive home from school, they will be deprived. This list goes on and on. I even found myself considering what I would wear on the first day of school as I picked my children up at their schools. To let you know how ridiculous this is, consider that at Emily's school, I don't even get out of the car. We pick up our children in a circle formation of cars and stepping out of the car is not even allowed. Fortunately, this was the thing that made me realize that I was getting crazy. As I contemplated whether I should wear a skirt or a pair of flowy linen pants, I had a shift in my brain and body take place. In that moment of contemplating what the perfect mother should wear, I was able to step outside of that and observe from a place of absolute compassion. I could see that I was overwhelmed and needed to stop. I was able to observe that this women who was getting so crazy needed not to be judged any further. I was able to cultivate what yoga calls the "witness consciousness" In that moment I was able to observe that I needed to stop and take care of my self.
So that is what I did. I took 20 minutes and had a cup of tea. I picked up a book that I was reading for enjoyment and enjoyed it. I showered myself with praise for discovering that I was being hard and impossible and overly demanding on myself. I even laughed at my "craziness" and found it endearing. When I finally did go to pick up my kids that day, I felt much more at ease with the world and was able to be much more present for my children when they told me the high points and the low points of their first day. I think I saw some other moms dressed in their own perfect first day outfits and i silently sent them some compassion without judgement.
Swami Kripalu said," The highest form of spiritual practice is self observation without judgement."
I remember the first time I heard these words. I was taking one of my very first Kripalu classes at South Windsor Yoga Studio. Sydney, the teacher, had just returned from a workshop at Kripalu and read this statement at the beginning of class and asked each of us to think about this as we practiced our yoga that evening. I don't recall thinking very much about this statement on that particular evening but I do know that those words have stuck with me since and during difficult periods of my life become my mantra. These are the words that take away my craziness and harsh judgements that still surface from time to time, no matter how much I practice asana.
There have been many periods in the last 7 years where I could not quite wrap my brain around what Swami Kripalu meant by these words but I believe that these kind and intelligent words have stuck with me and perhaps have even been grooved somewhere in my brain matter because they were and still are absolutely crucial for me to embrace and know in every way. During that beginner yoga class seven years ago, I had no idea the impact these words would have on me and on my own spiritual journey.
During that yoga class, where I first heard Guriji's words, I must look back and take some credit for getting parts of his message. I got that it was important to not be harsh or judgmental as I learned something new. I got why it would be necessary to be non judgmental on a thinking level but I never really understood it on a feeling level. The reason for this lack of knowledge was pretty basic- I had not yet been able to turn off that part of my mind that observes and speaks from the harsh critical eye. I had not yet felt the reality of no self-judgments or pure self acceptance on a physical level. Nor was I sure that I really wanted to.
As I think about those early days of yoga, I remember how difficult it was to actually get to a yoga class. I was lucky if I could get in a yoga class once a week. Forget about doing it on my own at home. Who had the privacy? Who had the time? I was already pretty maxed out on the time I had to devote to myself as it was being filled with a necessary and frugal hour of aerobic exercise per day. I had little babies and was a stay at home mom overly and was responsible for taking care of everybody. I made it my personal challenge to meet everyone else's needs before my own. After all, isn't that what a good mother would do? That's what my critical voices told me. By the time Matthew got home from work each evening at 5:30 PM, I could not deny how tired I was.
Maybe because of this tiredness and self imposed drudgery, I was not interested in philosophizing or psychologizing the yoga I was beginning to learn. Instead I wanted to "get on" with the class that had taken so much effort for me to get to. I desired to see and be with wherever the teacher was going to take us for that one hour and a half in my body. I knew that by the time I got down on my mat into shavasana, I would feel lighter, all of the weeks accumulated self imposed stress and fatigue would have melted away and I would feel in touch with my body and a deeper sense of self that for a few precious minutes would not be so taken over by my "have to be the best mommy" self. In that short span of months that I had been learning and practicing yoga, I had already gained the knowledge that yoga was a therapy that I needed desperately.
Little did I know during that beginning phase of discovering yoga that by allowing myself to let go into that space of "wherever the yoga was going to lead me that evening " was exactly the right frame of body and mind for the exploration of Swami Kripalu's words. As a parent, I must learn to also let go and follow where parenting will lead me without focusing on outcome and achievement. Find the space of listening to intuition and just being."
It is now 7 years later and I still practice yoga. I have come to love my yoga practice. The daily or almost daily return to my yoga mat is a space where I learn first hand about humility, patience, joy, and suffering. My mat is a place where I observe myself without regard for outcome or accomplishment. My mat is a place where I practice being compassionate to myself no matter how I show up at the mat. I come to the mat as myself and don't deny whatever I am feeling that day. Whether I am feeling tired, overwhelmed, inadequate, joyful, passionate, sexy, loving, hateful, angry. It is all ok. My yoga mat is a sacred space for me to observe myself without getting tangled up in what I discover. I observe from a place of compassion and let each ujaii breath move me into the next ujaii breath no matter what and by shavasana, I feel just as I did during those very first yoga classes. Cleansed and in touch with my true self. I detatch from my emotional state without denying my feelings. Embracing all of the different aspects of myself and all of the different aspects of this universe. I instinctively know that all is right in my world and there is an order to the universe which is bigger than me but i am inherently a part of.
"The highest form of spiritual practice is self observation without judgement." Again these words ring out to me over and over again in my daily life. What happens when one observes themselves without judgement? I used to believe that if I took the self judgement and even the harsh self critical voice out of my life, that my shortcomings and fears would be on display. As I write down my experience of the past week I validate that I still have many fears, that even though I have a strong and consistent spiritual practice, I oftentimes still feel vulnerable as a women and as a mother. That in these times of fear and vulnerability, I sometimes try to impose strong controls on myself and reinforce these controls with self judgementalness that is both subtle and not so subtle. But it is Swami Kripalu's words that help me turn the corner towards my true self. It is the practice of non-judging and self acceptance that brings me back into my body and ultimately into a space of contentment.
My yoga practice has been instrumental in deconstructing my need to impose self critical control on my life. There is something very gentle and freeing about the abililty to stand outside of yourself and witness the
place you are in right now without judgement. This is is a
practice. Something that has to be returned to over and over again. Starts and stops and obstacles along the way to creating the witness to the crazy thoughts, the paranoia, the harshness and sadness of our self talk without judging ourselves for being in this dark and what we might ignorantly consider an unenlightened place. When we step into a place of observing ourselves without judging, the antidote to this self-hate begins to grow. This antidote is compassion. When looking through the lenses of clarity, the lenses without the cloudiness of self critisicm, The words of Buddha become clear. Compassion is the way to end our own suffering.
