I don't like kissing

I don't know ... would I be the first girl to say this?  But experience has proven that I just don't like kissing.

How Yoga Works - Benefits of Yoga

Yoga is a great practice for the connection of so many important things - body, mind, and soul.  See some of the benefits of taking part in a yoga practice.

Yoga is great exercise.  The poses will test your body strength and engage your core muscles.  Yoga makes you strong from the inside out.  Active yoga -hatha yoga- provides a continuous flow of movement.  Cardio exercise will benefit your heart and give you a well earned sense of pride in your body.  In addition to strengthening, the lengthening and stretching in the poses increases flexibility and balance.   Yoga includes many forms and levels of exercise that are accessible and beneficial, regardless of fitness level.

Yoga encourages embodiment.  Having a connected body and mind is an important goal for personal wellness.  So many of our mental struggles from life not going our way keep us living in our heads.  Yoga reminds you to focus and become aware of your body.  Reach out your heart as you expand the possibilities of your body.  Breathe in, breathe out.  Focus on that and feel it.  The breathwork lets you connect to your body during the poses. 

Yoga leads you away from mental dullness.  The practice of focusing your mind to the poses, engaging your body, steadying yourself in a pose when you are off balance, is excellent practice for life.  Yoga helps you reground, and find your center.  With clarity and intention, you can find more ways to be present and available to experiences. 

You can find a community through yoga.  Yoga studios offer community benefits and events in addition to ongoing classes.  You can gain the support of a community through meeting friends.  Opportunities to socialize as well as self develop go hand in hand.  Reaching out is a great way to benefit yourself and others.  

Yoga lays the groundwork to connect with yourself from the mat up.

If a picture is worth a thousand words ... Eye Contact

Then why not make the effort to make eye contact?  You could say so much in that picture you take between you and another person.  When your eyes meet, and you get a surge of humanity that is voluminous, magnificent, in its innate closeness.  When you make eye contact, you do speak, and your inner voice has alot to say.  That picture is worth a thousand words, and its worth a memory.  And eye contact feels beneficial in most circumstances.  Its the story you want to listen to, the story that isn't made up of conversational words and wants and white lies.  Its more guttural, genuine, brilliant.  Take a secure look at someone's eyes and you have told them: I'm listening to you, I'm paying attention, I have the time for you, I am interested in you.  Eye contact has the capacity to comfort, to lead, to reconcile differences.  It begins with you believing that the other person is worthy of respect.  Its magnificent, and it can be very intense, that is something I love about it.  When you think of the thousand words that are exchanged in eye contact, you might even be at a loss for words.  When presenters make speeches, the good one's make eye contact with their audience.  By looking back, you are giving faith - you have my attention - you have my eyes.  My eyes are attuned to you, and my body is listening.  Its one thing to be facing in the direction of someone, and sometimes you are present, and sometimes the words are falling off as soon as they've left the mouth of the other person.  Eye contact helps keep you there, present, necessary to the process of exchanging ideas.  I find eye contact amazing, a mark of life between two people - real and alive, intimate.  Depending how you feel towards the other person, it might make you melt with love - the giver and object of love.

How Yoga Works - Who Can Do Yoga?

Who can do yoga, and what can yoga do for you?

When I practice yoga at studios, I meet people who are positively happy and grateful to have their yoga practice.  I don't know what it is about yoga - the poses and balancing acts, the exotic names, the structure of the class with a beginning, middle, and end.  But I find myself wanting to involve others and so does the Yoga Seed.

A single pose can be reworked into multiple strategic positions. Likewise, yoga can be practiced in a number of different ways to benefit each individual.  There is yoga to fit every shape and style of person who has the interest in placing their feet on the mat and learning the practice.

I have been amazed at the number of different outreach activities that occur through the Yoga Seed's efforts to expand yoga to the communities.  At the studio, there are classes in hatha yoga, vinyasa, stretching, yin, and an all-bodies class tailored to persons with physical limitations.  With an outward push to reach out to disadvantaged communities, the Yoga Seed is bringing yoga teachers to teach at schools for kids with developmental traits, jails or inmates, hospitals and the workplace for high stress employees, and classes for veterans.  The wide range of demographics in and around Sacramento encouraged to take up the practice shows the great accessibility that the Yoga Seed presents.

All of these people are practicing yoga. 

Yoga doesn't have prerequisites, so beginners can come just as they are.  There is no one type of person who benefits from yoga, and yoga encompasses a range of skill sets and abilities.  Most studios will have varying levels of classes for beginners, intermediates, and advanced practitioners to develop.  The first time you come, is a perfect time to come - there is always a class to meet you for where you're at in your body.  The Yoga Seed has many beginner oriented classes as well.  Even better, the donation based structure makes it affordable so dealing with financial situations can practice and be taken care of.

Yoga can be practiced by anyone, and everyone is a student.  Even the teacher is learning as a student in their own practice.  As long as you can learn, you can do yoga. 

See the next article to learn some of the many benefits of engaging in yoga.

I don't blame myself for making mistakes. I love myself for offering lessons.

There's some family troubles in my family, like in all families.

I have a hard time dealing with my dad, since I get really uncomfortable with him.  I generally find him to be unsupportive and uncaring, and it frightens me how fast he can go from zero to angry and irritable.

My dad typically says nothing to me but, 'have a nice day' when he leaves for work.  He doesn't take the time to say 'have a nice day', and he doesn't look at me when he says it or seem caring.  Instead, he usually says it just as he is leaving out the door in a rush - the door shutting as he finishes his hello and goodbye sentence to me for the day.

 I react in a thousandfold negative ways to this: 'He just speaks in generalizations', 'have a nice day' isn't even an authentic thought, its just something he says without meaning, 'he really doesn't care about me at all in fact',' he is so bothersome and irritating how he's always in a rush', 'he doesn't ever act like he hears my 'you too / thanks' - he doesn't respond to it and he's already out the door.

I have a lot of negativity towards my dad and can be overly touchy.  I have a buildup on grievances.

Our most recent 'situation': my dad told me multiple times that he would 'show me how to turn on the bike light' that he just attached to my bike, 'because its not working correctly and I should just show you how to turn it on'.

My reaction is: I feel demeaned that he thinks I can't figure out how to turn on a bike light and on top of it, bothered that he isn't even allowing me the chance to try it myself.  He has already tried to show how to fix things multiple times, with the assumption that I can't figure it out myself.  Also, I am incredibly sensitive to him and want to avoid any contact with him.  That includes avoiding giving him a few minutes with me to show me whatever isn't working on the bike light.

 To make it worse, he is always 'just trying to help', so in his point of view he is always in the right.  If I so much as comment on his tone of voice, I get an immediate blaming 'Marissa you are wrong; Marissa I am trying to help you and you're not letting me'.  He can't understand that I Do Not want help to learn something if I am going to feel this amount of tension over the manner of the help itself.  I also try extra hard not to let him help me because I know that he wants to help me, which would make him feel good about himself, and my resentment is pretty high to allow for that. 

When my dad tries to show me things, he has this incredibly authoritative, over-acting stuck-upness in his teaching role that I find incredibly displeasing.  He speaks with too much diction, and he gets really frustrated at not having words come out smoothly.   His words spit out sharply and with excess pressure of quality and tone, and I feel so irritated in that presence.

Instead of being casual, he acts with an authoritative role and I feel below him, student to teacher.  He overexaggerates all of his movements as he shows me how to do things.  For example, instead of just saying 'move this counter clockwise' and trusting that I understand that, he says 'move this cOUNter-clockwise' with this pressured angry movement in his face as he emphasizes 'counter' versus clockwise.  In his hand motions, he over-emphasizes his arms making a left circular motion by doing it multiple times. 

 I'm so bothered as to create alot of weasling around effort to avoid those three minutes with my dad where he wants to help me.  I find his body language and speech to be ugly.  Everything in me wants to look away, flee, forget about the task he is showing me and bury it in its now worthlessness- just not worth it -below mountains of tension that I hate. I tighten up, wishing he would stop 'teaching me' and that we didn't have such a poor relationship.  What goes from something small leads to my being angry.

In my most recent situation - my dad kept bringing up this wish to help me with the bike light.  I hadn't ridden my bike in a week and didn't have plans to, so the bike light wasn't important to me and I didn't particularly care.  Also, I assumed I could figure it out myself, and didn't want my dad's help.  Some day, some day, I will tell my dad of the Buddhist notion of 'joyful effort', and how utterly lacking he is in joyful effort in his efforts to help. 

But, my dad really harps on things.  In fact, I've stopped ever mentioning things I want, like say a car squeegee, because he goes out of his way to do things that people mention offhandedly.  So, my dad was harping on the bike light, and it was fairly high on his priorities.  He'd mentioned it a few times so I knew it was pretty stuck on his radar.  On the phone, he brought it up again, that he would show me how to turn it on.  My immediate reaction is to be all sensitive about how he doesn't have the faith in me to trust that I can figure this out for myself. 

I am not about to pick an argument since I will be blamed, and I dislike the tension of arguing.   I hold it in like usual that I don't like his help because he makes me so uncomfortable, the tone, the body language, and I don't refuse his help but I don't give in to him either; this is how I am weasly passive-aggressive.  I say 'yes well, I think I got it' .  He repeats that he should show me.  I say 'yes well I'll try it and call you if it doesn't work'.  I am still withholding the real problem of, 'Come on! I can do this! YOU AREN'T SUPPORTING ME, and never have to a good enough degree for me to learn self confidence'.  He replies 'look its easier if I just show you'.  I know at this point that his perspective is - he is trying to help me and sees me as being resisting, immature, hard to work with, that I am at fault, and that he is FRUSTRATED with me.  I reply a taut 'try me', and he huffs back an angry 'Fine. Suit Yourself. Bye'.  Click.

As always, I am relieved as soon as I get off the phone with him.  I am under some conflict stress of blaming myself, 'why can't I just let things slide, I could just give him the few minutes that he wants with me?  And yet I make such a big deal about it, but still withhold the real issue I have - why can't I be better at voicing my grievances?

I'm frustrated with my dad and with myself.  I'm blaming myself for essentially, not being perfect, for having unvirtuous, not right thoughts and actions (overly resentful instead of helpful, passive-aggressive instead of active).  I'm essentially blaming myself for being imperfect and taking on my dad's blame too.

Why should I perfect? Why should I even strive towards that?  I'm sick of blaming myself.

I came to the most delicious thought ever during introspection on this and other arguments.  Firstly, I don't have to take responsibility for my dad's anger.  He can learn how to deal with his own problems and stop being so angry at me for refusing his help.  This anger is his own karma that is working against him, and I am not the sole cause of blame.  In a more compassionate state of mind, he just as easily could have not been frustrated by me, not sweat the small stuff, not been attached to needing to help me or to his role as the knower and my role as the 'don't know how to do it', and could have said 'okay, try it, talk to you later'.  Unfortunately, he is not yet at that state of mind.  In the meantime, I do not have to absorb his negative Karma and be at fault for that, too; I don't need to take it personally.   My relationship with my dad is not all about me and my faults, that's me being overly critical of myself.

Not only that, but I can be proud of myself: I was giving my dad the chance to recognize his faults and learn from them.  If I just kept my frustration completely held in and didn't try this passive refusal response, and if I let him 'show me how to work the bike light', he wouldn't have had the chance to learn about his anger.  I am offering him the opportunity to learn from.  He could bow to me for helping him, for teaching him in the kindest way of letting people reach their own conclusions.

I giggled a lot when I came to this conclusion.  Suddenly, everything was so lighthearted.  I don't make mistakes and they aren't my faults - I just give people and myself the chance to learn lessons from.  Opportunities to learn from.  No blame, no judgements in an opportunity.

I can do no wrong! I just go around helping people out, letting them learn about themselves.  Mira told me that its very Buddhist to pretend, that pretending 'I'm going to act like things are okay, that I am okay' is a very high principled effort.  My dad can deal with his own Karma.  I can go about pretending that I am just bungling around, being ridiculous, whatever I do, and in doing so, let the pressure I put on myself recede.

Another example: my dad gets all ugly and mad at me when I don't put my dishes away.  His body gets rigid, and his voice comes out chokingly tight. I am sensitive and get frightened by my dad easily. 

Not putting dishes away is practically the only thing I do wrong at home right now.  At first, I was blaming myself for leaving dishes out since its bad manners, and disrespectful even. I don't know why I have so much resistance against putting my dishes away, but I do.  In all other respects, I have cleaned up extraordinarily - picking up clothes, and shoes, keeping my room neat and clean, having an offerings place on my desk.

Then I had the thought - my dad can deal with his own karma; better yet, my not picking up my dishes is offering him the chance!

My dad is smart and has every ability to see, acknowledge, and drop his anger and irritability.  He could choose a kinder response - he could help me out and pick up my dishes in loving kindness for me.  That shouldn't even be so much to ask, in my opinion.  But given where we are at, its a big proposition.  You think big in Buddhism, and you make your Karma grow bountiful.  Seriously, this was the most positive and hopeful, growth-oriented thought for someone else I've ever had.  So, I am offering him the chance in my wrongdoing to improve himself and generate good Karma!  Its great - I don't have to be perfect, judge or blame myself, and I still am creating an offering.

I am being facetious and not trying to avoid all responsibility; I am just trying to decrease self-criticism.  I am neat and clean in a million ways of kind speech and actions, and I have always washed everyone's dishes everywhere I have lived, not just washed my own (out of this strict conscientiousness I have).  I deserve some credit for that.  My dad doesn't know I have done that, but why is he getting so mad at me about this little thing?  I don't know, but its really not my problem.  I currently have too much resistance against him to try to help him, so rather than blame myself and add to the negativity, I will offer him my faults and mistakes.  I will offer him my plate left on the table and my cup left on the desk- I am offering my real, imperfect self.   He can respond kindly or he can add fuel to his own Karma fire, if he so makes the choice to do.  His happiness and inner peace isn't dependent on my rightful actions; they are dependent on his own. He might not realize this now, but maybe he will come around in the future.  

Pretending is fun.

I already feel my resistance lifting and more willingness to pick up the dishes out of kindness and respect, instead of being resentfully and unwillingly submissive. 

What if I had overcome my prideful and resentful faults and let him show me how to turn on the bike light?  What if I hadn't offered my faults and hadn't gotten him riled up at me yet again?

Well, I wouldn't have had the chance to learn for myself and see that nothing was wrong with the bike light at all.  I turned it on, and on it went. Simple.  The conflict around it, not so much.  But the act itself in this instance - effortless.

I want to be a child - raw wonderment

I want to be a shrieking child.

As my body gets better, I want the years to fall off and to revert back to a more incredible age.  I want to be 5.  I want to run around and be delighted in my senses. I want to be a happy maniac kid, like all kids seem to be. 

Everything seems to bring me back to wanting to be a child.  I want their lack of self consciousness, which would be so pleasantly liberating, and their ability to intermingle seamlessly with peers and kids they've never met.  I want their not needing to try or make efforts at things.  I want the excitement, I want the body lightness compared to my heaviness.  I want the constant learning and  the amazement.  I want the bouncing step, the love of body movements - running, hopping, jumping. I want the crazy imagination and ability to create games without a moments hesitation, and play for hours.  I want the fun, the delight.  The stopping eating when full and looking around at stuff.  The laughing and shrieking and jumping for joy when happy.   I want the temperamental crying at anger and frustration without any self complex.   I want the limitless curiosity.  When I put curiosity together with my smart mind, there is no doubt that magic can be created.

I want to be a cat.  Cats delight in body sensations.  They lean up into things, testing weight, solidity.  They nuzzle up to people and treat everyone equally, just as an object to rub on.  I would love to just lean up into a wall and just inhale its wall-ness, and feel my body rub up and exchange contact.  I love their pushiness and their softness.  The sleekness in the body movements - cat essence is pure smoothed down tactile control. 

Dogs are always so pleasant and happy.  I guess that's just because they are taken care of.  Every time I see a dog, I pet it, I feel absolutely no wall of unfamiliarity with dogs like I do with people.  Its so much easier. 

Inward versus Outward: Conscientiousness

The main point of this post is probably to work through my thoughts on my own excessive introspection and self thinking.  Its about love and caring, and about relevancy.

While I'm not actively doing harm by thinking about myself, I am unhappy with it.  I am passively interacting with my world, that I am only such a small part of, and my thoughts about myself are completely disproportionate to all the things going on around me.  If I want to fit in, I'm going to have to start being aware of things going on that I can fit into.  Or, develop my awareness, increase my physical presence over my mental presence, and let my mentality drift beyond my current sphere of self.

I already think that I am a good person, and in simple terms of principles, I wish the best for everybody.  But things that I want in my life haven't come together, with a job and career success and respect being the main one.  I think that the main reason is that I haven't made significant efforts towards enabling other people to reach their goals, and so I haven't been reached out to in a workable manner, either.

There's a number of reasons for me to not reach out to others, including social anxiety and excessive inner conflict, and in much of this I feel a victim (again, of people not reaching out to me).  But the plain facts are that I think about myself constantly, and its obviously not working for me. 

I don't think I have to come to any large scale changes to develop the habit of thinking about others.  I believe it will simply take a shift in my perspective.  Here's why: I consider myself extremely conscientious.  I am careful to do the right thing, I am concerned how my actions affect others, I value peace and quiet over noise and conflict.  I felt terrible last night when I kicked a pebble that was actually a living snail in a small shell (I kicked it right as I saw it was a snail). 

 But I think that my conscientiousness is again profoundly self concerned, like I watch every step I make, and every noise I make or thing that I say.  So, its over the top self involved and its pretty excruciating to live up to standards of being highly conscientious, or shall I say perfect.

And, or, there is the chance of me turning my conscientiousness away from myself, and thinking about the world.  Not in my passive or inhibited way, but in a broad, expansive, engaging way.  My conscientiousness, if redirected into awareness and compassion, could do great things.  I would start seeing suffering around me and make attempts to stop it.  I would be able to think about issues, and with that same introspection, looking in, I could like in at an issue and really work it out.  

That's something I could do.  Or, I could just be, and incorporate my senses into everything I do to ease the stronghold my mind has on me.  I could just be sensual and alive.  As my presence develops, I will feel less invisible, and less wary of creating noise or disturbance.  I will be fuller of life and awareness of sounds, smells, tastes, touch.  So I will grow into my own body and naturally my mind will stop wandering because it will be so attentive to whats going on around me.  I will be anchored by present sensations rather than drifting in thoughts of the past.

Conscientious means with a conscience, so I already have that strongly developed - my conscience is ready to be used, its just under many mental barriers.  The book, the Power of Now, will probably help me with this to decrease my mind wander.  My mind wander isn't really very conscientious since its so random and irrelevant to the present.  I want relevant, and I want to matter, and I want to make a difference.  I just would hope to shift my perspective around and focus on things that I care about.  I do care about myself but I am not even showing myself that much caring while I am mind wandering, so its better that I think about others.  Its better Karma to think about others; it gets you more connected and plants better seeds to help others and have things come your way.

Since I'm very word/verbal focused, I need to think of some way to step out of the spiral of self involved conscientiousness.  I had already come up with selfless development.  What I'm going for here is to retain the conscientiousness (but lower the degree since its too stiflingly perfectionist), and dissociate from myself.  I'm not going for development, I'm just going for a shift.  Just easy, relaxed, smooth, nothing to make efforts on or judge myself over.  I'll pick smooth, since it reminds me of my sense of touch.  Instead of conscientiousness, I'm trying to feel outward for smoothness, and my body can tell me what to do.