Yoga with Gin

So a couple weeks ago I had an obligation that kept me away from home most of the weekend. As some of you know, I have a puppy and a kitten, and while I have a busy life and I do lots of things, I try not to leave them home along too long. I take my dog with me lots of places, but I try to give the cat enough time with all of us home too. I think about them both always and try to do as best as I can by them. 

So, a couple weeks ago, I was gone all day Saturday and all day Sunday, longer than I normally am gone for work or other normal obligations. All day long on Saturday I was worried about my dog. The cat, of course, can use his litter box and is pretty happy most of the time, cruising in the house, but the dog has to be walked and exercised more and certainly has to hold it until I get home. 

So all day long I was worried about the dog. I got home Saturday evening and the dog was asleep, sprawled out on his back and just gave me this look like “um, Hi Mom, I was napping, why are you interrupting me?” No worries at all on his end.

The cat, on the other hand, had to tell me all about it. As soon as I unlocked the front door (he stays in his own room when I’m not home so they don’t harass each other), I could hear him “meow? Meow?! MEOW?!” He had to tell me all about it. “Where were you, Mom? Why were you gone so long? You left us here and I thought we were going to starve and oh my goodness, nobody has petted me in hours....MEOW MEOW MEOW!!!” And on and on and on. He let me have it for a long time. The dog, on the other hand, once he finally got up, just wanted a snuggle and then thought, maybe going out would be ok, but he wasn’t too concerned.

It was funny to witness, and just reminded me the fundamental difference between dogs and cats (at least when they are trained well and well adjusted...not talking about dogs with separation anxiety, etc...that’s a different story, of course). The true nature of a dog, is to rely on man, to look to man to tell him what to do. As long as man is generally responsive and taking good care of him, dogs relax into the knowing that they will be cared for. Cats, on the other hand, while domesticated, certainly have a different outlook on life. They are still hunters. They still want to figure things out for themselves mostly. It was funny to see how these two outlooks on life resulted in much different feelings for my two fluffy creatures a couple weekends ago.

We have a custom here in Hawaii that when you come to someone’s home or space, you remove your shoes. It is such a nice custom, and on the surface, just a simple thing that I imagine many people don’t give much thought to. Maybe we think “oh, we don’t want to track dirt into their home”, but I believe there is much more to it than that. As is the tendency in the yogic mind, many simple things on the physical plane become metaphors for larger ideas on the emotional and spiritual plane. 

One of my teachers brought up this custom last week when he was talking about coming to class to learn “with an empty cup”. We remove our shoes and enter into someone’s home or space literally without any of the dirt that we walked through that day coming with us. We also too should enter in without any of the mental, emotional and spiritual dirt we might be tracking with us coming in as well. As my teacher said, we should come in with an empty cup, especially when coming in to learn, so that we can fill it up. 

There are moments in life, a few, maybe more, if you are lucky, where you get this overwhelming feeling of being in the right place at the right time with the right people doing the right thing.

Such a feeling of contentment, happiness too, but really this deep contentment. There have been a few other times I can think of that come to mind easily, the one that stands out the most being the first day of my first yoga teacher training.

Tuesday night, I started lomi class. If you’ve ever heard that word, I imagine you probably have heard of or had a lomilomi massage, a traditional Hawaiian muscle massage with oil. Really though, lomi is so much more than that. It is called a “Hawaiian holistic approach to quick healing, which include massage, stretching, adjustments, energy work and counseling among other aspects. It is just like yoga in the west, where we often associate yoga with asana only, when really asana, physical postures, are just a part of the whole system of yoga, maybe a quarter or even a 10th or less maybe depending on how you practice. Same with the oil massage of lomi lomi, it is just this one piece of a holistic practice that views the person as a whole being of body, mind and spirit and recognizes our connection to the whole as well. Really, for lack of a better way to think about it, for me anyway, it is more yoga, more practice, more of the same, discussed and thought about in new ways and old ways and the same ways, just with different words.

I am so excited to explore this practice and to deepen my connection to the place I call home now, Hawaii. This will be a journey. The classes are every week for about a year or so, but more than that, they are, without a doubt, not only for learning techniques of massage and stretching and adjustment, but for learning about ourselves, our community and our connection to the world. I can always use more of that.

I have been thinking a lot lately about connections. Connections with people are often easiest for us to see and think about, but really, and I love yoga for showing us this through connecting to ourselves first, even before connecting to others, we are connected to everything in the universe. Everything.

I posted a link to a video on Facebook a few days ago, but I wanted to link to it here again too. There’s a little girl, named Iris, who has autism. She has a therapy cat, and the cat goes everywhere with her and does everything with her, even swims with her. Their connection is so amazing. Tula, the cat, even got Iris to start talking. You can check them out here:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-3491674/Autistic-six-year-old-paints-cycles-SWIMS-tabby-feline-helped-voice.html

I have worked at Therapeutic Horsemanship of Hawaii for about 8 years now. We teaching horseback riding and horsemanship skills (caring for the horse, learning about horses, learning how to groom and tack up, etc) to students with both physical and mental disabilities, and “normal” kids and adults too. It has and continues to be such a magical experience. Over the years, I have had many students with autism, and in fact, they are often my favorite kids to work with (maybe I shouldn’t have favorites, but oh well!). Just like Iris and Tula, the connection between some of my students and the horses is so profound. I have had horses that will misbehave for regular kids who they know are not paying attention and then 10 minutes later do everything in their power to do everything right for a child who truly needs their help. It is so beautiful. I have had a few students with autism even say some of their first words riding a horse in my class. I cannot even begin to tell you how amazing that is. I don’t even have to say how amazing it is to see a student who couldn’t hardly talk, who acted out and constantly got upset to learn, over the years to speak well and ride their horse fully independently. Magic happens all the time. We are all connected. I love seeing those connections first hand there. 

If you are on Oahu and you are at all interested in checking out our program, we take volunteers to help us out everyday of the week (I’m just there on Sundays though). You can check out our website:

http://www.thhwaimanalo.org

Love, hugs, aloha and namaste,

Today is International Women’s Day. I sat in a Women’s circle on Sunday with a group of amazing and powerful women. We discussed many things, but focused on compassion, and the conversation quickly went to understanding the need for compassion for self. Compassion for others and compassion for self are intricately linked. Finding and practicing one can help you find and practice the other.

The discussion of compassion for self though got interesting when we got deep into the fact that you can have compassion while still feeling both “good” and “bad” emotions. You can be angry at someone, but still find compassion. Often times we feel we have to put away or suppress the intense emotions, but I do not believe that to be true. Our emotions are our guidance system. They tell us what we want in our lives and tell us what works for us and what doesn’t.

While it is easy to be grateful for things that bring us joy, it is more difficult, of course, to see the importance and find gratitude for that which brings us pain or sadness or anger. But those things are important too. As one of my teachers likes to say “contrast brings clarity. When we know what we don’t want, we get really clear on what we do want.” Going back to the idea of compassion for self, it is important too to recognize that it is ok that we get mad, it is ok that we get sad, for those things help us to navigate our life.

Leaving El Salvador, I was definitely sad, but in a way, happy to recognize that feeling. That feeling was showing me that I clearly need more of what I found there in my life, more teaching yoga and more people like the people I met there. I didn’t do anything with the sadness, I just let it be, and that’s a huge part of yoga. When we recognize that emotions are just emotions we don’t have to go down the paths they invite us down, but twe can just appreciate them for what they are, signs that tell us where we want to go, what we need to get clear on in our lives.

There was a moment in circle where Elisa, who was leading the circle, was talking about this, and expressing that we need to express all the emotions, both the “good” and the “bad, and she took some sticks and dirt and threw it onto this little alter we had made with pretty figures and stones and feathers and offerings and she declared that needed to be there too. It was such a genuine moment, and one I won’t soon forget.

Women, especially, have been told for so long to put our emotions down, to only say positive things, to hold our tongues, but let’s change that here today on Women’s Day, but every day too. Embrace every emotion. See where that takes you.

*Full disclaimer: you can think of this little story I’m about to share as being about actual beings, or you can think of it being a metaphor about energies in the world. You can imagine it as God creating us and our reality or you can imagine it as physics and science, the Big Bang and everything that has come after. All ways of thinking are valid, but for now and for fun, a story...*

They say in the begining, Shiva existed as pure love, as potential energy, but that in wanting to see his own awesomeness, he created Shakti, his consort, his partner, to reflect himself back to him. As one of my teacher’s likes to say “you can think of Shiva as the sun and Shakit as sunlight” or “Shiva is Love and Shakti is Life and Life is Love in action.” Really, Shiva and Shakti are two inseparable parts of the same thing. All is Divine. Everything is a reflection of Source energy. We are all mirrors.

I love this story and what it means to us. I have been so captivated by the human connections that I made on my trip. Since I have returned, I have not been able to quit thinking about them. I am missing the people I met there really strongly. I met some truly magical people, and got to spend time with some truly magical beings that I already knew as well. I felt like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. I had a Toto, a Tinman, the Cowardly Lion and of course, my Scarecrow. Glinda the Good Witch was there, but I had known her before, same with the Wizard him(her)self. There were countless other citizens of Oz, previously unknown, known to me now, sharing their amazing gifts with the world. True positive co-creation of this reality was occurring and it was so powerful to rest inside that there. I could see my true nature being reflected back to me in the witnessing of the true nature of so many beautiful souls.

I have been contemplating the idea of “sacred relationship” lately. It is something that I hope to drawn into my life. There is much talk on the subject recently, and it is certainly something you can look up and learn more about. The idea, simplified, of course, is that through a partner, through full honest relating to another being completely, including not shying away from the tough parts of relationship, one can journey towards the knowing of their true nature. That relationship can be a path to enlightenment, a path to Samadhi, a path to bliss. There are so many paths we can take, but I think this is an interesting one. I’ve thought about this a lot in drawing in a partner, but since my trip, I have been thinking about it in relating in other ways as well. I think we can find sacred relationship in many levels of relating, in friendships, in families. When we find those friends who love us for being us, who let us be ourselves no matter what, but who also call us out when we aren’t being our best. Those are sacred relationships and they should be tresured. They help us to grow and the remember who we truly are.

There was a time in my life when I was completely disenchanted with the human race. I believed that humans were what was wrong with this whole world. I realized years ago though, that humans are not going away, and that in fact, while they may be the source of much of the problem, they are actually the solution as well. We must embrace each other and work together to co-create the reality we want.

I am grateful for all of you, and grateful that you are all mirrors in which I can try to see my true self. I hope I am the same to you as well.

If you are on Oahu, I hope to see you in class this week and of course, we might discuss this juicy stuff. If you are not here, I hope you enjoy thining about these concepts. Please feel free to share your thoughts and comments. If anyone wants to talk more, I’m available for private yoga and even Skype or Facetime yoga from afar. ;)

Aloha and Namaste!