When my Critic is Quiet

This weekend's retreat was unsurprisingly powerful and emotional. I felt very strongly supported by my Portland friends, something CK helped to remind me of by prompting some friends to send me very positive text messages on my way out to Great Vow, and by the Sangha there. Looking back at the weekend I can see the many ways the residents at Great Vow were supporting and helping me through a retreat I came to very reluctantly.

One thing I figured out that was good to learn are the times when my Critic is silent. That critical voice or sensation in my body is so often present that it feels like I am never with out it. However, when a Dharma brother from our Portland program and I agreed to talk about when it isn't there, since the conversation was shorter, he helped me to see two times when I am utterly free from this feeling.

Unsurprisingly cooking was one of those times. When I am engaged in preparing food there is no critical voice. I am merely present to the activity of my hands, the timing of the cooking, and the food I am transforming. When I serve a new dish to someone the voice comes back, but most of the time I'm pretty confident that what I've prepared will be delicious.

I also realized that when I teach yoga there is no Critic. Even if I am anxious or terribly upset right up until the very moment I begin a class, once I start to teach the voice goes away and I am present and alert. When I transmit the Lineage of Yoga there is no space for the Inner Critic. None.

It was good to connect with these two times when I am clear and free of my Inner Critic. Now I'm wondering when else it is gone!

Transforming the Inner Critic

In a few minutes I'm headed out to Great Vow for the weekend for the Transforming the Inner Critic workshop. People have assumed I've already done this workshop, but the truth is I've avoided it like a plague. I'm really very anxious.

It isn't helped that I made a rather big decision today about my life. It is a positive decision and for the best, but like any big decision it brings up a lot of worry. It really fires up the Inner Critic.

So off to engage my Inner Critic in the safe environs of Great Vow Zen Monastery. I dread crying. I already know I will be. I hate crying in front of people and I feel like I do it all the time at Great Vow if there is any kind of overnight stay involved. My therapist said she thinks I should try and come back having attained some compromise with my Inner Critic where I'm allowed to feel OK when crying.

Have my pictures packed and silly Buddha ATC someone sent me (bling-tastic, hilarious). I have snacks and CK made cookies last night. I even packed up some supplies for making some art myself. Ready as I'll ever be for this retreat.

Art Stretch

I made a couple of artist trading cards this evening featuring some of the brushwork I was learning at Great Vow earlier this month. I'd been quite taken with the cursive writing of the character for "Ink". Something about it reminded me of the twisty, circuitous route we take on the path of awakening, a "meandering lifeline" as poet David Wagoner writes in his poem "Getting There".

This evening, in a total break from everything else I'd been doing this weekend with the thinking/planning brain, I got out the box of water colors and the cheap brushes. I practiced once on some scrap paper to get the feel of the making the much smaller paper and carefully painted two cards of watercolor paper with the cursive character for "Ink". Since these are for a trade I included some lyrics from a song by the Indigo Girls about crooked lines.

I feel very anxious about these two little pieces. They are so unlike anything I've created yet. To me they seem quite flat compared to the layers and levels I use in my paper collage pieces. CK really liked them and I'm ignoring my Inner Critic who says that CK only likes them because she's biased.

Even though I feel great anxiety about creating, I deeply appreciate the opportunity and support to explore art.

Here's the whole poem by David Wagoner I referenced earlier.

Getting There

You take a final step and, look, suddenly
You're there. You've arrived
At the one place all your drudgery was aimed for:
This common ground
Where you stretch out, pressing your cheek to sandstone.
What did you want
To be? You'll remember soon. You feel like tinder
Under a burning glass,
A luminous point of change. The sky is pulsing
Against the cracked horizon,
Holding it firm till the arrival of stars
In time with your heartbeats.
Like wind etching rock, you've made a lasting impression
On the self you were
By having come all this way through all this welter
Under your own power,
Though your traces on a map would make an unpromising
Meandering lifeline.
What have you learned so far? You'll find out later,
Telling it haltingly
Like a dream, that lost traveler's dream
Under the last hill
Where through the night you'll take your time out of mind
To unburden yourself
Of elements along elementary paths
By the break of morning.
You've earned this worn-down, hard, incredible sight
Called Here and Now.
Now, what you make of it means everything,
Means starting over:
The life in your hands is neither here nor there
But getting there,
So you're standing again and breathing, beginning another
Journey without regret
Forever, being your own unpeaceable kingdom,
The end of endings.

And while I'm at it, the song I used the lyrics of is 'Closer to Fine'

Closer To Fine

I'm trying to tell you something about my life
Maybe give me insight between black and white
The best thing you've ever done for me
Is to help me take my life less seriously, it's only life after all
Well darkness has a hunger that's insatiable
And lightness has a call that's hard to hear
I wrap my fear around me like a blanket
I sailed my ship of safety till I sank it, I'm crawling on your shore.

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain
There's more than one answer to these questions
pointing me in crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine.

I went to see the doctor of philosophy
With a poster of Rasputin and a beard down to his knee
He never did marry or see a B-grade movie
He graded my performance, he said he could see through me
I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind, got my paper
And I was free.

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain
There's more than one answer to these questions
pointing me in crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine.

I stopped by the bar at 3 a.m.
To seek solace in a bottle or possibly a friend
I woke up with a headache like my head against a board
Twice as cloudy as I'd been the night before
I went in seeking clarity.

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain
There's more than one answer to these questions
pointing me in crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine.

I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain
There's more than one answer to these questions
pointing me in crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine.

We go to the bible, we go through the workout
We read up on revival and we stand up for the lookout
There's more than one answer to these questions
pointing me in a crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine
The closer I am to fine
The closer I am to fine

As a Result of Poety

I really thought I'd written about haiku, learning the form. It is a cherished memory and activity from the year I was nine. Generally that year was one traumatic event after another, but I also was taught the form of haiku that year. It is a form of poetry I've returned to over and over in my life, although I really moved away from in during my twenties. When I started practicing yoga and zen I noticed that haiku just started to appear in my mind.

And that brings me to this past Friday. My love of haiku has borne fruit, as it were. I am being given a pair of tickets to see the production of 'Snow Falling on Cedars' at Portland Center Stage as a prize for a winter haiku I wrote! They sponsored a concert on Twitter for the best winter-themed haiku, or "snowku" and I submitted this:

Bare branches rattle.
Evergreens shiver and sway.
Winter's breath blows cold.

On Friday they posted a message that I'd won. What a delightful surprise to see appear on my computer screen while working! CK & I'll be going on the 30th and are very much looking forward to it.

I'm trying to take this into my practice too. Ango is approaching and I'm given the gift of a chance to remember the focus Hogen gave me during my first Ango: Appreciate my accomplishments.

I discount my writing a lot while at the same time am anxiously attached to it. I minimize my poetry. I even diminish the accomplishment of having my writing appear in ZCO's publication, Ink on the Cat.

"After all, they're your Sangha, they have to act like they like your writing." says my Inner Critic.

This little surprise of winning these tickets is pretty hard for even my Inner Critic to diminish. I mean someone in the "real world" liked something I wrote. Gosh.

Hah! Take that, Inner Critic!


In Kilauea Iki Crater on the Big Island in August 2009

Dirty Cups

CK bought me two beautiful editions of Rumi's poetry for my birthday. On the flight home from Hawaii I came across the following piece, gorgeously illustrated in The Illuminated Rumi

Ask!
Step off
proudly into sunlight,
not looking back.

Take sips of this pure wine being poured.
Don't mind that you've been given a dirty cup.

I read that as CK dozed next to me on the long flight over what appear to be endless water and clouds, then darkness. It really made me sit up and blink. The last line particularly resonated with me.

Don't mind that you've been given a dirty cup.

I tend to see my life, especially the fragile, bruised beginning, as a "dirty cup". This life where my Inner Critic relentlessly condemns my goals, my present actions, my trauma-triggered responses - the whole of me. To that critical voice my life is a dirty cup, unworthy of pure wine being poured by the Beloved.

Greater than the Inner Critic who immediately deems me as unworthy, is that on many levels I mind. I mind ferociously that I experienced abuse, repeatedly. I mind a world where every step I move towards truth alienates and invites insult from much of the society I live in. I mind the very idea of suppressed memories surfacing unannounced and involuntarily pulling me backwards into misery. I mind tremendously that CK was hurt. I mind that my job frustrates me and leaves me feeling unable to accomplish anything.

Alright, so I mind a lot of things. All those things that stack together in an ugly heap, the dirty cups of my life. I mind them. Some of them I downright resent the hell out of. Some I want to pick up and hurl into the wall I mind them so much.

Which would then leave me without a cup for the pure wine.

Leaning into this suffering to feel compassion for myself is hard, excruciatingly difficult. When I do I almost immediately run into either drowning in grief or completely overwhelmed by fear. Sometimes I kind of ping-pong back and forth between the two. There was a whole lot of that back in April during the Loving-Kindness sesshin.

Yet in fighting these realities, in minding the "dirty cup", I'm staying stuck in the fear and grief. I can touch back to moments during the Grasses, Trees & Great Earth sesshin in August where grief came up and I was just able to be there with it. It wasn't that I didn't cry, but I didn't have the overwhelming fear about crying. I just cried some and the moment of grief passed. I even had a pretty awful memory bubble up and I was also able to stay still with it.

I was so stilled by the outright exhaustion that hit me at the start of the sesshin that I lacked the energy to fight. It even felt like my Inner Critic was quieter, minimized due to the soul-deep fatigue. Regardless of why, it was still a taste of just being present to the grief and able to witness & accept the memories.

The knack of doing this is something I need to cultivate in my practice. Waiting until I am utterly exhausted by the tension isn't terribly sustainable. Besides, I am weary of being exhausted by fear.

I'm also taking Bansho's suggestion and considering a suitably non-threatening, perhaps slightly comical name for my Inner Critic.

Inner Critic Revealed

I'd like to introduce you to my Inner Critic. I talk about her a lot here and a new art project in my Zen community inspired me to catch her in the act.


I had this clever idea to use Photo Booth on my MacBook to "catch" my Inner Critic. Earlier this morning I'd thought about writing down some of the top things I hear from my Inner Critic on a note card and photographing them with me in the background looking angry, disgusted. When I finally got this done this afternoon I found myself really taken aback by the image.

Wow, is that some nasty shit. Inner Bully is more like it.

And yet that's the person I hear nearly constantly. Something about having this image really kind of creeps me out. The enormity of this voice, the judging and harshness of it. The ugliness fully revealed, not just alluded to.

Somehow seeing this visual representation helps me get a grip on why I've felt so self-doubting these past several weeks, why it is so hard to feel any sense of accomplishment when this is the constant negativity I'm bombarded with. No wonder my therapist will interrupt me occasionally during our sessions to remind me, "I don't like it when you talk about Sherri that way!"

Yeah, need to keep working with this voice.

I burned the note card in the fireplace and lit some incense just now. It felt like the right thing to do. A cleansing step.

My Inner Critic

The tasks around Jukai, particularly sewing my rakusu, writing about the Grave Precepts, and making my lineage chart, have riled up my Inner Critic hugely.

What occurred to me tonight, while lying on the bed with a hot bag of flax seeds on my face and doing Metta practice for myself because I feel lousy, was that I've been able to more clearly hear the words of my Inner Critic lately. I've experienced a lot of the sensations of shame, guilt, anxiety, unworthiness, etc. that my Inner Critic builds up in me, but not the words.

It isn't even that I'm arguing with my Inner Critic (that still riles up a lot of childhood anxiety about the consequences of "talking back"). I can just make this internal voice out more clearly, which is kind of different.

My Inner Critic seems at times to be made up of a bored Greek Chorus of 13-14 "cool" kids from middle school. Not the self-conscious & longing to fit in kind of kid, that was me, but the disdainful, judging, mean-spirited kind. Nothing but pure anxiety-inducing spite and sarcasm.

My rakusu? Sucks.
Lineage chart? More sucking.
My writing? Lame. You're such a hack.
My name?! Yeah, right!

You get the picture... Bullying, arrogant, jerks.

In fact, that "Yeah, right!" response to the name given to me was immediate upon hearing Chozen tell me that my name means Peaceful Person. That bored, young-adolescent voice snorted in derision, rolled their eyes and said, "Yeah, right."

I insisted to myself that I was not allowed to start laughing in the zendo, in the middle of Jukai, right after my teacher gave me my name. In retrospect they both probably would have encouraged that laughter to just take form. I was conscious of the same Inner Critic who denies me the right to say I'm "Peaceful" then denied me the option of laughing about it. For a moment there my Inner Critic taking on my Mother's voice about proper behavior.

I'm still juggling how to deal with this voice, or voices it feels like at times. The very fact there is a distinct voice instead of just pure, overwhelming surges of emotion feels like an interesting shift. When I started writing this all down I wondered if some of these sensations would make a little more sense, I'd be able to define the "voices", and maybe that's what's happening now. The combination of the writing practice and the furnace-like intensity of preparing for Jukai have started to reveal some clarity.

Waves

Today has been all waves, ups and downs.

It started with feeling tired and a headache. I jumped into communicating with someone in IT on a project that releases next month and before I knew it was past 8. I threw myself together and out the door to catch the bus.

Lunch with AM today and lots of catching up. I'm feeling sad for the relationship troubles he's just gone through, for both he and the person he was seeing. The rest of the day I spent much of trying to get something to work on a coding project only to end the day wanting to scream. Oh how my head pounded. The whine of the router in our new office area does not help.

There was a time when learning a new programming language or systems short cut was exciting, challenging and fun. More and more it isn't that way anymore, I just go straight into feeling dumb that I haven't figured it out yet. Don't know, maybe it is just some short-cut my inner critic has found to really get to me and fast.

Came home cranky and in a rush to change because I'd stayed a little too long at the office before catching the bus. I had no more than 15 minutes of "down" time before leaving again to go teach yoga. I was even just barely on time to start my class! Ugh!

And then teaching yoga does what it nearly always does. I settled down mentally and emotionally. I listened to my student's needs, touched the lineage of yoga and just taught. I felt cooled, centered, and my head felt better.

I put on some lentils to cook to make into a salad and finally faced calling my Mom. After all my stress over telling her I won't be going to the wedding she responded with an, "Oh. OK."

She said she understands how my family hurt me and why I might not want to see them yet. She also really felt like my desire not to have my relationship with CK potentially turn into "Family Drama" at a wedding was reasonable. We made plans to have a late lunch and some thrift store shopping on Sunday.

I made a great, late dinner and got the downside of the wave catching up with my friend JA-N. Her cancer pathology report was sent onto the Mayo Clinc and even they were only able to give a "best guess" as to where the cancer started. The diagnosis, endometrial cancer, suggests a chemotherapy treatment that is known to have the most side-effects. She's scared about it and I totally understand.

In between the surprising Up wave of talking to Mom and the Down wave of catching up on news from my friend there is the middle. I felt the happiness at hearing CK get home from a meeting and now watching Zonker snuggle up to her on the couch. I don't feel unsteadied by any of the news I've received today. I do feel rooted in compassion, especially towards those who are experiencing pain that leaves me feeling sad in response to their suffering.

Metta on the Up waves, on the Down waves, and in the space between the next wave starting.

Is weeping speech?

I've been thinking on the poem I Have Five Things to Say from Rumi, (translated by Coleman Barks, down at the bottom of the post). So many of Rumi's poems leave me feeling as though I've been struck in the heart and this one is no exception. I've only recently been reading some poems from Hafiz and find they too have such depth and such ability to touch the tender places.

I have a lot of internal struggle around crying and have been actively working with it since 2008. One thing I remind myself over and over is that Kwan Yin's response to the cries of the world is to weep. The vessel she is often depicted with contains her tears, which have become a healing elixir. I remember this when my Inner Critic is beating me up for crying, for looking silly because I'm crying, for causing me to worry that I'll be caught crying and punished...

Ugh! I spend a pretty ridiculous amount of time worrying about crying. "Just cry!" is pretty much what all my teachers say to me in one form or another. All of them. It is damn hard to relearn this stuff and some days I feel loads of Bad Student Guilt over seeming to need to hear the same message over and over again.

When I read the line in the poem, "Is weeping speech?" I thought of Kwan Yin, She Who Hears the Cries of the World, and her wordless response, suffused with compassion for all the suffering of the world. Her act to hear terrible suffering and respond with the open vulnerability of crying reminds me of the very positive quality to tears and how they are a way of speaking when words utterly fail us.

I HAVE FIVE THINGS TO SAY

The wakened lover speaks directly to the beloved,
"You are the sky my spirit circles in,
the love inside love, the resurrection place.

Let this window be your ear.
I have lost consciousness many times
with longing for your listening silence,
and your life-quickening smile.

You give attention to the smallest matters,
my suspicious doubts, and to the greatest.

You know my coins are counterfeit,
but you accept them anyway,
my impudence and my pretending!

I have five things to say,
five fingers to give
into your grace.

First, when I was apart from you,
this world did not exist,
nor any other.

Second, whatever I was looking for
was always you.

Third, why did I ever learn to count to three?

Fourth, my cornfield is burning!

Fifth, this finger stands for Rabia,
and this is for someone else.
Is there a difference?

Are these words or tears?
Is weeping speech?
What shall I do, my love?"

So he speaks, and everyone around
begins to cry with him, laughing crazily,
moaning in the spreading union
of lover and beloved.

This is the true religion. All others
are thrown-away bandages beside it.

This is the sema of slavery and mastery
dancing together. This is not-being.

Neither words, nor any natural fact
can express this.

I know these dancers.
Day and night I sing their songs
in this phenomenal cage.

My soul, don't try to answer now!
Find a friend, and hide.

But what can stay hidden?
Love's secret is always lifting its head
out from under the covers,
"Here I am!"

Inner Critic Out of Control

Not sure when it happened, but my Inner Critic has gotten the upper hand again.

My therapist today commented in the midst of my ranting about how angry I am at myself, that only I would find some way to manage to avoid giving myself credit for something I've done by saying I was ashamed of having to do it in the first place. I've taken my weight loss and turned it into anger at myself for gaining weight in the first place, a way to beat myself up for something in the past rather than appreciate my accomplishment.

Yes, that sounds even more ridiculous typed up than it did a few hours ago. That's how powerful my inner critic's voice can be. I'm not even sure when it started up, but here I am. Am I that terrified of having people read my writing that this has come up

So back to the hard work of hearing the voice that offers gentle encouragement and reminding. Reconnect again to the part of me that remembers how to over loving-kindness to myself.

Body

It was one of those realizations during zazen that felt like it kind of thumped into me. Why writing about, talking about the weight loss is so difficult.

I feel shame for having gained all that weight in the first place. For having abused my body so much.

Every day I'm reminded of it by the skin. I mention it sometimes, like wanting to wear something with long sleeves to cover my upper arms, the underside of which have a great deal of loose skin. People shrug and say how that happens to a lot of people, it is genetic.

Only really, this isn't like that. It is extra skin. One of my dearest friends, who has had a lap band surgery, calls them her "Bat Wings". More exercise and different body care products will not make the skin go away. There or any of the extra on my belly (upper and lower abdomen), breasts, and thighs particularly. There is quite possibly 10 extra pounds of skin. That's what happens when someone goes from 290+ to 140 +/- (I stay within a few pounds of that in either direction).

I mentioned it to Chozen and Hogen after sitting. I was reminded that instead of shame I need to honor my accomplishment by helping others. I joked with Hogen, asking if he kept a tally sheet under the sazen cushion for how many times I'm told this lesson. He laughed and said only for me. Chozen noted that I needed to go back to the piece I'm writing for her with this mindset.

And Loving-Kindness, of course.

I haven't done it yet. We were in Sacramento all weekend visiting CK's family. It was an inferno there compared to Portland, painfully bright. There was a lot of family dynamics and tension I was getting introduced to at the same time. It brought up some tough stuff in my past.

On top of that CK's step-dad, a professional photographer, took a series of photographs of me. Well over an hour of going through yoga poses again and again, turning to get different angles. It was exhausting on so many levels.

I shouldn't have looked at the images mid-way, but he was making a light adjustment for me to do standing asana, so I looked. He was complimenting my chaturunga, how great it looked to get it in series. He does yoga, so often he had a comment or suggested a couple of poses I hadn't done.

I couldn't stop looking at the way the loose skin on my upper abdomen hangs down. Gravity being what it is there's just this round line. It doesn't matter how strong or lean my core muscles are in my abdomen, nothing will make that skin hang smooth against my body again.

I continued on with the asana, working up a real sweat in the warm house in my yoga outfit with long sleeves and pants. CK expressed surprise several times, noting how I could do some poses she didn't even realize I was capable of. I wasn't able to move away from feeling shameful about my body for a while, it wasn't until I looked at other poses that I could work my way back to appreciating my alignment in the asana the way a teacher would. Moving towards looking at my body as just a students, not actually my own.

Back to the writing for Chozen. Now that I'm out of excuses and have zeroed in on at least one big reason I'm so uncomfortable with it. I suspect there's others but this appears to be a good one to start with.

Writing About the Weight Loss

I've gotten OK with writing about quite a lot of stuff. I've now even managed to write three things to be put into zine-type publications and have the work be personal, from my own experience. Writing about the weight loss is tough, weird, and it is one of the topics I think I get asked about the most.

Chozen was at the Dharma Center tonight and thanked me for writing a nice review of her book on Amazon. This prompted me to blurt out that I'd finished a draft of my assignment from her but I was still unhappy with it. I noted that CK had thought my voice seemed distant in it. She said usually reading my writing seems as though I'm there talking with her.

Off to the zendo and zazen I went with that little burst of anxious, "bad student" guilt, courtesy of my Inner Critic. It struck me in that first period why I find writing about the weight loss so difficult, why I try to distance myself from it. I feel ashamed for having abused my body with gaining that weight. Every day I see the loose skin as some kind of testimony to my guilt.

Second sitting period starts. I breath in... and Hogen's telling us to work on feeling satisfaction with ourselves, our breath, our bodies. Ugh! I feel like I've just been double-teamed by my teachers. Then I directed the madly spinning brain wheels to some Metta practice.

In chatting with both my teachers after sitting I was reminded of what I am told again and again. To take this history, the lessons I've learned from it, and use it to help others. Turn it all into potent medicine to heal the world. I sighed and laughed, feeling a bit sheepish (which is a variation on the bad-student anxiety, only with more kindness).

Chozen reminded me that she asked me for this writing because it means more for me to say that it is possible to change your life through mindful eating. She said that they might listen to hear about struggling with chocolate desires, but I truly speak the voice of someone who has successfully lost 150 pounds and kept it off. Proof that there is a way.

So I'll pick it up again over the next few days. Read it aloud, feel the words and where my discomfort rises up around them. Practice Metta and remind myself why I'm writing about this stuff (to help others, not so I won't feel guilty around Chozen... OK, maybe both).

Down Time

I feel at loose ends tonight. I could have went with CK to go stuff the bags that will be handed out as people show up for Open Source Bridge starting Wednesday morning, but I didn't feel like being around a bunch of people talking. I didn't feel anxious or anything, just not very social. I'd also rushed to go to the post office, drop off DVDs and picked up some veggies for dinner. Then a rush to make dinner so CK could eat and dash off.

Dinner's star was the beet greens. CK thought I was inspired by the tattoo of a bunch of beets sported by the woman who helps manage Scapegoat, maybe I was. I picked up a bunch of 4 small beets with gorgeous, lush greens and popped them into my bag along with kale, zucchini (soon won't need to do this) and other yummy produce. We've been eating out so much that it was really nice to have a very simple diner at home, even if it was rushed.

I had felt all fired up to get started on some art projects and have had some very clear thoughts as to construction, etc. I got upstairs and just felt unfocused. I ended up finishing Chozen's book, Mindful Eating, finally. Then I went downstairs to put away leftovers and do the dishes. After that I popped outside and tried to get the cages around the now very grown tomatoes. The effort of this and dinner have left beet

Mostly I've cleaned in my little office that lacks all things from an office (no desk, etc.). The space has been quite cluttered during the move and I'm feeling like it is contributing to my feeling unfocused when I'm in there. It isn't perfect and I need to make a plan to take a pile of clothes to the Useful Goods Exchange swap shop my friend runs in Southeast. It is a bit better, am shifting my sitting arrangement too.

I'm trying to remind myself, those voices inside that criticize and push me a long, that pretty much all of September through April has been change and upheaval. Yep, all for the good, but BIG. Things have just kind of piled up ad still seem to be piling around. I don't have to be constantly producing all the time - whether it is teaching yoga, making art, cooking (I turned down CK's idea that I make cookies tonight), writing, or anything else those inner voices deem as "Good Productive Work". Once in a while it is just fine for me to do nothing but finish a book, do the dishes and call it good.

Open Source Bridge Butterflies

Back during the craziness in March, finishing up teacher training, relationships all sliding around, that's when proposals for Open Source Bridge were due. I really wanted to find something to present but felt so swamped with finishing up stuff that I wasn't sure if I could do anything and resigned myself to just going as a participant.

That's when I got some very positive encouragement, especially from CK, to send in a proposal for a mini yoga class. I thought I could pull that off and sent in a proposal. Immediately upon sending it in my Inner Critic started commenting about what I could possibly be thinking. I mean, really, a yoga class at a conference for developers? Come on...

By the time I left for the Loving-Kindness sesshin I still hadn't heard back if it was accepted. CK had heard back on one of her proposals, several people had. I guessed that I was right, that although some people were interested, not enough of them to pick yoga for a tech event. I was really OK with this and started thinking about a proposal on change control I could put in next year. Then I went to sesshin.

It was after returned, when popping by to join the monthly Code-n-Splode in April, I got the news in person from the conference chairs that they wanted me to do the yoga session! It was a great surprise, especially since I'd written it off in my mind. Now it is just over two weeks away and I'm feeling a little nervous.

The 45-minute class I did at BarCamp felt like madness! So fast, not a lot of time to do corrections or anything. This is another quick session, 45 minutes at the end of the first day. My Inner Critic has reminded me several times that everyone will leave for beer rather than do yoga after all the "real" sessions. I won't have any props this time, so talking people through using props isn't necessary.

I'm going to focus on some breath work and postures that could be done at a desk, in a line, really anywhere. Quick, short things that really help relieve a lot of the wrist/neck/shoulder stuff computer people get. I've joked with people that this is the yoga you'll do when you get out of a frustrating meeting.

It is a stretch for me in that it isn't my usual free-form approach to a class. It is very focused on a limited area without a lot of time for in-depth answers. I hope people come, have a good chance to wind down after a full day sessions, and THEN go have a beer. Heck, I'll join them and go on about how I really do think Yoga and Open Source have a lot in common! I am trying not to listen to what my Inner Critic says about it.

Angry Tai Chi Man

First of all... I am feeling sad, cranky, and questioning myself.

Good thing dinner with CK was nice.

I had a good day back in the office after a couple of weeks - and that's after having been in only one day in three weeks before getting bronchitis. It was nice to reconnect with co-workers, but the day was filled with sad news and my throat hurt by then end of the day.

I'm hoping it is because I've been talking so much more.

Then home via Tri-Met. Kind of nice sitting on the bus. Instead of reading on the way home* I put my book away and did Metta practice for everyone instead. I wasn't able to take part in a Dharma-brother's "Zen Flash Mob" idea this past Sunday since I was teaching at the time, so it was nice to do this as my evening commute meditation.

A quick change and off to Dishman for my Tuesday class.

And another confrontation with "Angry Tai Chi Man".

I've been teaching a class at 5:45, which was moved to 6PM at the request of students, for about a year now. A month ago I opened the door to my classroom to discover a Tai Chi class underway.

Uhhh.... There went my precious pre-class minutes to get myself set up to teach!

I checked in with the site director who informed me that he'd scheduled the class to end at 5:50, a short 10 minutes before my class started. Pretty tight since students really like to have time to ask questions, gather belongings, etc. He suggested I chat with the other teacher about the close time commitments.

I gathered my courage (I hate confrontation) and let the Tai Chi teacher the next week know about the close scheduling. At that time one of her students, who was listening in despite my efforts to take the other teacher aside and explain things, suddenly jumped in and confronted me angrily, "So what are you saying? To get out?"

It left me feeling anxious and upset the rest of the evening. I had tried to explain to him that I wasn't trying to be disrespectful and that I was offering to start my class even later, just that there was a tight time commitment and it would be most helpful if the Tai Chi class ended on time.

I missed teaching last week and was grateful for it.

This week I waited until 5:55 and went in with my stuff. My mat, very unfortunately, landed on the floor with a thud having slipped from my hand as I went to unroll it (Natural latex, surprisingly heavy). I quietly walked along the edge of the room to hang up my jacket and open the closet where the props are stored.

The Tai Chi class ended and the same student as a few weeks prior rounded upon me immediately in anger with phrases like, How dare I enter their room, obviously projecting my anger at them? How little respect I showed.

He parted the room with, "How can you call yourself any kind of yoga teacher?"

The worst part?

I couldn't immediately curl up into a little ball around the wound, the hurt of this anger. No, two new students were waiting for me to teach them. Ugh.

After quickly introducing myself I slipped outside to apologize to the Tai Chi teacher for interrupting her class with the heavy "Thud" of my clumsily dropped mat. I confirmed with her, "You class ends at 5:50, right?"

"No, 5:55." she answered.

Uh. Problem!

"Oh, the program director told me 5:50!" I said back in surprise.

For weeks I have felt the chafe of irritation that this teacher would consistently end her class 5 minutes late! I felt the irritation turn instead for the activity director who made this ill-timed planing decision without informing either of the teachers involved! Then I took a deep breath.

I left a note at the front desk to tell any students who ask that my class will now start at 6:10, instead of 6PM. This gives ample transition times between the classes and hopefully will mean I may get to avoid another interaction with Angry Tai Chi Man. In addition to offering Metta for my students, the memory of Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, and all beings, I tried to offer Metta for the Tai Chi class, teacher, and especially Angry Tai Chi Man.

I forgot about myself. I have a habit, generally considered to be unhelpful, of forgetting myself.

Then I went home and broke one of our new dishes. Admittedly kind of cheap, but I still felt hugely bad about it, growing more and more upset with myself.

After all, I had picked out said cheap dinnerware and I had broken it by microwaving it.

The voice of my inner critic, which had already grown strong stewing over the words about my worthiness of being a yoga teacher, stomped in an angry tantrum all over my heart and I started crying. CK, who had been trying to read me a proposal request, was a little surprised at my upset over a dish. I admitted that the interaction with the Tai Chi student had really hurt and I hadn't really been able to acknowledge it because students were right there.

She just hugged me an said she was sorry I had to deal with a jerk.

I didn't feel awful to cry, not that if felt exactly good, but it felt OK. Not as crushing, overwhelming, or anxious feeling as crying usually feels. I just cried a little, with her comforting me, then got back to finishing up dinner.

We'll see how next week goes. Honestly, I'm hoping to miss Angry Tai Chi Man entirely!

Graduation Depression

Everyone keeps asking me how happy I am now that my second round of yoga teacher training is completed.

I haven't made it to happy yet. I'm beginning to wonder if this is the next entry onto the list of accomplishments I don't truly feel happy for finishing. I feel unfocused, anxious and sad.

Some of this sounds like it is normal. I touched base with a couple of my fellow trainees this week and they echoed my less than happy feelings. I have heard from others how they felt down after finishing something like this. Tonight after the Dharma talk Nan called it "Graduation Depression" and gave me a hug.

I want to feel energized about the piece I'm writing around responding to the suffering of others. I had a moment last week where I just wrote flat out and felt good about it. My thoughts really came together around the idea that what we can offer to others, what we always have available to offer. Instead I sent a copy to CK and immediately hated what I wrote.

"Ahh, I hear the voice of the Inner Critic." said Chozen with a smile when I mentioned this to her tonight.

Chozen wants me to feel energized about writing for her blog on Psychology Today. I told her I had an outline done and she was happy to hear that I'd made some progress. I felt like a bad student. I also told her I hadn't written in days, felt unfocused, depressed, and not at all wanting to attend her sesshin starting the 20th on Loving-Kindness.

Being Chozen, she heard all of this and smiled at me. She insisted she is not nagging, merely reminding me with kindness to help me focus. She asks people to reminder her in this way when she is writing as it is useful to her. She is looking forward to my writing about responding to suffering and said that my reaching a point of hating it is not necessarily bad. She said that she gets that way too sometimes and then later, when the writing is read again she discovers that there's some good stuff.

AM is moving the bulk of his furniture this weekend. We had some tense words yesterday and I still feel the energy of them. These two endings, strung together, seem very heavy. As the teacher training progressed to a celebratory, loving end my marriaged progressed towards as loving a divorce as possible.

Saturday I am going hiking with CK and whoever else shows up at 10AM by the Zoo MAX stop. We're going to have a picnic after the short hike, if it rains we'll do it in the shelters at Hoyt Arboretum. On Sunday she and I are going to Easter dinner. Ham will be served so we're making a hearty, vegan soup to take with us.

I feel guilty for not being excited about CK moving into the house with me when I am back from sesshin. I know inside there's a part of me that is so happy, so grateful, so excited and yet I feel very disconnected from that part.

The Monday After

Not too much today. I was tired, poorly rested, and in a funk all day. Come down from finishing teacher training on Saturday on top of everything else going on. Spent most of my day feeling unworthy of living up to the positive things people said about me on Saturday. Heavy with the responsibility of that praise.

Yes, today my inner critic showed up right on cue so I would spend most of the day distracted with negative feelings. Generally a lousy and unproductive day. Feeling unproductive, when I'm not intending to be, it really irritating to me. I feel very impatient with myself when I have trouble focusing when I feel I should be.

CK and I made tacos, even picked up and enjoyed an avocado with it. Such luxury! We watched Wilde, which was as well written and acted as I'd heard. It has been a nice quiet evening together. I really was happy for it since she'll be at the Inner Critic workshop this weekend.

Today should be the official end of the 30 Poems in 30 Days challenge in my Sangha. I find that I have 28 poems at the end, which is pretty good. Given the day I've had I'm trying not to focus on not having 30 and to allow for a simple haiku to end on.

Moving Forward

An ending becomes
Just another step forward.
My way along the path.

Fourth Noble Truth

Tonight during the graduation ceremony for completing my 200+ hour yoga teacher training my teacher said that I was the Fourth Noble Truth. The way I teach yoga is one of the paths away from suffering.

I'm still just trying to be with this compliment. Trying to not listen to the voice of the inner critic and move away from these words. I'm pretty stunned, really and am just trying to stay with it being a compliment.

E said some pretty amazing things too and made a yoga octopus pendant for me. I so love the design she came up with and the meaning behind it. It has already crossed my mind that the design would be incredible on a t-shirt or as a tattoo. I've also wondered if CK could use it on the website we're going to come up with for my yoga teaching practice.

And then CK said wonderful things about me after being put on the spot because I forgot to warn her that JW would ask her to speak. I felt so happy to have her there with me. I mostly just focused on the flower in front of me and tried not to cry. She also brought these lovely, orange flowers for me and made awesome vegan mac & cheese.

I am actually rather amazed I wasn't crying all evening!

...thinking about all this stuff to keep from thinking about something else... keep from thinking about how I embody the Fourth Noble Truth when I teach... It feels big, too big to get my mind around, so I'm going to stop trying and rest.

Fourth Noble Truth

There is a way.

That is the simple
Beauty of the
Fourth Noble Truth.

All one needs is
Just the knowledge
That a path exists.

Inner Critic vs. Ada Lovelace

CK signed a pledge back in January to post a blog entry about a woman in technology she admired today, March 24, in honor of Ada Lovelace. The goal of the Ada Lovelace Day project is to get 1000 blog entries talking about women in technology. There's been a thing about it on her blog for weeks.

She surprised me by saying she wanted to interview me. Yes, I'm a woman who's been working in technology for over 12 years. I just never have thought of myself as worth interviewing over it. In fact thinking about it gets my inner critic all riled up noting how I don't do anything important, that I'm just a hack with a lot of what I do, there's so many other women who are better at technology than I am...

Yes, that list could keep growing, easily.

Part of it falls right in line with my having a very difficult time recognizing my accomplishments. I am so focused on moving forward, keeping momentum up that the very idea of stopping to appreciate, reflect seems very uncomfortable. I come from a very non-technical family and being the only child with a real passion for technology, learning and studying, my interest in these areas didn't really warrant a lot of supportive input. In fact, I never had a computer until I was in my 20s and on my own. The value of buying one for home was not something that I could convince my family of in the mid 1980s.

Here I was this morning, reading CK's blog post about me, and feeling awkward as all heck. Just noticing the awkwardness, where it comes from. Aside from all I've already said it occurred to me that it feels strange because I admire her so much, as a woman in technology and as a human.

In part I am just in awe of anyone who is successful in running their own business, doing freelance work. I've been in the situation of living with someone trying to do that and it was pretty hard. I've always felt a lot of uncertainty at my ability to do that and have let that drive me to try and find as stable as a job as possible. She works really hard for her clients and is concerned that her work be the best that it possibly can be. She has inspired me to think about leaving the corporate world and work for myself!

There is a large part of my admiration for her that comes from my respect for her integrity and intelligence. Those don't have anything directly to do with technology, but I think that they are so important. Combined with her openness, her want of learning, sharing knowledge and fostering collaboration is so important in any community. In the technology community I see her using these skills to find ways to support and encourage women more. CK also uses her time and technology skills to help non-profit organizations improve their online presence and make resources more accessible.

A lot of the time I think CK is a way more accomplished woman in technology than I am. She speaks with great skill about the specific tools she works. Her capacity and tenacity when it comes to learning is just amazing, she just sticks with topics, turning them from side to side until the solution becomes more clear to her.

I've never given a lot of thought to being a "woman in technology", it was just what I was drawn to and I spent a lot of time projecting a "tough" image to protect myself, playing "alpha geek" with all the guys who would be at events. I pretended not to notice and/or just played along with the "boys club" type attitude I'd run into on a regular basis in the NOC, in server rooms, in the cafeteria, and at conferences.

Over the past few years I've become more aware of the need to foster an environment where people do not feel the need to compete, especially for women. Yes, some competition is fun and can spark creativity, but it shouldn't be regarded as the only means to feel included in a group. Most importantly, everyone can benefit from being encouraged to go where the passion and curiosity for learning takes them, whether it is data visualization, neuroscience, baking, teaching, or writing.

Although They Are Only Breath

Today began my experiment with greater "word exposure" for myself. This morning PDX Pipeline posted a short piece I wrote about watching the series finale of Battlestar Galactica at the Bagdad Theater. Which is pretty cool and a lot of fun, plus good writing practice!

Seeing it published on the site reminds me a bit of when a piece I wrote for my Sangha journal came out. Looking down at a picture of myself next to my words. Today it is seeing something I wrote, with my name and little bio line there, on a very public site with a growing amount of traffic. Then there's this sharing poetry thing I've been doing, the Sangha Poetry Challenge. I think more people have read my poetry than ever before in my life, which is kinds strange and nice at the same time.

While chatting with the person who runs PDX Pipeline this morning before heading into the office we sorted out trying to arrange for me to do a phone interview of the guys behind a musical act I'm a big fan of as well a go to one of their shows next month and take some photos. I was just hoping for the show & photos bit, the interview thing... Wow! Don't want to write a lot of details about this one since it is still getting sorted out, but it is enough for me to be excited and nervous about.

Although I checked out another new yoga studio tonight, had a really nice class that even helped my neck feel a little better -- I'm not going to write about it. I'm just going to leave it at reflecting upon the interesting emotions, inner dialog that arises around writing, sharing my writing. Which brings me to my poetry offering for today:

My Words

“But, why?”
I ask myself
And wonder.

Why is it I even
Want people to
Read my words.
Why do I think
My words are
Worthy of the
Eyes of others
Taking them in,
Holding them.
Letting my words
Linger.

My critic reminds
Me that I am
No great hand
With words,
Daring me to
Compare my
Crude lines
With those of
Other, greater
Women.
Men.

A defiant child’s
Voice, I barely
Recognize as mine,
Repeats with small
Determination
Words she’s heard.
My words may
Transcend darkness
To bring illumination.

My words are
Potent medicine.

**The title of this post is taken from a bit of Sappho someone from Dharma Rain Zen Center reminded me of when she saw today's poem for the Sangha Challenge.

Although they are only breath
these words of mine
will live forever