by meghanleborious | Apr 20, 2020 | Notes on Practice
I really didn’t feel like practicing. It had already been a long day; and I had another big day coming. I was on a meditation retreat at Garrison Institute, and part of my personal practice was to dance a 5Rhythms wave, o sea, in other words, to move through each of the five rhythms in sequence. At least once a day, I tucked my socks into my pants, sprayed myself with deet, and made my way down a wooded path to the Hudson River. Because it’s my practice, even though I didn’t feel like it, I still stepped in.
I began in a tiny inlet, on a beach enclosed by tree cover. In Flowing I was lackluster. I moved in circles on the little beach, cutting up the sand’s surface. In the second rhythm of Staccato I was still not really into it, determined to see the wave through, but also eager to get it over with. Then, a spark caught, somewhere in the transition from Staccato to the third rhythm of Chaos. I moved from the little inlet to an open, glacial rock that rose up over a powerful expanse of the river and moved with abandon. In Lyrical and Stillness, the world opened itself. I imagined that I sunk to the depths of the ancient river, where it was black and dense, then rose up again with its density streaming down the rock channels of me.
Sometimes practice is mundane. Sometimes it is life-changing. You never know what will happen until you step in. In 5Rhythms, there is a tradition, a benediction, sometimes expressed at the beginning of a wave: “See you on the other side.”
All of our dances, all of our practice experiences are necessary. After about two years of dancing the 5Rhythms, I went through a period of agonizingly painful dances. It lasted almost two months. Every time I stepped in, I felt terrible. I felt isolated, disengaged, disincluded, and unable to connect. It was extra painful because I’d become accustomed to the wild, frenzied release that left me whimpering and grateful, alive, full, knowing. And for this long period, it just wasn’t available.
Thankfully, by then, I had already developed a strong practice. I had already verified for myself that 5Rhythms was beneficial for me, and was worth the dedication of precious resources. If I didn’t already have a strong practice–a regular, intentional practice that was not rocked by external factors–I’m sure I would have stopped attending 5Rhythms classes. As it was, I just kept attending, noticing how I was feeling, and knowing that it would pass. Later, when I hit patches of agonizing discomfort, I would draw on this experience, reminding myself that practice would not always be pleasant, but that the periods of discomfort would pass, and would leave me with deeper faith in my own ability to stay present in the face of whatever arises.
In the simplest terms practice is something we do regularly and intentionally without being attached to a certain outcome in a given session. We show up again and again. Usually, something only becomes a practice if we have been raised with it, or we have field tested it and found it worthy of our dedication.
To me, having a 5Rhythms practice means regularly, intentionally dancing the 5Rhythms, regardless of how I feel before, during, or after. It means I don’t ask the dance to fix me in the moment, but, over time and with slow erosion, to free me from my personal prisons and to reveal the nature of reality.
When my son, Simon, was first born, I developed a practice of writing a poem a day. As is true of many practices, it started accidentally. My sister invited me to swap haiku poems for fun, and somehow I caught a little groove of poem writing. I let go of using the haiku form, and instead wrote about my daily experiences, capturing the exquisite beauty of Simon’s first months of life, including the blizzard snows that buried New York City that year, the sublimely quiet room where I sat breastfeeding him in the quietest hours of night, the silver J train sliding across the bridge in view outside the window, and how it felt to look at my tiny son’s face as he slept. And I also captured the pain of that time period, as my relationship with Simon’s father was falling apart.
After a week or two of catching an accidental groove, I started to realize it might be worth making this into a practice. So I did. Some days I wrote more than one poem, but almost every day I wrote at least one, sometimes staying up just a little bit later to accomplish this task. Sometimes the poems were mundane, sometimes they were life changing. Once I wrote. “I’m too tired to write now. Maybe if I can just hold this pen upright, the world will flow through it.”
One of the benefits of this practice was that it sensitized me to the poetic level of experience, and had me looking for it all the time. To me, “poetic” is a level of experience that is concerned with the beauty of exquisite reality, of sometimes painful and imperfect aliveness.
I kept it up for nearly three years, writing over a thousand poems. At that point, I discontinued the practice. I had started a new job, and it started to feel like I was forcing it in a way that was no longer benefitting me. I had already started to slack off, but made a conscious choice to let it go, recognizing that practice is worth discipline, but once it becomes rigid, it might be time to let it shift or end.
Knowing when to embody Flowing and when to embody Staccato is an important skill for working with the practices that create meaning in our lives and help us to realize our potential.
In 5Rhythms, practice falls into two categories. “In the dance” when we are intentionally practicing, and not in the dance, in other words, at all other times. All of it can be viewed as practice.
Whatever we repeat becomes a practice, in a way. For example, road rage, insecurity, gratitude, or frequent hand-washing. Through repetition, we carve a groove in our mind to arrive at a particular state or to exhibit a certain skill. For our purposes, though, we need to distinguish between intentional practice and practicing/re-enforcing conditioned responses.
Practice and conditioned responses can look similar, but are fundamentally very different.
The key difference is in how we are in relationship to the given practice. If a practice serves to open our experience and bring us into (sometimes painful) confrontation with our misconceptions, then it is probably a practice. If a “practice” causes us to shore up our view of ourselves as separate or better than or less than or omnipotent or limited, and to disconnect from physical and energetic reality, then it is probably a conditioned response, not a practice. This is true even if it looks like a practice.
Distinguishing between these two requires skill and insight, and often input from a clear-seeing teacher, especially in early to intermediate stages of the path. And there are often multiple layers of intention. As such, a practice might need to be examined complexly for information about how it is functioning for a given practitioner.
Identity stories are a kind of practice, and can support practice in the larger view. For example, my teen students need to develop healthy identity stories (“I’m a good student, I’m lovable, I’m someone who has a healthy relationship to emotions”) to support them on their path. If they cannot construct through practice these healthy identity stories, they will struggle to move into a later stage of development. At another level, those same identity stories may become conditioned habits, and obstacles to opening into the naked truth of bare awareness. But they are developmentally essential practices at a certain stage.
Some 5Rhythms teachers believe that the core of 5Rhythms practice is continuous, sustained, profound mindfulness of body, and of the feet in particular.
Our main practice is to move.
And there are infinite sub-practices within the main practice of 5Rhythms.
In Flowing, we practice bringing attention to the soles of the feet and dropping the weight down. We acknowledge the importance of ground and grounding. We also practice allowing our bodies to move in unending circular motion. And we practice having an attitude of receptivity, and paying attention to the inbreath. In Flowing, I also practice paying attention to the perimeter of the dance floor, and sometimes physically circling the space. Sometimes I also use a practice adapted from Thich Nhat Hahn, in which I acknowledge each person without direct eye contact, patiently noticing each person and saying internally, “I see you there; and I’m grateful for it.”
In Staccato, we practice bringing attention to the outbreath, and with using sharp, percussive movements. We invite specificity and direction. We also find nuanced ways to work with the beat, and to relate to partnership. One sub-practice that I use in Staccato is noticing if I think partnering with someone is negative, positive, or neutral. Then, I either decide to move away from them if I don’t want to dance with them, or decide to stay and see what happens. And the same for someone I feel positive about partnering with.
In Chaos, we let go of our heads, and alternate between shifting weight between our feet, and moving with whatever wild demon possesses us. We invite and celebrate unpredictability. We go all out, to whatever extent we can at that time. One practice I personally use in Chaos is to experiment with going to the farthest edges of balance. I also experiment with inviting resistance to Chaos, then releasing fully into it, sometimes toggling between the two.
In Lyrical, we rise up and allow ourselves to become weightless if it’s available, trusting that we’ve already established our ground, and often engaging with the element of space. Lyrical shifts so much, but I often experiment with practicing extension and balance in Lyrical.
In Stillness, we allow ourselves to be moved by breath, and in some cases to merge with a larger view than conventional reality can accommodate.
In practice, nothing is always true. There is always nuance. For example, in general it is helpful to open the eyes during 5Rhythms practice, for practical, psychological, and spiritual reasons. However, a given person might have a conditioned habit of always keeping the eyes open because they are afraid to sink deeply into their inner darkness. In this case, it would be appropriate to engage in a practice of closing the eyes periodically, to investigate and explore the teachings available through breaking the habit of always having the eyes open. Also, intuition might insist on closing the eyes at a certain time. This might be conditioning, or could be an important directive from inner wisdom or spirit guides. Insisting on always keeping the eyes open, without any willingness to acknowledge nuance, might suppress important insights or revelations.
Practice is a balance between structure and creativity. Committing to a practice or a sub-practice requires discipline. Sometimes we do it even if it isn’t fun or we aren’t in the mood. At the same time, responding to the shifts in one’s needs requires creativity; and it is a vibrant, dynamic process.
Doing something as a practice yields benefits that are not available in haphazard or incidental actions. Practice requires grit and discipline. It forces us to push through resistance, inertia, and neurosis. It also requires us to gently reassure the tender ego, that although we are walking the path of absolute freedom, we are no threat to him. Practice requires gentleness and self care, and asks us to notice and relent if pushing through has actually become an act of aggression against ourselves.
Now, as we face a worldwide pandemic, practice is here to hold and sustain us.
Practice is the path.
Practice is a way to make the most of this life, and to offer the fruits of our devoted work to the benefit of all beings. Practice is a blessing. That we are alive in this time, in this moment, in this body, in this way, is nothing less than a miracle.
April 19, 2020, Broad Brook, Connecticut
(Photo from aleanjourney.com)
This blog consists of my own subjective experiences and ideas on the 5Rhythms® dancing path, and is not sanctioned by any 5Rhythms® organization or teacher.
by meghanleborious | Apr 18, 2020 | Notes on Practice
For the last two nights, I’ve slept on my back. This despite being a side-sleeper for pretty much my whole life. I have a certain way of tucking the pillow into the side of my neck, settling in, and nestling my back up to a pillow or another body. But my shoulders suffer, and the asymmetry sets me up for all kinds of misalignments. I’ve tried re-training myself many times, but I let myself go back to what’s comfortable when sleep has eluded me. This time, I think I’m on track to finally interrupt this persistent habit.
Yesterday, I logged into a zoom class that a friend led. I love his facilitation style, but I just couldn’t get into it this time. I was already feeling shut-down and discouraged, possibly because of many coronavirus deaths in my work community. Then, during the afternoon something I said contributed to disequilibrium in a whatsapp group. I apologized, but it was too late. I wasn’t wrong, exactly, but it really wasn’t my business. I wished I had stayed quiet or been more supportive. Even my ten-year-old son, Simon, felt I was in the wrong.
For a minute, I started to make a case against the person, but that fell apart pretty quickly. Then I started to make a case against myself. How I’m a bad person, how no one really likes me anyway. I started to visit past experiences, focusing on my many regrets. And I thought about all the recent emails I’ve sent that haven’t been answered, seeing it as a sign that I’m not really included or approved of, totally disregarding the fact that many people are grieving, or intolerably stressed, or have their hands overfull and answering their emails isn’t a top priority.
I really wanted to quit the group. They probably don’t want me anyway, I reasoned. But I made a recent resolution to be more present and available in group friendships–something I have struggled with–and I decided to stick it out for awhile.
In Flowing, I rolled and stretched on the floor, keeping as much of me touching the ground as possible as I curled and flipped over, at times rolling over the back of my skull or laying flat, arms and legs outstretched, on my belly or back. On my feet, I let my arms gently follow and rub against the rest of me. I let my weight down into one foot at a time, seeing if I could connect with the center of the earth. During all of this, I was also thinking about feeling left out at work, and how to approach some of my tasks. These kinds of thought processes continued into Staccato, though I could see the pattern my mind was insisting on. In Chaos, I was more energetic, but still felt lackluster in terms of engagement. Lyrical found me briefly disengaged from persistent thinking, but still uninspired. I disconnected from the session as we moved into Stillness, and made a video for the students I teach.
The video was about how our habitual fear stories can build up and cause us to feel overwhelmed, and how it is important that we learn to cut through our thoughts by coming back to the present when we start to make a case against ourselves.
In the evening, I avoided the temptation to drink wine to have a break from the difficult feelings I was experiencing. Instead, I wrote, then meditated at length, wrapped in a blanket in a dark room, lit only by one candle from my altar. I watched related thoughts arise and fall away, still making a case against myself, still feeling shut down, but gaining a little distance, and was able to sleep peacefully.
Today, things felt a little easier.
Again, I was drawn into exchanges with the same whatsapp group, but I didn’t feel disliked or disincluded. In fact, I found the people who contributed very supportive and receptive. I shared that I had been tempted to quit the group, but decided to ride it out. In the past, I’ve been inclined to shut down quickly in group relationships, but this time I wanted to try something different. I’m curious to see where it will lead, and excited about another strong community to learn from and grow with.
My biggest block in practice yesterday was in Staccato, but today I felt more connected as I joined a group of close friends on a zoom dance.
The livestream class was very clear and direct, with the teacher naming each form of each rhythm as it arose. In Flowing, I spent some time creating a perfect white circle around my home dance floor, and casting a circle spell. Then, I lost myself in weighted spins, following my intuition even if it didn’t look like typical flowing movements. The teacher offered a challenge that engaged me and I reflected that good teaching is a process of refining attention by offering hooks and challenges for students to engage with, and eventually supporting them to create refinements and challenges for themselves.
In Staccato, I found edges and definition, sinking low in a howling yoga-goddess-pose again and again. In Chaos, spin was my thread, and I followed coiling, moving like a matrix, and flapping my head wildly as the expression of the spine in perpetual motion. In Lyrical I noticed that different dancers were highlighted on the zoom screen, and I moved in partnership with that specific dancer, assuming they, too, were seeing me. In Stillness I moved into vast space, noting the movements of clouds, the many birds I could see from the window, and wondering about arcane languages.
After Stillness drew to a close, we came together in conversation. My newly-created zoom pattern is that I bail as soon as the music stops. Often Simon is drawing me, but it might also be that I’m uncomfortable in this kind of group friendship. Today I enjoyed the conversation, contributing and listening patiently.
Why might it be helpful to interrupt our persistent habits? In general, defaulting to our rehearsed patterns (and the mind-stories that support how we currently see ourselves) functions to keep up trapped in our small sense of self, and our painful, futile efforts to sustain our fragile ego. At this time, our patterns are rocked, and we have the choice to either dig in and insist on them, or to see them in the clear light of day and change our way of relating to them.
If there is any value to be gathered from this time–though any consideration of value in the face of such devastation is surely an expression of privilege–it is that it is an opportunity to confront and interrupt our habits, certainly on an individual level, and I hope, I pray, I intend, on a societal level, that we may establish new habits, new ways to share resources, and new ways to value our myriad contributions.
April 16, 2020, Broad Brook, Connecticut
by meghanleborious | Apr 6, 2020 | Notes on Practice
I’m listening to a livestream piano concert now given by a teen named Donny, who is the nephew of a friend. She shared that he has blastoma and autism, and just lost his mother. As I join the stream, Donny opens with three of my lounge-singer-grandmother’s favorite songs: Smoke Gets in Your Eyes, Misty, and Unforgettable.
***
I’ve been crying intermittently all day.
After 14 days of strict quarantine, my ten-year-old son, Simon, and I were able to join the household of my parents, in their house in Northern Connecticut yesterday.
***
Now Donny is playing Somewhere Over the Rainbow. He’s not reading any sheet music, and he’s really good and really into it. He mentions playing something “just like mom used to play it” and a male voice off the screen says, “You played that song at her service.”
***
Yesterday, Simon was very excited, got up super early, and raced to my parents’ room to climb into their bed and hug them. We had planned a whole coming out party, with dance and singing.
But this morning, Simon and I struggled. He seemed resistant to everything and uncooperative. He didn’t want to sing, dance, or help his Nana make a giant chalk drawing in the street to express thanks to health care workers.
Simon’s father, who was officially my partner for eight years, and has been my not-husband and close friend for another ten, decided to stay in Brooklyn, rather than come to stay at an apartment nearby we were able to arrange for him.
***
Every time Donny finishes a song, the off-camera person (his father?) claps enthusiastically.
***
I took a break from parent-child volatility to dance the Sunday Sweat Your Prayers 5Rhythms dance class at 11AM, happy to connect with community. Before joining, I took an emotional call from a family member I’ve been worried about.
I started late because of the call and caught only the tail end of the rhythm of Flowing. Today I cried hard as soon as I started to move, especially during a song with lyrics about loss. Lately, I’ve been recording myself when dancing for my own interest; and on the video my feet seemed a little hesitant in this beginning part. In Staccato, I had no trouble finding expression and inspiration, but with so much yoga and dance lately, my knees are a little tender, and it’s like I was trying to avoid stomping, a tiny bit aversive. In Chaos, I moved quickly, coiling and shaking. In Lyrical, my hands seemed to take over, but my arms didn’t seem to be fully extending. Overall, I was kind of flat today, compared to my usual athleticism.
Near the end of the Sweat Your Prayers class, Simon’s came in and said, “Mom! Get. Me. Socks!” Another period of challenging exchanges was set off.
While I was dancing, my Mom created a giant chalk drawing across the street that says, “Thank you, helpers!” She tried to engage Simon, but he was resistant. Challenging because the reason she designed the project was specifically to engage Simon. A motorcyclist went out of his way to avoid damaging her cheerful drawing. Another passing driver beeped and waved, smiling.
Everyone in the house seemed to be having a hard time.
Now? When we’re faced with so much danger, so much uncertainty? How can we be anything but overjoyed to be together? Unceasingly loving and kind? I know connecting with the people we love is the top priority now, and felt dismayed that it wasn’t going well.
Eventually this wave of unrest managed to work its way through, and we agreed to sing a few karaoke songs together.
Singing is very emotional for me. My Dad loves to sing, and we’ve been singing together like this for my entire adult life. It’s easier for me to sing with him because I can follow him. On my own, it’s much harder to carry the tune. When we sing, I feel the mixed happiness of being together in joy, and pain of knowing how much this will hurt if there is a time I don’t have him any more. Also, my Dad is the most tender-hearted person I know, and it comes through in his singing voice.
All four of us were smiling and dancing. Simon, though still young, is a trained musician with a strong, clear voice, and belts out a few of his favorite songs. I put on a hot pink tutu that I found near the karaoke studio in the basement. I was having a little trouble because sadness kept bubbling up; and it’s hard to control your voice when your heart wells up into your throat, but still sang with feeling. My Mom alternated between singing and dancing–at one point waltzing with Simon–and she took a video of Simon, my Dad, and me singing a melodramatic 80’s song.
My Dad had a heart attack two years ago, and was recently diagnosed with diabetes. My Mom and my Dad will both turn 70 this year. As we sing, I think again and again of how precious these moments are, and how grateful I am to have them.
***
Now my mom is sitting with me, watching and listening as Donny plays Ave Maria.
***
In Stillness of the 5Rhythms wave in the Sweat Your prayers class, I sink deeper inside myself, imaging that I’m channeling light, and sending it out one hand, around the entire world where it pours out white fire, then back into the other hand after a trip around the world. Soon, I imagine the entire world engulfed in purifying flame, flickering with spirit fire.
***
Donny ends with Danny Boy, a song my both my grandmother and my great grandmother loved, and we are in tears, sobbing along to the lyrics.
At the end of the concert, Donny walks toward the camera and takes a formal bow, then signs off.
***
I didn’t want surprises tomorrow morning right before I have to work, so I checked my work email right before posting this. I learned that another student I’m close with has lost a family member.
My heart breaks. So many people are suffering now, most especially those who are vulnerable because of poverty.
For now, there is nothing to do but practice, and pray, and try our best to love the people who are close to us as skillfully as we are able.
April 5, 2020, Broad Brook, CT
by meghanleborious | Apr 1, 2020 | Notes on Practice
Things I wrote even two or three days ago seem so dated now. The pandemic is intensifying in this region.
I’m in the eleventh day of a 14-day quarantine in an apartment attached to my parents’ house, along with my ten-year-old son, Simon. We are in quarantine because we just came from Brooklyn, NYC, the epicenter of the United States coronavirus plague, and I’m afraid to expose my parents.
Fear, sadness, and anxiety come in waves.
My work is to teach meditation to teens in a Brooklyn High School, and in a matter of days, like many other teachers, I had to make the pivot to online teaching. I’ve been working tirelessly to engage my students, but at this point less than half are actively participating in the online class. So I sent an email to their parents to let them know their students’ status. One parent responded that she is working 12 hour shifts and it is hard to keep up with her child’s assignments.
I realized how insensitive my email was, given the circumstances.
Some of the parents of my students are low wage health care workers. Many are working long shifts caring for people infected with coronavirus, seeing up close how horrific the disease can be. They are risking their lives, day after day after day. Some are doing it because of altruism and a deep calling to serve. Some are doing it because they absolutely have to work, and do not have the resources to take any time off. Many are single parents.
This is a slap in the face about the real impact of bias in our society, and one of the infinite ways coronavirus is disproportionately impacting communities of color. I thought about the privilege of being able to withdraw from NYC, and the fact that there are many people who don’t have the same option.
And I’m seriously bugging parents about their kids doing their classwork. Really?
Some of my students have a parent or grandparent who already has the virus.
There is now an emergency tent hospital in the middle of central park. A US Navy hospital ship arrived Monday to help exhausted health care workers as they toil, often lacking even basic protective supplies.
In answer to a writing prompt, “What is one thing you wonder?” One student wrote, “I wonder if it’s even safe to go outside and get a breath of fresh air.”
Every day, I start with a period of meditation, before the sun is even up. I transported my entire altar box and all of its contents to our new location, and re-created the exact altar that I had in Brooklyn right before we left. I also brought many of my cherished books, and arranged them beautifully near the altar.
Lately, my morning meditation feels more like prayer than meditation, as I focus energy and attention on wishing health and safety for everyone I love and for all beings, mixed with other meditation practices and contemplations.
I have to clock in to work at 8:15 but most days I start long before, after taking a shower, trying my best to get Simon oriented to his schoolwork, and having breakfast.
I make sure we get outside at lunchtime, and again after my workday ends at 2:50. We play on the swing in the yard and laugh. Sometimes I can even convince Simon to play soccer or take a bike ride with me.
Yesterday, I heard my mom crying through the wall, and learned that the son of one of her friends is in hospice.
Today, she told me that my cherished great aunt is not doing well, either. Her 100th birthday is this spring, but since she has been isolated and has no visitors, and therefore nothing to anchor her to this world, she has been dissolving into spirit. She lives next door to my parents’ house, in the same house that she and my paternal grandfather grew up in with their parents, my great grandparents.
I wanted to run next door to support her in her transition. I rushed out in the direction of the house, without even a coat, and just stood there, crossing my arms to hold my sides, knowing that I couldn’t go in. That I wouldn’t have a chance even to say good-bye.
I was crying, of course. And Simon wanted to know why I was crying. I told him and he started crying, too. We went for a walk, talking about what happens after you die and sharing jokes. I brought up Gabrielle Roth, the mother of the 5Rhythms practice, and told him I didn’t think dying was so bad for her. He said, “Yeah, but she was this crazy witch dancer…” I didn’t respond but had to smile, at least for a moment.
I don’t know what I would do if it weren’t for practice. Most days I do yoga, which helps me to feel grounded and flexible.
I also dance the 5Rhythms for at least one wave a day. And I’ve been recording myself, which is a new habit. I can’t even keep the videos because they take up too much space, but it is interesting to watch myself when I play it back in the evening.
Today, Flowing did not come easily. It was hard to settle down, and I noticed that I wanted to move into Staccato quickly. Maybe there was just too much to let in today.
I can hear Simon talking with his friends on video chat throughout the video as I play it back…One source of private guilt is that pretty much all of the time that I’m in formal practice, he’s on a screen chatting with friends or playing Roblox with them. He blows through his schoolwork in under two hours most days.
At the start of the video, I squat in front of the altar and dedicate my practice to my ailing great aunt, Mae Grigely, and acknowledge the power of practicing for someone else.
Staccato never fully ignites today, either.
In Chaos I come alive though, with speed, resistance, release, and wild surrender, spinning and letting momentum fling me to all kinds of edges. The gap when the beat drops out seems to be when I get the most creative.
The Chaos Lyrical song I chose is 165 beats per minute, and I twitter wildly, racing to express the layered, exploding sounds. I pause briefly and leave the room to address one of Simon’s questions, then resume this ultra fast dance, responding more and more to the melody and less to the wild rhythm and rising upward as the track evolves.
In the second Lyrical track I am transported, moving with soaring undulations, the afternoon sun in one vertical rectangle catching different parts of my body as I move.
In Lyrical Stillness I cry throughout the track, singing part of the lyric in jagged gasps. I cry again watching myself. I look so alive and so sad. My heart was broken in this part, is broken.
“Ewwwwww!” Simon screams from the other room, for some unknown reason.
I whisper-sob through the last song, sensing my grandfather, who once lived in the very room that I am dancing in. He loved the ocean, and would make the Christian sign of the cross as he waded into the sea. He would fold his hands behind his head, cross his ankles, and float on the bobbing waves for long periods with his face to the clouds. He was a man of few words, but I always thought this was a kind of prayer for him.
I end in a squat in front of the altar, as I had started, dedicating the merit of my practice to my aunt and to all beings everywhere.
Today, this period seems more like a time of survival than of possibility. One of my meditation teachers led an online practice and talk tonight, and he reminded us to do what we can to stay connected to our humanity. My practices encourage me to open to the reality I’m immersed in, knowing that every moment is a chance to deepen in my ability to be present, even when it is uncomfortable, stressful, painful, or sheer agony.
In the words of Pema Chӧdrӧn in Living Beautifully with Uncertainty and Change, “If you can stay present in even the most challenging circumstances, the intensity of the situation will transform you. When you can see even the worst of hells as a place where you can awaken, your world will change dramatically.”
May it be so. Blessed be.
March 31, 2020, Broad Brook, CT
(Photo1: military.com, photo2: News7)
by meghanleborious | Mar 31, 2020 | Notes on Practice
“Mommy, why do you cry so much?”
That’s the quote I remember most from this week.
I was trying so hard to step up for my students. I kept spending hours creating materials and assignments, then realizing I had done everything wrong and having to start over. I spent almost an entire day trying to figure out how to use google hangouts. I also created usernames and passwords for countless websites, trying to learn everything at once.
I felt an enormous amount of work pressure, and have been asking myself hard questions about if it’s being put on me, or if it’s pressure I’m actually putting on myself.
At the same time, I’m managing Simon’s learning, cringing with the fear that he will lose half a year of learning, and cringing more at all the video games he has been logging hours on, as a way to connect with his friends. And feeling the pain and sadness and grief of so much societal loss, and fearing personal loss, too.
Today is day 8 of 14 days of quarantine. It’s Saturday, and I slept until 9, instead of waking up at 6:15, as on weekdays. After breakfast, I did yoga practice for nearly two hours while Simon chatted online and played video games with friends.
Simon and I tried to do the online zoom version of the NYC Sweat Your Prayers 5Rhythms class, but by the time we logged on the class was already wrapping up. Instead, I put on a wave I’d played a few days before. Simon was half-hearted at first, feeling pulled by his video games and friend chats, but we started a dancing game of throwing a shirt at each other and trying to dodge it, and he managed to stay engaged throughout the wave.
Living 24-7 in quarantine in the apartment attached to my parents’ house that was created for my grandparents has been tender. I have always had hesitant excursions to this place, sitting to talk at length with my grandmother when she was frail and with limited mobility, crossing through to retrieve something from the refrigerator when the main house was full and we were cooking for a holiday. Most of life seemed to happen next door, at my parents’ though.
Now, as we are in quarantine, I have a whole new perspective. It is a beautifully designed four-room apartment that is easy to keep clean, and I am grateful for how it has held us. I feel close to my grandmother, my grandfather, and also to my brother, who lived here for a period. And though it hasn’t always been easy, I’ve been grateful for the time with my son, who will enter the teen years soon.
In terms of dream analysis, previously unused rooms now put to use represent finding new layers of consciousness, and new layers of potential.
The world is shifting.
We are in a parenthesis.
It is a period of chaos, fear, and reckoning. As painful as it is, especially for those grieving personal losses, it is also a time of great possibility. A time when we can remember what really matters, when we can collaborate on a new vision, one in which the earth is revered as sacred, where presence is valued above achievement, and where we can prioritize love and community as our greatest wealth.
March 28, Broad Brook, Connecticut
(Photo: dataisbeautiful on reddit)
