Sunday, November 20, 2011

Making Peace with Family



The spiritual teacher Ram Dass once said that if you think you’re enlightened, visit your family.  That always makes me laugh  --- he is so right! I don’t think I’m alone when I say that nothing makes me lose my peace of mind faster than my family.

This Thanksgiving, I’m testing my spiritual limits. I recently moved back home after almost 20 years of independence to live with my parents. It may only be temporary, but it’s giving me a lot of time to practice patience and gratitude.

When I was living my fabulous, single girl life in NYC, I used to have nightmares at night about living back home, and I would wake up in a cold sweat. It scared the daylights out of me. Funny how life can turn out…here I am, at 42, living my worst fear. And yet, you know what? It isn’t so scary. I haven’t lost my independence, or my mind, for that matter. In fact, I’m quite enjoying it.

That’s not to say it's been an easy transition. I can’t wait to get my own apartment again. But I realize that my fear of returning home was only in my mind, not in my heart. Sure, it drives me crazy that my mom still worries incessantly about me. Sure, I get annoyed when she tells me my clothes don’t look right. Of course, I get pissed off when my dad reminds me to wash my dishes. I find myself snapping at least once a day. But something I didn’t expect also happened.

My first night home, my mom urgently called me to look at something outside. Oh God, I thought, now what? Not another strange person lurking outside that she thinks is a burglar. But when I found her by her bedroom window, she pointed up at the sky. “Isn’t that beautiful?” she asked. As I stared up at this magnificent orange glow, I realized that I hadn’t seen the moon in a long time. When you live in NYC, you don’t tend to gaze at the sky. At that very moment, I felt so grateful to be home. 

I don’t know how long I will be with my parents --- or how long they will be with me --- but I know this moment is special. I enjoy the little things each day, like getting up early and squeezing them fresh orange juice, driving my mom around on errands, and kissing them goodnight at the end of the day.

The truth is that we never know how long we will have our families. We will someday lose them. And yet we never fully appreciate them.  We’re too caught up in all the drama. And we’ve all got stories.

Recently, I exchanged emails with one of my good friends. She told me she was jealous of me. I thought she meant jealous that I had escaped the hustle and bustle of the big city. But what she meant was that she was jealous of me having both my parents. She had lost both of hers a few years ago. My heart softened and tears came to my eyes.  I thought of all my friends who have lost a parent, or both. In a way, I feel now that I honor my friends by spending time with my parents.

So as I celebrate Thanksgiving this year, I feel more grateful than ever for my family.  No matter how difficult, contentious, or painful life with family can be, it’s all we really have. Family is always a part of us, of who we really are. Maybe by learning to love our families, warts and all, we will learn to love ourselves.

Monday, November 14, 2011

Keeping Things Whole

*Editor's Note: I’m excited this week to introduce our first guest blogger, Tamar Samir. Tamar is an Advanced Certified Jivamukti Yoga Teacher based in NYC. Not only is Tamar my teacher, but also a dear friend and mentor. Her compassion for all beings and dedication to saving our planet is inspirational. This week, Tamar shares her thoughts and personal experiences on veganism and its connection to yoga.  To hear more from Tamar and find out when she teaches, visit her website at http://tamarsamiryoga.com/about/


I was born in Michigan, but grew up primarily in Israel. My Dad was Israeli and my Mum is Scottish, so there have been diverse influences on my life, my culture, and my accent.

Our family was atheist and we didn’t observe or celebrate Jewish holidays very much. From a young age, the word God was a loaded, foreign concept to me. I’ve always believed there’s a force of Good present in the world, with which you can align yourself. Nowadays, I like to replace the word God with Good in a sentence, and see how that shifts my response. I’ve always believed in reincarnation – I remember thinking this at a very young age.

I never considered myself an athletic person. In fact, I often dreaded gym class in school. I relied on intellect and creativity as my form of expression, and didn’t think about the body too much. In college, as I learned to draw the human form and design clothing, I became interested in the body and its sculptural potential. I moved to NYC in 1997, to work as a designer in the fashion industry.

While working in fashion, I started practicing yoga at the gym as a way to work out. I appreciated the stretching, the emphasis on breath and the introspective quality of yoga. But it wasn’t until attending a free class at Jivamukti Yoga School on Lafayette Street, that I started taking the yoga practice more seriously. At first I practiced yoga twice a week, but over time I increased the number of times I practiced. Instead of yoga being one more thing to fit into my schedule, I was able to weave my daily schedule around the time I set aside for practice.

I found a morning class that I could take every weekday at 8am before going to work. I loved the consistency of practicing every morning, at the same time, with the same teacher–Jeffrey Cohen. I loved starting the day with yoga! It changed my outlook on life; I was calmer and more able to deal with stress. My yoga practice got me through some challenging times–a difficult break up, graduate school and a career change.

The practice made me stronger, physically and mentally. It changed my posture and my walk. It made me feel beautiful. It made me want to smile more often. My skin and eyes glowed. People noticed the difference and commented on it.

“When the energy channels are purified, there are external symptoms. The body becomes thin and glows. Then one should feel certain of success”. –Hatha Yoga Pradipika II.19

The more I practiced Yoga, the more I wanted to learn. The Jivamukti method teaches about all aspects of Yoga, not just the physical postures. It goes deeply into the ethical practices, philosophy, scriptures, Sanskrit, chanting and meditation, as inseparable from the physical practice. As taught by Jivamukti, Yoga unfolded as an interconnected series of practices designed to spread happiness and freedom to all beings, a force of good.

I have been a vegetarian from age 18. It started when my sister had a disturbing experience while eating a McDonald’s hamburger. She took a bite and felt that it was living, moving flesh. She put the hamburger down and hasn’t eaten meat since. Inspired by her, I followed without really articulating why. It just felt right. Later, as part of my service in the Israeli army, I worked with cows. These loving, sweet, beautiful beings deserved my respect. I couldn’t eat them.

Jivamukti’s association of ethical vegetarianism and environmentalism with the Yoga practice resonated with me deeply. Everything came together–ethics, yoga practice, and my personal philosophy. Inspired by the teachings I received at Jivamukti, in classes, retreats and at the Jivamukti teacher training in 2007, I changed my lifestyle completely.

Now,
I practice 5-7 times a week.
I practice the ethical yogic principles (yama and niyama).
I am vegan (I use no animal products in food, clothing or other products).
I reduce, reuse, recycle and compost, as much as possible.
This has changed my life.

Once I started practicing Yoga daily and changed my diet, I experienced an immediate and radical shift on a physical level. Extra weight dropped off. My cholesterol levels, which had bordered on high, dropped from 215 to 175 within the space of 2 months of vegan eating.

On a mental and emotional level, I feel more peaceful and at ease. There’s a sense of wholeness and connectedness to the earth. It’s become easer to face challenging situations with equanimity. The practice has become a way of aligning myself with Good. And I’ve found a community of like-minded people, teachers and students, who have become great friends.

The Yoga practice continues to unfold and expand. I constantly learn and find connections between aspects of the practice and the natural world. This is so exciting to me.

If you’re interested in a daily yoga practice and its physical benefits, I highly recommend reading this short essay by my teacher, Sharon Gannon: http://jivamuktiyoga.com/focus/focus.jsp?viewFocusID=4


Monday, November 7, 2011

Cultivating Contentment

As I spend my last week packing up my apartment, I’m struck by how much stuff I have. Clothes, books, jewelry, gadgets, CDs, DVDs --- a history of almost 18 years in NYC spent buying things. And that’s even after I started to simplify my life. If there is one thing that I will always identify with NYC, it’s shopping. I feel like besides working, all I did was shop!

Even after all these years practicing yoga and mediation, I still crave things. I fool myself into thinking that I’m completely content, only to have the strings of desire tug at me once again. So how can we cultivate contentment when we are conditioned to believe that our happiness and success depend on having more, more, and more?

In yoga philosophy, one of the ethical principles of how we relate to ourselves is “santosha” or contentment.  Contentment does not mean passive acceptance or surrender. It means actively engaging in the present and enjoying life as is, as opposed to what you wish it was. Swami Rama of the Himalayan Institute once said, “Contentment is falling in love with your life.” How many people do you know, yourself included, who feel that way?

Most of us live our lives discontent and constantly seeking something to fulfill us. We play the “what if” game. If I only I was married, had a new job, got a promotion, was thinner, bought a bigger house, had new pair of shoes, met my soul mate (the list goes on), then I would be happy. Instead of feeling gratitude for what we have, which is a lot, we obsess over what we don’t.

When I first moved to New York City, I became a shopaholic. I was obsessed with accumulating a closet-full of designer shoes. Never mind that I hardly ever wore them, I just felt better about myself when I had them. Of course, that feeling was temporary. All that shopping did was create an endless vacuum of craving, not to mention deplete my bank account. All those shoes didn’t make me happy. They just left me disappointed that I didn’t have more. Oscar Wilde once said that the only thing worse than not getting what you want, is getting what you want.

By the way, only when I became a vegan did I stop buying all those expensive shoes --- wearing no leather means you usually buy your shoes at Target or Payless. Anyway, as I began to re-examine what I was consuming --- everything from food to clothing to media --- I realized that my longings were unhealthy and making me suffer. I knew I needed to change my life.

I started by going on a shopping fast. No new shoes or clothes for one month. I gave away all my designer shoes. I paired down my wardrobe to just the basics. I cleared my apartment of clutter and all those toxic chemicals under my sink. I became a vegan and started cooking more at home. I threw out my TV, all my fashion magazines and catalogs. I started a gratitude journal. I began volunteering every week. And I started to save more money. My friends and family thought that was a little extreme to renounce all those things. But you know what? By simplifying my life, a funny thing happened. I became more joyful. I was amazed at how fulfilled I felt with less.

It wasn’t easy, but spending less energy on the outside and more on the inside, made me realize I had everything I needed. Contentment slowly began to seep into my life.  My cravings started to subside.

That’s not to say I don’t still have desires. I do, but I’m not so attached to them anymore. I can walk away and not feel distressed. When I see something I want to buy, I wait a few days now to see how I feel. Usually I have forgotten about it, but if I still am thinking about how nice it would be to have that dress or new coffee maker, I’ll buy it. I don’t deny myself. I'm just better able to put my cravings into perspective, instead of allowing them to rule my life.

So as I finish packing this week, I’m grateful for how much I have, knowing how truly little I need.  This week, see if you can cultivate more contentment by “falling in love with you life”. Start by practicing these three simple exercises:

-       Start a gratitude journal, and each day; write down three things you are grateful for in your life.

-       Don’t buy anything you don’t absolutely need, i.e. food and medicine, and throw away things you don’t use. Discriminate between your needs and wants.

-       When cravings arise, pause and notice how you feel. What sensations arise in your body? What happens in your mind? Then, take a few deep breaths and bring yourself back to the present moment, as if this is all there is.