Peace Begins at The Yogi's Home

"If you want to promote world peace, go home and love your family." -
Mother Teresa

Being with children is a yogic practice. There's so much mindfulness involved, such constant dedication, selfless service. There's the practices of Ahimsa - nonviolence and Asteya - nonstealing occurring on a moment-to-moment basis. There is the continual bowing and Namaste to our children, to ourselves as parents. This is a metaphorical bowing, one where we are continually looking at our experience and saying, "I bow to the Divine in this very moment." Being with children is a pilgrimage - a daily pilgrimage, yes, and a lifetime one. When we strike out to become parents - the very moment we think about having children, imagine our children, imagine carrying a child in the womb, we have in fact conceived them. We have taken the first steps on this pilgrimage. And it's almost hoakey to say our lives will never be the same again once we've taken these steps. Because, really, our lives are never the same from moment to moment - not to mention the moment we become parents.

How can we be - really be - with children and still be with ourselves, with the world, with our values? How can we contribute to society and still be fully present in our home? In my own personal practice, it requires being where I am at the moment. If I am with my children I am with my children. I have to be with them without prejudice, without labels, without past grievances or stories. I have to be with them unstuck - not rooted in the past. We must transform at every moment, willing to bend and be molded. When our child cries and says she hates her brother, that she "wants to throw him into a volcano" as my daughter did one time, we have to simply be present for that statement without judgement, without predication. We have to let our small, judging self get out of the way and look at the suffering that's actually happening for her - not the words themselves.

Words are, afterall, just symbols. She is not truly going to throw her brother into a volcano - that would be nearly impossible as she's never even been to a volcano...and her brother weighs 90 pounds. What she is symbolizing with her words are her feelings of deep frustration, of sadness, of anger. And who am I to tell her she shouldn't have those feelings? Who am I to put her in a "time out" thereby negating her feelings - and actually tell her those feelings are unacceptable, bad, intolerable by doing so? I have no right to steal her feelings from her. So in this moment I practice both ahimsa and asteya.

I look past the words and I see the truth of the situation. I stand in a silent meditation before I approach her. I root myself into the ground in Tadasana, feeling my feet, feeling my own Mother Earth who supports me in this role of mother every single day without compromise. I thank Mother for turning my table scraps, my moldy refridgerator refuse, into compost to feed me the next year. And in these three seconds before I approach my child, I look at my breath, take a full and deep and slow one, and ask for guidance.

I say, "Jai, you are feeling sad and frustrated. You are feeling scared. I want to know more about your feelings. I love hearing how you feel."

Then I am silent. I wait for the tears. They come and keep on coming. When she's cried in my arms for a few minutes, Jai then says, "Sage was looking at me scary and he was swining his stick at me and I don't want to get hit and he is too big."

I am witnessing her movement in this moment. I am not judging her or her brother. I do not condemn his actions, for to do so would be to steal his experience. I take another breath and say, "You felt scared when Sage looked at you and swung his stick at you and you feel frustrated that you are smaller than him and cannot defend yourself."

She nods her head. (And it doesn't always happen so neatly - sometimes I have to look at the situation over and over again until I can see clearly what she is feeling. She lets me know if I am right or wrong.) She hugs me and cries a little more and says, "I feel scared Mom and I feel frrusssterrated," she says.

I look over at Sage who is watching this whole scene and say, "Would you be willing to come give Jai a hug?" Sometimes he says no, which I honor, but today he says yes. He comes over and hugs her, he doesn't say he's sorry and I don't coerce him into doing so. I let Jai speak to him. "Sagey I am scared when you do that," she says. Then they hug and smile at one another. Sage wipes a tear away from her face. And he actually doesn't even attempt to scare her again that day.

This creates peace between siblings instead of feelings of guilt and more frustration. When we see clearly we can offer our own body and mind as a temple for our children to work out their stuff in. We can just be present and watch the miracles unfold.

This process really, truly works. And I find the most important part of it all is letting ourselves as parents be so deeply present that we remove our own experience, our own bias, our own temptation to moralize and teach. We let our children be their own true teachers. Just as the Adi Mantra suggests when we recite Ong Namo Guru Dev Namo - we are saying I bow to the true teacher inside, I bow to my own inner Guru. We let our children find and honor their own inner Guru by allowing, and allowing and allowing. It's asana in action. Our poses teach us everything. They show us where we are holding and what we are fixated on. They reveal, uncover, scrape away. When we sit in a pose, confront all of the discomfort in our own bodies, we understand on a deep visceral level what it means to be human, to carry our junk around with us, to hold onto things, to attach our stories to even our children. And by continuing to hold the pose - or to be in the fray with our children's feelings and fights - we allow true healing to take place. For ourselves right alongside our children. Because, as Maharaj-ji Neem Karoli Baba always said, we are all one.