Breathing In

The moon is setting this morning over the shopping plaza and commuter parking lot that is my "view" and the sky beneath it is a lavender-pink. I did not need to see Melancholia to know that my brief, rare, and passing forays into melancholy have never been anything like what true melancholia must be. I'm glad I can regard the moon nearly-full in all its glory and feel no fear that it is quickly approaching to destroy the world I love! Contrary to what Justine says, I do not believe that the world is evil. In fact, I think just the opposite.

Pop has gone to see God. At my father's funeral, my brother N. told the story of how he and my brother I. lost a helium balloon when they were little. They decided, after a few moments of reflection, that the balloon was headed up to heaven, and that it would "get to see what God looks like." I think of Pop in heaven now and I know that he is listening to the best Irish music in the universe, playing his penny whistle, and stopping to take out his Swiss army knife and cut up a really good apple as a snack. I imagine he'll share apple with anyone who will have a taste. And turnips, too. All the spirits of those he lost while here and missed so deeply are gathered 'round listening to his music and his stories. His eyes are twinkling as stars in the night sky and when his granddaughter's laughter reaches his ears, through the millions of light years (or nanometers) that actually separate him from us, he smiles.

As a physicist, Pop understood the nature of light. There is a part of me that believes he is zero distance away.

All beautiful lights remind me of him now.

I have found a new teacher. When I told him I was going to have to breathe with my father as he was breathing his last breaths, he understood, and told me he had done the same with this grandmother just two weeks before. On the same day, he had her face tattooed on the inside of his wrist. He is wearing a tattoo of his father, who died tragically and too young - a handsome, bearded man - on the left side of his abdomen. He lifted his shirt to show me.

D. is a special guru for me because he is a linguist of sorts. He says/chants the name of every single asana we do. I find such great comfort in his rattling off twelve to fourteen syllables - mostly some version of the letter A - as we sit in our seats, our poses. Last week D. told us, "our bodies are our temples and our poses are our prayers." Yesterday he told us that our practice would be "easy," and it was. I surprised myself and did a headstand, which is something I haven't felt strong enough to do in many, many months, not since before Pop got sick. D. says that the practice really only requires three things: the breath, the asana (the seat, or the pose, and its form), and the drishti (the object at which one gazes gently, but steadily). When he breaks it down this way I know I can last and last, I can endure, and surprisingly, the enduring becomes such a pleasurable being.

At the very end of the practice yesterday, in savasana, or corpse pose, I forgot that I was even having any thoughts, I was so relaxed. Amazingly, my thoughts were so few and far between that only when D. played the "singing bowl," which is a continuous ringing as though he were playing a wine glass, did I even become aware that there was any mind activity at all. Even then, the thoughts were so fleeting I couldn't even hang on to them.

I've found it: hatha yoga. It took me seven years, pretty much to the day. I began to learn the practice of yoga on November 4, 2004, seven years before my father would pass. I was equipped for the pain of losing my beloved parent because I have learned to breathe. I breathed through his diagnosis and I breathed through the months of his illness. I breathed through his last night in a body on earth and I breathed as I gave the eulogy at his funeral. Of late, I'm harnessing the breath to make music on the penny whistle my father dearly loved. Emerson says, "What you are comes to you." All we have to do is breathe in, really breathe in: the air, the music, the light. We are our breath, and it is always there for us.

Peace, love, and happiness,

Kate

Bridges, Breath

I was at the wedding of my BFITW in April. It was April 8th, and the sun was gone and the smell of all the spring flowers filled the air. Nighttime in warm Georgia. The air really was delicious. Aunt J asked me why I had stopped blogging. I was so surprised to hear that she even knew that I had a blog, let alone that she had been reading it, "following it," as they say. Following a blog could imply that I am forging some sort of path, plowing ahead, perhaps paving the way. A blog fills a different niche from any other sort of writing I do. Now with a newfound awareness that someone is actually reading my words, I am thinking differently about who I am and what I want to say. It's a "fine line kind of thing," as "Hannah" in my dissertation says (that just happens to be her pseudonym - how could I write a dissertation and not include someone of that name, after all?). This fine line is one thing in a relationship between two known entities. It is different still in a relationship between the "blogger" who has no editor, just readers. And future readers who may judge her for her past words. (Just the other day someone said to me, when I told her that I had started a blog a couple of years ago but had fallen away from it, that "Yeah, you're a teacher - you probably shouldn't have a blog anyway.") The presence of readers known and unknown changes how thoughts formulate in my mind - I can feel it now - and that experience alone is worth the trouble of coming back to this.

I have been practicing yoga with a woman name G. She is a gentle, loving soul. She is incapable of raising her voice. I've found myself wondering how she disciplines her children. It must be gently. I'm sure they've never heard her yell. G says that "the breath is a bridge between the body and mind." Just yesterday, as I was about to tell this to my students before our sixty seconds of silence with which we begin class each day, I said, "my yoga teacher says," and I was interrupted! My students, nearly in unison, chimed, "I am who I am and I love being me!" I looked at them in complete surprise and smiled. "No," I said, "those are the words of D, my other yoga teacher." But I told them how happy I was that they remembered. And then I shared G's wisdom about the breath as a "bridge."

The concept of bridge is an important part of my analysis for my dissertation. Frank McCourt says, in Teacher Man, that "they were building bridges where we could travel back and forth. I answered their questions and didn’t give a damn anymore about giving them too much information" (p. 146). Well, I do have to "give a damn" about "giving [you my reader, whoever you are] too much information," but my, it does feel good to be back.

G also said today in class, "You have arrived." So, I say to you today, "You have arrived." That's what Being Here Now really means. Your journey has led you here, wherever here is at the moment. Here for me is Princeton, NJ, and in a few hours I will be the guardian of my niece while her aunt is married in the Princeton Chapel this afternoon. When I sang there with the University Chapel Choir in the years of '92 - 96, I never imagined I would be there again as both regular attendee and witness to my brother's wife's younger sister marrying her Love as I hold my two-year old niece in my arms.

These are the surprising joys that keep me going. It must be what keeps us all going, I think. At least for me, nothing else really does. It's the promise of future joy that makes me wake up and eagerly enter my classroom each morning - there's always the joy of learning and teaching that never fails to enliven my creativity and brighten my world. As this school year comes to its inevitable close, it is with deep gratitude that I reflect upon the bridges my students and I have built together, and all we have learned and considered, and all they have given me. It was a trying year, for many reasons, but the process never seems to fail. Keep an open heart, build those bridges, and joy will come.

I'm here,

KMH

It struck me this morning in Michael Cremone's yoga class that I am making headway. We were sitting in hero pose, which is when you fold your legs and sit on your heels. After about 4 minutes, each time we do it, my calves and feet go numb. We started out this way on Monday morning at 6 am, and again yesterday morning, for 12 minutes instead of 10 (M. C. told us), and again this morning, for an undisclosed amount of time (blessedly, today, he did not tell us). I knew I was making progress, because on Monday when M.C. mentioned "tomorrow," I fell suddenly out of the pose we were holding, but today, while we were beginning with hero pose and he said, "Try not to think about the pain in your feet and legs," I realized I hadn't been! I had been picturing the little grassy cliff on the east edge of Monhegan Island in Maine, because taking my mind there took me away from the agony. There were other times, too, this morning (all before 8 am), when I found a way to breathe through the pain. A five-minute plank pose. Who's ever heard of such a thing?!? I was convinced that my arms were not strong enough to bear the weight of 150 pounds for a full 5 minutes, but, miraculously, they did.

In 15 months living here in my studio apartment, I have never once run out to the lawn to throw myself into the grass, splay out my arms and legs, and stare up in bliss at the blue sky with tiny wisps of clouds in it. Today, after yoga, I did. Being pain free is such a blessing I cannot even begin to explain it. I have witnessed others in pain, and been in pain myself, but it takes the reminder of physical pain to release me into this place of the utmost gratitude for a healthy body and brain. I have no pain! Nothing aches; nothing troubles me. Sure, I have the task of writing my dissertation staring me in the face, but how can I complain? I am beautifully strong, whole, and complete.

I realize that the equation really is simple. As Ernest Holmes says, I really can learn to exist in "the eternal now and the everlasting here," and I can do this by being fully present, fully aware, even when my feet are numb or my deltoids are trembling under the weight of my entire body and are about to give way.

I haven't been able to convince everyone I know to try yoga. But I won't stop trying, because I know that mastery of the body means deep peace for the mind. Today, I thought I'd be aching and too tired to make it in yoga class after running a 5K race last night in Princeton. But I was wrong. I have newfound strength, newfound deepening of inner peace that seems as though it simply cannot be shaken. Of course, tragedy comes to us all, and I expect, like the rest of humanity, to experience it in one way or another. But I intend to always cultivate, like a kind and gentle gardener, that place inside of me, like a deep blue ocean, that is an endless peace that can only feel slight ripples from the tsunami above.

Thank you, Michael, for three wonderful classes so far. You have an eager student in me and I shall return for more.

The Person I Want to Become

My four classes these past two school days have consisted of six people each. Everything is different with a small class. These two special days we started class sitting in a circle by the windows, and our usual sixty seconds of silence were particularly silent. There was a different feel to everything, and suddenly, with more time to think about fewer students, I found myself really thinking about each and every one of them to a greater degree than I am usually ever able. I was able to truly listen to them, too, and they to one another. On the first day I told them what John C. Maxwell suggests in his book Today Matters: "Think, act, speak, and conduct yourself as though you are the person you want to become." I asked my students to consider this statement, and then write a paragraph about the person they want to become. I also asked them to think of three people they emulate. We all sat in silence, writing. Then we shared our thoughts and shared the names of the people we emulate. My answers were different in different classes, but I always said my mother, and Mrs. Gerry, my Kindergarten through Fourth Grade teacher, and once I said my grandmother, and another time, a former student, DZ. I was moved by my students' answers. They said they wanted to become wise, and that they wanted to be people in whom others could confide. They told me they wanted to be leaders, and to inspire others, and to be personable. One student said, "I want to be a best friend." When they spoke of the people they emulated, they mentioned mothers, fathers, and, most surprising to me, their friends. They love their friends. (I had forgotten this about high school. I really did get through high school relying on the support, comfort, and love of my friends. I was reminded of this the other day when my high school friend invited me to have dinner with his family. I realized that the friendship we shared when we were 15 was just as important to me as the friendship we have now at 35.) Other students shared that they want to possess the same carefree, living-in-the-present-moment existence that their pets do. One student said, "I emulate my dog's outlook on life." One student shared that he emulates his father because he "brings me back down to Earth."

The extent of my planning of this lesson was to choose two texts - Maxwell's Today Matters and Csikszentmihalyi's Flow - and share a few excerpts of them for discussion. I never imagined the degree to which my students would take the exercise to heart, or the truth they would bring to it, or the way in which they would enrich us all with their meaningful contributions. I found myself wishing I taught English instead of Anatomy! But then I realized that perhaps this little break in the routine of learning the path of blood through the heart and figuring out the details of the cardiac conduction system might have its own meaning and power. Instead of reading the work of others, we created our own texts right there on the spot. We penned our own aspirations together, and we shall carry them out together, too, until we go our separate ways in three months' time.

Who I Want to Become, by Kate Heavers

"I want to be a person who lives every day of her life to the fullest, who seeks the good in everything, and whose presence on Planet Earth brings joy and love to all. I want to be a person who shares her good. I want to be a role model for others, even in all my imperfections, and to be a person who possesses deep, abiding faith in love and goodness. I want to be happy and filled with peace. I want to be the kind of person who makes others happier for having known her. When I die, I want to have done more than just pass through - I want to have left an indelible mark on the hearts and minds of all who have ever known me."

Whom do I emulate? My mother, above all others I have ever known. But I also emulate my students, for in these difficult and uncertain times, they have deep hope, light hearts, and fresh wisdom. As always, I am honored to teach them.

KMH

Getting Sight, Seeing Light

A beautiful convergence happened the other day, and I mean to say just that, because light converges on the retina in order for us to see. I'm teaching my students about vision and sight this week, and we've talked some about what it means to have sight, even when you cannot see visible light. I read to them an excerpt of Helen Keller's memoir and asked them to consider what life would be like if they couldn't see. Then, two days ago, my mother sent me an email with this conclusion:

"Shortly after you were born (i.e. an hour or so) I was sitting in my hospital room when the nurse brought you in all wrapped up in a little bundle. You were awake and your eyes were wide open. The nurse handed you to me and I looked down at you and you looked straight back at me. It was as though you were saying, 'Well, here I am.' I suppose that is what we do over and over again our entire lives. With enough life lessons, we finally get to the place where we can say it with the some confidence!"

I asked my students to close their eyes and imagine what their mother must have felt when she looked into their eyes for the very first time. And I reminded them that the gift of sight, that is, vision, not only enables them to look out and take the world in, but to look into the eyes of others and send something forth. With our eyes we can listen, and show we care, and try to understand. Sight is nothing short of a gift.

Ralph Ellison said that "it takes a deep commitment to change and an even deeper commitment to grow." I think nowadays I'm growing because I've been sharpening my sight. I'm less short-sighted. I've set my sights more squarely on the future. I have more foresight, and moments of insight. I'm seeing things for how they are, not as I wish they were. I found out last month that my vision is 20/12. My eye doctor says I won't need reading glasses until I turn 40! So I've got a solid five years to enjoy my unaided, ever-sharpening sight.

I shall remind myself to listen with my eyes. I will shine forth my love to others as I let my eyes reflect their light back to them.

Here I am,

KMH

A Reminder That We Are the Decisive Element

"I have come to the frightening conclusion that I am the decisive element. It is my personal approach that creates the climate. It is my daily mood that makes the weather. I possess tremendous power to make life miserable or joyous. I can be a tool of torture or an instrument of inspiration, I can humiliate or humor, hurt or heal. In all situations, it is my response that decides whether a crisis is escalated or de-escalated, and a person is humanized or de-humanized." - Goethe

My purpose - and I want the whole world to know - is to be an instrument of inspiration for as long as my brain and body are alive and breathing on this planet. I wish that we all would be, and by our words and actions make a climate in which we make one another's lives not miserable, but joyous.

Goethe also said, "Do not hurry; do not rest." And I shan't!

It's cold today (14 degrees F and my car started on the second, not the first, try) but my heart is so warm.

Peace, love and happiness,

KMH

Yoga for the New Year

Denise began yesterday by telling us she would "push our buttons." That always seems to have negative connotations, but let me tell you, when Denise pushes your buttons, it feels amazing. She asked us what we were there for yesterday, at the start of a two-hour long power yoga workshop offered at Michael Cremone's YogaAbove, Nassau Street in Princeton, and I blurted out, "For peace." I knew she wanted us to speak aloud. I haven't seen her in a couple of years, but I knew. She asked what we expected, and I said, "To have fun." I did have fun. It did bring me peace. But it brought me something else, too. It brought me to a place of a just a bit more wisdom. She told us during the intense poses, that her "love affair with her breast cancer has been her greatest teacher." She told us that it was yoga that saved her life, because her yoga teacher noticed that her left arm wasn't able to work as hard as her right. It was that attentiveness on the part of her teacher that caused her to discover she had breast cancer. And it was yoga that got her through. My yoga teacher April taught me that full wheel causes grief to vanish. Denise told us it took her 8 months to be able to do full wheel pose again. When I once was filled with so much joy I wanted to begin singing, but the compression of my lungs, not to mention the other people in the room, would not allow it, I believed them then. I believed that my grief was gone. It vanished. The power of practicing yoga, what Denise called yesterday "body prayer," is that you cannot be anywhere but right there on the mat. You get stuck in some sort of position so that if you tried to move out of it quickly you might severely damage a muscle or ligament for a long time. This locks you in. You cannot fight it. You stop resisting. You sort of want to give up, but you don't because you know it will be worse to do so. And so the metaphors that crop up on the yoga mat stay with me. Denise told us yesterday that we are "too smart to suffer." I kept thinking that thought: "I am too smart to suffer." In my twenties, I figured out what it really did mean to suffer. I watched two people I loved dearly suffer, both physically and emotionally, and I watched someone I loved dearly suffer so severely emotionally, it practically stole his soul, stole his health, stole his youth. And I had my share of suffering too, as helpless, but ever-trying, witness to this. Then I mustered courage and clawed my way out. Any suffering I experience nowadays is my own doing, and it doesn't happen too much. Sometimes I get overly enthusiastic about food and end up with heartburn. Sometimes on the treadmill I sprint so fast my heart feels like it's going to beat right out of my chest. But "underneath it all," as Gwen Stefani sings, my heart is happy. Thank you for an incredible lesson, Denise. My twenties were my teacher. At least that's how it feels for me now.