SHEDDING FEAR

The soft breath of evening opens over me as I take the first steps down the path in the forest I’ve come to think of as my own. I rarely see other people here, even on the most gorgeous, welcoming days of the year, days when the leaves wave rainbows and drop themselves like delicate angels onto the ground below, days when the air is bright with the spring-tipsy flutter of forest critters, days when the world is mellow, and the slow hollow suck of the mud-soft path pulls my shoes away from my feet as I walk. The curt welcome of winter is especially solitary, when the path is often frosty or slippery or slathered in ice-cold water, glittering with the hard, undeniable beauty of a quiet frozen landscape. Countless times now, maybe thousands of times, I’ve stepped from the lair of my car into this real world so drenched in beauty and life it amazes me the whole city hasn’t flocked here to taste just a morsel of it.

But they haven’t. Usually I’m here alone, the way I like it.

My relationship to the forest has evolved, the way most everything in my life has over the past few years, most keenly the relationships I share -- with people, with trees and hills, mud-slicked paths, with myself. Years ago, before yoga, before I had reclaimed my body, before I chose to allow so many of my fear-based perspectives to take their own hike somewhere else, I discovered the forest as a convenient place to get exercise. As a novice runner mid-way through an 80-pound battle, I navigated a three-mile course on the paved road that rambled through the woods. In those days I did usually see people. Cars would drive past, moms with baby strollers, other runners leaving me in their dust, cyclists… The deep tangle of trees and hills that spread out from the road and around me for seeming infinity represented a world I never stepped foot in, not by myself at least.

Somewhere in the midst of losing almost half my body weight, I discovered yoga and unwittingly began to transform my interior landscape. For quite some time, a number of years, I continued to exercise vigorously while struggling to find enough time to enjoy the yoga I intuitively knew I needed. I ran in the forest, attended umpteen thousand aerobics classes, I did yoga. I adhered to a specific schedule each day, enjoying my yoga practice only on allotted days, partially ruled by the fear that if I sacrificed any aerobic activity I would re-gain an ounce of weight, which would immediately snowball into 80 pounds, and I’d be back where I started. So I weighed myself morning, noon, and night, wrote down every tidbit of food I put into my mouth, and struggled with how to fit more yoga into my schedule. I didn’t know how to put my decisions into this context then, but now I know I was driven by fear, that sneaky devil. The fear of becoming who I didn’t want to be.

Eventually I took my run to the woods. I don’t remember the transition, I just know it happened, and I know it was the yoga in me that made me do it. One day I was on the road, and then one day I wasn’t, I had disappeared into the leaves to begin a different journey, and I haven’t looked back since.

Now I take it slow. My running feet have stopped running. I’m back to walking in the woods. Sometimes I’ll stop dead still in the middle of the trail and look around in sheer wonder. I see things back here I never once, in all the years I trod the pavement, saw. Five feet from a deer bigger than me, the two of us locked in a thick moment of respectful cross-species communication, she finally turns and saddles off to rejoin the wood’s salient hum. I’m so grateful to be a part of this scenario I could cry, and sometimes I do. Sometimes it’s birds dancing on the breeze, sometimes it’s a beaver slamming his tail at me, sometimes the noise is a mystery I can only guess at, a twittering reminder that I am of this world and not above it, that we are all of us – the birds and salamanders, moss-covered rocks and chirping squirrels – participating in a dance, whether we realize it or not.

People have expressed concern to me about the safety of hitting the woods alone. Part of me used to worry about this as well. My father, bless his heart, gave me this thing called an “executive ice-scraper,” this tool that could very legitimately be used to scrape ice, as well as gouge eyeballs or otherwise inflict harm on a would-be attacker. It fit snug and warm in my palm, and I gripped it while I darted through the woods, constantly aware of its presence, of the imminent threat of attack. It made perfect sense to me at the time. After all, I also used to tell my husband that I felt like we were all walking around with loaded guns aimed at our heads, I worried so incessantly about the well-being and safety of my family. I used to constantly feel as though all of us were just a hair’s breadth away from disaster, that really the list of potential tragedies was infinite so I therefore had to worry extra hard and extra long to make sure I covered every single one of them. It was hell, and I created it. The executive ice-scraper was my friend, its presence helped me to not forget the never-ending parade of disasters that were tottering on the brink of reality, poised to ruin my life. I was ready, dammit, I could hardly wait to show off my impressive self-defense skills.

So again with the fear. Eventually, as I deepened my practice, as I learned to focus more on my breaths than my thoughts, more on what is than what might ruin it, the executive ice-scraper got left behind, and slowly, so slowly I didn’t even notice it happening, the torrid parade of scary images that seemed to me just a natural constituent of being a mother, a wife, a woman alone in the big breathing world, the torrid parade faded into oblivion where it belongs and left an open space I could begin to fill with gratitude and appreciation. I can’t remember the last time I entertained a twisted fantasy about how exactly I would kick a man coming at me, how fast I would run, would a car be on the road for me to wave over? If I was going to go down, would it last long, would I suffer much? How exactly would my children react when they learned they’d never see their mother again? Would my husband remarry? All this as I took one step after another through god’s growing green earth, shining all around me in full-on lustrous glory, while I shirked inside my useless worry like a turtle in a shell. It’s as though I was insane, just like a lot of us, worry worry worry, wasting all those precious moments on figments of our imaginations, breathing life into our worst nightmares.

Now at least I know I have an option. I can walk in the woods, my arms swinging a careless rhythm, allowing myself to absorb the sheer limitless goodness offered by one foot after another on a long forest path, the woodsong happy and the leafwind smooth, my heart open and my mind free. Or I can walk with the executive ice-scraper tucked like a burdensome shadow in the hollow of my hand. What the heck, I’ll risk it. The scraper can stay in the glovebox of the car where it belongs, waiting for winter and hard cold ice.

I’ll take the woodsong and leafwind.

Namaste.

Ahimsa and Lifestyle

We started the discussion of ahimsa last week, but one little page isn’t enough to even introduce the topic, much less explore it. The importance of ahimsa (non-violence in thought, word, and deed) to yogis as well as other peace-loving folks is bound to transfer to daily life, but the issue of diet is one which can philosophically segregate even those devoted to a non-violent existence.

Plenty of people who eat meat would never dream of committing a violent act against a person or an animal, but the hard fact remains that meat cannot land on a plate without an act of violence having been committed, an act in which the carnivore is ultimately complicit when enjoying meat. At the same time, many spiritually dedicated and conscientious people do choose to eat meat, and I’m definitely not here to admonish anyone’s particular lifestyle choices. I’m the only vegetarian member of my family, and it’s only been 2 ½ years since I gave up meat myself. So I’m not on a high horse here. Nonetheless, this is a salient topic in the world of yoga, and one I believe worthy of exploration.

The evolution of my own dietary habits definitely mirrored the integration of yogic principles into my daily life. I was always one of those “don’t tell me, I don’t want to know” meat eaters with a stronger affinity for vegetarian rather than flesh dishes. Once I exposed myself, however, to the realities involved with not only the production of, but also the peripheral effects, of the meat industry, I gave it up. Happily. The decision has actually made me feel lighter, and has made my life easier. Rather than burying (and therefore on some level struggling with) the harsh truths represented by my diet, I’m now free from that burden.

Except for the fish issue, which I discussed last week, and which I am currently re-evaluating. One of the “justifications” I use for occasionally eating fish is that at least the animal has been afforded an opportunity to live life, to swim freely, and to, well, be a fish. As opposed to industrially-raised cattle and chickens, who live horrific lives and die horrific deaths, suffering through their entire existence without the opportunity to experience even one moment of freedom, of happiness, of being as they’re “meant” to be. Everything dies, everything transitions from earthly form, so the death itself is not as bothersome to me as the denial of life.

Many people believe that since we have “dominion” over animals, we have the right to do with them as we please. My personal response to this is that dominion does not equate a lack of responsibility. Parents have dominion over their children, but that does not mean they have the right to treat them any way they want. It actually means they are obligated to steadfastly nurture them.

The debate over the morality of meat eating could go back and forth forever, but I think the debate about the best production practices is more easily won. Massive, industrial meat producing operations are devastating to the animals, the land they inhabit, and the people who eat them, simple as that. Polluted farm runoff, overuse of antibiotics (which ultimately travel through the food chain and into human bodies), the direct support of monoculture megafarms, and the general dismal pall permeating the industry from feedlot to table can be avoided by kind-hearted meat eaters who alter their buying habits.

We do this first by eating less meat. It’s no secret, even within the mainstream American health community, that our culture tends to consume an unhealthy amount of meat, especially red meat, and for pete’s sake especially too much heart-stopping pretend food like hot dogs and chicken nuggets. Our beautiful state is a supreme example of a population that could benefit immensely from going veg a couple of days a week. Implementing the self-study required (another yogic prescription for the good life) to bring oneself to the realization that something might need to be changed in order to take a step further in living our healthiest, happiest lives, is in itself worthwhile. Nothing in the world wrong with a little self-discipline; just because we might want to eat hamburgers for dinner every night and bacon with breakfast every morning (or poptarts or macaroni and cheese), doesn’t mean we should. So less is more, in lots of realms. Easy enough.

Beyond this we can lessen our impact by choosing local, organically-raised meat. And produce too, if we can find it. Smaller operations tend to treat their animals more kindly, and the animals are more likely to die humanely. If you are interested in finding locally-raised meat, I’m aware of a couple options in the area. Feel free to contact me for information if you’re curious.

The environmental impact of the mega-meat world is too vast a topic for me to try to broach, but I can recommend some books that will enlighten you better than I:

The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan. This book is incredibly well-researched and even-handed. It’s written by a meat-eater, and he won’t try to convince you to give it up. Entertaining and highly informative. I couldn’t put it down.

Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. Learn more than you ever wanted to know about America’s favorite meal, the burger and fries. Yum.

The Hundred-Year Lie by Randall Fitzgerald. Not really a book about meat, but a book about all the stuff we put into our bodies that we might want to think about a little more thoroughly.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. Explore the life of a family that goes local for a whole year. No trucked-in food allowed. http://animalvegetablemiracle.comt/

Most of these books, as well as some yoga cookbooks, are in the library at The Folded Leaf. Help yourself!

I think more important than our specific choices regarding diet or other habits in our lives, is our devotion to exploring the motivation and purpose behind the choices we do make. It is only through our own self-study and desire to grow that we might get from Here to There in our effort to progress -- even when that journey is a spiraling from wonderful to more wonderful, for yoga understands that our potential is infinite. What a great practice.

Namaste.