Presence

Presence. Just showing up and keeping your mind in the same space as your body. Deceptively simple, as anyone who���s ever tried to meditate knows. That was the theme of the first week of the forty-day yoga program I���ve embarked upon with the folks at Houston���s YogaOne studios using Baron Baptiste���s book, 40 Days to Personal Revolution.

This first week brought an awareness of how much I ���check out��� and allowed me to discover tools and tricks to keep me present, while not beating myself up when I miss the mark.

In an effort to blog more often during these six transformative weeks, I will present the high points of each week in a kind of stream of consciousness rather than trying to craft a perfectly coiffed essay for you. This is a fine exercise for any of us, by the way. You will show up and be present more often if you give yourself permission to do so imperfectly. That���s really the only way to do it, isn���t it? This is especially difficult to do with something we���re naturally good at. So, that leads us to bullet point #1 in today���s not-so-polished blog entry.

DON���T WORRY, BE SLOPPY... One of my yoga teachers has us do sloppy down dogs or down dog-esque moves at the beginning of her classes. She doesn���t tell us why she does this, but I theorize that it gets us moving and alleviates any lingering perfectionism that will get in the way of the day���s practice. We do this sloppy movement for maybe ten breaths (I love how yogic time is measured in breath). None of our moves look like anyone else���s. To the casual observer, we���d appear quite the renegade class. But there is power in embodying that messiness. Without a model to emulate, we are forced to ask what our own body needs in that moment. And then we move, oh-so-sloppily, into the answer. We shimmy, sway and sag. We bend, breathe and balance. We move into the moment and become present as we embody our own unique reality

DRIVING PRESENCE... This week I realized that the activity in which I am the least present for is driving. Like most of you, I spend a fair amount of time in the car. In my case, I am usually shuttling kids from point A to point B. You may be commuting or making sales calls or any of a number of other tasks that require time behind the wheel. What I discovered is that I actually seek out way to distract myself from the monotony of moving through familiar routes. It���s like I���m on auto-pilot and my mind departs when the engine starts up. Sometimes I���m intentionally multi-tasking���listening to an audio course that���s teaching me more Sanskrit chants or talking (hands free) to my mom or one of my sisters. But, usually, it���s not intentional. My mind just drifts away from my body. It may drift toward grief, taking advantage of time alone to shed the tears that still come so often over the loss of my sister Angie. Or it may drift toward plotting and planning the rest of the day. Or tomorrow. Or the next day. In any case, my body is driving a moving vehicle and my mind has left the building. So, next in this reflection on presence is an idea for reuniting your mind and body when you���re in the driver���s seat.

COUNTING TREES... Trees are my thing. Yours may be different, but find something plentiful along your route to observe. In my tree counting, I am not actually counting (that would be too much like math), but noticing and naming. I notice all the different types of trees I am passing. At one prolific intersection, I sat at a light and spied pine, oak, magnolia, hackberry and a bit of bamboo infiltrating. Plus all those that I noticed but couldn���t name. Houston is a great place for arboreal sightings any time of year, seeing as we don���t have winter enough to send many into hibernation. Maybe you are an architecture buff who sees how many distinct styles you can find as you trek around town. You can even notice something as utilitarian as street signs. The point is to keep your brain engaged with the space you are moving through, rather than sending it back to the past or jettisoning it into the future.

ACCEPTING WHAT IS... Sometimes we don���t actually like what���s going on in the here and now. We���d like it to be different or think it shouldn���t be as it is. Another lesson from the road last week made it clear that it can be downright dangerous to deny reality. Cruising down the 610 feeder road Sunday afternoon, I saw brake lights ahead. Instead of accepting that I was, indeed, approaching a patch of bumper-to-bumper traffic, I noticed my mind began revolting, with thoughts like, ���Hey, it���s Sunday afternoon. There shouldn���t be traffic!��� I questioned, ���Why is this happening?��� Thankfully, all that chatter happened in a nanosecond, and I did stop balking and start braking. How many times in life do we do the same thing? In life on and off the road, we will slam or get slammed if we insist on life proceeding according to our plan rather than the universe���s greater one. Above all, being present means accepting what is and acting accordingly.

I will leave you not this more words but with the image at the top of this post. Because I was fully present instead of playing with my new car���s many audio options or making a phone call, I was able to notice and capture this mysterious beauty going on in the sky above me while I was sitting at a stop light. I���m still not sure what it was. And, really, I���m not interested in a scientific explanation. To me it was a secret portal to heaven, dashed open by God for no reason at all.

So glad I noticed. What divine visions have you observed lately?