abhyasa vairagya

I never got any tattoos until I was thirty. Although I am impulsive, I also usually make pretty solid decisions, and so I knew that there was just nothing I wanted on my body that badly. Plus I have this nasty streak of non-conformity, and it felt like all the cool kids got tattoos, and I didn't want to do what everyone else was doing. Don't ask me why my brain is this way, it just is. It's the same thought process that caused me to not have a dishwasher for ten years. Sometimes I like doing things the hardest possible way.

Anyway, when I did finally decide to get one, it's no surprise that I chose text. I just like words better than pictures. So, my first tattoo is on my back, and it's a Greek word that is used often in the New Testament to describe Jesus' feeling of deep compassion ("suffering-with") those who are hurting.

My second one came about in September. I had been mulling it over for about a year, since I first started reading the Yoga Sutras during my teacher training. The Sutras are a golden thread of proverbs that weave together the philosophy of yoga. On my better days, I read from the Bible, the Sutras, and then meditate for 20 minutes in the morning. Some days I can't get it together. But on the days that I do, I'm never disappointed with this choice.



In my reading, over time, I came across a Sutra that spoke to me particularly. It's the twelfth one. In Sanskrit, it says "abhyasa vairagyabhyam tat nirodhah." There are many ways to translate this, and (as I've discovered since having this tattoo) none of them are easy to explain. I have no elevator speech for this tattoo. If you ask me about it (and people do, because it's visible and beautiful), be prepared for a 20-minute discussion on the intricacies of yogic meditation. Sometimes I even ask people, midway, if they'd just like to be done with the conversation. It seems more merciful that way.

Anyway, the English translation of this tattoo is "they are restrained by practice and non-attachment." What is "they?" The vrittis. "Vritti" literally means "whirlpool," and it means all those distortions and misperceptions that our minds are so good at feeding us, thus warping reality.

So, how do we restrain the vrittis? Well . . . this is yoga! This is the very purpose of why we try to bring about union between mind, body, and breath. All of the asana (postures), dhyana (meditation), and all the rest of it, are meant to begin to tame these vrittis, to dismiss them. But in particular, we try to balance two ways of being: one related to effort, the other related to non-effort.

This is abhyasa vairagya. Abhyasa means "practice." In order to restrain the vrittis, we must practice. We put in effort. We try to steady the mind. We meditate, we practice asana. We do good things, and we try to not do bad things. We eat our vegetables and do our homework, so to speak.

Vairagya is "detachment" or "dispassion." Oh, this is so hard for me! I am a passionate person by nature. I cling and expect. I crave. It is far easier for me to practice than it is for me to detach. But detachment from the fruit of one's action is necessary. So much of what gets warped in our minds is because of expectation. But we can't force a flower to bloom before its time, can we? Tearing it open would be both cruel and useless. If the flower told us, "I am going to bloom on December 3," and then it took another week, would we just throw it away, because it had not fulfilled our expectation?

So, I got this tattoo because it is how I try to live my life. Am I there yet? Absolutely not. I have handled so many situations with a total lack of practice and detachment. But I'm working on it. And practice makes progress.

boring bodies

My best friend Amanda, who in many ways has taught (still teaches) me the lessons that a mother or a sister might have, made this declaration during my sophomore year of college, as we sat around the table with other girls on the brink of womanhood at our beloved Columbia Cottage, drinking boxed wine in carafes and eating Chinese string beans until late into the night:

"Can we not talk about our bodies?  It's just so . . . boring."

Prior to this, I had suffered from some garden-variety body dysmorphia.  Nothing unusual or extreme.  I don't have the will power to starve myself or exercise excessively, and I really can't throw up to save my life (when I have had the flu, I have often actually wished for the ability to gag myself so that my nausea could pass).  But, like most women, I didn't like the way my body looked.  I wished for many things:  rounder hips, smaller waist, more petite and arched feet, thinner fingers, more symmetry.  These were things that would never be "fixed" by losing weight or working out harder.  In fact, the list of complaints I had about my appearance never shrunk, even as my size ebbed and flowed over the years.  And Amanda was right:  oftentimes, when women get together, we fill the silence with complaints and accusations toward our bodies.  If you don't want to participate in this kind of conversation, you risk being left out.

But the one thing I wanted more than for my body to be perfect was to be not boring.

So I decided that body shape and size would not be a pressing topic of discussion for me anymore.  I would own my body and how I felt in it, even if it sometimes felt uncomfortable.  Of course, this was 19-year-old me, still light years away from the drastic things that childbearing and nursing, depression and neglect, trauma and heartache, would do to my body.  And this was also still a judgmental me, now turning that laser beam of criticism away from my own appearance and onto others, compared to whom I was now allowed to feel superior (because they were still over there boringly hating their bodies).  It really wasn't much of an improvement.  I still never felt beautiful, even if I wasn't boring.

But a funny thing happened to me when I began practicing yoga seriously a couple of years ago.  I began to feel beauty and grace emanating from my hands and feet, then from my legs and arms, and finally, over time, from my core - back and belly and chest.  Certain poses were almost too lovely for words, as I watched myself in the mirror.  Who was this lithe creature, whose body seemed to just know what to do?  Who was this woman, whose comfort in her own skin was so amply evident?

I began to love my hands and feet as their ropey sinews gripped the earth.  Then I began to love my arms and legs as they grew firm and strong from supporting me well.  And then I started to love my middle, last of all.  That took awhile.  But that same middle that grew babies and then grew crepey and soft is the middle that can now hold me up in uddiyana bandha.  The back and ribs that are "too wide" can hoist my legs into a playful headstand.

These are the strong hands and wrists that hold my daughter.

And these are the sturdy, strong feet that carry me around all day and play with my son.

And sometime after I started feeling all this gratitude toward my body, something else amazing happened.  I began yoga teacher training five weeks ago, and it has been an intense experience for me so far, both physically and spiritually.  My physical activity has really ramped up - I'm practicing yoga probably four times more often than I was previously.  I was anticipating this, and thought I might drop a few pounds.  Instead, what has happened as I gain strength is that I am constantly hungry!  I feel like a marathon trainer, or like a woman who is pregnant and growing something inside herself.  I think I've gained a few pounds, even.  But, without even forcing myself to, I don't care!  I feel like a gorgeous, functional machine that is having its controls and dials turned.  More output means more input.  I have also become one of those jiggly ladies who takes her shirt off in class and truly doesn't care.  I'm naturally a very hot and sweaty person, and hot yoga classes make a shirt a total inconvenience.  I strip down to my bra and the shirt is better used to mop my face and neck.  As the kids say these days, IDGAF.  Not only that, but I feel lovely!  I have become a person who starts making videos of myself doing asana practice:

And what's more astonishing is that I watch that video and feel love and attraction toward the person I see.  It's thrilling.  It's something that, in 32.5 years of life, I have never felt before.