Altars

Here's a snap of my own altar at home. It's got my white orchid, a gift from my daughter. A painting of a window by my nephew, with one on the wall by my other daughter's tattooist friend Scott. It's a blue door that I imagine opens to a great and sacred space. Sea glass from the west coast of Spain, a wooden Buddha draped with my student-beads from Kripalu, all those years ago, and my stone elephant which I bought from my friends at Merkabasol in Augusta. But it's the east morning light that makes my altar complete. Facing the east when meditating in the morning supports alignment for the whole day, I find.

 

An altar is said to be where sacrifices and gifts are left to a god, goddess or God. It could then be said, an altar at home is a place to honor and remember the higher self--the divine aspect of a human being, too. For me, it is a place of holding the energy of goodness, wholesome well-being, and my place for bringing in symbols of growth, love and nature's unique shapes. Maybe it's a reminder of holiness, solemnity and prayer for meditation time. I know that I can tap into my center very quickly with this altar in my home. 

 

I've also kept an altar of beach findings and small figures, large gourds, and branches picked from woods-walks on the stoop of my front door. I love seeing children look at the little Buddha, the white conch from Florida, the red berries from Belfast when they're out walking with their families. When I'm traveling, I often bring to the car, some branch, flower, or stone to set inside the key cubby.

If these things we gather really do carry the energy of the earth or the people who brought them to us, then they bring a living remembrance to our awareness and meditations, and remind us of who we are when we are centered, thoughtful, aware of our selves in the world. 

 

--What makes us feel holy, better than our lower impulses like greed, jealousy, fearful scarcity of love? The symbols or items that catch our imaginations and hearts are signs of ourselves at center, markers of our experiences in which we've been touched by the holy, a loved one, the divine self. An altar is ever changing but always energetically higher than our lowest thoughts, and steeped in the vibration of love and reverence. It is a balm in a loosely cast world.

Flight

Once a horse came into my life, or rather I dragged her into mine, bringing her home by way of a loaner truck and trailer to a loaned stall and a borrowed pasture.  Worse, I did not have my then- husband's blessing or an easy payment arranged with him.   The initial cash came quickly--it was the rest of the payment I would fail to pay in full.  --I rode that mare right out of my domestic life each Sunday afternoon.

Barely trained, she was sensitive.  Didn't like men, or some women, cow-kicked or nipped them, she was in almost constant flight or its consideration.  She was my time and money pit, as they say.  And I loved her dearly, absorbed in lessons that even now I'm just understanding.  But she was tough.  My trainer-friend called her spoiled and there were many times I left her in the barn because she was impossible, a bad horse.   I'd gotten a bad horse.  Bad.  Then I heard myself.  When I stopped making up stories about why she was a bad horse, I began to learn about myself, eventually riding her without a bit, which was better for both of us.  She was quiet in the woods but not in open land, where I'd struggle to contain her urges to flee by yanking her this way and that, attempting to correct the wild part that altered by something invisible, a trigger I couldn't experience as real.

I'd read of the Horse People who said that a horse's eyes are all over its body, that they see with flank and ear and whisk of tail, experiencing the world through the whole body.   Horse People touched the whole body of the wild horse to make him ride-able.  Broken, we'd call it.  They said to ride a horse is to borrow freedom.  Which sounds respectful and something like a truth.

So while this mare had worked so hard against my aids in certain situations, throwing herself and me around, she'd quietly, obediently carried me deep into the woods of Gouldsboro, Maine, unflinching at bear scat or branch-fall, brilliantly gathering herself--with me still riding--up and out of a pond when we'd broken through ice upon crossing one early March afternoon.   She'd even allowed me to lead her with one hand while I'd carried a 20 pound snapper turtle that gurgled and hissed under my other arm.  It'd been shot in the head by the side of the road while laying eggs.  A toothy, moss-covered shell wide as a steering wheel, staggered breaths against my side.  We'd walked a whole mile like that.  That horse hadn't cared one bit and walked along--slowly, steadily--clopping on the tar beside a dying but powerful prehistoric creature and me.  It was one of those feral moments I'd only ever had with her: for who was I with but one of the most embodied teachers of my life--this horse who could also be present and safe and actually, thrillingly, brilliantly helpful. 

She'd shown me how fear can manifest as a confusion of behaviors, how helping her regulate those moments of hijacking fear took great patience and, key word, acknowledgment.  As when we'd come up and out of the icy pond, she'd stood there on the hillside to shake off the effects of the event, the moment done, though how I'd stayed on, I don't know.   I do know that once she'd shaken off that traumatic fall through the ice, she'd been able to carry on, shaken but rightly so.  I'd affirmed her with my mittened hand on her neck all the way home.  Good girl, good horse.  She'd saved us both and would show no future fear of ice.

The invisible forces behind fear response are as complex as those forces that subdue its forms: flight, fight, freeze.  The body remembers all through its constellation of eyes, cells, receptors, tissues.  Patient noticing, a resolve, an openness to profoundly dumb mistakes without losing it.  Maybe approaching befriendment or a radical compassion for being alive in this world.  Maybe that pays out in new experiences--like the horse and the snapper--all good, even weirdly triumphant. 

Elephants, Trauma & Embodiment

   One winter I visited a Florida zoo where I witnessed a profound example of embodiment at the elephant pen--an acre wide, fenced space of dirt, a few trees and some boulders.   A group of six or more mature elephants and a calf lived there.   I watched them push at hay, take dust baths, and rub against tree trunks; the baby explored on his own, away from adults but not too far.   He pushed at a tree with his trunk and kept pushing until a dead branch crashed to the ground.  He cried in terror; the sound was shocking.  Within seconds, the mother ran to him, touched him all over with her trunk, as every mature elephant trumpeted, running to him.  Then the most fascinating thing took place: the adults created a circle around him, tails pointed in towards him with the arsenal of trunks, tusks, mouths and forelegs outward.  He stood in the center while the adults called and snorted, stamping the ground, threatening the perceived danger.  Once they felt safe, they quickly broke the circle, returning to normal--grazing and bathing in dirt.  The baby violently shook itself off, bucked and ran around, before settling down --soft body, head dropped, meandering.  He embodied "home" and safety.

   His fear was validated.  I believe this is why he could quickly return to a balanced state of relaxation.  Both he and the herd responded to something in the environment, physically and with a purpose.  I think on this as an example of functional embodiment, even a sense of selfhood, within a healthy culture; I hold it up to the tragic picture of the individual struggling with PTSD and trauma in this culture, the one who endures isolation, with poor access to viscera, the body, or on-the-ground support.  I think of my uncle, friends and neighbors coming home from Vietnam to shunning, abuse, accusations--no sense of home.  Communal support wasn't there and is still not wholly there.  Honestly, I think of the high social order of elephants and feel disappointment in our kind.  I wonder why it's so difficult for research in this field to happen and then for solutions to become available to those who need them.  We have too many obstacles.

    On-the-ground support may be within the body itself.  Why is it important to be present and to be embodied?  In a any given person, or any given elephant, the brain is wired for one thing: mobility.  The body is in service of a complex survival system engineered by the brain and limbic system to fight or flight and it can also quickly becalm.    It’s difficult to relate embodiment to simple reactivity or response.  Awareness, consciousness and presence seem important and defining to the essence of this state.  Maybe the question is what is the self, as in what is consciousness?  I could ask this question ad infinitum and only come up with question after question!

    But if embodiment has a root, it may well be the vagus nerve, the longest cranial nerve that has the power to change unconscious body processes such as heart rate, blood pressure, the immune system, digestion and mood.  Interestingly, it impacts voice and keeps the mouth open for breathing during distress.   Also known as the “rest and digest nerve,” the vagus nerve wanders from brain then to ear, jaw, larynx, heart, lungs, belly, and pelvis.  When stimulated, it improves the status of mood disorders like depression and has become a stabilizer for some kinds of seizures.  Through deep, relaxed abdominal breathing, the vagus nerve can be activated to trigger the relaxation response in the body.  That response can be consciously induced through yoga. 

   In trauma, that vagus nerve is signaling through the body to a hyperactive amygdala which continuously loops emotional memory, locking the suffering person in cycles of unbearable arousal states.  “The vagus nerve instantly affects the state of viscera, the internal organs of the body, literally the guts,” Dr. Van Der Kolk says,  "People take drugs to make it (pain) disappear, and they cut themselves to make it disappear, and they starve themselves to make it disappear, and they have sex with anyone who comes along to make it disappear and once you have these horrible sensations in your body, you’ll do anything to make it go away.   If these sensations last long enough, your whole brain starts fighting against emotions. And what happens in the long range is that traumatized people who continuously have a state of heartbreak and gut wrenching feelings learn to shut off the sensations in their bodies. And they go through life not feeling their physical presence.”

   They disembody.  “What should cause some fear, actually, is the idea of a selfless state," says Prof. Antonio Damasio, who suggests the self is a circuitous, speedy communication between amygdala, basal ganglia, somatic memory, and viscera--the lungs, gut and heart.  He argues that to be embodied one must have a sense of self which is constantly influenced, changed, reinstated by the experiences of the organism but also has static properties in narrative memory, autobiography, past and future planning.  ‘The self is not a homunculus or little man in a single point of the brain telling the body what to do but is a perceptually recreated neurobiological state.’  It’s a a continuous loop.  ‘The (neurological self) is an endless reactivation of updated images about our identity (memory and planning) and constitutes a sizable part of the state of the self." Feeling as it relates to the neurological self is the experience of changes in the body state.  For me, this is where yoga can have a pretty big impact.  As feeling is noticed, then allowed, explored and transformed through movement, the sense of embodiment may return and, in theory, the sense of self.  What yogis call the "I am" state.   That "I am" state was affirmed in the young elephant whose call was answered through effective action by the adults. 

    In the moment of decision making and action, what the outer world sees, the self is revealed.  The dynamics of a person arrive.  Movement choices are made as expression of feeling or emotion or sometimes both.  This is yoga as mirror.  To know one’s self seems to mean, in its purest form, to know  what is happening within in a given moment of time within the whole organism as it makes conscious choices for its well-being.  Awareness may be embodiment within viscera, breath and vagus nerve, conscious recognition of sensory information, engagement with memory, disposition, executive abilities, preferences, the idea of self.  When the body is moved by a decision made by the self, the body's call is answered, affirmed.  If the family home of the person isn't answering the basic needs of love and validation, maybe we begin initiating home within--validating the self, noticing the call, answering the true, dear self as if its life depended on it.

                    

Beginner's Mind: Yoga for Dementia

For almost two years, I've had the honor of working with Ron, a veteran with frontal lobe detachment and onset of dementia.  In my explorations of what this means to work with someone who exhibits keen awareness, intelligence, and ability to access breath--with diminished sensory capacity, intermittent focus, and deteriorating executive function--I've learned more than I could possibly blog here.  But I feel compelled to share some of what happens when we meet for yoga in hopes that others may try yoga with loved ones in this spectrum. 

We meet twice a week in his rec. room that's got a wall of books on fishing, fly tying, war history, some in German--many tomes belonging to Ron.  Pictures of him wading in a stream in Canada or Baxter State Park, casting lines, remind me of my own dad.  They hang beside a photo of his favorite river in Canada, which we use for drishti or gazing point while in Star Pose.  Ron and Marianne share a home of memories and the best of the best organic foods, supplements, and herbs that Marianne has been able to find.  I'm often treated to her root veggie soups and cakes or pies.  She miraculously creates meals, sensory meals--can't-pass-by-the-kitchen-without-sniffing-and-ogling meals.  Her constant care and devotion have made her an expert lay person, if you ask me.  The bar is held high for our health care system and its treatment for individuals within the dementia spectrum.  She's disappointed by what's actually offered for families like hers.  She often tells me what's happening in Germany, where she's from, and seeks ways to replicate approaches in her home.  Her German family and their doctors strongly urged her to get Ron into yoga.  --And this is how I got into their rec. room.

What I've grown to appreciate is how we always begin at the beginning.  I know this is always true on some level everywhere, but in these classes, it feels especially poignant and presses on patience, boredom, reluctance.  And yet we begin.  When he remembers or can organize himself--what his wife calls a good day--Ron gathers props, placing them exactly as the classes before:  a mat, a chair that sits half on and off the mat, two blocks for feet in front of chair, a pillow for postural support, his super tea or juice that Marianne lovingly prepares several times a day, and his Buddha box--his name for the Kleenex box, which we need before centering and breath work.

Ron has loads of wit and he loves to hear the names of the postures and references to "that spiritual stuff".  He giggles and if I'm lucky, he laughs out loud.  In that spirit, we address the serious medical "stuff" like dehydration.  We've recently named the pauses in the sequence where he takes a drink from his water bottle.  It's called slug-asana, a stopping point where he's prompted to drink and breathe three relaxing-breaths before drinking again.  He takes three "slugs" then three full breaths.  This may sound funny but it's been crucial.  Ron has forgotten many things, appearing not to care, often shrugging small tasks off, such as taking in enough fluids.   Episodes of dehydration have been sometimes frightening and in our classes, they have stopped the practice with dizzyness, fatigue, increased "zoning out" and muscle cramping.  So entered "slug-asana" into our sequences.  Three times in an hour--and the bottle is emptied.  Usually!

We sometimes have light "hippy" music (his word for my music) or big German orchestrations (distracting to me but waking to him) or silence.  Lately silence.  And I've noticed his energy flag more quickly.  Anyhow, breathwork always begins in silence and he's developed such a fidelity to one breath technique taught in trauma sensitive yoga, in which he blows air out through pursed lips, inhaling through nostrils.  One disorienting time last spring, he remembered that breath and his cell phone and his house number, reaching Marianne who found him and rescued him from dehydration and disorientation.  Truly, a victorious breath for Ron.  And that's where we begin the practice once settle in seated mountain, building on slow, smooth nostril breaths, three part breath, then layering ocean or victory breath.  We take this breath into slow head-swivel kriya, back and forth with breath, shrugs and varied sunbreaths.  Breath-focused, inhale opens arms, exhale closes arms.  Ron's developed his breath so beautifully.  Sometimes we practice breath of fire, if it seems right--sometimes in the middle of the sequence.  But the grounding, calming, focusing and balancing nature of the other breaths usually fit the bill for Ron at the start.

Through coordinating breath with the six movements of the spine,  I gauge Ron on the trajectory of mood, focus, executive function ability.  He does this in the chair, still, and I mirror him, always.  This helps him see/feel what's next, though I also give touch point cues to help him remain lifted through spine, sternum, crown.  The chair is a critical part of his yoga.  It literally grounds him, contains him.  It has armrests to anchor to for twisting.  It's a safety as he explores right and left, using the very familiar gazing points of his furniture, collections of book titles, pictures.   "Gaze at Halford on the Dry Fly!"  "Gaze at Margaree River!...Keep lifted in the gaze.."  It's all known; he almost always has a memory jog when he turns to the river picture or an interesting point about a book he's read, sometimes in German.  And where his eyes go is as important as any pose given.  The eyes are the guideposts for me as a teacher and a source of uplift and real work for Ron--from his spine up.  Gazing points, cuing to focus eyes on objects to keep attention upward and energize, are super important. 

The yoga sequencing is a combination of dogged repetition and adventure.  For example, pigeon pose arrived after a year of child pose, then half child.  We moved slowly into this pose from chair to floor, propped and unpropped.  Several months ago, we began exploring downward dog.  We're up the wall with dog, when energy and focus are there.  I've chosen those two classical postures for forward folds based on his back's flexibility or inflexibility.  We do more backbending for upward energy in our hour.  Some postures are important for people with dementia--certain others not so.  Many recommend inversions or belly down backbends like cobra.  All seem beneficial to Ron.  He enjoys legs up the chair.  And he seems to like the warriors when Marianne is practicing with us, especially.  His focus is playful when she's there and I take advantage of it, when it's right, to have them do a partner yoga pose or two.  They sit spine to spine and move in and out of wide seated forward fold and back bend, using one another's backs as props.  I almost always tear up!  They also do goddess with fierce lion's breath, tongue to chin, eyes wide, face to face.  It's really tough to be serious with this posture.  Very fun and opening.  And tension releasing!

All sequences end with quieting supported forms like twist with bolster or legs up the chair.  We end with svasana, resting pose, waking the body with contract and release from the feet up to the crown.  From a modified seated mountain (knee hug) on the floor, we bow to hands over hearts and offer a Namaste to ourselves and one another, one last slug-asana, and a fond farewell until next time. 

With love & pranic steam,

Beth

I hope you find inspiration here, as much as I'm inspired by Ron and Marianne, whom I humbly thank for allowing me to share what I do in the spirit of spreading the word of yoga and its potential for helping someone with dementia live the fullest life possible.

When Stillness Doesn't Feel Okay

For some of us, stillness just doesn't feel okay.  In fact, it feels frightening, intense, and wrong on a visceral level.  Predators use stillness.  If you look at a predator bird, say an owl, it is completely silent, watching for something smaller, more vulnerable than he is, from a vantage point.   Survivors know this better than anyone.  Stillness and quiet, especially quiet, can trigger our survival system to be on watch, seeking out any sign of danger.  We are naturally wired this way, to stay "on" just as we are.  And if a life has been ravaged by someone else's impulse, agenda, or rage that survival system can get stuck in the "on" position, making stillness impossible.  Stillness and quiet may have preempted an abuse or strike or even a medical emergency.  An innocent yogic call to silence may be terrifying to some, a call to stillness may be paralyzing. 

What do you do when stillness is your edge?  Why bother with it?  When I am sitting still, after a day of work, a good hike, or after a hatha yoga practice, I can feel my body let down its ghosts--all the worry of vigilance and the vigilance of worry diminish.  Fear and chronic worry are debilitating, exhausting, depleting and bad for relationships--I mean, what's left of you?  Stillness is about refueling, among other things.  And stillness is most often available after elongating the body and stretching the 72,000 nerve endings.  And breath, the current of the emotional state--control that and you control your inner universe.

For 13 years, I would gain access to periods of stillness reliably after a vinyasa-based practice--a flowing, physically demanding practice that coordinates breath with movement.  As an aging yogini, I now have hurts, large and small, in my wrists and shoulders from downward facing dogging it through those years of devotion.  I would sometimes set up a mat in my daughter's hospital room or seek refuge in the hospital chapel, sun saluting in front of the faux stained-glass window.  Now, not surprisingly, my limitations are showing.  While Vinyasa brought me to more quiet routinely and reliably, it also strained me.   So, I now must work on cultivating that same action of coordinated breath with movement in the Kripalu tradition of micro-movement but with the instruction of my own experience as well as from master teachers such as Angela Farmer.   For example, through her Inner Body approach, I gain more mobility in the tightest places in my body if I move in and out of a posture such as triangle before sustaining it.  Angela Farmer says, "the body likes to work and then release, work and then release."  And then there's the coordinating breath.  If holding a posture still triggers anxiety or agitation, which it can for me, then breathing in a particular way can help me move past the strong agitating sensation that can arise from the endurance of stillness.   Think about it--if you are just enduring a posture, waiting for it to end, chances are you are holding loads of tension in the body and missing the miracle--that moment when the body is allowed to be strong and relaxed without clenching and gripping and refusing full breaths.  This is where a student can investigate and visit stillness inside a structure through work and release, inflow and outflow, titrating moments of stillness into a hatha practice.

Recently, I attended a Gary Kraftsow workshop.  His Viniyoga Therapy is a way of using yoga to regain mobility, reduce anxiety, and create a new back through slow, mindful movements.  I thought I would be bored or agitated out of my mind!  But I left one of his classes feeling as though my back had just been replaced.  Then I left another class feeling my mind had finally quieted down after days of workshops, missing loved ones, and worry about my daughters while I was away from home.   He teaches students to take a slow, smooth inhalation into movement and a slow, smooth exhalation out of movement--micromovements or little vinyasas!  Interestingly, his yoga comes from the same Krishnamarchya lineage as Ashtanga which feeds the Vinyasa Yoga approach.  I've managed stress, anxiety and bouts of the blues through vinyasa for years, very gingerly approaching stillness--which agitated.  This practice makes sense to me.  Warning: he uses Sanskrit names for the postures.  If you're okay with that, I hope you body-sense what I'm talking about!  

Gary Kraftsow's DVD Viniyoga for Anxiety may be useful to those of you, who like me, experience anxiety now and then and who want to approach stillness through yoga.  Unfortunately, I'm unable to post the You Tube Sample of this DVD.  It's really a great example of where movement with breath can take you when flow is slowed down.   Go to You Tube for this, if you like.