Word After Word

It’s the first trip in my life for which I packed light. I didn’t take baggage. At home, I wear the same clothes for days. I bought so little with me. I didn’t think about calling my Mom. I didn’t bring any work. 

Yoga classes twice a day.

Eating in silence. Buddhabowl: you eat what fits in a small bowl, the size of your stomach. Slowly.

There’s not good karma or bad karma: it’s life.

A philosophy I want to bring into my writing classroom: it’s your practice, it’s your body, it’s your yoga: what’s right for you? so that you learn—really truly feel—the difference between pain and hurtful versus what’s stretching, difficult, but nourishing and healthy and good.

Drumming, chanting, praying: a full moon ceremony (the lofty moon it’s called—it’s so high up, it appears tiny and unreasonable).

A fire ceremony. (I’m not sure what that is but it sounded cool; participants complained it went too quickly. I’m thinking: That’s fire!)

Reiki. (Who knew!)

Massage: “thank you for receiving.”

Yoga is softness and strength. It takes a lot of strength to open your heart. It takes a lot of guts. When someone yells at you, turning the other cheek comes from a place of great strength. Anyone yelling at you is saying “I NEED YOU TO LOVE ME.”

Four women, Gaia Roots, who study with elder musicians around the world, learning old rhythms, old lyrics, old instruments, and then they pass it along.

Massage: “pay attention to your body.” 

Three children spontaneously dancing in front of a crowd of a couple hundred, loving dancing and truly performing  not showing off. They were inhabiting the dancing whenever we’d clap, they bowed, hands in prayer position: thank you for letting us, thank you for loving it, it’s good isn’t it?

Massage.

Meditation. “My mat is a prayer rug.”  “Through my breath I extract God.” There’s more traffic here than you know.

“The more dysfunctional the system, the more rigid the roles.”

A still pond reflects the world. A choppy pond: all it sees is itself. (Good writing lesson.)

Green moss, the ice fairy land, Monk’s Pond. The most strange and beautiful shades of green.

A class in Shiatsu massage, where the teacher, Ken, kept saying: your partner isn’t paying you for this massage. You are doing this work for free so don’t make it work. Be selfish, get a good twist. Protect your back, your wrists. More fodder for the writing classroom: you aren’t getting paid to do this writing. It has to be fun for you. (Magically of course, when you aren’t working but playing instead, the massage is much better, your technique is smoother, wiser, instantly—so too for writing!) You aren’t getting paid! He kept saying. Stop working. Lean. He said Lean.  If you press on someone, they will press back, the body will resist, it will say: what is happening to me here? Am I under attack? If you lean, they will relax, feel safe. It’s like the floor, when you are sitting on it. You don’t press with your hands. You lean. Less effort = good.  This is true for writing. You don’t want to try. Lean. If you lean on another person, love, support, and safety are exchanged.  You can’t try. You have to entrance. You do this by making very very predictable movements, steady, no tension on part of the giver or the receiver. Great writing lessons. 

Basically, Ken said, we are trying to learn one thing: how to stop giving each other the creeps. 

Nametags. Everyone has to wear a nametag—teachers, volunteers, staff, every participant—you can’t ever be without it. Heaven.  Maybe that’s why I loved my five perfect days. Everyone was helpfully labeled. It was so easy to make friends. And keep them.