Taking a Seat

"Taking a seat" below Never Laughs Mountain on the southeast side of Glacier National Park...a place and a practice that brings me to my Heart.

 

I just finished a lovely yoga practice entitled "Take Your Seat" with an incredible teacher, Noah Maze; and I also took a class last night with a focus on coming into your Heart with a teacher who has quickly made her way into my heart, Elena Brower. These two classes touched something in me, as they so often do. YogaGlo has been an important part of my life lately because it has kept me connected to very skilled yoga instructors in a time when I have had difficulty attending regular yoga classes. Of course, in-person yoga classes and workshops have been what have transformed my practice the most. Nothing can replace having a teacher in a room with you, especially when you're a beginner--but YogaGlo has offered me a way to stay connected to the teachings, and I am incredibly grateful for that. I'm not here to advertise for YogaGlo, but I will speak to the importance of steady practice; whether that means sitting by the river for fifteen minutes every day or doing yoga for some amount of time regularly. Steady practice is ultimately what allows you to remain in your Heart through whatever comes up and does its best to distract you.

As I begin to think about Monday and the week ahead of me, I start to feel uprooted. Today I became totally unnecessarily verbally aggressive with Ryan a couple of times for (now that I think of it) nothing at all except for anxiety about the 10,000 things to come. This is what happens when I move from my seat, in my Heart, to the periphery, in my mind. I've notice within my body lately how physical that uprooting is. I become harder--I tense the muscles in my face and in my core, my shoulders rise up, and my breathing becomes faster and more shallow. When I am able to take a seat in my Heart, I settle back, I become more expansive, my face relaxes, and I am softer, physically, mentally, and spiritually. I know a lot of people who may scoff at the idea of being able to "be" in one's heart, seeing it only as a physical thing--a muscle and organ that pumps blood. But, like so many other spiritual things, words sometimes have to fill a really tall order. The Heart is something much greater, and if you've felt it, you know what I mean (give it the word Heart or not, it doesn't really matter--but I will say that in the teachings of yoga and in my own experience, it does reside approximately where the physical heart resides). The Heart I'm speaking of is the expansive feeling you get when you are taking in a beautiful sight, listening to children playing or a powerful song, or getting to take part in making someone else's life more joyful for a time. It's something I think everyone has experienced, whether they have a name for it or not. The difficult part is staying there.

Most of us have this habit--of residing in our mind a whole lot more than our Heart--and I think the way modern life has a lot to do with that. There are a lot of distractions (technology, media), a lot of pressures (Americans work more hours than any other developed nation, and for many of us, it's just to get by), and not a lot of encouragement in modern American culture to connect to what is Real. I would say this tendency is very closely connected to the tendency Americans have to change our place of residence a lot (the average American moves 11.7 times in a lifetime!). The idea of being rooted in a place is quickly being replaced by the desire to bounce around until we find "happiness"--or perhaps more often, wealth. And the funny thing is, in my experience it's being rooted in a place that allows me to really take a seat in my Heart. I'm not saying you can't move around and be in your Heart at the same time. In fact, in the yoga class I just took with Noah Maze, he spoke of the importance of your asana, or your body, or your Heart, being your Home; that Home should be portable and accessible wherever you are, like the home of a turtle that moves with them on their back. But, as someone who believes strongly in the importance of Place, I think we shouldn't underestimate the power of staying. Most people aren't equipped to move around constantly and stay plugged in to the Source. Hell, most people aren't equipped to stay in one place and stay plugged in to the Source. I am one of the "most" that I speak of!

But, let's just say that we stopped moving around all the time--physically, we found a home and got to know it deeply, and raised our children there, and invested our energy there instead of moving as soon as we felt discontent--and spiritually, we stuck to our teachings (non-dogmatically, of course) and let them grow and develop with time instead of switching to the next belief system when it got uncomfortable. Would we then be more able to reside in our Hearts? Can you imagine a world where we were all connected to the Source, all the time? There would be so much more laughter, kindness, and beauty! What a thought! I'm not saying if everyone lived in one place for their whole life we would know world peace. I definitely know many people who move around the country and the world (in fact, many very amazing yoga teachers), and stay tapped in a whole lot more than some people I know who have never moved an inch from their home. But, I do think there's something to say about staying; about rooting yourself physically so that you can truly take a seat in your Heart. For some, that may mean having a steady practice that roots you to the Source (meditation, church, asana, , etc.). But for those who have not had the great blessing of having a teacher or a practice that brings you Home, maybe that means rooting yourself physically to the Earth and becoming a part of one Place that you can forever call Home. It's a thought.