Cirque du Malaise

I have a cardiac arrhythmia. It’s a genetic thing and, according to my doctor, I shouldn’t be terrified. It’s simply a “disturbance in rhythm” that makes my heart STOP.  And then catchupreallyfast… about a hundred times a day. It feels like a hummingbird caught in my chest, but if I take a deep breath, it goes away. It doesn’t happen when I’m stressed, or when I’ve had too much coffee, or if I overexert myself. In fact, I usually notice it when I am totally calm. Like, lying in bed reading. Or watching the latest episode of Wilfred.

It has something to do with electric signals in the body. I don’t know. But this arrhythmia makes me anxious. (Everything makes me anxious, so this is not surprising.)

I’ve always particularly hated the awareness of my own heartbeat. Listening to my own pulse makes me queasy. I can’t yog because it makes my heart pound, and I hate that. As far as my heartbeat is concerned, no news is good news. So, this is a particularly nerve-wracking disorder I have.

The other day I had a session with my shamanic healer, Cynthia Mellon. She gave me a somatic practice: to take a moment every day — at least a few times — to connect with my heart. Like, put my hand on it, breathe, and feel it.

She had no idea how challenging and also poignant of an exercise this would be for me. I’ve never told her about my arrhythmia or my phobia of my own heartbeat.

But she knows how twitchy I get when I am out of my rhythm in LIFE. So, in a weird way, it all ties together.

ARTIST: Vanessa Fiola

I recently I went up to Spirit Rock Retreat Center for a daylong mindfulness workshop called “Wisdom 2.0.”

It was hosted by Soren Gordhamer, founder of the annual conference of the same name, and Will Kabat-Zinn, son of Jon “Wherever You Go, There You Are” Kabat-Zinn. I was excited about this daylong because technology and spirituality are two major interests of mine, and the possibilities for discussion seemed endless.

At places like Spirit Rock and events like mindfulness daylongs, it goes without saying that electronic devices are generally frowned upon. There is ubiquitous pressure to be device-free at “spiritual” events. If you even glance at your iPhone during such a thing, people will judge you as an under-present douchebag. It’s a faux pas punishable by social annihilation to bring a cell phone into a yoga studio. We’ve all hated on that one person who dared to bring her Crackberry into class with her and lay it on her mat while practicing her day’s yoga. She could be a doctor on call for brain surgery for all we know, but in yoga, all that matters is the sanctity of the $20 yoga moment, right? Hmm.

Read the rest on Elephant Journal...

If you're not bored to tears with listening to me wax on about how over yoga I am, I published a new article today on the site Lexi Yoga.

Lexi is a yogi in Canada who hosts a web site where people can talk about how much they love yoga and how drastically it has changed their lives for the better. You might wonder why she asked me to write an article. I feel like maybe she hasn't actually ever read anything I've written. Nevertheless, it was awfully nice of her to ask, and as luck would have it, I did have a positive yoga experience a few weeks ago! Swear to Jesus!

Read on...

I once had a teacher tell me that my extreme neurotic tendencies were due to my incredible imagination. I have long held on to this extremely optimistic interpretation.

Lately I’ve been relying on my imagination to keep my spirits up when things get tough. For instance, when I was feeling panicky about entering into my first ever silent retreat a few weeks ago, I decided to pretend instead that it was the 1800s and I had TB and had to go to a sanitorium for some life-saving R&R. This tragic make-believe story cheered me up immensely and made me feel like a heroine in an Emily Bronte novel.

While I was in the retreat (which actually did feel kind of like a recuperative mission for my mind and body) I variously entertained myself by pretending I was at fat camp (due to the delicious but extremely low-cal meals), an asylum (also not that far off base), and prison camp (that was just for added dramatic flair).

Now that I’m back in action and spending a lot of time onsite on the 22nd floor of an office building downtown—one that I’m positive was built before the invention of the concept of earthquake-proofing—I truly rely on my imagination to keep my spirits up. Today, when I found myself shivering under a green knit shawl while eating spoonfuls of cold, congealed steel-cut oatmeal and being bathed by fluorescent light, I decided to pretend that I was a poor Irish peasant during the potato blight and that the oatmeal was my one and only meal of the day. That thought gave me such comfort. There’s nothing like some good old fashioned romanticized drear to lift flagging spirits.

My imagination has a life of its own. When I’m not paying attention, it can swiftly hijack my thoughts, not to mention the destructive power it has over my meditation practice. I know it’s just trying to help—bless it’s heart—but sometimes I have to gently remind it that it’s not invited to sit down with me on the zafu.

My creative mind is particularly insidious when I’m asleep. I have fucked up dreams. Luckily, during this last silent retreat, I was reminded once again that I am not my mind. So when I wake up from a nightmare, I can more easily shake it off and be like, good one, mind, but I know you don’t control me.

My cats do.

When I was growing up, my single mom was fond of the riveting car game “let’s see who can be quiet the longest.” My brother and I were very competitive about this game, but because I was older and therefore had more patience, I usually won. That early training—along with a childhood spent playing invisible at my dad’s weekend 70s parties and burying myself in books most of the time—gave me an advantage when I recently attended my first weeklong silent retreat at Spirit Rock.

Unfortunately, it turns out that a mindfulness meditation retreat is not a quiet contest. Nor is it a place for competition—even with oneself. On some level, I already knew these things going in. I’ve dabbled with vipassana long enough (and spent enough years in the yoga world) to have had most of the competitiveness conditioned out of me. Truth is, I was never very competitive to begin with (except at spelling bees and Scrabble).

Read on at Elephant Journal...

My new animal totem, the almighty sloth

Way back in February, after my first night of my dharma course at Spirit Rock, I wrote a post about the five hindrances to meditation and how Sloth & Torpor are my particular nemeses. That, sadly, has not changed. Sloth & Torpor (and just plain ugly laziness) continue to hijack my sitting practice on a constant basis.

I can be running around like a crazy anxious freak all day, and the moment I sit in the meditation position, I basically fall over. I know what you're thinking—that I run myself too ragged and of course I fall asleep when I calm down. But no, that's not it. Even on the most absurdly indulgent amount of sleep, an adequate but not gratuitous amount of caffeine, and with all the stars and my monthly hormones aligned, it still happens. It happens regardless of time of day, day of week, circumstance, or situation. I try to meditate; I fall asleep.

It's gotten to the point where the mere suggestion of meditation makes me sleepy. This last week as I was making the long, serene drive up to Woodacre for my evening class, I was heavy lidded at the wheel. I'm pretty sure I was actually asleep for some parts of that drive.

Of course, the moment I leave class and get back in my car, I am wide the freak awake.

I have asked a few of my meditation teachers what they make of it. This is what Frank Berliner had to say: "You're probably hiding from something."

Awesome, now my own mind is hiding something from me? That's just terrific. I feel like I'm going to end up on Oprah one of these days, telling the whole world that I suddenly remembered some horrible event from my childhood that my subconscious has been suppressing all these years, and suing my parents to within an inch of their life.

Mark Coleman calls this aversion "the pleasant coma." And that's the problem. It actually is quite pleasant. It's the same thing that happens to me when I get acupuncture or a massage. Utter and instant slumber. I have been known to sleep through more than one power yoga class.

The problem is, I feel gypped that I don't get to experience the other hindrances. Just once, I want to spend my meditation session in a state of aversion, or craving, or doubt. Sloth & Torpor is kidnapping my mind.

Or maybe I just have a mild and lingering case of mono?

After I originally published this post, I took it offline to make some changes and have reposted a longer, revised version. Comments and critique are more than welcome. No, really.

Yoga and I had such a great relationship once. When we met, it was love at first sight. "Finally," I thought, "something that really gets me." I would have bet a million rupees that we would be together forever.

But then we started fighting, and eventually I had to break it off. It was sad, but I knew it was for the best. I moved on to mindfulness meditation. We'd been flirting for years, and once yoga and I broke up, I knew it was time to give meditation my all. For the last few months, I've been really enjoying my time with Buddhism, but still feeling a little gun-shy about jumping in with both feet again after what happened with yoga.

Nevertheless, I recently attended an all-day mindfulness meditation workshop. And guess who showed up? That's right, yoga.

During our lunch break there was an optional one-hour yoga class with a teacher I'd never heard of. "What the hell," I thought, "It's been a while, and maybe I'll actually enjoy it again." Truth is, I'd been missing yoga and wondering if I'd made a mistake. Sometimes I can waffle like that. I have a hard time letting go of loyalties once they're secured, and I've been known to take love interests back before. I should realize by now that it's always a mistake.

Sure enough, less than ten minutes in, I knew my decision had been right all along. I'm over yoga. And it's not yoga; it's me. I'm the one that's changed.

I used to love every part of yoga's quirky personality: the endless sweaty classes, the platitudes that sounded so life altering the first time I heard them, the sense of belonging to a really cool cult.

The teachers. I used to love the teachers. And if I didn't love one of them, I would give myself a little talking to about how triumphing in the face of adversity is the mantra of a warrior and how if I could cultivate the patience and insight to make it through a bad class, I would be a better person. (This sort of attitude is encouraged by yoga studio owners, who want you to feel like a bad yoga experience is your own fault for not having the right outlook. "Shift your vision," they say. They don't want you to pick favorites with their teachers. They want you to patronize all their classes equally, for obvious reasons.)

At some point in any relationship, things need to go to the next level. The next level of yoga is to develop a home practice. And if you never do that, well, it's kind of like only seeing your husband out at bars. It's like he's hanging out at the same bars he's been hanging out at for ten years, and his bar friends are getting younger and sloppier and more intolerable.

That's sort of how I feel about yoga teachers. I mean, not literally, of course. But, well, kind of.

I am getting older and wiser (about myself, at least), and they are just hanging out at the same old bars doing the same old things: telling me to "lock your knee," repeating things their teacher said in a Valley of the Dolls voice, playing intolerable Beatles songs in class.

For whatever reason, yoga and I never got to the home practice stage. I lack the discipline. And that's not yoga's fault. I was expecting yoga to keep giving me what I needed year after year, but I was refusing to give back to yoga.

So, back to that one last fatal class.

In the spirit of Buddhism, I tried to give this particular teacher my best beginner's mind attitude. I put my mat in the back, kept my eyes down, and let her assume (as she apparently did... they always do) that I had never tried yoga before and have zero body awareness.

That's the only thing that can explain why she came over to me in Padangusthasana, leaned in, and condescendingly whispered, "Straighten your legs, honey."

Obviously, I was bending my legs on purpose. I was bending my legs (and just a little bit!) because I hadn't done a shred of yoga in a month and I'm tight and it was barely noon and if I force my legs straight, it HURTS MY KNEES and really? Do you really care if my knees are a little bent? What does it matter to you, lame random yoga teacher?

I'm sure she caught the look of murderous disdain I shot her as she walked away. That's the only explanation for why she came back and did it again. Yoga teachers like to be right. And the easiest way to make yourself right is to make someone else wrong.

With barely masked contempt I muddled through the rest of the class, a billboard flashing in my head the entire time: NOTE TO SELF! DO NOT MAKE THIS MISTAKE AGAIN!

It's really over for me and yoga this time.

(I am 99% sure.)

This is what I call triple synchronicity:

1. I decided that yoga is out, and walking is in...
2. right on the cusp of starting a new creative project called Walking in this World, which is all about walking as a means of tapping into the source,
3. and then all of a sudden, in my dharma class, we're practicing walking meditation.

I got to Spirit Rock early on Wednesday, so I went on a walk up the hill. So did these other people. I'm pretty sure they were all actively involved in a retreat and doing a specific walking meditation. Ever the consummate journalist, I exploited their private moment by stealing their souls a little bit.

I really love walking. Here's my favorite Steven Wright quote:

"You can walk anywhere, if you have the time."

But I'm not yet a fan of walking meditation. The concept of walking and not thinking is an oxymoron to me. Walking is my numero uno way to clear my head. In other words, to think. I love to walk and think. I come up with some of my best ideas while walking. Walking-and-Thinking is a close, close relative to Talking Out Loud to Myself, which is another favorite "creative" tactic.

My besties and I started Walking in this World this week. It's Julia Cameron's follow-up to The Artist's Way, and it's another 12-week program wherein I'll be dating myself and talking about it ad nauseum. This particular book puts an emphasis on walking as a way to clear your head and tap into your creativity. So, I'll be experiencing the two polar ends of walking:

1. Walking and trying not to think, while I'm in my Buddhist practice
2. Walking and thinking, while I'm in my artist practice.

Speaking of walking, last Sunday I took a great Plant Walk with my friend and creative collaborator Caylie See of Acupuncture Kitchen. I wrote an examiner.com article about it afterward, which has a link to a slideshow full of sweet pictures of edible and medicinal Bay Area plants.

Here's a bonus:

The latest installment in my Wildlife of Marin series, filmed at Spirit Rock on Wednesday. I'm just getting the hang of embedding video, so you may have to reload the page to get it to start from its riveting beginning.

As you can see, this turkey was doing its best to make me its bitch, with complete disregard to the other girl turkeys around.

Lately in my Buddhism class we've been focusing on suffering (in regard to the First and Second Noble Truths, not just for the hell of it). Particularly while meditating, we're asked to hone in on our attachments and aversions.

Luckily for me, I don't have to search too hard for a source of suffering in my sitting practice, because I am blessed to have a nifty little thing going on called Pulsatile Tinnitus.

What is Pulsatile Tinnitus? Well, imagine that your heart is in your ear. That's what it sounds like. I can hear my pulse. In my ear.

And yes, I've gone to the doctor (Western, Eastern, you name it). One particularly wise MD set my mind at ease by assuring me that it's probably due to a wee little anatomical deformity in my head, and that I probably don't need a CAT scan, and that I probably won't drop dead of an aneurism anytime soon. Probably.

Luckily, I can only hear it when I'm sitting still in a quiet environment. In other words, every single time I meditate.

If I wasn't a classically aversive personality type it wouldn't be such a big deal. And if I hadn't always been queasy about heartbeats in the first place. Being a nurse is like, number one on my list of professions I could never handle.

So I asked my meditation teacher for some advice. He gave me two options:

1. Ignore it and focus on something else. This one's tough because it's rather hard to ignore something that's happening inside your own head.
2. Use it as a focal point of my practice, and as a way to study aversion.

There you go.

Lucky me, I have a built-in, ready-to-go aversion every single time I sit down to meditate!

And here's a beautiful Hafiz poem we heard tonight:

To Build A Swing

You carry

All the ingredients

To turn your life into a nightmare—

Don't mix them!

You have all the genius

To build a swing in your backyard

for God.

That sounds

Like a hell of a lot more fun.

Let's start laughing, drawing blueprints,

Gathering our talented friends.

I will help you

With my divine lyre and drum.

Hafiz

Will sing a thousand words

You can take into your hands,

Like golden saws,

Silver hammers,

Polished teakwood,

Strong silk rope.

You carry all the ingredients

To turn existence into joy,

Mix them, mix

Them!

Tonight was my first in a ten-week series of classes on Buddhism. It was kind of exhausting.

To be fair, the exhausting part was not the Buddhist part. The exhausting part was scrambling like mad to get there from my house in Mill Valley during rush hour traffic while simultaneously trying to coordinate to meet up with my "Dharma partner" (and perpetually harried BFF) Bria.

When I finally arrived and launched into our first meditation sit, I realized how anxiety-tired I was. (My acupuncturist would call this a qi deficiency and hook me up to the E-stem, stat. For those who haven't had the pleasure of being hooked up to an E-stem, it's a nifty little gadget that gives you tiny little electrical jolts along your meridians, not unlike electroshock therapy, which Younger Me was always very curious about thanks to my early obsession with Sylvia Plath.)

In Buddhism, there are Five Hindrances to Meditation.

Different schools of Buddhist thought call them by different names, but they are all essentially the same. I like these descriptions, personally, for their dramatic flair:

1. Sensory Desire

2. Ill Will

3. Sloth and Torpor

4. Restlessness and Remorse

5. Doubt

I'm usually a big fan of Doubt in my very loosely defined meditation practice. However, tonight was all about the Sloth and Torpor. The moment I sat still and closed my eyes, it was all I could do not to slump over and pass out. The dirty, heavily-trafficked carpet of a budget meditation center has never looked so inviting and cozy. It was like severe and utter torture to keep myself in an upright position for the twenty minutes that lasted a hundred years.

But, I did it. I stayed upright. And now I'm a Buddhist. So I have that going for me.

Incidentally, how cute is it that they lump together Restlessness and Remorse? Like, if you're bored and antsy, chances are you're also full of regret?