Accessible Ayurveda - Spring Forward

Spring!  Like a breath of fresh air, spring sailed in today and lightened my step. 

In Ayurveda, spring is kapha season, same as winter, but while winter's kapha is informed by the cold vata of autumn, spring's kapha is influenced by the coming pitta fire of summer.  Confused?  Let's break it down a little more.  Kapha is a blend of water and earth elements.  In winter, water and earth are cold, frozen, and solid.  As in nature, kapha begins to thaw in spring as the longer days bring warmth.  Spring's kapha is full of movement, like melting snow and runny noses.  It's time to shed excess accumulation and stagnation.

Balance is key.  Ayurveda approaches disease from a standpoint of imbalance.  To maintain health and wellbeing, we try and live in harmony with various cycles of nature, like the seasons.  The idea is that "like increases like," so imbalance in spring looks like an accumulation of kapha from winter - excess weight and mucus, sluggishness, stagnation, water retention.  Balance is found through breaking habits, making space in our minds and living spaces, seeking dry heat (like a sauna), and moving the body a lot to increase circulation and release toxins.

Your instincts to cleanse, purge, start new projects are exactly right.  Think like a gardener - now is the time to plan, clean out the beds, add new soil, and plant seeds.  If you rested like the earth throughout winter, you should feel a burst of energy now.

A healthy diet will be similar to winter - lots of bitter (greens, nettles), pungent (ginger, radishes, spice), and astringent (grapefruit, pears, quinoa) tastes, while taking care to decrease heavy foods and oils.  Limiting sweet (breads, meat, desserts), sour (dairy), and salty (olives, cured meats) will help the body shed excess weight put on during the cold months.

Daily rituals for spring include waking up early (5-5:30am), vigorous exercise, and exfoliating skin.

Yoga poses that help the transition to spring include sun salutations, twists, and inversions.

I think many of us anticipate this season more than any other.  We made it through another winter.  Hello spring, you're here just in time!

Thoughts on Suffering

Spring is taking its time arriving this year.  I'm impatient.  After a long, wet, and very cold winter here in the PNW (coldest in 30 years), I had high hopes that spring would bounce onto the scene and sweep away all the built up dreariness and stagnation in my body, while magically airing out the moss and mildew accumulating on our back patio.  The landscape is getting more colorful every day, but the rain sure hasn't let up and I'm still taking refuge inside my ankle length down coat for most outings.  

Just like the weather, my toddler seems in no rush to ease up on the intensity of his existence in this life.  19 months in and I'm more exhausted than ever and left to wonder when I will ever emerge from this extremely demanding season of motherhood.  My son has slept well 4 months since arriving - the other 15 have been an endless nightmare of multiple night wakings.  Every sleep regression hits hard and drags on.  Neither of us is ready to fully wean, but I'm amazed to find that instead of tapering off, he's asking more and more often for whatever milk I still have.  So we're still attached at the breast several times a day.  I'm barely functioning, while all the while my head is spinning with projects I long to pursue but have no energy to initiate.  So the spinning spirals downward, dragging me into endless feedback loops of unhappiness and self-doubt.  I'm so good at burrowing into these layers of suffering.  

I'm in pretty deep, barely clinging to any semblance of a practice that usually helps alleviate the pain and allows me to gain a little traction.  I'm so exhausted that I can't, for all my wishing, get out of bed any earlier in the morning to have some time to myself for pranayama and meditation.  I collapse again after tucking my little guy in for his afternoon nap.  I spend the precious hour between his bedtime and mine trying to connect with my partner, wash my face, brush my teeth, and wind down.  And so it goes, day after day.  My inner and outer worlds spin in the mud. 

I stumbled upon an On Being podcast recently that briefly pulled me from my mental prison.  Krista Tippett's interview with Alain de Botton is mostly about love, sex, and relationships, but deviates just a bit at the end to discuss a less western approach to life.  He suggests an "acceptance of ourselves as flawed creatures." 

We have an enormous loneliness around our difficulties.  We need solace for the sense that we have gone wrong in an area where perfection was possible.  Anyone who comes along and says "It's normal that you are suffering.  Life is suffering," is doing a quite unusual thing in our culture which is so much about optimism. It sounds grim; it is in fact enormously consoling and alleviating and helpful in a culture which is oppressive in its demands for perfection.  (We need) a certain kind of pessimistic realism, which is totally compatible with hope, totally compatible with laughter, good humor, a sense of fun.

A week later, Yoga teacher and author Rolf Gates came to Seattle and offered a weekend workshop for teachers hosted by 8 Limbs Yoga Studios.  I was able to pass off nap duty and attend one session.  Low and behold, in the middle of a lecture on theming classes, Rolf addressed suffering.  He wasn't suggesting anything new, but it was helpful to be reminded of some basic tenants of a philosophy I've studied and adopted into my worldview.  To sum up Rolf's offering  -

• we get stuck like a wheel in mud and then we suffer.
• habits of the mind cause suffering.
• everyone is carrying a portion of the world's pain.  your portion gives you unique insight.
• affliction comes from an exaggerated sense of aloneness.

And so I remind myself that suffering isn't unique to my experience.  I remind myself of the most simple breath practice - three conscious breaths.  Suffering is the reality of all of our lives, even if a few of us are able to pretend, from time to time, that it's not.  

It's not any special time of the year or month or week right now - today is a random Wednesday in early April - no real reason to start fresh.  If you follow my blog you know that I'm big on cycles.  I use the moon and the change of seasons as a guide for renewing my intentions for mindful living. Yet here it is Wednesday in early April and I need (another) restart.  I've neglected my Lunar New Year intentions.  I escaped to Whidbey Island for a weekend alone to usher in Spring, and two days later I was once again sleep deprived and had abandoned any attempt to shake the winter/toddler blues.  The stories in my head that call to me to be told still aren't down on paper.  Projects pile even higher.  I'm buried but it's time to start digging out.  I don't want to miss that glorious Puget Sound sun when it finally decides to show up and stay a while.  There's nothing special about today, but there doesn't need to be.  On some level, every breath is an opportunity to release the past and try again.

Practice - A Balance of Effort and Ease

Be soft in your practice.  Think of the method as a fine silvery stream, not a raging waterfall.  Follow the stream, have faith in its course.  It will go on its own way, meandering here, trickling there.  It will find the grooves, the cracks, the crevices.  Just follow it.  Never let it out of your sight.  It will take you.  - Sheng Yen

My daily home practice was flowing smoothly last fall, but once I hit January it ran right into a brick wall.  I couldn't pry myself out of bed early for a bit of asana and meditation to save my life.  It became, at best, a feeble weekly attempt.  I hoped the season of Lent would jump start my efforts.  No such luck.  Daylight savings seemed like another good marker for gathering momentum, but it came and went and still I struggled.  Surely the transition to spring would have an immediate effect...it to passed without significant influence. Then last week, for no particular reason, I woke up early and found my meditation practice lengthened 10 fold without any real effort.  I resumed my study of the Sutras.  I welcomed the ease.

We like to think we have control over most things in life.  We like to think our shear will power is enough to keep any practice strong at any time.  We feel guilty when we fall short, convinced we've failed.  But life has a force all its own and we can not separate ourselves from the influence of all that swirls around us.  Darkness - whether lack of daylight or seasons of personal struggle - can hinder the best intentions for practice.  The effort to keep going can seem momentous.  And that feeling of exertion can build and build until we are all but ready to give up.

We can't predict when the balance will shift back towards ease, but we can trust that at some point we will cycle back around to a more peaceful place.  Our responsibility is to show up - not to be perfect, not to be the best - simply to show up.  To keep some semblance of commitment going, acknowledge when it's hard, and savor the times that it's effortless.

Be soft in your practice.  Think of the method as a fine silvery stream, not a raging waterfall.  Follow the stream, have faith in its course.  It will go on its own way, meandering here, trickling there.  It will find the grooves, the cracks, the crevices.  Just follow it.  Never let it out of your sight.  It will take you.  - Sheng Yen

Time Crunch

I'm still adjusting to the recent leap we took to "spring forward" an hour.  I love the extra light in my living room come late afternoon, but I feel behind as soon as I open my eyes each morning.  We're also coming out of a season that is supposed to provide a chance to hibernate and move at a slower pace, but with the holidays and new year's resolutions, winter is often just as exhausting as any other time of year. The shift of seasons (spring starts Friday) give us the opportunity to pause and reflect on what's working in daily routines and what isn't.  As we say goodbye to winter, I'm ready to re-focus my dwindling breath and meditation practice.  Turns out, this isn't just for yogis.  Anyone can feel less rushed and stressed by starting a simple practice. The New York Times recently featured an op-ed highlighting the link between our level of anxiety and our perception of goals.  That we live in a world of constant connection--allowing us to try and juggle numerous things at once--heightens our sense of busyness.  Mental exercises that focus on breath and re-framing how we think about time can actually lessen stress!

Rather than consider this as one more "to do," start small and see if it works for you.  Meditation doesn't have to be an hour-long practice to have benefit.  Five minutes is more than enough, if that's what you feel you can reasonably make time for.  Set your alarm 5 minutes earlier tomorrow, go sit in a quiet place, and set another alarm for 5 minutes.  Connect to each of your five senses in some way.  Then focus on taking three conscious breaths.  Follow the inhale and exhale in and out of your body.  Then think about a time you were at ease - feel the experience of relaxation throughout your body.  Try and stay with the sensation for about 30 seconds.  Go back to your breath and finish with three more slow inhales and exhales.  Repeat the following morning.  See what happens.

Contentment, still relevant

It Felt Love

(by Hafiz)

How

Did the rose

Ever open its heart And give to this world

All its

Beauty? It felt the encouragement of light

Against its

Being, Otherwise,

We all remain Too Frightened.

     Spring has come, as it does every year, but I never grow tired of the awakening that happens when the days get longer.  My garden blooms as hibernation comes to an end.  It feels a bit easier to breathe and certainly contentment is less difficult to practice.

     I've thought a lot about Santosha over the past 9 months.  The turmoil of moving, a remodel, moving again and finishing graduate school made me realize how hard contentment really is.  I wrote about it last October, about how easy it is to think we're good at being content when we think within the context of ease.  Once effort is required, santosha usually becomes such a challenge that I brush it aside and focus on other ethical teachings of yoga.

     Spring seems like a good time to strengthen this particular niyama (internal practice).  It's a hopeful time and I can easily find moments in each day that feel good and contentment is nearly effortless.  But there's usually enough turmoil in this season to provide brief tests, when contentment is less a feeling and more a choice.  Like those days of rain and wind we get after a teaser of sun and warmth.

     Meditation is as good a way as any I've tried to encourage growth in this area.  It's easy to get carried away with the business of spring, to become over-stimulated with light and activity.  A few minutes of quiet, alone, goes a long way.  And when I say a few, I literally mean 3-5 minutes.  If you think you can't "do meditation,"  try it for a week.  Start or end your day in silence, just briefly, and see what happens.  Set the timer on your phone for 3 minutes, sit and breathe and observe your mind.  If that feels easy, add another minute.  If it's a challenge, be willing to stick with 3 minutes, even if it feels silly and a bit wimpy (it's not).  As someone wise whom I can't recall wrote, "solitude is where you gather yourself."  It's counter-intuitive in our hyper-connected world.  Silence can be unsettling, but spend enough time there and you just might build santosha capacity for life's effort-ful moments.