11 things I just don’t need #reverb10

Tags

#reverb10, Acupuncture, Anxiety attacks, Courage, Cycling, Fear of rejection, Grief, Kinesiology, Procrastination, rampant consumerism, squatter’s rights

What are 11 things your life doesn’t need in 2011? How will you go about eliminating them? How will getting rid of these 11 things change your life?
~ December 11 prompt

1. Clinging to the past
   Bah! That past stuff, whether it’s limiting self-beliefs, traumatic events or anything else that’s been holding me back. Can’t say divesting myself of these ghosts will be easy but I’m prepared to keep at it. In my arsenal is kinesiology, acupuncture, cycling and of course, yoga (both as a student and a teacher).
   This year has proven that these things get results. Next year I’m keeping steady on my course with this work…
2. Fear of rejection
   My basic assumption is that no one but NO ONE could be looking at me. Not in that way. I’ll happily play a gauche game of eye contact hockey with a cute guy across a room (which actually happened just last week), but I completely fail when it comes to having the courage to just say “hi”. Lame. Gotta get my courage on!
3. That extra 10kg I’m wearing
   Not quite as slinky as a silk negligee but more intimately involved with my body… that layer of grief and sadness I’ve been hauling around, well that HAS to go. So I’ll be upping my daily quotient of sun salutes (which are awesome for the metabolism and digestion) and trying my hand once again at a little interval jogging.
4. Debts
   I’ve already covered this one I believe…
5. Grief
   I know it might be asking a little much, and I’m not too sure if there’s anything I can do about it. I’m thinking it’s up to the universe really… but I’d just LOVE a break from the grief. Fuck, it’s been five long years of hauling my ass out of desperate times and a whole twelve months without any fresh crap would be such a relief.
6. Procrastination
   Aren’t we all acquainted with procrastination? Do we all intend to do something about it? When did I pencil that in to my diary again?? 😉
   Seriously though, I’ve learned the only way to deal with putting things off is to do them right away. Of course, that’s not always possible but ya gotta try, right?
7. Anxiety attacks
   Gargh! If you’re not too clear on what happens when someone has an anxiety attack, it can often result in horrible chest pains, a racing heartbeat and feelings of doom and despair. They last for hours or days, and often arrive with no warning. In my case, they most often happen when I’m really stressed.
   I’ve had so many of them now that I almost roll my eyes when the symptoms appear. Not that it lessens their intensity, but at least I know what they are now.
   I think this will be one of the things I work on with my kinesiology appointments in the new year. Otherwise, I’m not sure how to fix my stress reaction (which appears to be somewhat broken).
8. Excess possessions
   I’m pretty much on a mission to get rid of all the stuff with squatter’s rights at my place that I don’t absolutely need. It goes hand in hand with my plan to abscond from the western world of rampant consumerism. I’ll be working room by room and getting ruthless, then employing the likes of eBay, Gumtree, charity bins and maybe even garage sales. It’s all gotta go!
9. Foods I eat that I KNOW don’t work for me
   I don’t believe I have any really serious food allergies as such, but I do know that eating wheat causes me to feel bloated and tight in the belly. Almost like I’m so full that I might burst. It’s an uncomfortable feeling. Cheese is another one that doesn’t seem to go down well once I’ve eaten it (oh, beautiful blue cheese and brie!!).
   Really, if I’m serious about treating myself with more respect, then I’ll pay attention to this before I do end up with food allergies!
10. Staying up late
    This is one of my all-time love-hate things I do to myself. I know I don’t cope with getting up early unless I’ve had a full eight hours sleep. I also know that I LIKE to get up early to fit some yoga in before work. Being a pitta-kappha constitution, early mornings also work better for my mind. And yet, I’ll sit up late regardless and get by on seven or even six hours sleep. By Friday night, I’m exhausted and over-sleep on the weekends if I can get away with it.
    None of this is what you’d describe as productive. In fact, I wrote most of this post in the shadows of the midnight hour. Doh!
    Part of resolving this one is managing my time better in the evenings. Going out less during the week, spending less time mooching about on my laptop and taking a stronger commitment to doing the right thing by my body and mind.
11. My hermit tendencies
    Honestly, I’m concerned that I spend too much time alone. I like my own company and how stress-free alone time is. But I could do with a little balance in that department. I figure though, that if I keep my teaching work going then I’ll naturally be involved with more people. Dunno what else I’m gonna do about it. Kirtan is my main social activity other than teaching yoga. Should I join another social group? Hmmm…

~Svasti

Generating lurvvve – part 1

Tags

ardha chandrasana, bhakti, Cycling, direct realisation, Enter your zip code here, Facebook, Inspiration, kaleidoscopic, kirtan, Krishna Das, kryptonite, Love, neediness, Om Namah Shivaya, Shadow Yoga, Sri Krishna Govinda, Suffering, Yoga, Yoga of Chant

Recently life’s been a little kaleidoscopic. So much going on, it’s kinda hard to work out what I’m actually meant to be focusing on.

Which can be good and not so good. Then when there’s half a moment to calm down, sometimes things settle in a pattern that makes sense of the world a little more.

And that’s good, right?

So, last week I heard this (voice in my head), then wrote it down AND made it my Facebook status:

Do something you love, something from the core of your being. Give over to it entirely. Let your heart open. It makes all the difference…

And today I’d like to add this:

Doing the things you love, generates love.

See, I’ve been thinking a lot about our outward seeking culture recently and how needy we human beings are as a result.

To clarify, there are two broad definitions of need that I’m talking about here:

Need type #1 – fundamentals that help us to live. E.g. oxygen, sunlight, breathing, nutritious food, love (yes, I think love falls into this group). Characterised by things we do not thrive without.

Need type #2 – internal or external objects of desire that we crave. E.g. entertainment, clothes, physical appearance, other people, money, cars, houses, iPods, travel, fame etc. Characterised by a belief they will improve our self-image/confidence etc.

Of course, needs from type #1 can and do cross over into needs from type #2. And we tend to believe strongly that needs type #2 are in fact, needs type #1.

I’ve been wondering about that. Why? Why are we so needy? How do we get these different types of needs so messed up?

And I confess. Most of my life I’ve felt that sense of need, based on what I think I’m missing. How, if only I had a boyfriend who loved me, or more money, or more friends, or if I was prettier, or wasn’t such a dork, or had a home of my own, or children or nicer/better taste in clothes, or if I was taller/shorter/thinner, or if I didn’t have to work for a living or… you get my drift… that I’d be happier.

Maybe other people are smarter than me and have this stuff figured out already? But I’d be willing to bet that most of us, even if it’s only in a very subtle way these days, experience that kind of need. It can make a person feel desperate at times. Or hollow, even.

But generally, we just think less of ourselves because we don’t have what we think we need.

This my friends, is need type #2. The kind of need that creates suffering because it makes us feel incomplete in some way. But actually this is really just the default human condition, until we get sick of it that is, and seek another path.

For me, that path is yoga. And what I’m trying to convey here are some personal realisations combined with everything I’ve studied and learned to date.

So, let me talk a little about my own personal kryptonite: love. Or the lack thereof.

I’ve had such a funny relationship with love in my lifetime. Mostly, I’ve felt like I never had enough love, or enough of the right kind of love. Not accepted. Not wanted.

And if you believe it, and so it will be.

Like many people I grew up believing that we must be loved by someone else in order to have love, and to feel like we are valued. And much of the “evidence” in my life suggested that I was not valued very highly at all!

I have a good idea how these beliefs arose. As far as I can tell they date back at least several generations before I was even born. I grew up saturated in them and so of course, I’ve inhabited those ideas for myself.

At the same time, as I’ve been re-counting, my other life-long goal has been spiritual evolvement, before I even knew what that meant. There’s been this ongoing battle between my extreme neediness and my desire to shed such a limited view of life.

Of course, throw a few traumatic experiences into a person’s life, and watch the neediness factor multiply. Especially if they’ve got screwy ideas about love in the first place.

I’d say this is something that’s plagued my relationships and friendships for most of my life. Even worse, it’s had endless impacts on my relationship with my Self…

A few weeks back I went to something called ‘Yoga of Chant’, conveniently held at a yoga studio just a five minute cycle from my place. It was advertised on a meet up website that I’ve used before, and I was immediately drawn.

First one I didn’t get to as I was at home with a horrible flu. So disappointing! Second one was only two weeks later and I was determined to go! Of course, it had to bucket down rain just as I was leaving. I arrived kind of sodden but it was worth it.

Had to peel off my plastic pants and rain jacket, so the chanting (or kirtan) started before I found a seat. The dude running the group (a yoga teacher) played electric keyboard and sang (gorgeous voice!) while his friend played double bass (it worked really, really well), while we sang extended versions of Sri Krishna Govinda and Om Namah Shivaya mantras (Krishna Das style).

I don’t get too many opportunities for kirtan here in Melbourne (i.e. none) and this one rocked. It was kinda awesome actually and for me, there was real bhakti in the singing – loudly, deeply, from the very center of my heart.

Its not that I have a fantastic voice, but I absolutely ADORE singing kirtan.

Next day I was still buzzing, and had this lovely-warm-gooey-heart-opening sensation most of the day. The sort of feeling I get when I do ardha chandrasana and reeeaaalllly rotate and open through the torso…

…times about a hundred!

Interesting, I thought… and went to the next one (last Saturday actually).

The other thing I did last Saturday was attend a free Shadow Yoga class (more about that in another post). And I came away literally glowing with happiness. I could feel it, and I noticed other people noticing it, too.

Cycling home from the yoga class (before the kirtan), that’s when those words popped into my mind: Do something you love, something from the core of your being. Give over to it entirely. Let your heart open. It makes all the difference…

And I got it. Hey, sometimes it takes me a while to get things!

Ohhhhhhh! By doing things you really, really, REALLY enjoy, you are generating love for yourself and other people? And when you do that, there’s no sense of neediness? No space for miserable, self-defeating thoughts? No feeling bereft, adrift and craving connection with others, because the connection is already generated with yourself, through the LOVE you’ve been pumping out via your own actions?

Ahhhh..!!!

That’s what happens sometimes, when you shake all the pretty pieces of coloured light in your kaleidoscope to reveal a mandala you probably already knew about on some level… but had never experienced for yourself.

Until that moment when you do.

And it changes EVERYTHING.

[Read part 2]

~Svasti

Joyful living

Tags

bleeding from the heart, Cycling, Depression, Friends, Happiness, Jill and Kevin's wedding dance, joy, Nieces, Skiing, yoga classes, Yoga teacher

Watched this today…

Found my eyes were leaking (a bit) and I have to admit I felt a little envious of the joy being expressed.

Most of the time, we western-world folk do not express this much fun and happiness in our day-to-day lives. Or even weekly. Maybe not even monthly.

Sure, some people might. But most of us don’t due to habit, cultural acceptance, and generally because most people are bleeding from their hearts instead of singing.

Aren’t we?

We hurt, we try to keep our hurt to ourselves and we barely ever notice that everyone else around us is doing exactly the same.

This morning as I wandered around my flat getting ready for work, I realised that (for now) my interactions with depression are in recess.

I’ve got more energy than I’ve had in ages and I can actually get out of bed in the morning with relative ease. I’m starting to be much more excited about becoming a yoga teacher (OMG, I’ll be qualified at the end of the year!).

And yet, still… it’s possible to wander around and feel less than joyful for most of the day or week. Especially when doing a job I could care less about (except for getting paid).

My joy comes from my yoga classes, my nieces, cycling, and talking to my friends (most of them live far away).

But this morning I also realised I could add more joy into each day.

A little like the way BlissChick schedules time to dance regularly.

Because joy shouldn’t be something we experience infrequently like clinging to a life raft within a sea of unhappiness…

Then there’s Tricia’s latest post (a meme) – 6 things that make you happy.

There’s a world of difference between depression going away and actively seeking out the things that make you smile.

While the thrall of depression has lifted, the habits I formed to cope with that existence also need to be broken down. The staying in and not socialising. The having fewer expectations of my life. The not taking care of my appearance or what I eat. The not looking to the future… these are but a few.

In Tricia’s comments, I wrote my own 6 things that make you happy list (definitely in no particular order):

1. Thinking about becoming a yoga teacher
2. My fan girl night (meeting my celebrity crush earlier this year) – still makes me smile!
3. My glorious nieces
4. My yoga school’s spiritual home in north-east Thailand
5. Snow skiing
6. My wonderful friends (both virtual and IRL kinds)

It’s not a bad list, but if the meme had asked for 10 things, I might’ve come up a little short.

Which is ridiculous when there’s so many things to be happy about, right?

So. Here’s to the energy behind the wedding dancers in the video.

Even if we don’t actually break into dance as we wander throughour days, we each deserve the feeling that goes with this kind of celebration.

And I’ve decided the next step to climbing out of the dark, dank abyss of depression includes adding more activities into my life that are designed to tap into that kind of joy. Yes!

I’ll let you know how I go.

~Svasti

How was your Sunday?

Tags

Bikes, Bogans, Cave in the Snow, Cycling, Family, Flat tyre, Hermit, Humour, Laughing at myself, Mona Lisa, Nieces, peek a boo, Spirituality, Sunday, Surrender, Tenzin Palmo

What to say to a day where you try to do a nice thing (for your 94 year old and increasingly senile grandma) only to be insulted quite rudely (by said grandma – we’re not sure how much dementia is ruling the roost and how much is just her), and then on the way home, discover a flat bike tyre as you get off the train, and the spare tyre tube’s faulty too (but you didn’t know til after you’d been trying to pump it up fruitlessly for at least ten minutes).

Argh!!!

When trying to repair the original tube, discover the hole is in the worst possible spot, and while waiting to see if one of the many things you’ve tried has worked, get approached by a totally drunken bogan who says… ooooh, hey honey, what do YOU neeeeed? …as you frantically pace around trying to work out how to/if you can fix the damn tyre tube at all!

Mumbling more to yourself than anything, Need a band aid or something that might work as a stop-gap to get home!

For some reason the long haired drunken bogan leans in and salaciously whispers, Ohhhh I think I really want yoooouuuu! To which you reply, That’s great but I DON’T want you.. (why don’t really cute guys EVER say things like that?). Standing too close still, Mr Bogan is smoking (a major pet hate) so you tell him to smoke elsewhere. Anywhere else!

Another dude on a bike wanders by to commiserate at which point, Mr Bogan again feels the need to stick his face right near yours, PLEASE get out of my personal space!

Damn bogan!

So you give it up. Put the original tyre back together, wheel back on the bike and resign yourself to more train travel (two trains) and wandering home from the closest station with your poor limp bike and its sadly flaccid front tyre squeaking in protest at having to roll with not enough air in there…

Thank goodness for adorable two year old nieces playing peek-a-boo with your hair and chanting 1-2-3-ready-not! (translation = coming, ready or not!). Giggling in a way even the Mona Lisa couldn’t resist. And three month old baby nieces smiling wide cheesy baby grins, highly infectious those…

Not to mention being grateful for some time to re-read a rather wonderful little book, Cave in the Snow (will do a write up soonish), allowing those latent hermit-like tendencies to quietly re-surface… twas enough, too, to make me laugh at the madness of the day.

~Svasti

The invisible cyclist

Tags

Baylor University, Commuting, Cycling, Depression, Motorbikes, Post-traumatic stress, PTSD, Research, Tackaberry Chronicles

I tend to think my life in related metaphors.

Like, cycling – or for that matter, motorcycling (I’ve spent quite a bit of time as a biker biatch on the back of a good friend’s motorbike. I’m a huge fan of the current one – his totally hot Honda 1100cc – and beg for a ride whenever I’m in Sydney. Purrrrr!!). And, as I’ve already explained, I love my push bike…

The thing with being on two wheels in a four wheeled culture is that no one sees you. As a bike rider you can’t ever think cars, trams, buses, trucks or even pedestrians actually notice you on the road.

For all intents and purposes, you’re invisible.

Once, a couple of years back I actually had to shout quite loudly at a guy crossing the street. I was barrelling along at 40km/hr or so… he made eye contact but still… he was gonna walk straight into me. That sure would have hurt both of us at the speed I was moving. And it would’ve trashed my bike too!

But like a deer in headlights, he didn’t change his course. So I had to take evasive action… thankfully there weren’t any cars or trams coming up behind me or I woulda been squished.

As a two-wheeled commuter, I consider it part of my job to learn to deal with the blindness of others in order to keep myself from harm’s way.

And really, that’s how I deal with depression and post-traumatic stress, too.

Michelle over at Tackaberry Chronicles wrote a great post on Baylor University’s study of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).

Interestingly, it seems parts of the brain actually shrink after exposure to traumatic experiences. Which can impact things like decision making, ability to deal with stress, and also, the brain’s capacity for inhibiting fear.

Reading this kind of stuff helps me understand (rather than excuse) my reactions in certain situations… and for those with some grace and perception, it helps me to help them get it – why I might suddenly drop out of circulation. Or, when panic attacks set in, see them for what they are instead of thinking… geez, Svasti just totally freaked out. What’s with her?

Just like the dude crossing the road in front of my bike, other people for the most part can’t see what’s right in front of them. I’m definitely not the first person to feel like they’ve been falling apart in a serious way, right under the noses of others…

Even when there’s external signs pointing to things not being okay… many people simply can’t see it. Or they’re too caught up in whatever is going on in their own life (see: Light on the train) to notice if you’re a quivering heap on the floor.

So, I try to change my view. It’s easy to label others as lacking in discernment, cold, unfeeling or insensitive. But really, that’s just a perception, not reality. And it’s not fair, actually. Coz everyone’s got crap to deal with.

I’m fully aware that my emotional world is highly invisible to almost everyone – even some of those closest to me, even if I tell them I’m in trouble… even when I point them to this blog to read what I’ve written… I simply can’t expect them to realise or understand. They aren’t empaths, and they can’t read minds or feel what I’m feeling.

To date, I can think of only three people who’ve somehow known exactly what to do or say. Not that it’s the same thing each time… they just know how to be there in the right way.

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Minor update (after reading Susan’s post and commenting): Possibly the common theme with the three people I mentioned is this – they never tried to do anything about how I was feeling… they just tried and succeeded in connecting with me in a human-to-human way. And, they demonstrated that they cared. It wasn’t just pretty words. It’s that kind of connection I think, that helps us remember that really… we’re not alone at all.
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There are choices, always.

Every time someone fails to see, or care, or know what’s going on… I can choose to view that as a new hurt. Or not. I choose… not.

But, what I do choose is – to keep cycling onwards… keep taking care of me as best I can, relying primarily on myself… and the handful of people who do get it. Who can see the difference between when I’m in a good space and when I’m just not…

And constantly work to find that place where I can let go of the tension, the strain and the pain. Coz I do think its entirely possible.

~Svasti