Soulful Healing

Each season brings with it a natural series of changes.  Spring.  Summer.  Fall.  Winter.  Birth. Growth. Aging. Death.  These are the systematic cycles that affect not just the weather and landscape, but also our body, mind, and emotions.   Even if you couldn’t tell by the 100° L.A. weather, Fall is officially upon us now.  In Ayurveda — the sister science of yoga — Fall is the season ruled by vata energy.  Vata is light, dry, cold, subtle, and mobile, like the wind.  People with dominant vata energy tend to be creative, energetic, and lively.  As such, however, they are often ruled by their emotions.  Depending on your own primary constitution or dosha (vata, pitta, kapha, or some combination of the three), you will have different responses to the increased vata energy that Fall brings.  Some find the cooler temperatures, falling leaves, and wind to be refreshing, while others find this light, dry, mobile energy to be unsettling or even aggravating.

The seasons aren’t the only cycles that affect our lives.  There are also cycles that span our days, months, and life-time.  Vata energy is most prominent during the hours of 2-6 each day, both in the early morning and in the afternoon.  Because vata is so energetic and creative, we must be careful not to exhaust ourselves during these times of day.  They are times that call for mental and physical rest.  As I write this, I am reminded of the many cultures around the world that call for an afternoon rest period.  It is so common for people to feel unfocused and tired during the early afternoon hours, U.S. workplaces would do well to establish a post-lunchtime rest.  When I am being mindful (which hasn’t been happening enough lately!), I will take 30 minutes sometime in the middle of the day to rest.  I might take a power-nap, engage in silent meditation, practice yoga nidra, or listen to a guided meditation.  And believe me when I say this is an ongoing process for me…  playfully dancing between the pull of opposite poles.  At any rate, honoring our natural cycles promotes better productivity by taking advantage of the best times for work, rest, and play.

Balanced vata energy is creative, vibrant, and full of life.  It is what gets us moving and doing things.  Out of balance, however, it can be forgetful, disorganized, anxious, emotionally overwhelmed, and eventually exhausted.  As we go through these daily, monthly, and annual cycles, it is important to note how we are affected.  How is your mood at this time of year?  Do you feel energized and full of ideas?  Or do you find yourself feeling annoyed and overwhelmed?  Are you forgetting things and starting too many projects?  Or are you accomplishing things and feeling good?  This is where practices like mindfulness and self-reflection come in handy, so that we can observe the effects of these cycles on the body, mind, and emotions.  When we quietly observe what is happening externally and internally, we can uncover what is balanced and imbalanced within us.  Then we can make conscious changes that will balance our energies so that we can be at our best in our relationships with ourselves, our families, and our work.

If you’re not so sure about the mindfulness/meditation thing and you live in the L.A. area, join me for my next FREE meditation class on Monday, November 7^th at 7:00pm, in North Hollywood.  We’ll be focusing on mindful practices to incorporate into daily activities, such as eating, working, and interacting with others, keeping in mind the increased vata energy of this season.  You can also give me a call for your own personalized dosha analysis and yoga plan to balance your energy.  If you’re outside of L.A. and would like to learn more about how to balance your energy, you can use these links to find a yoga therapist or Ayurvedic practitioner near you.  Enjoy the Fall season and until next time, be well!

This month’s blog post is actually a guest post for Sherry Gaba, LCSW.  She is the author of the book “The Law of Sobriety,” in which she applies the concepts of the Law of Attraction to help people recover from addictions.   Her life coaching and therapy skills have also been featured on VH1′s Celebrity Rehab and Sober House. Please hop on over to her Law of Sobriety blog to read my post on mindfulness and sobriety.  Thanks for reading!

In a relatively recent post, I wrote about the signs and symptoms of two common depression diagnoses.  So now I’d like to approach the treatment of depression from a yoga and mental health perspective.  In Ayurveda (the sister science of yoga), we would most likely describe depression symptoms as excess kapha, the energy of earth and water that gets stuck and stagnant when out of balance.  Depending on the situation, I could also foresee a depressed individual being someone with an imbalance in another dosha (DOE-shuh) or sub-dosha, but whose primary guna (GOO-nuh) is tamasic (tah-MAH-sick):  slow, lethargic, inactive, stagnant, heavy, and dark.  I know, I know, I’m throwing a lot of Sanskrit words at you today, but stay with me    Think about that last one for a bit…  Slow, lethargic, inactive, stagnant, heavy, and dark.  If you or anyone you love has ever been depressed, I’m sure those words ring true for you.

Ayurveda is a complex and detailed approach to health and wellness.  As such, it is far too intricate for me to go into detail here (naturally, if you’d like to learn more about your dosha, or constitution, contact me to schedule your Professional Yoga Therapy^TM evaluation today).  I will say that the Ayurvedic yoga approach to depression, or any mental health imbalance, is one that is very individualized.  It is worlds apart from the “take two pills and call me in the morning” approach to health that Western medicine often takes.  That said, a variety of Western research studies have shown that yoga-based interventions are effective in reducing depressive symptoms (Wolf, 2000; Lavey, et al., 2005; Zerka Yoo, 2008).  I enjoy reading yoga therapy research, as I’m hopeful that this adds credibility to yoga therapy and reduces some of the “airy fairy” concerns that people have about using yoga in the health and mental health care fields.  Credibility is also one reason I like referring to the Sanskrit terms behind these concepts.  This isn’t a bunch of gibberish I just made up (I swear!), but a systematic and individualized approach to wellness that’s been around far longer than our current medical systems.  Consequently, taking an Ayurvedic yoga approach to address depressive symptoms could look something like this:

1. Energetic and cleansing breathwork – In yoga, we call breathwork “pranayama” (prahn-uh-YAHM).  For a depressed individual, I would recommend breathing strategies that energize, cleanse, or even bring balance to a person’s energy (again, depending on a variety of specific factors).  These could include Victorious Breath (aka “Ujjayi”, oo-JAI-ee), Sun Breath, and Alternate Nostril Breathing.  There is also the use of Bee Breath (a sighing exhalation) for the clearing out of physical and emotional pain brought on by depression.
2. Mudra (MOO-drah) – These are hand positions intended to focus or channel the flow of energy within the body.  Abhaya (ahb-HA-ya) Mudra builds inner strength and create a protective barrier against negative energy.  Jnana (ny-AH-nah) Mudra reminds us of our unity with all things (depression can make you feel alone and isolated, after all) and helps to focus the mind.  This is great for addressing the lack of concentration that is often present with depression.  Two more favorite mudras for depression include Pushpaputa Mudra, used to recognize the abundance that awaits us, and Rudra (ROO-druh) Mudra, which decreases heaviness and lethargy, increasing energy flow to the entire body.
3. Asana (AH-suhn) – This is the Sanskrit term for yoga’s physical postures.  To address depressive symptoms, I would focus my client on utilizing the energizing and balancing poses.  Again, specific recommendations must always take into consideration the severity and type of symptoms present, as well as the client’s physical abilities.  There are a wide range of energizing and balancing poses that can be used here.  These include everything from gentle, supported backbends on the floor to powerful standing poses and challenging one-legged balance poses.  Even if yoga isn’t quite your style, Zerka Yoo (2008) found that both hapkido and yoga were effective in reducing depressive symptoms.  So increasing your physical activity in general could be helpful.
   Walk around the house/yard and slowly graduate to walking to the corner and back, if you’re thinking a whole exercise plan is too much.

As I said in my last post on this topic:  Please consult with a qualified mental health professional, if you think you or a loved one are experiencing depressive symptoms.  You can also take this online Depression Screening Test to help you determine whether your feelings & behaviors match up with depressive symptoms.  Psych Central hosts this screening test and has an amazing collection of resources on the depression and its treatment.  If you do seek out yoga and Ayurveda to help treat what you think are depressive symptoms, please choose your practitioner wisely.  Professional Yoga Therapists are the most highly qualified yoga practitioners trained in the use of medical, research-based yoga therapy to treat health and mental health diagnoses within their specialties.  To find an Ayurvedic medical practitioner near you, visit the National Ayurvedic Medical Association or the California Association of Ayurvedic Medicine.

As always, thanks for reading and take good care of your Self!
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References

Lavey, R.; Sherman, T., Mueser, K.T.; Osborne, D.D.; Currier, M., and Wolfe, R. (2005). The effects of yoga on mood in psychiatric inpatients. Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal, 28, 399–402.

Wolf, D.B. (2000).  Effects of the hare krsna maha mantra on stress, depression, and the three gunas.  Dissertation Abstracts International: Section B: The Sciences and Engineering, 60(7-B), 3584.

Zerka Yoo, Christine (2008).  Hapkido vs. yoga: Analysis of choice, persistence and psychological benefits.  Dissertation Abstracts International: Section B: The Sciences and Engineering, 68(12-B), 8441.

I have found myself having a lot of conversations about depression lately.  From clients to friends to colleagues, sadness and disappointment have many people in their grasp these days.  I imagine that local, national, and global events are major contributing factors.  Whether you call recent U.S. economic challenges the Great Recession or the 2^nd Great Depression (hmmm, there’s that word again), unemployment & stagnant wages & cuts to services to our most vulnerable are crippling the nation.  Then there’s the Haiti earthquake, the BP Oil Spill, the Japan earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear crisis, and the various wars the U.S. is participating in.  Lots of reasons to be bummed, especially if you watch mainstream news on a regular basis.

Sadness is a normal human emotion and while it may not be pleasant to feel, it is an essential part of our experience.  I think it is important to be sad about the above laundry list of alarming events…  Sadness — like all our other emotions — can be a messenger, if we let it.  Sadness alerts us that something important, significant, meaningful is happening.  Whether sad at the end of a fun experience or about living far from family or about the loss of a job or loved one, sadness is part of our collective story.  In addition, one cannot be happy all the time.  In fact, we call it mania when someone’s mood is excessively positive for too long.  Think about the cycles of nature…  There is birth, growth, death.  Plants require both sunshine and rain to grow, so how can we expect only sunshine in our own lives?  As the book of Ecclesiastes notes, “To everything there is a season and a time to every purpose under heaven.”

While personal challenges and socio-political factors have a huge impact on a person’s mood, there is a significant difference between general sadness and clinical depression.  True clinical depression is deeply painful (both emotionally & physically) and makes it difficult for a person to function normally.  The disorder takes over a person’s thoughts, turning them almost exclusively to the negative (or at least making it really hard to think anything positive).  There is huge body of research on what is happening in the brain on a neurochemical level in a depressed person, but that’s beyond my purpose here in this article.  I’ll focus instead of the different types of depression, their symptoms, and some resources for more information. 

There are different types of depression, but when most people use the word they are probably referring to Major Depressive Disorder.  From the Diagnostic & Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the symptoms of Major Depressive Disorder include:

• Depressed mood most of the day, nearly every day, as indicated by either subjective report (e.g., feeling sad or empty) or observation made by others (e.g., appears tearful).  Children and adolescents may present with irritable mood.
• Markedly diminished interest or pleasure in all, or almost all, activities most of the day
• Significant weight loss when not dieting or weight gain (e.g., a change of more than 5% of body weight in a month), or decrease or increase in appetite.
• Insomnia or hypersomnia
• Psychomotor agitation or retardation
• Fatigue or loss of energy
• Feelings of worthlessness or excessive or inappropriate guilt
• Diminished ability to think or concentrate, or indecisiveness
• Recurrent thoughts of death (not just fear of dying), recurrent suicidal ideation without a specific plan, or a suicide attempt or a specific plan for committing suicide

As you read through this list, you may have found yourself thinking, “I’ve felt that way before!”  It’s true, many of us have had these signs or symptoms at one point or another for a short time.  It is important to note that a person with true major depression will have at least five of these symptoms and experience them nearly every day for at least two weeks.   In addition, the above symptoms must be significantly impairing a person’s daily functioning.  This means that the person’s behaviors are causing them to have significant difficulties at work (e.g., can’t complete important tasks), school (e.g., sudden drop in grades), or in personal relationships (e.g., emotional withdrawal from or frequent arguments with one’s partner).

Another form of depression is called Dysthymic Disorder (from Greek, quite literally “bad mood”).  This is more of a low-grade depression that lasts for an extended period of time.  Two or more of the following symptoms must be present for at least two years in adults and one year in children (with no more than two months being symptom-free).

• Poor appetite or overeating
• Insomnia or hypersomnia
• Low energy or fatigue
• Low self-esteem
• Poor concentration or difficulty making decisions
• Feelings of hopelessness

Due to the training & experience required to properly diagnose a depressive disorder, I encourage you to refrain from diagnosing yourself based on the information presented here.  If you suspect that you or a loved one are experiencing depressive symptoms, please consult with a qualified mental health professional.  You can also take this online Depression Screening Test to help you determine whether your feelings & behaviors match up with depressive symptoms.  Psych Central hosts this screening test and has an amazing collection of resources on depression and its treatment.

In my next post, I’ll be exploring various treatments for depression, with an emphasis on how mindfulness, meditation, and movement can be used in depression recovery.  Be well and stay tuned!

Sundays are one of my favorite days.  It’s a day to reconnect with friends, family, and Spirit.  Yes, even on this  Sunday when much of the U.S. is keenly tuned to their TVs for hours of football fun.  On a slight tangent, it’s awfully hard not to use the actual words for today’s big game, but that’s how trademarks work…  Check out this great article on CNET about blacklisted words.  At any rate, I’m not much of a football fan, but because I like rituals, I like today’s football game.  Sometimes I even watch it, but that’s really more for the commercials, the food, and the fun conversations with friends.  Rituals are important; they help us mark the passing of time and can give structure where none would exist otherwise.  Birthdays, holidays, ceremonies, anniversaries, days of remembrance, rites of passage.  All these are important to satisfy the very human desire for order, but they also are a way to help us be more mindful.  Mindful of who we are, mindful of our past, mindful of where we would like to go from here, mindful of the people and places that nurture us.  

So in the interest of having a restful day, I am listing here some of my past articles on relaxation, rejuvenation, and reflection.  Whatever your ritual is today, I hope you enjoy it and bring some of that joy into the rest of your week.  Be well!
– Reconnecting with your Soul
– Time Out
– Emotional Balance
– Make Rest a Priority
– Coping with Stress

I was reminded recently of the importance of stepping back and doing a little self-reflection.  Having reaped many physical and emotional benefits from the practice of yoga, I was feeling stuck in regard to one particular challenge I’ve experienced for years:  chronic tension/pain in my right shoulder.  Fluctuating from mildly bothersome to headache-inducing, this shoulder pain situation has  frustrated me for probably the past decade.  In one of my early yoga therapy courses, I was excited to learn about various ways we can use a combination of movement and stillness to help the body heal itself.  Armed with my enthusiasm for studying anatomy and biomechanics, I started trying to figure out ways to make my shoulder feel better.  Over the next few years, I found that proper posture was generally helpful to my entire upper body and I started trying all kinds of different stretches to release the tension in the complex network of muscles inside the shoulder joint.  I would find relief anywhere from a few hours to a few days, but it would never leave completely.  I was in so much pain at one point a little over a year ago,  that one of my physical therapist friends gave me an excruciating massage to help liberate the bad juju hiding under my shoulder blade.  I won’t lie, there were tears!  Despite attempts to keep my shoulder at ease, the pain still came back.  Stress made it worse and the pain led to more stress, so it was a vicious downward cycle. 

At any rate, I really was perplexed as to why whatever I was doing was NOT working.  Over the holidays, I took a complete vacation from my asana practice.   This wasn’t specifically because of the shoulder, but because I’d had a pretty stressful year and figured that some complete relaxation was in order.  Between resting, meditating, and occasionally using the back of a chair to massage under my shoulder blade, my right shoulder started to feel better.  Then I returned to regular life and wouldn’t you know it…  There was my old friend the shoulder pain  So I decided to take a restorative yoga class at a local studio as a means of re-starting my asana practice.  It was wonderful and gentle and got me thinking that maybe what was unhelpful about all the stuff I had tried before was the way I had approached my yoga.  I have a rather driven personality and enjoy being active.  Being still isn’t easy for me!  But that’s why I’ve loved yoga…  I can move, move, move, and then enjoy the peaceful inner and outer stillness that comes from that.

My experience in that restorative class prompted me to get back to basics.  I figured if what I had been doing wasn’t working, I needed to start over again.  I needed to stop pushing myself so hard and getting frustrated over my own limitations.  In other words, I needed to take the recommendations I regularly give my clients and apply them to myself.  That whole thing about walking your talk isn’t always easy!  So I pulled out my yoga therapy books and created a basic series that addresses shoulder pain.  Then I actually practiced it.  And let me tell you…  My shoulder has never felt better!  For two weeks now, I’ve been focusing on a few specific movements for shoulder issues, focusing on strengthening & lengthening the right combo of muscles to create a healthier me.  I notice how my right shoulder is very reactive to stress; it tries to jump into my ear at the slightest hint of stress!  But what’s different now is that I can breathe and move and keep the tight ball of badness from coming back.

If you’re feeling stuck, take a step back.  Do a little self-inventory and see what you find.  What are you doing that isn’t working or isn’t helpful?  What are you doing that is helpful?  How can you decrease the unhelpful and increase the helpful?  Find your way back to your Self and let that put you back on your best path.  As one of my favorite authors, Dr. Clarissa P. Estes writes in her book Women Who Run With the Wolves, ‎”If you feel you have lost your mission, your oomph, if you feel confused, slightly off, then look for … the ambusher of the soul in your own psyche.”  Mine was an imbalanced approach to my life and yoga practice.  What’s yours?

I’ve been on a communication kick lately…  In both my professional and personal worlds, I’ve been observing what makes an interaction between people go smoothly and what makes those inevitable snags become waaaay bigger than necessary.  One of the most daunting challenges in communication is telling the difference between your thoughts and feelings, then sharing those with important others.  I truly believe that being aware of our thoughts and feelings is essential to effective communication, so I thought I’d go a little deeper into communication this week.  As you already know from your own experiences, communication is a tricky endeavor…  Being mindful of our own stuff, determining what is being asked of us, working through our automatic responses, and then stringing all these feeling-thought-ideas together in a cohesive sentence is difficult work!  In my experience, good communication requires that we S–L–O–W our internal reactions long enough to sort through everything.  We need to first create time-space between the internal reaction and the external response, then we are able to practice making our external responses match those of our highest Self.

This allowing for time and space in between urge and action is not easy.  First of all, feelings and psychological processes are powerful stuff…  The mind can either be a safe harbor for peaceful contentment or a mine-field of self-derision and negativity, as well as everything in between.  Our default way of responding to the world can be learned from our culture, our circumstances, and our families.  It can also be linked to our own genetic and neurological make-up.  Whatever the source of your automatic responses, the idea is to shift from automatic to conscious.  Often this process requires the help of a guide, whether that person is a friend, mentor, spiritual leader, shaman, therapist, or psychiatrist.  Regardless of your chosen guide, becoming more aware of your own internal process and communicating with others more effectively is a completely achievable goal.  As with so many things, it takes commitment and active practice.

One communication strategy that I and many therapist-types will share with others looks like this:   I feel ____________ when ____________.  You may hear this referred to as an “I statement,” because the idea is to get away from making assumptions about others in favor of discussing only your own feelings and observations.  The simplicity of this statement is deceiving.  This is because, again, you have to know what you feel before you let all the other junk racing through your mind just pour out.  Marshall Rosenberg, the creator of the Nonviolent Communication (NVC) method, adds another step to this statement, encouraging the speaker to identify what needs/wants trigger the feelings being expressed.  I really like this extended “I statement” because I believe it helps the speaker focus in on their own needs and how those needs create emotional responses.  So instead of saying, “It hurts my feelings when you don’t want to spend time with me!!” one might instead say, “I felt hurt when you said you have other plans, because I need to know that my interests are important to you.”  Yes, I know, this latter statement is longer and perhaps more tedious.  But this longer, more conscientious statement makes it easier for the listener to truly hear the speaker.  So instead of the defensive response, “Oh, get over yourself, you’re just being sensitive!” the listener will hopefully access her/his own compassionate nature and offer an empathetic response.  This is probably because “you don’t want to spend time with me!” sounds like a judgment at best and an attack at worst.  The NVC-inspired statement is simply an expression of the speaker’s emotions and thought process.  It’s the ultimate in honestly expressing what’s going on inside, without accidentally (or on purpose) attacking others.

If you are intrigued by this brief glimpse into the possibilities of Nonviolent Communication, here are some links:
– Center for Nonviolent Communication
– Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life (Book)
– Nonviolent Communication Companion Workbook

Happy New Year everyone!!  I hope you all enjoyed the holiday season and had some time to rejuvenate.  Whether spending time alone or with friends and family, the holidays offer up many opportunities for both self-reflection and figuring out how to communicate with those we love.  I often find that many difficulties in communication stem from getting our thoughts and feelings confused.  In my graduate school therapy internships, we would have to complete these complex grids called “process recordings” about our therapy sessions.  These were to help us figure out what observable statements and behaviors occurred in the session, what we believed the client was thinking and feeling, and what we were thinking and feeling.  It took some time to gain skill at differentiating between the thoughts and feelings of both myself and others.  Just in case you aren’t planning on getting trained as a psychotherapist, I’ll take a few moments here to discuss the basic differences between thoughts and feelings!

Thoughts
The term “thought” is usually applied to the processes of the mind or intellect.  With our thoughts and ideas, we solve problems, figure out what we like or dislike, and identify how to get from here to there.  The thinking mind can even be used to sort through feelings and determine what action to take next.  All this is to say that thoughts are very different from feelings.  When clients talk about communication challenges they’ve encountered, I’ll ask them to identify what they were feeling during that given situation.  A common response might be, “I felt s/he was being a jerk!”  Okay, show of hands…  Which of you out there has said something like this before?  Yup, pretty much all of us have.   It is not a common part of our culture to take the time to notice the difference between our thoughts and feelings, or even to really figure out what we’re feeling.  The statement “I felt s/he was being a jerk!” reflects a judgment, whether correct or not, about another person or situation.  Planning, judgment, assessment, observation, problem-solving…  These are the stuff of thoughts.  But sometimes feelings disguies themselves as thoughts:  “I’m never going to get that job,” or “S/he hates me,” or “S/he doesn’t love me because s/he didn’t e-mail me back right away.”  These are not rational statements.  These are feelings masquerading as thoughts and can get us very confused if we don’t take the time to sort them out.

Feelings
When I hear statements like the “jerk” one above (whether from myself or others!), I will point out the lack of a feeling word and help the person figure out exactly what they are feeling.  When someone finds this exercise particularly challenging, I might even pull out a list of feeling words.  With the above example, the emotional response might instead be, “I felt hurt” or “I felt angry”.  Note how these feelings statements reflect an internal state of being on the part of the speaker.  One of the challenges around honestly identifying how we feel (instead of proclaiming others’ jerkiness) is that doing so makes us vulnerable.  This is especially true of our more unpleasant emotions.  Sad.  Afraid.  Hurt.  Worried.  Insecure.  Who wants to feel those things?!  And so we cover them up with judgments about others and irrational thoughts.  But I often find that in trying to run away from feelings, we only make things worse.  If we don’t allow ourselves to feel, allow those feelings to pass through us, and allow others to know how we feel (when appropriate), then the feelings get stuck somewhere in the mind and body.  If you are interested in expanding your own emotional vocabulary, here is a great list of feeling words.

Remember that feelings are not facts and they do not last forever, though it often seems they will.  Consider attending to your breath as a means of allowing your thoughts to settle and your feelings to pass.  Thanks for taking the time to read and have a great week!

Over the past few weeks, my motivation to write has been low.  First, there was Thanksgiving.  I had a wonderful time celebrating with my family & friends.  One of the side effects of feasting, though, is a sleepy lethargy!  So I gave myself permission to just enjoy the relaxation that I don’t usually make time for.   Then in the week after Thanksgiving, one of my friends passed away.  She was about a month younger than me and her death was entirely unexpected and shocking.  I think I spent that first week feeling numb and in complete denial.  As the most basic defense mechanism, denial comes in very handy.  Information that our minds cannot process is blocked out because to take in that information might require a complete reorganization of thoughts, feelings, and information that we currently have.  If you think organizing your desk is challenging, try reorganizing your mind!  About a week after I got the news, I was able to really feel the sadness my defenses had blocked out.

Dealing with this sadness got me to thinking about how the holidays are not always “happy”.  With smiles on our faces, we encourage one another to have “Happy Holidays!”  And while Halloween through Christmas is easily my favorite time of year, it carries with it reminders of both past joys and past sorrows.  Then, there are the current joys and sorrows.  I was reminded of this recently while watching the movie Parenthood, where one of the characters gives an apt description of life as a rollercoaster, noting that she prefers the rollercoaster to the merry-go-round.  Whether we like it or not, life is rollercoaster… a sometimes intense series of ups and downs and all-arounds, with (hopefully) moments of rest in between.  I don’t know about you, but I am looking back on a year that zoomed by in true rollercoaster fashion.  There were a whole lot of amazing times and a whole lot of hard times.  There were times when I thought I couldn’t be happier.  There were times when I couldn’t imagine how I would get through the day.  Here I am…  sad, content, worried, joyful, eager…  all of the feelings that make up this life.  But most of all, I feel lucky to just be sitting here writing about it.

Still, at this time of year, we can sometimes feel pressured to be happy.  As if, when we are not happy, we are somehow upsetting the natural order.  Sometimes, we might even actively become angry with each other because someone wants to honestly express their discomfort or discontent.  When we are the accusers, it’s usually a sign that we are denying, ignoring, or avoiding our own difficult feelings.  It’s far simpler to blame others, versus doing the hard work of looking inward and coming to terms with the stuff we’ve been ignoring.  While denial and avoidance are great forms of self-protection in the short-term, they don’t tend to serve us well in the long haul.  What we deny or avoid comes back to haunt us in strange ways.  Just because we choose not to be conscious of something does not mean it just goes away.  It can come to settle in the subconscious, from which we act out our fears & desires without conscious awareness.  Have you ever been completely shocked by an observation that someone else has made of you, only to later realize they were right?  It’s rarely pretty, but try saying hello to the junk buried in your subconscious with gentleness and curiosity.  Remember that self-blame only creates stagnation and keeps us repeating the patterns we don’t like.

If you are one of the people for whom the holidays are not so happy (or are perhaps a mix of happy & sad & other stuff), know that you are not alone.  I also hope that, as you experience the wide range of human emotion during this holiday time, you can honestly share that with someone who is willing to listen.  Whether you are grieving a recent loss or a more distant one, many people are feeling exactly the same.  Maybe it’s time to reach out for a little social contact, maybe it’s time to stay home and rest, or maybe you need a smidge of both.  Only you can figure that out for your Self.  Denying your Self the right to feel what you feel can have all kinds of negative effects.  So pick your favorite self-care strategy or engage in some self-reflection to get you back to your Soul center.  It’s right there waiting patiently for you to return.  While we struggle with our losses, let us also call to mind the people still here to walk through this life with us.  Whatever your Soul is handling right now, I’m wishing you the  grace to let yourself heal and let others in your life know what you need.  Be well!

The last entry in this review of the connection between body and soul brings us to an exploration of our spirit.  If you’re just now dropping in, you can read the previous posts in this series here:  Part One (the physical body), Part Two (the energetic body), Part Three (the mental & emotional body), and Part Four (the intellectual body).

Anandamayakosha

Try this fun, gigantic word on for size…  awn-AWN-duh-mai-uh-KOH-shuh.  This term applies to the spiritual body or to the things that bring us true joy and bliss.  While many of us being our yoga practice because we know it will be good physical exercise, it holds so much more substance.  The ultimate goal of yoga is samadhi, or complete union with the Divine.  Other cultures call this by names such as nirvana, bodhi, or enlightenment.  In this space of unity, concepts such as “you” and “I” no longer exist because We are One.  You may have caught brief glimpses of samadhi in your everyday life via the experience of those “aha” moments where everything seems to make sense.  It is also something the people of every age have tried to achieve in ways that yield the opposite effect.  In his book Light on Life, B.K.S. Iyengar states, “I can assure you that everyone seeks samadhi, and most of us seek shortcuts to get there. … People seek samadhi through drugs, alcohol, the danger of extreme sports, the romanticism of music, the beauty of nature, and the passion of sexuality.”  As I noted in Part Four, there is nothing wrong with momentary pleasure in and of itself, as long as we recognize that it is a feeling that passes like any other.  True bliss is something else entirely.

In many a late night conversation with my dad, he would often say to me that we humans have a God-shaped hole inside.  Take a moment to reflect on this and I think you’ll know exactly what that means…  The place inside of you that hurts, aches, and cries out for connection.  The place you might try to cover up with a shield of comedy or harshness or doing too much.  The place that may even make you run away from truly connecting with others because that idea is just…  so… terrifying. The good news, though, is that it’s a space that can be filled by recognizing the Divine spark inside each one of us.  Yes, that applies to you.  You who are too hard on yourselves; you who blame yourselves and others for things far outside anyone’s control; you who yell at people in traffic (like me!); you who push others away; you are struggling just to get through each day.  Especially on those deep, dark, sad days, I recognize that belief in something Divine is hard to come by.

So how do you seek Oneness with the Divine?  What in your life brings you that sense of joyful contentment?  For some it visits during meditation or quiets walks among nature or śavāsana.  Some get to experience it in their daily work, whether that’s at home or office or factory or field.  For others, it is in finding ways to give back.  And for still others, it is in allowing oneself to receive the gifts that others want to provide (think about it…  when was the last time you brushed off a compliment instead of simply saying, “Thank you”?).  At all of these levels, I like to think that when we recognize the Light in each other, we make these connections spiritual ones.  And if not spiritual, then at the very least mindful, thoughtful, caring.  In my work as a therapist, I frequently see people working to turn their losses and injuries into helpful gifts for others (this applies so strongly to all of us healers out there!).  This is such a wonderful way to bring Soul into things.  We can let life’s injuries leave complete destruction in their wake and perhaps, for a time, we revel in that darkness.  But eventually there comes an opportunity to rise up, to reconnect.  Just be careful of the other extreme, giving too much and doing too much.  Balance is always the key.

As usual, I hope that I have given you many things to wonder about…  I find that there are very few tangible answers along our journey through life.  I believe our body and soul are connected in so many ways, with a lovely dance swaying back and forth among all of our layers:  body, energy, emotions, wisdom, spirit.  Consider how you might more consciously connect all these qualities of your Self in your daily life.  Are you eating foods that give you fuel for the day?  Or are you eating in an attempt to fill the hole?  Is your mind a safe harbor of gentle thoughts towards self and others?  Or is it a minefield?  Here’s wishing you grace and bliss in your own journey!  And to those celebrating Thanksgiving this week, enjoy the communion of friends, family, and feasting!