so i notice every morning in the shower that the thoughts start to creep in.  the worry, the fears, the unsettled, unanswered questions.

then i go and sit to meditate, hair still drying and mouth fresh with the taste of mint, and i stare at the screen of my mind as i would at a movie screen. i ask myself:

what’s the thinking today?

and i go from there. for 10 or up to 40 minutes, depending on the day.

it’s kind of like holding back a busting dam, that process of recognizing the thoughts in the shower in the morning before meditation as they come tumbling and stumbling in, like wayward drunks, knocking over the still sleepy docility of my otherwise calm mind, jarring me into dull annoyance.

this is why meditation works. it is an extremely simple equation in that it gives your mind someplace to go when the thinkin’ starts cookin’.

you must practice being in this space. otherwise your thoughts run you over: they will think you.

i heard here three or four times today a quote by an unidentified woman, telling the NPR Reporter that for the downwardly spiraling economy,

there are no silver bullets here…The best the Fed can do is throw pillows down to soften the landing.”

i’ve been telling students in class for the past week that if you are feeling tired, lethargic, and/or mildly (or more) morose, it’s totally normal. it’s time for the Winter Solstice.

in our hemisphere, we are on the cusp of the shortest night and longest day of the year. there is a lot of information here to describe the metaphysical, scientific, and ritual aspects of this moment.

for the body, which is comparatively depleted of energy from the sun, layers of darkness enter. this is the time when mentally we can reflect (or meditate) on the things we want to shed–just as the earth here is allowing most of its plants to die.

no matter what your asana practice is right now, be aware of your overall energy levels and practice around that. this is an important time of year to let go–no matter how you define the verb.

last night i was at an anniversary party and had a few glasses of champagne. the mood was celebratory (local business = success!), the music consistently danceable (de la soul and prince!), and the people watching and food delicious.

i slept well, but not well enough, of course, to get up and do my pranayama practice, which is a goal for tuesdays. instead i slept in and wished i could sleep more. my body was recovering from that bit of alcohol, technically a poison that the body has to work harder to remove in order to return to “normal.”

a learning for a yogini aiming to be consistent in her practice above all else, when she still loves champagne and a good dance party.

i think everyone is well served touching their own tailbone once in a while. for sure they should check out that bad boy during yoga class.

though this might not be the case for others, i find my own tailbone (coccyx, actually, and check out the groovy diagram on wikipedia) to be thinner and, well, bonier, somehow, than i always imagine it to be.

this is the base of your spine, the thing that holds you up so well. it’s amazing to think that the tailbone is where it all goes down.

lately i’ve been thinking about karma, which evolved from a Sanskrit word whose pronunciation matches that of caerimonia, or ceremony, ritual.

On this side of the dateline, we tend to define karma as the apostle Paul did: “Man reaps what he sows.” “What goes around, comes around.”

I’ve always had trouble with the term “karma yoga” as defining good acts, because then you aren’t you still attached to getting only goodness in return? it seems to me you can do anything and still be practicing karma yoga. What if you’re ok with doing something neutral or negative, and with being prepared to experience that same thing some point in the future?

Asking for negative acts to come back to you might even been like saying “bring it” to the universe.

Lately, I am examining karma by being aware of an emotional state I am uncomfortable with, for example, depression, sorrow, anger, or frustration. I drive almost every day, and I often feel “cut off” by someone rushing to their job, home, a bar, their dying grandmother.  My heart jumps as the other driver speeds past me and into my lane, my breathing changes, and at least 50% of the time, I find myself reacting in anger. this anger comes from the fear of experiencing an accident.

as i experience this sensation, i imagine that i have done that exact thing to someone before. when i wedge in this stop sign on the road of my own reaction, a mental shift occurs:

1) My negative emotion changes or goes away.

2) I see immediately the universe’s answer to a previous demand from me entitled, “bring it”.

9 times out of 10, i can recall an instance in which i have acted toward someone in exact the way that i am currently uncomfortable with.

in savasana, there is an excellent opportunity to navel gaze. imagine your thighs–and indeed the bones of the thighs and legs–dropping toward the ground to such a degree that the tops of the thighs feel flat and smooth.

or at least like rolling hills. calm, rolling rounds of earth.

yesterday at the end of a private session with a new female client, the woman turned to me from her very first savasana (corpse pose) and said,

so, like, is this not your favorite pose? i mean, are you like the most relaxed person ever? and don’t you do this pose all the time?

i told her yes, savasana is in fact one of my favorite poses, but i don’t do it all the time, and in fact, i said,

when i’m feeling stressed out i’m actually really bad at this pose and sometimes go so far as to avoid it at the end of my practice.

this confused her. she questioned me more on how i could *not* be so totally unstressed as a result of doing yoga.

i told her that it’s not that i”m never stressed anymore–life continues to be life, and to have its natural ebbs and flows. rather, i find myself able to relax more quickly, more precisely, and more deeply.

the greatest advantage of yoga in this context, i told her, is that you begin to witness the coming stress like an arriving storm. just as you put on a raincoat, or get an umbrella, or even stay inside until the storm blows over, you observe yourself in a stressed-out state and access the breath, or do a lengthening pose here and a strengthening pose there.

using these yogic tools helps you move away from the stress response in a way that is difficult to do otherwise.

most important, practice is not at all about doing the poses *better*. it is instead about witnessing the effects the poses have on you more and more clearly.

particularly as i observe my mind experiencing boundless’s imminent move, which may or may not be to 14th and T, i was struck this morning when reading a commentary by swami satchidananda, who writes a potent and clear translation of the yoga sutras:

How are we to know whether our thoughts are selfless or not? We have watch carefully the moment a thought-form arises in the mind. We become analysts. This itself is the Yoga practice–watching our own thoughts and analyzing them.

Can you run a business successfully and be selfless, I wonder? This is the question I visit and revisit often.

yesterday, i was shaving in the shower. i forgot that i was doing it, actually, because this is a rote task i’ve done for more than 20 years. instead, i was doing what i usually do: analyzing not the job in front of me, but rather the past few days. I was re-experiencing conversations and experiences i’d had with friends, family, and business colleagues. i was somewhere else while my body–hand and leg–were there, experiencing the deed of wicking the hair away, down the drain, and off my leg.

at the moment i came back to being aware i was shaving without any real participation in the act, i felt the line between my eyebrows furrowed. it’s a line that acupuncture calls the “inner critic;” according to ayurveda, it lies right in between the liver and spleen lines. if you’re wrinkled there, which i was–straight down the middle–you are manifesting dis-ease of those organs, and probably of the stomach, too.

i know this, of course, and i’ve known it for years. and yet, razor in hand, i was aware of having forgotten, utterly and completely, to be present. instead, i chose to stay immersed in analyzing–criticizing–past events over which i now have no control, and which, in any event, having little or nothing to do with shaving in the shower.

for the rest of the shave, i changed my focus. i started noticing each strip of hair wicked away, feeling the weight and angle of the razor in my hand, and on the feeling of the water in the shower itself. staying focused like this had an effect opposite to what many of us might think: it relaxed the line between my eyebrows. i was aware of a calm contentment that also relaxed my upper abdomen/solar plexus area, where my stomach is.

the lesson in this information is to stay present. when you are aware of being as fully involved in any experience–shaving, crying, walking, sleeping, eating–all of your cells are also involved. at the very least, they are more occupied with the mind and body both assisting you in this task. this is a preferable state to the one in which the brain sends signals–typically ones of analysis, criticism, and discontent–to the body that have little to do with what is actually in front of you at that moment.

this is also why meditation is critical in today’s world.