by Prajna

At the beginning of the description of my monthly workshop, there’s a quote from Chogyam Trumpa.

“You begin with ambition of some kind. Then, at a certain stage, meditation becomes instinctive. Then you cannot not meditate – it happens to you.”

This is actually true. The cultivation of mindfulness becomes pervasive. If you’re sincere, at some point you’ll see that you can’t not know what you’re doing. But the refinement of a meditation practice, of wise mindfulness, of wise concentration and of wise effort, doesn’t stop. It seems to be an evolution that’s ongoing. There’s always space to deepen, soften, clarify, always the new moment to open to.

I’ve been meditating regularly since around 1974, which is closing in on 50 years, so I have a lot of experience and have accumulated a lot of technique. I practiced in two very different traditions before settling into a Buddhist Insight Tradition about 34 years ago and I’ve been fortunate to be with great teachers. Some of the most helpful things I’ve learned about meditation have been from other meditation students, from the questions they’ve asked teachers, or from hearing what people shared during group discussions. This was my basic motivation in leading a meditation group, the hope that we could share our practices and support each other in deepening.

Surprisingly, this isn’t an easy thing to do.  The ability to articulate personal practice is something that has to be learned, something that there aren’t always words for.  How do we talk about what’s happening when we sit down and try to restrain the modifications of the mind stuff?  How do we discuss the interior landscape? It’s much easier to try and discuss some aspect of practice than to share this ongoing space out, feel something, go away, come back, start again, drop in deeper, what’s that, bring in some kindness, get lost, see clearly, rest in the body, heart opening, get sidetracked, feel gratitude, touch something huge, obsess on an itch, on and on with a million variations sometimes deepening and sometimes skittering on the surface – this experiential thing that happens when we sit down to meditate.

I’ve spent a good amount of time on meditation retreats. And during retreat, one of the valuable things that can happen is getting to meet privately with a teacher every few days, usually for 10 or 15 minutes. Unfortunately, this tradition is becoming rarer, but, fortunately for me, it was the norm for my first 20 or so years of practice.  You’d come in to see the teacher, sit down and eventually they’d say something like, ‘well, how’s it going’ and then you’d talk about how it was going. They’d make sure you weren’t getting lost, but mainly they shared the territory, maybe gave a little advice or feedback, articulated something for you or not. Once I went in to see Phillip Moffitt – there had been a kind of blockage in my sitting- almost like something in my energy body was in the way and I told him, in a kind of stutter – ‘there’s something there, in the way, I don’t know what’ and we both closed our eyes for a minute and meditated together and he said, ‘oh yeah I can feel it.’ And he didn’t really give me any advice but to let it be there and sit with it without making up a story. And of course, eventually, one day, it was gone. But he validated my reality and knew I could handle it and I felt supported. You can learn a lot from 10 minutes with a teacher, even though it might not be something you can put into words.

So, there’s not always a vocabulary and there’s also not always the need for one. But sometimes it can help to not be alone with our experience. I think there’s a real value in people coming together and talking about their practice, both on and off the cushion. I know, with our friends, with our real sangha of like minded people, we talk about our practice off the cushion. We try to find ways to navigate this life, this world, with moral and spiritual values. That’s real friendship. And I want to encourage us to really try and bring what we sit with in meditation out and share that too. We can learn from and support each other by sharing our sitting practices.

Because the older schools of meditation have thousands of years of watching what happens, there are techniques and ways of dealing with almost anything. We don’t exactly have to re-invent the wheel. But we do have to develop enough skill to know what’s going on in an interior landscape that can sometimes feel like a jungle, and this is cultivated one moment at a time, usually incrementally. One of the reasons I wanted to lead a practice group was because it just seemed like it could be so helpful to share our wisdom, to pool our resources. There are many things that took a long time to become clear to me. Sometimes things that I heard people say twenty or thirty years ago became clear because I was finally able to recognize the landscape of what they were referring to. “Just sit” was something I heard early on, but it’s something that I think requires quite a bit of skill. Just sitting without much skill was kind of how I’d already lived a lot of my life. I had to wait a long time before letting go of technique was feasible. There needs to be some real intuitive feel for the territory before letting go of the map.

This January will be my last 3^rd Wednesday for a while. On one level, I don’t really feel like I’ve been successful in the workshop. We haven’t found a way to talk regularly, or deeply, about our individual sitting practices, but I am very grateful to the people who’ve come and been part of the workshops and to IYI for providing the space. It’s given me a way to take a close look at various facets of practice and to share them through the lens of my own experience and to then interact with people through their own experience. And we did get to share our wisdom, and at times, to open our hearts and minds.

So a big thank you to the IYI community and may we all practice sincerely, for our own benefit and for the benefit of all beings.

Prajna lives, practices, cooks and teaches as San Francisco IYI

Please join Prajna for her Deepening into Meditation workshop on Wed. January 19 @ 6:30 pm – 7:30 pm PT.

by Swami Ramananda

To go in the dark with a light is to know the light

To know the dark, go dark. Go without sight,

and find that the dark, too, blooms and sings,

and is traveled by dark feet and dark wings

Wendell Berry 

This time of year in the Northern hemisphere, when the hours of darkness predominate, is conducive to slowing down and turning inward. Even as we celebrate the holidays with bright lights and decorations, gatherings and festive meals, this season beckons us to also honor the darkness and allow it to call us into stillness.

Even when the holidays are over, many of us live in a culture that resists a quiet inward orientation. Our senses are constantly lured outward with flashy images, sound bites and all manner of entertainment, expressly designed to capture and keep our attention. It’s intoxicating and another example of how modern technology has separated us from the natural rhythms of life.

If you’ve ever been camping overnight, you know how practical it is to set up camp before nightfall, stay put and wait for the light to move on. In the same way, winter calls for us to pause from so much activity, take stock of where we are and wait until the way forward is clear.

We have much to learn from turning inward and reflecting on the obstacles that limit our spiritual growth and prevent us from navigating daily life with peace in our hearts. Increased self-awareness enables us to disentangle ourselves from the habitual thought patterns that cloud our vision. Then we can uncover the roots of our suffering and expose the unconscious beliefs that are the seeds for frustration and struggle.

Even when fear, frustration or grief is triggered from some deeper place inside, we may not take the time to look into it. We may unconsciously avoid such painful emotions that can feel like a sign of weakness or conflict with the self-image we are trying to maintain. It’s easy to feel too busy to dwell on something we cannot easily understand and makes us feel ashamed or depressed.

We may need the support of a trusted friend to feel safe enough to look in the dark corners of our hearts and allow ourselves to explore painful emotions. When we are able to be with our anger or grief and let those energies move, we can often see the unhealthy expectations or desires that gave rise to them.

Another example of the need for listening into our darkness is the way our good intentions to make lifestyle changes can be thwarted by some subconscious resistance. How often does a New Year’s resolution peter out within a few weeks? And consider how difficult it can be to let go of some addictive behavior even when we really want to. The ways we overindulge in unhealthy habits may be methods of compensating for the painful aspects of our lives or ways to avoid feeling how our hearts are hurting.

If we are willing to look at ourselves with honesty and compassion, instead of the harsh judgement that makes reflecting so painful, we may be able to perceive the hidden needs that lurk beneath our awareness. It took me years to really understand that my moments of compulsive eating were a subconscious reaction to the way I would push myself beyond my limits out of some unknown need to feel worthy of love.

Writing regularly in a journal can be helpful in exposing the concealed energies that are influencing our behavior and thinking. We can experiment this way with giving a voice to the hidden needs that might compel us to spin the truth, fall again into an old habit, or blurt out some hurtful words that we soon regret. A regular meditative practice also helps to develop the neutral awareness and clarity to make space for the unspoken voices that lie beneath the surface of the mental lake.

Shining the light of awareness into the darkness this way, enables us to include these messages as we plant new seeds for future growth. Before we look for the return of the light and warmth that comes with Spring, let’s remember to lean into the darkness for the stillness, maturation and inner strength it brings to our lives.

by Dawn Summers

Oh no!  Suddenly my left knee got really wonky when I was going up and down stairs.  I could hardly bend it or put weight on it without pain. This was a call to action!

Yoga having been fundamental for me since 1985, when I became an Integral Yoga Teacher, I decided to see if I could resolve it with the right yoga practice.  Having also been trained as a Yoga Therapist by Gary Kraftsow, founder of the American Viniyoga Institute, I saw here an essential and compelling crisis/opportunity/necessity to apply my knowledge in practice.  

Observing the reality of humans who are compromised in their ability to walk – for whatever reason – has reinforced my priority in maintaining this function, as well as my appreciation of and joy in walking. Successful knee and hip replacements in my friends and students are a wonder of western medicine, but one I hope to avoid. Yes, these parts can be replaced, but the ‘after-market’ parts are not as good as the ‘factory originals’!

Consequently, I was very motivated to understand the source of my knee imbalance/misalignment and to resolve it with yoga, if possible. I also had Plan B if needed – consulting a Physical Therapist. I highly respect their anatomical knowledge and skills and have seen many exercise regimens from PTs. While often effective, they are, often, unfortunately, boring to do – rather one-dimensional as compared to a full-spectrum, body/mind/spirit yoga practice. But, let me not get too grandiose – my knees were the issue, not my dharma or the vrittis of my citta.

So, some after some svadyaya (self-examination of my hips, legs and knees), I discovered the weak lines and muscles contributing to the imbalance. The torque on the knee joint can originate from either the hips or the foot/ankle alignment. Some study of old notes from my therapy training and other resources gave me the creative asana tools I needed to create a practice.

This was a purely biomechanical practice, very different from the yoga practice that had been created by my Yoga Therapist and teacher, Gary Kraftsow, for my cancer therapy. Of course, the cancer therapy practice included mantra, intentions with gestures (nyasa) and very specific pranayama. These yoga tools had been masterfully assembled as an adjunctive support for the Western medical therapies I was receiving. I do use and apply these tools in every practice, but getting my asana chops right was the key for my knees. 

 Since I was able to correctly identify the weaknesses and imbalance in my left leg, and appropriately apply the yoga (the very definition of “Viniyoga”), my knee issue resolved within a month of practice.

As with other life challenges, I learned many lessons, primarily about biomechanics and tracking lines which involve the hips, legs and feet.  I was quite relieved to move away from this dangerous knee issue and recover full function; especially so I can happily take my long walks, now that swimming pools are closed and I have no other alternate source of major exercise besides perambulation.

Call me a Happy Yogini with Bees Knees!

You, too, can have happier knees from participation in the online workshop Knees Need Good Yoga on May 30 from 1-3pm. You will explore your own hip/leg/knee relationship with a targeted practice specific to supporting the knees, plus an understanding of why these postures are useful. Yoga teachers can also receive two Yoga Alliance CE hours.

Dawn​ ​Summers​, YACEP, ERYT-500​, is a certified Yoga Therapist who has been teaching yoga​ ​since becoming an Integral Yoga teacher in 1985. She has been a senior faculty in Teachers Training and Yoga Therapists Training Programs for the American​ ​Viniyoga Institute. She teaches classes through Ocean Yoga and works privately with individual students.