Being With Pain - On and Off the Mat
Seeing clients and teaching yoga classes all weekend, I was once again reminded of the saying: present moment, only moment. Right now, this very moment - this is the only one we're gonna get. This is the only time we will have this moment. Why do we wish so many of our moments - the moments of our lives - away? By "wishing them away", I mean to say: why are we universally unsatisfied with the place we are in presently? Are we really able to BE with anything at all? Are we able to be with our children, our happiness, our deep pain?
I've been asking myself those questions for a while now because I notice that whenever I am in pain, I will do just about anything to keep from sitting with it. When I am at my breaking point in a yoga pose, when the pain feels so intense, I notice my mind wandering to other things - ANYthing - other than sitting right there in that pain. And I notice myself doing this in all of the facets of my life.
In parenting, when it is really hard - when things are not going according to my expectations - I make wishes: I wish this house was cleaner. I wish my kids would put their dirty socks in the basket. I wish I was at a yoga retreat. I wish I had a day off from being with my kids. And I miss all of this amazingly beautiful stuff all around me.
Here's an example. I am cleaning the house a couple of days ago. I go upstairs, to where my whole family sleeps together in a giant loft. I notice the place is, like, totally trashed. And my kids have followed me upstairs, pulling each other's clothes and hair. There hadn't been a quiet moment in the day - my head was buzzing. I began to go into the craziness that is my ego: I have the right to have a calm home. I have the right to be obeyed as a mother. I have the right to be...well, RIGHT! So I pull back the covers on my bed and - horror of horrors - there is, spilled out onto my sheets, the entire contents of a marshmallow bag spilled all over the place. Marshmallows in the sheets, on the pillow, beside the bed. I feel my blood boil. "Sage and Jai...come here right now!" I say indignently. "Who did this? Why did you guys do this? I am trying to keep the house clean - I can't do everything..." and the rant went on like this for a couple of minutes. The whole time they were smiling and just didn't stop. So, when I finally stop flapping my gums, Jai looks up at me and says, "Mom, you're the best mom. So we put these things on your bed so you would be comfortable tonight when you went to bed. Feel them. They're sooooo soft and puffy. You will sleep really good tonight!"
Okay, once again, who is the teacher and who is the student here?
I was so caught up in being right that I couldn't possibly see another reason why there would be marshmallows in my bed. All I could think is: I am right, I need a clean house and my kids are not helping me. So, my mind went to work to find all of the ways that I was right. And then, just like that, my kids snapped me out of my illusion.
I apologized to them, laughed really hard, and hugged them - not necessarily in that order. I told them how honored I was to have them as my teachers in life. I confessed what was happening in my mind and how I was determined to find all of the things wrong with the house. I told them how the situation unfolded so perfectly, so that I could learn a valuable lesson.
I was happy. Just like that. Just by changing my mind. And the thing that helped me change my mind was simple innocence. The beginner's minds of my children.
I am beginning to think that I should have one day where I just let these two kids literally lead me thoughout the day. Let them decide what I will wear. Let them tell me what to have for breakfast. Let them tell me which things were OK to do and which things were unacceptable. Let me bring them to all of the places that they fit in which I was too big for. Let them bring me somewhere I had been begging to go all week long and then be told - just when I was getting into it - that it was time to go. And when I protested, to hear them say, "You won't get an ice cream if you don't get out of the pool right now." They would say, "Well, Siri, you're just tired and hungry, and that's the reason you're acting out right now." All along I'd be thinking, you two are nuts, you control my whole day, right down to what I wear, what I eat and how much I eat at that, and then you want me to leave this nirvana I call the pool? And then, I hear you talking to your friends about how kids these days have such a short attention span. Well, why do you THINK I have such a short attention span: Every time I get to do something I love, your schedule interrupts me. I mean, yes, I know you have to be at blah, blah, blah class tonight at 5 p.m. but what about ME? I am NOT hungry or tired. When I am hungry I eat, that's how you know I need food. When I am tired, I fall to sleep. That's how you know I need rest. Why do you always think you know better than me about who I am? I know, I know - your all-important schedule. When will it be a day just about ME?
I remember when my son saw us celebrating Mother's Day one year. He said to me, "When is it Kid's Day?" I laughed at him and said the same thing my mother would have said, "Every day is Kid's Day, Sage." And he assured me that's NOT what it feels like to a child. So many of us parents are so far from childhood that we forget how frustrating, how demeaning, how belittling it can be to be a child in our very adult world. Children are segregated from the rest of adult society - they have their own tables at Thanksgiving, they have to sit in the back seat of the car where they cannot engage in meaningful adult conversation. And in the end, they almost always HAVE to do what we tell them to do. They can kick and fight. They can scream and yell. But in the end, it is the bigger one that wins. Doesn't that sound like classic bullying? It does to me. Imagine, parents, that we could be considered by our children to be big bullies. If the little ones around us don't do what we tell them to, we punish them. Sometimes we put them in a "time out" and other times we just punish them with the look in our eyes or the tone in our voice that says in its own subtle way: "You'd better listen up...or else."
How confining it must feel to be a child. It IS possible to open up and give our children total freedom. Yes, it is. Freedom to be who they are - even if their behavior is "unacceptable" to us. We can choose to accept who they are 100%. We can choose to tell them the truth. We can choose to let them speak with screaming or body language or kicking or swearing. If we are honest with ourselves, these are exactly the kinds of things WE as adults would love to do in excessively stressful situations. Except we've been "taught", molded, into "acceptable" behavior - of talking. And now we express our violence through our speech. Our speech has become such a vehicle for violence, in fact, that we have entire groups of people where I live who meet weekly to learn and practice "nonviolent communication".
Communication has become so violent that we don't even realize it anymore. Consider this when you ask your kids to "use their words" - do we really want all of that violence to bottleneck itself into the throats of children who do not understand how to express giant feelings? Why not, instead, let our child scream and kick while we are lovingly holding their hand or sitting quietly in their presence - without judgement. Why not, instead, allow them to truly vent the way their body knows how to. Our children are incredible healers of themselves. They know how to heal - and sometimes it is NOT through adult scripted language. Let's honor this part in them so that they can fully be in this stage and then grow out of it into another new stage. These actions are not going to last forever - they really won't. And if we show them that we can sit in our pain - that we can sit with them in their pain, however they choose to display it - we will come one step closer to being able to be in Hanumanasana without gritting our teeth and imagining a island oasis somewhere. In short, we will be able to be in the present moment - the only moment we will ever have.
I've been asking myself those questions for a while now because I notice that whenever I am in pain, I will do just about anything to keep from sitting with it. When I am at my breaking point in a yoga pose, when the pain feels so intense, I notice my mind wandering to other things - ANYthing - other than sitting right there in that pain. And I notice myself doing this in all of the facets of my life.
In parenting, when it is really hard - when things are not going according to my expectations - I make wishes: I wish this house was cleaner. I wish my kids would put their dirty socks in the basket. I wish I was at a yoga retreat. I wish I had a day off from being with my kids. And I miss all of this amazingly beautiful stuff all around me.
Here's an example. I am cleaning the house a couple of days ago. I go upstairs, to where my whole family sleeps together in a giant loft. I notice the place is, like, totally trashed. And my kids have followed me upstairs, pulling each other's clothes and hair. There hadn't been a quiet moment in the day - my head was buzzing. I began to go into the craziness that is my ego: I have the right to have a calm home. I have the right to be obeyed as a mother. I have the right to be...well, RIGHT! So I pull back the covers on my bed and - horror of horrors - there is, spilled out onto my sheets, the entire contents of a marshmallow bag spilled all over the place. Marshmallows in the sheets, on the pillow, beside the bed. I feel my blood boil. "Sage and Jai...come here right now!" I say indignently. "Who did this? Why did you guys do this? I am trying to keep the house clean - I can't do everything..." and the rant went on like this for a couple of minutes. The whole time they were smiling and just didn't stop. So, when I finally stop flapping my gums, Jai looks up at me and says, "Mom, you're the best mom. So we put these things on your bed so you would be comfortable tonight when you went to bed. Feel them. They're sooooo soft and puffy. You will sleep really good tonight!"
Okay, once again, who is the teacher and who is the student here?
I was so caught up in being right that I couldn't possibly see another reason why there would be marshmallows in my bed. All I could think is: I am right, I need a clean house and my kids are not helping me. So, my mind went to work to find all of the ways that I was right. And then, just like that, my kids snapped me out of my illusion.
I apologized to them, laughed really hard, and hugged them - not necessarily in that order. I told them how honored I was to have them as my teachers in life. I confessed what was happening in my mind and how I was determined to find all of the things wrong with the house. I told them how the situation unfolded so perfectly, so that I could learn a valuable lesson.
I was happy. Just like that. Just by changing my mind. And the thing that helped me change my mind was simple innocence. The beginner's minds of my children.
I am beginning to think that I should have one day where I just let these two kids literally lead me thoughout the day. Let them decide what I will wear. Let them tell me what to have for breakfast. Let them tell me which things were OK to do and which things were unacceptable. Let me bring them to all of the places that they fit in which I was too big for. Let them bring me somewhere I had been begging to go all week long and then be told - just when I was getting into it - that it was time to go. And when I protested, to hear them say, "You won't get an ice cream if you don't get out of the pool right now." They would say, "Well, Siri, you're just tired and hungry, and that's the reason you're acting out right now." All along I'd be thinking, you two are nuts, you control my whole day, right down to what I wear, what I eat and how much I eat at that, and then you want me to leave this nirvana I call the pool? And then, I hear you talking to your friends about how kids these days have such a short attention span. Well, why do you THINK I have such a short attention span: Every time I get to do something I love, your schedule interrupts me. I mean, yes, I know you have to be at blah, blah, blah class tonight at 5 p.m. but what about ME? I am NOT hungry or tired. When I am hungry I eat, that's how you know I need food. When I am tired, I fall to sleep. That's how you know I need rest. Why do you always think you know better than me about who I am? I know, I know - your all-important schedule. When will it be a day just about ME?
I remember when my son saw us celebrating Mother's Day one year. He said to me, "When is it Kid's Day?" I laughed at him and said the same thing my mother would have said, "Every day is Kid's Day, Sage." And he assured me that's NOT what it feels like to a child. So many of us parents are so far from childhood that we forget how frustrating, how demeaning, how belittling it can be to be a child in our very adult world. Children are segregated from the rest of adult society - they have their own tables at Thanksgiving, they have to sit in the back seat of the car where they cannot engage in meaningful adult conversation. And in the end, they almost always HAVE to do what we tell them to do. They can kick and fight. They can scream and yell. But in the end, it is the bigger one that wins. Doesn't that sound like classic bullying? It does to me. Imagine, parents, that we could be considered by our children to be big bullies. If the little ones around us don't do what we tell them to, we punish them. Sometimes we put them in a "time out" and other times we just punish them with the look in our eyes or the tone in our voice that says in its own subtle way: "You'd better listen up...or else."
How confining it must feel to be a child. It IS possible to open up and give our children total freedom. Yes, it is. Freedom to be who they are - even if their behavior is "unacceptable" to us. We can choose to accept who they are 100%. We can choose to tell them the truth. We can choose to let them speak with screaming or body language or kicking or swearing. If we are honest with ourselves, these are exactly the kinds of things WE as adults would love to do in excessively stressful situations. Except we've been "taught", molded, into "acceptable" behavior - of talking. And now we express our violence through our speech. Our speech has become such a vehicle for violence, in fact, that we have entire groups of people where I live who meet weekly to learn and practice "nonviolent communication".
Communication has become so violent that we don't even realize it anymore. Consider this when you ask your kids to "use their words" - do we really want all of that violence to bottleneck itself into the throats of children who do not understand how to express giant feelings? Why not, instead, let our child scream and kick while we are lovingly holding their hand or sitting quietly in their presence - without judgement. Why not, instead, allow them to truly vent the way their body knows how to. Our children are incredible healers of themselves. They know how to heal - and sometimes it is NOT through adult scripted language. Let's honor this part in them so that they can fully be in this stage and then grow out of it into another new stage. These actions are not going to last forever - they really won't. And if we show them that we can sit in our pain - that we can sit with them in their pain, however they choose to display it - we will come one step closer to being able to be in Hanumanasana without gritting our teeth and imagining a island oasis somewhere. In short, we will be able to be in the present moment - the only moment we will ever have.
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