Peace

For out on the edge of darkness there runs the peace train. ~ Peace Train, Cat Stevens

A new instructor had arrived on the scene, and instead of bowing with a Namaste, he put his hands in prayer with something new to say.

“Om Shanti. Peace. Peace. Peace.”

After several years of practice I was surprised not to have heard these words before! In fact, I could hardly hear them now, because he seemed to murmur them more so to himself than to the rest of us.

I wondered what he knew that I didn’t, and so when I got home I looked up the chant on the Internet.

I’d already learned about the word, Om. We say it all the time. It represents the universe, and it means everything. It’s all the colors and all the sounds and even all the moments in time.

Shanti, however, was a new word for me. It’s defined as the state of being in peace, and it’s usually chanted three times. The first time addresses divine disturbances from unforeseen forces; the second time addresses upsets in our immediate environments, and the third time addresses the turmoil found inside of us.

For a while, I’d almost given up on the idea of peace. It has proved hard to come by. But the thought of calling it forth with a chant was intriguing.

Until recently I thought that peace existed only in the absence of anxiety, something that’s been a challenge for me. But lately I’ve felt a peace so deep that I know it must come from something more. Sometimes it actually overcomes me, as nothing I’ve ever felt before. And so when it’s here, I stop what I’m doing and make sure to offer up some grace.

“Thank you, thank you, thank you,” I say aloud from my room or my car or from wherever else I am.

I don’t know if it’s really possible to write about this bottomless peace, because I don’t know whether it can adequately be described. A good start would probably be a discussion about the harmony of opposites as found in the Book of Tao, but that could take a long time. If I dared to say it in one sentence, I’d say that to truly experience something good, its negative counterpart must be fully understood.

This winter we experienced the biggest, baddest blizzard in decades. Stuck inside, I watched this divine disturbance through my kitchen window like a black and white movie. Outside was quiet and without color. Even the sky was white. The thick snowflakes that first fell languidly from the sky quickly turned into tiny white ones which spun in circles for days, as if the outside world wasn’t sure which end was up.

Before long my house was wrapped in a white blanket. I was tucked inside, protected from temperatures so cold that a state of emergency was declared.

I was lucky enough to be able to prepare for this storm. I charged my phones and cooked up some soup, just in case the power went out. I also brewed some coffee in anticipation of possible decaffination. And I hired a snow removal service in advance, so I could count on a way out.

It’s not always easy to anticipate a state of emergency. I know this because I’ve weathered a few of my own. These upsets were always a surprise. I’d be struck unaware without the chance to prepare. And so I suffered high anxiety, and my thoughts would spin in circles like tiny flakes on blizzard winds.

I worked from home the day the blizzard began. With no commute, I had an extra hour’s sleep, and I awoke in a deep state of peace. I said my three thank-yous and got up to make coffee. Friends and family checked in, and I ran a quick errand before the roads got too bad. Then I picked up some lunch and worked from my kitchen table for the rest of the day. That evening I watched a movie under my favorite blanket and slept hard again, waking up the next morning to a peace as deep as the snow.

Recently, I read that anxiety should be considered a gift. The article said it was a red flag for inner turmoil. I was flabbergasted at the idea, as I personally wouldn’t wish it on anyone. But then I got to thinking. Could anxiety be the color we need when all we can see is a black and white movie?

The article stated that anxiety serves as a personal warning mechanism, an alarm that sounds when we’re living outside of our boundaries. And it said that we should embrace our anxiety with stillness and not combat it with fear, because only then are we quiet enough for the answers we need to hear.

   

Yoga has regulated my anxiety in a big way. I have found stillness in a practice of movement! But strangely enough the practices that are best at teaching me how to be still are the ones that are like storms themselves.  

One instructor, in particular, takes us through what is a rather grueling practice. I have to prepare beforehand, hydrating well and eating properly. And I have to move with faith in myself, so I can be strong and balanced and know which end is up, especially in the inversions.     

After the practice, we lie in Savasana, or final resting pose. The instructor walks around, helping us wind down with her soothing words and three spritzes of lavender water.  

“Relax your body and still your busy minds,” she says. “You are done moving now.”

The silence echoes throughout the room that only a moment ago was filled with breath and music. It wraps around me like a blanket of peace, and I lie still until we’re called to our seats.

I can’t really say that I’ll never get anxious again. I suppose it’s to be expected. But at least now I have the practice to prepare as a way out, so I know I can get to the other side. In fact, I’m over there now, and the calmness is startling. At times, the peace is so deep that I wonder where it came from.

How did it get here? What have I done?

I really wish I knew, because when I feel it I’m free. I’m able to realize that all is really okay with me. And then nothing that’s ever happened before really matters so much anymore.

We close the practice with one joyous Om. And as we bow to say Namaste I silently add a few words of my own.   

“Shanti, shanti, shanti,” I say to myself. “Peace. Peace. Peace.”

Stillness

How can I possibly be inconspicuous when my flow is so ridiculous? ~ I’ll Be Around, Cee-lo Green

I was at an evening yoga class with a guest instructor who arrived with a great big welcome, his greeting warming the room, and his smile inviting many in return.

This is a Level Two class, he announced. So, what would you like to work on?

With each answer, he jokingly upped the ante, saying, Oh, hips? That’s a 3.23 class!. Inversions? That’s a 5.67 class! Backbends? That’s a 10.789 class!

He asked us what we wanted and got us laughing when we answered, promising us a high energy class and lifting us with that of his own before landing the room in a quiet meditation with a poem and a chant. 

I was happy to be there, sitting next to a friend who was leaving town and among others I knew as well. I felt cozy as evening fell outside the windows, darkening the room in a stillness filled with the rhythmic voice of the instructor.

I didn’t really take in any of the poem or understand the chant; rather, it was as if the sound of his words blanketed my busy thoughts, tucking them away for the night and settling me into a stillness usually found in the final resting pose of Savasana.

It was as though we were starting at the end, and then what followed was the middle!

The instructor popped up from his seated position, turned on the music and moved us directly into Boat Pose, a pose that works on the abs and is usually found halfway through the class. After more ab work, we moved into an early Crow, balancing on our hands with our knees tucked as high above the backs of our arms as possible.

And then we started to flow, and he even threw in a few handstands between warrior poses. He danced to the music and bounced around the room, adjusting us here and there and singing along, too, as his energy lifted us again before landing the room in the quiet of Warrior Two.

And there we held the pose.

With the others, I settled again into stillness, but this time with much more effort as he implored us to take the pose even deeper. He ran through a checklist, asking us to see every part of our bodies as he outlined the view of our arms, our legs, our bellies, our muscles and more.

I even want you to see the back of your knee, he said. I want you to see your blind spots.

There is something about expending lots of energy while being still. Somehow, everything seems to make sense in the stillness, like understanding the words to a chant with no knowledge of the language.

And it’s in this way that I saw myself as instructed, and I at once remembered an astrologer telling me the stars were such that I should walk the King’s Highway. When I asked for an explanation, I was told that I was not to sit on the side, that I was meant to be seen.

My muscles were working hard, and I felt so alert that it seemed as if I could see out of every pore. And I was so still that I found myself strong enough to look at my blind spots and to understand that it’s okay to be seen. I even pictured the back of my knee.

We held the pose still longer, and the energy was as high as we had been in our handstands earlier in the practice. 

I want you to do this pose as if it’s the last yoga pose you’ll ever do, he said.

This brought some giggles to the room, but he held his ground in much the same way as we held the pose.

Seriously, he said, countering with his smile. This could be the last time you’ll ever do yoga. There is no tomorrow.

And so there I was, standing still in what turned out to be the Just Now, where nothing is hidden if you are brave enough to look. It was a liberating place to be, among my fellow warriors with no tomorrow, doing all that mattered in the moment, and seeing all of myself from the inside out.

We broke the pose and flowed once more, the music never having stopped, and the instructor continuing his beat around the room, singing and dancing and asking us to see ourselves, and somehow getting us to do just that by sending us from stillness to flow and stillness to flow.

Soon after, we moved into reverse side angle. I stepped one foot in front of the other and twisted to my left, placing my right hand to the mat and reaching the other to the ceiling. And as I turned my torso to the side, my eyes passed the window, and I saw a single star, like an eye in the sky blinking back at me.

I gazed at the star, and it stared back, both of us seeing the other in the clarity of the stillness that was the Just Now.

But before I knew it, the flow was upon us again, and I averted my eyes, flowing all the way to the end of the class, until the room finally settled into its sweat and its breath and another poem and another chant.

And I lay there in stillness against the rhythm of the words, and I felt free in the bravery of being bare enough to be seen by even me.

And so when I left the class, I thanked the instructor and, although I know he knows there’s no tomorrow, I asked him to please come back again as if there was.