Tread across any terrain, any darkness, and stop. Kneel down by the creek. Your hands comb over the cool moss on the ground and you do nothing else other than feel and hear and see. Take it all in. Curiosity absent any agenda.
Might our senses offer more capacity for Knowing than fickle and capricious thoughts?
It's an ongoing lifetime education for any of us bold or foolish enough to sit in the teacher's seat — learning to look at a room full of differently 'posed' bodies. With instruction cues focused less on the gross outer forms and more on the imperative to breathe into harmonious, liberating alignment from the inside out.
It's temping, common, and understandable that in the closing days of 2020, our attention and conversation revolves around overwhelming evidence of disunity. Yet we're bound together not only by common wounds, but also by the brief, indispensable mercies that can appear out of nowhere when we need them most.
If we’re lucky enough to have a safe and nurturing environment as a kid like I did (thanks mom and dad, you were phenomenal), we get this honeymoon period in our tender years when self-trust comes naturally. Then as teachers and other lifestyle-influencers, however well meaning, get their hands on us and begin to mold us and erect guard rails around us? Or begin pigeon-holing our natural curiosity into the metaphysical realm into a rigid religious structure? Self-trust erodes. Over time, we look more and more outside ourselves – and certainly outside our own bodies – for approval, for validation that we’re worthy of love, or for exterior evidence that we have a place that matters in this world.
Solitude is one thing. Loneliness is quite another. I can't speak for anyone else, but for me, contemplative practices that happen in community can make it easier to remember all kinds of things. Such as how the inquiry into truth (yoga) can seem to take infinite patience, how everyone else is also finding their way, and why good humor can save your life while it's busy coming true.
Our commitment to, and sense of urgency about, knowing nothing but the truth seems to amplify with time. Once we have more than a few decades of grownup life under our belt, our tolerance for fanciful thinking or concepts that feel contrived putter out. My recent personal experience is that thirst for the unvarnished truth gets magnified when faced with unexpected loss and its onerous sidekick, grief. When the stakes feel high and our hearts are tender, our appetite for extravagant leaps of faith raw peters out
It took philosopher-historian Will Durant (1885-1981) over five decades to complete his 11-volume series, "The Story of Civilization." He and his wife would pen more than 53 surveys on human existence that are still praised for their readability and accessible prose.
Durant would declare: “certainty is fatal to inquiry.”
Personally, I take comfort in the twists and turns chronicled in Durant’s shifting perspectives over time.
In the yoga-verse, somewhere along the way, many of us found satisfaction in the certainties shared by the teachers, books, classes, and videos we consumed. It's human to be seduced by the lure of a dogmatic blueprint for fill-in-the-blank-desired-effect: This meditation technique is a protective armor against your life's stressors. That movement sequence will restore your spine to health. This breath practice is an inoculation against anxiety. That restorative posture will improve sleep quality.
The pitfalls of hubris aren't confined to philosophers, historians, and scientists. It’s one of the (increasingly poorly kept) secrets about 'teaching' yoga.
So much certainty. Sometimes, the promises align with experience. But often enough, they don't. When we first dip our toes into yoga teaching waters, the impulse to telegraph confidence in the value and accuracy of what we’re sharing from the 'teaching mountaintop' can slide us downhill, at alarming speed, eventually landing us in the discouraging valley of cocky overconfidence.
In an essay about cultivating "beginners mind," cognitive neuroscientist Christian Jarrett highlights the results of a 2015 Yale University research study. It asked graduates to estimate their knowledge of subjects pertinent to their degrees, then tested their ability to explain those topics. "The participants frequently overestimated their level of understanding," he noted, "apparently mistaking the ‘peak knowledge’ they had at the time they studied at university for their considerably more modest current knowledge.”
One of the most liberating, if humiliating, revelations for anyone daring or foolish enough to try to teach a subject as complex and vast as yoga comes from surrendering to how little we know about what’s best for an individual practitioner. Once we swallow a bit of pride and admit that our certainty about opinions-disguised-as-expertise robs students of the twin jewels of curiosity and inquiry? It's a relief to drop the exhausting façade that our instructions and cues can outperform someone's curiosity-fueled, intuitive discoveries.
The yoga and contemplative teachings with lasting impact for me came from those urging a spirit of curiosity. I'm talking about the teachers who leaven answers to questions with strong encouragement toward inquiry. (I'm looking at you, Erich Schiffmann, just for starters). My admiration and gratitude for the ones that didn't strain to enroll me in a fixed dogma grows exponentially over time.
What's your experience on that front?
I’ve been chewing this week on a short Bryan Kest video echoing the theme as it applies to the concept of correct postural "alignment" in asana. He's been teaching yoga for 38 years and declares that “proper alignment doesn't exist. That's why five schools of yoga will emphasize five different ways to do the same pose.” Teachers can share informed opinions on how they feel a posture should be correctly executed, but they are just that. You might find some opinions helpful to your practice, others not so much. Kest says that every human body has its own unique, natural alignment and “what makes it yoga is the discovery of what that uniqueness requires at any given moment.”
Boom!
This summer will mark the seventh time I'm woven into the team of guides as emcee for the weeklong Feathered Pipe homegrown Mindful Unplug retreat in Montana.
The primary teacher at The Mindful Unplug is the place where it happens, the land of the Ranch. Wild, raw nature is abundant at the storied Feathered Pipe Ranch. A mountain lake nudges you in the direction of solace and reflection. Trails wind through wildflower-saturated hills and the woods are dotted with aspen and aromatic pine. Mountains shape every horizon. Ravens, warblers, blackbirds, and pine siskins flit among trees and across meadows.
There are human guides at The Mindful Unplug too. I share accessible yoga, mindful movement, and meditation. Our sensory awareness friend Zane leads forest immersions and an enchanting nightfall meditation. And the incomparable Matthew Marsolek and family add a profound and vibrant dimension to our time together, helping us find our own rhythms through group drumming, music and dance.
An important piece of news about the Mindful Unplug: it is among the 2023 Feathered Pipe Foundation programs with scholarship availability. Applications are being accepted now through 26 February, so if you or someone you know is interested in attending but would benefit from some help making it happen, hop on over to this page to apply for a scholarship.
