Tag: yoga

Yoga with Cats

I had watered the plants before I did my practice in the sun, and the one-eyed tom cat slipped under the fence and lapped at the puddle where I’d dragged the hose across the flagstones to water the pomegranates. Part of his tail was missing as well as one of his eyes. I was surprised to see him stay so long. Strangely, he wasn’t timid like he used to be. While I did my yoga practice, paying close attention to my alignment, to my breath, to my presence in the moment, he came closer, stood nearby, and meowed relentlessly. I realized that he, like other cats I’ve known, wanted to be part of this.

I once taught at a yoga studio that had resident cats. During my personal practice there, the one named Shakti would participate in any pose in which she could place herself with a gentle leap onto my body. Without ever using her claws, she would get on the thigh of my front leg in warrior one or on my back while I was in child’s pose, a warm breathing sandbag. When I was in a pose in which she couldn’t participate, she would meow pitifully until she could make contact with me again. (She inspired the scene in Death Omen where Gasser joins Jamie in yoga.)

Another cat with whom I did yoga belonged to my landlords next door when I rented a little house out in the country in Bertie County, North Carolina. (For people who like trivia about my books, the place I rented is Yolanda’s house in Shadow Family, the old one-room schoolhouse.) Fluffy, a long-haired calico, used to come to the porch for yoga. I think cats are drawn to the positive energy, to a human who is serene and grounded and stretching.

One-eyed Tom kept looking at me with his one eye. I tried not to look at the other, thinking, what happened? Don’t your people take care of you? The neighbors had been feeding him, but had they taken him to the vet, done anything for him? I wanted so much to pet him, but I’d read about a man in England who got some horrible rare disease from petting an unfamiliar cat on the street, and after that I vowed that I would stop petting the friendly, half-feral cats that roam T or C.

One-eyed Tom stared. He mewed and coiled to jump up on the chair that I was using as a prop. But I moved just enough to discourage him. He stuck around, though. When I finished my practice, he settled down in the cat loaf position in the sun and did his savasana while I did mine.

I looked at him more closely when I sat up. His face didn’t have the big tom cat look anymore, and his injured eye was no longer leaking and oozing. It was just gone. I think he’s been to the vet finally, and that his people who feed him tamed him enough to care of him. I owed him an apology. Should he try again, I’ll let him join more fully in my yoga.

 

“A few more breaths.”

The yoga teacher I studied with for over twenty years, the man who taught me most of what I understand about yoga—the skills of teaching, the physical and spiritual practice—died Oct. 21, 2024. He’d been ill for a while, and his wife said he died peacefully.

I honor his life and work by teaching and also by practicing. By remembering not just what he taught but how he taught: with respect, humor, knowledge, and insight, with attention to every person in the room—the real room or the Zoom room—guiding students to be their most conscious selves. I used to commute all the way to Albuquerque to take his classes. The studio where he taught closed in 2020, and I continued to study with him online.

When his cancer was diagnosed, I knew I wouldn’t see him again. He was my teacher, not my social friend, a reserved and private person. I understood not to pressure to see him, not to intrude. I’ve been studying with his wife, also a thoughtful and caring teacher in the same tradition. As he grew more ill in hospice care, she asked me to take over her Zoom class so she could be with him. I wrote to her about his influence on me, and she shared my words with him. He changed my life.Today, I did my yoga practice outdoors, with his teaching in mind as I always do. “Yoga is a manual for being human,” he once said. He challenged us to practice with attention to the moment, deeply awake. Sustaining a difficult asana, he gave clear permission to exit the pose at any time, while inquiring of yourself why you needed to stop. He often ended a long-held pose with “a few more breaths” to get us through it, then saying “And when you’re done, you’re done.”

Namaste, my teacher. My spirit honors your spirit.

Novelty

I take requests at the beginning of every yoga class. The senior students in Gentle Yoga ask for “the same as last week.” It’s become a running joke, because the class is the same in some ways every week, but it’s also different. They become more capable and aware, so the same asana sequence is a new experience even though familiar. I also introduce novelty on purpose. Not enough to be confusing, but enough to make all of us engage more mindfully. I’m a better teacher when I challenge myself to instruct the basics in varied ways.

During this heat wave, I’ve been waking up ninety minutes earlier than I had been previously. I’d been writing late into the night and early morning, but that meant running in the hottest part of the day. I tolerate heat well, but I’ve drawn the line at a hundred and four. (I used to think ninety-nine was the max I should endure, but then I realized a hundred didn’t feel any different.) Anyway, the point of this story is: the change was not only instantaneous and easy, but it changed my perception.

I began perceiving annoying tasks I’d put off as being easier, and I got around to them. I managed my time better with less attraction to time-wasters. This was not a conscious, will-power based change, but a side effect. I made one alteration because running is important to me, and the other changes followed, as if I’d cleaned the filter on my brain, allowing it to operate more efficiently.

I plan to add something new to Gentle Yoga tomorrow. One new asana. One small yet significant change.

The Pause

When I catch myself pushing on and on, from one task to the next, I’ve intuitively begun to pause in between and do nothing. A few silent seconds of breathing and gazing at whatever’s in front of me changes everything. Then I carry on with greater equanimity and mindfulness.

Teaching yoga, I bring students back to a neutral pose between more challenging ones,  revisiting tadasana between warrior poses or dandasana between seated twists. In stillness and symmetry, we can feel the aftereffects of the previous asana.

Pausing my run for a sip of water at the top of a hill, I discovered the clouds in the north were no longer distant but moving in and thundering, bringing the imminent blessing of rain to the desert. A multitude of yuccas’ spikes of bell-like blossoms stood out, green-white against the blue-gray sky.

The space between each breath, neither inhalation nor exhalation; the space between each thought, neither this thought nor that; the airborne space between each running step; the pause between lightning and thunder; the line breaks in poems, the rests in music; the dark sky between the stars, the blue sky between the clouds. Sacred space.

Spontaneous Serenity

When I finished a long run at Caballo Lake State Park, I was so reluctant to leave the bliss state of immersion in nature, I did my yoga practice on the small brick patio behind the visitor’s center. Its adobe-brown stucco walls and an L-shaped stone bench were my props. Balancing poses in the wind became open-skill activities, challenging and unpredictable. The views of the mountains and a cute little cactus with bright yellow thorns provided a change from the familiar views of my apartment and my outdoor teaching space, making my inner space feel different as well. Savasana on a hard stone bench, listening to the wind, was deep peace.

Then I took pictures. While I may never be much of an artist as photographer, the effort makes me appreciate even more the work of those who are, and helps me reconnect with the extraordinary serenity of that moment.

 

Space to Breathe

I’ve been teaching yoga outdoors for two years now, renting the patio and back yard of a friend’s Airbnb property on weekdays. Hot yoga in the summer, windy vata yoga in the spring with weights anchoring my mat, blissful perfect-weather yoga in the fall, and slightly chilly yoga in the winter. It’s not bad at midday as long as we’re in the sun. Bees still hum in the ice plants, low-growing succulents that bloom year-round.

I’ve come to appreciate the spaciousness of being under the sky and hearing the sounds of the world around us. Not only the bees, but the birds fluttering in a tree next door and for some reason occasionally whacking into the metal fence. Neighborhood noises such as a passing car or a barking dog. Life surrounding us. I don’t miss being in a studio. Where I teach now, people who see my yoga website or get a referral from someone in town have to ask for directions, and I get to know them on the phone before they come to class. I can check with them privately about health concerns.

Of course, it’s the pandemic that moved my teaching outdoors, and not all my former students have wanted to do an outdoor class. I have to accept that. Will I ever teach indoors again? Will they take my classes again? Perhaps. But I don’t fantasize going back to everything the way it used to be.

I heard an interview with a man who volunteers to help at disaster sites like the recent tornadoes in Kentucky. He said people often tell him, “Nothing will ever be the same.” He doesn’t deny it. But he also says, “That doesn’t mean it will be bad.”

 

Space

Part of the appeal of the recent pictures of Mars may be the emptiness. No people. No buildings. Just rocks and dirt. It looks a bit like New Mexico. I’m fortunate to have access to open space, places where I can run alone and in silence.

My yoga teacher often guides savasana by reminding us to enter the spaces between the thoughts. One method of meditation is to attend not only to the breath but to the space between, the unforced transitional pause that’s neither inhalation nor exhalation. Likewise, there are spaces—small but deep—that are neither one thought nor the next.

When the to-do list is long and the calendar is full, spaciousness is still possible. The space between.

 

Carport Yoga

After a long hiatus, I finally taught yoga. Not in a studio or a spa like I used to, though. Group fitness classes are specifically not allowed under current public health orders in New Mexico, a decision I support. But personal training is allowed. I taught a private outdoor class in a student’s carport, twelve feet apart so we could be unmasked even with deep breathing and with my voice projecting. A typical New Mexico carport is a detached shade structure, open on all sides, not part of the house, so the breeze blows through. Perfect for outdoor yoga. The cat walked through, giving us a humans-are-weird look. It was the first class I’d taught since early March, and she hadn’t taken a class since the end of February. I look forward to doing this weekly, the exchange of positive energy that is teacher and student.

Moments

In Jon Kabat-Zinn’s classic on mindfulness, Full Catastrophe Living, he quotes an elderly woman reminiscing. I can’t find my copy of it to cite the passage precisely, but she says something along the lines of, “Oh, I’ve had my moments. And if I had it to do over again, I’d have more of them. Because that’s all we have, really. Moments.”

Writing this made me stop and perceive my apartment in a new way. There’s no sound but the faint hum of the humidifier gently battling the total dehydration that is April in New Mexico. I look at my furniture, the quality of early evening light—all beautiful for being so ordinary.

Despite the shrivelingly-low humidity and frequent high winds, the desert smells like flowers. I can’t figure out which ones produce the scent, but I run through it in delight. Tiny yellow flowers grow wherever they can, in hard soil, in dust, in pavement, between rocks. Creosote bushes and claret cup cacti are blooming.

One day on my run, I noticed a peculiar shadow in motion near me and looked up to see a trio of huge black shiny bees flying in a sloppy little V. Another day, another trio. A bee-o. My inner Dr. Seuss can’t help rhyming this: Big black bees/ fly in threes.

I took my car out for her weekly workout to keep her battery charged. I drove her to a trail just outside of Elephant Butte Lake State Park, as close to my beloved park as I could get while it’s closed, and took a walk to see if it was a potential running trail. It wasn’t—too much lose gravel and then extremely soft sand—but it was a lovely walk. The deep soft sandy part of the trail was partially overgrown with flowers I’ve never seen before, purple clusters that sometimes curl over like fiddlehead ferns. The unique landscape of Elephant Butte is quite different from Truth or Consequences, just a few miles away. More gray rocks than red. More twisted, shaggy-barked junipers, fewer creosote bushes. Greater earless lizards rather than checkered whiptails. Sand rather than dust and dirt. The trail dropped off sharply into a dry arroyo, and I turned around, content with my exploration

On the days I would normally teach yoga, I’ve been doing my practice as if teaching, talking to myself with the cues I would give students, treating my own need for alignment , relaxation, and engagement as those of a student I was observing. It sounds crazy, but it makes me pay full attention. I can’t think about anything but the moment, as my body and my words meet in my focused awareness.

After today’s yoga immersion, I gazed out my screen door at the waving, rustling green leaves at the top of the tree that invaded our water line back in February. It’s a beautiful tree. And I have water.

*****

The entire Mae Martin Series is currently discounted. Book one, The Calling is free and will be through June 13. Shaman’s Blues is 99 cents through the end of April. The other books are $2.99, and when the promotions end, the first two books will be only $2.99 for the rest of the summer.

Social Distancing, Reading, and Writing

Seriously, I want to hug someone. Not touching is strange, and it makes me feel a bit disoriented, not quite myself. I socialize by taking walks with friends rather than going to coffee shops, restaurants, or the brewery. No blues dancing on crowded dance floors for now. A friend I hadn’t seen for two years came to Truth or Consequences for a few days of camping and bird-watching. We met—and parted—with elbow-bumps.

I’ve been teaching yoga without using touch for guidance, and now the studio is going to close for the rest of the month. Art events, music events, the life-blood of my town … I’m not going. It’s difficult, but I can see the wisdom in doing things this way. Prevention.

Fortunately, running in the desert is still an option. And since I have less of a schedule and less of a social life, I can do more reading. E-books don’t even involve going to a store. I can’t run out of them.

And of course, I’ll get more writing done. I’ll probably be writing scenes in which people hug.

*****

The Calling is free on all e-book retailers though April 23rd