Embodied Attention

*Body(s) by Da Vinci (1452-1519)

Yoga teacher training has been an interesting mix of confirmation, ah ha moments, and "oh, my god, I have no idea" experiences. I have felt kind of dumb and boneheaded fairly often, something I didn't anticipate happening. So, I really enjoyed reading this story about another guy's experience with yoga teacher training. Neal Pollack writes about his preparation for, and expectations of the training before he goes. And then, less than two weeks before the training is supposed to start, he pulls a hamstring that impacts his practice the entire training. Almost everything he had expected was thrown off by the hamstring pull, but it seems to have offered him a window into something greater. He writes:

It occurred to me that all matter, thoughts, and emotions are united under some sort of unknowable eternal consciousness. That perception, I thought, is the essence of yoga. But I had also experienced that perception before, and in greater depth. Frankly, I was a little disappointed that I hadn’t encountered it more fully or more often at yoga school. I paid my money, I thought. I deserve pure consciousness.

But the truth is, I don’t “deserve” anything, and that was one of the most important lessons I eventually drew from yoga school. Just like you can’t depend on your body to always be able to do the asana you were capable of when you were 25, you also can’t depend on your brain to constantly exist in the divine realization of pure awareness. When I came home, things were much the same. My kid still howled when his socks were uncomfortable. My Boston terrier still peed in the back room. I still had financial problems. People still cut me off in traffic. And all that stuff still annoyed me.

But I also found myself walking through life with a much greater sense of calm. I had certainly heard about non-attachment, to both positive and negative experiences, but now, suddenly, I began to put it into action. If I felt myself getting angry, or jealous, or otherwise mentally troubled, I would observe my feelings, even cradle them, as a famous rinpoche once instructed, but not let them rule me. For the most part, without even trying, I found myself feeling kinder and friendlier and more generous. Subtly, slowly, and by very gradual degrees, yoga was changing my very nature.

One of the things I have noticed in myself is that from the increased focus on paying attention to bodies, my own and others, I'm much more attentive overall. Feeling my way into different alignments for poses. Watching others do the same. Offering adjustments. Being adjusted. Remembering to breathe. Seeing how I stop breathing. Feeling that stopping. Seeing others stopping and starting. All of this is leading to a more embodied attention, something that didn't seem to come as easily when I was focusing primarily on zazen. In fact, when I have been doing meditation, it feels more organic and less pressured - as if I'm responding to the rhythm of my life instead of an artificial schedule.

I'm also getting to face another layer of perfectionism, which resonates well with Neal's point about the ever-changing quality of body and mind. My mind was really cloudy during last week's core class, and I responded rather confused and irritatedly to the intense yoga teacher doing the class. This week, with a clearer mind and piles of energy, her intensity didn't bother me much, and I just enjoyed myself going with the flow of class. And both of these experiences are fine.

Learning occurs in different ways at different times. And some days, you're just in a fog. It's all part of the process...

Notes from Yoga Teacher Training

I haven't written much about my experiences in the yoga teacher training. It's not always easy to put words to something you are in the middle of.

The past few days have been interesting. In a class on kriyas Tuesday evening, I had an incident when we were practicing bellows breathing. Basically, I couldn't do it. In fact, I was breathing really shallowly, and in a reversed fashion. The teacher was quite good that night. He saw what was happening, came over, and tried assisting me. I still couldn't shift the pattern.

Throughout the past month of training, I have noticed many evenings where I have shown up with shallow, challenged breathing. Some of it I link to the rush hour bus rides, which I wrote about recently. However, as feelings of embarrassment rose and fell during class Tuesday night, and then an awareness of some resistance to manipulating the breath (from all these years doing Zen meditation practices), I realized that this shallow, sometimes reversed breathing has been a common feature in my life for years.

Hardening the belly when stressed or upset is something many of us do, often unconsciously. And with this comes all sorts of warping to our natural breathing processes. I have seen all of this during meditation periods. And it especially started to become clearer when we studied the Ananpanasati Sutra last year. However, one of the reasons why I have always been a "dual practitioner" attracted to both yoga and Zen is that the obvious physicality of Yoga practices have helped inform my awareness in ways zazen rarely does.

So, I've been watching my breathing much closer the past few days, informed by that experience in the kriya class, and also the continued studies of anatomy. One of the things that Kevin, the teacher Tuesday night, told me (after class) was that in the Feldenkrais Method, one way they work with warped breathing patterns is to get people to do exactly what they are already doing. Repeating what you are doing with awareness, and perhaps exaggeration, allows you to see what's going on, and start to let go and shift it.

Funny thing is that later that night, as I was heading home on the bus, I noticed myself deliberately breathing deeply in a reversed fashion. In my mind, I thought I was "doing it right," but then, after a few minutes of this, I realized it was reversed. I have continued to experiment with all this ever since, noticing this morning, for example, how quickly my breathing became warped while biking. Makes me wonder if that is how I usually breathe while biking.

In Zen, we're always talking about paying attention to breathing while meditating. However, I think it's more challenging to really see what's going on with the breath during activity. You say you're paying attention to the breath while typing, or cleaning, or driving, but it's often a shallow attention, or only a close attention for a minute or two. And of course, there's also an underlying imperative in meditation traditions to witness what's happening, but not deliberately mess with it. Or the interventions are linguistic in form - such as riding a mantra or teaching phrase. I'm quite fond of such practices, but it's interesting to consider that interventions that go against the grain, like deliberately shifting or exaggerating the breath. Having been in Buddhist circles long enough, I know there are some of these practices around, but they are much more central a feature of yogic schools from what I've seen and experienced.

The breath is so rich. Who knew, right? Actually, I did already, but all of this just reaffirms that.

There's my dispatch from YTT land.