There is no finishing line

Tonight I went to a discussion at the Rubin Museum between Sonali Deraniyagala and George A. Bonanno, entitled Grief and Gratitude.

Sonali lost her two children, husband and parents in the 2004 tsunami in Sri Lanka. She said that for about two years after that she barely moved, and was on suicide watch. (She remembers being in the bathroom and a friend outside asking, Are you done now?)

Tonight she was bright and able to laugh; she was clear and warm and generous and real.

She wrote about her experiences in her book, Wave, in 2013, and she discussed her grieving process with George, a psychologist who writes about grief in his book, The Other Side of Sadness. He remarked on her resilience. And she said, very gently, "There's no finishing line." Meaning, you don't just go from being shattered to moving through the grief to being fine. “You need to keep fluid,” she said. “There needs to be some freedom to grieve and some freedom to feel.”

I found tremendous comfort and relief in this idea; that there is no finishing line, no point at which we will be judged or win the prize; we don’t have to achieve a certain thing at a certain time. It seems to me to be a spacious way to exist.

Sonali talked about the decisions she’d made over the years—the fact that she hadn’t moved back to her home city, London, for four years after the disaster, because she hadn’t been ready to go home. She said it was right for her at that time. It was just what she felt she needed to do. George said, We know more than we think we do.

I was very glad to have heard what they shared.

Hello

There's always something

Yesterday on my way to the station from work, I hurt my wrist. I was leaving a store and it was late and I was tired and my hand got caught in a funny way as I closed the door, and there was a little sprain. It hurt a bit today, and now the pain is fading. My very minor injury put me in mind—happily, actually—of something Sister Chan Khong said a few years ago.


Sister Chan is a disciple of the Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh, and she has directed his humanitarian projects since the 60s. She has one of the most beautiful faces I’ve ever seen; she’s in her seventies now, but she looks like a baby, too, in all her wisdom. I went to Thich Nhat Hanh’s Blue Cliff monastery in upstate New York for a retreat, and Sister Chan was leading the group through a guided relaxation.


Sister Chan said, very gently and very lightly, that there’s always something going on with our bodies—always some kind of ailment or pain, or just something a bit wonky. And she said it in such a way that made me feel very relieved—that this is okay and to be expected. It’s alright. We are, in fact, incredibly lucky if we’re just moving from one little or medium-sized pain to the next. So when I have something going on, I tend to remember Sister Chan saying this, and I think, “Oh, there it is. There’s the thing right now.”


It puts me in mind of one of my favorite passages in Pema Chodron’s book, When Things Fall Apart. She talks about the notion that so many of us have, that if we just do this or say that or meditate enough or get the right job or meet the right person or find the right haircut, then everything will be perfect, and from that delightful point, life will be plain sailing.


But doing this is setting ourselves up for failure, she says, “because sooner or later we’re going to have an experience we can’t control: our house will burn down, someone we love is going to die, we’re going to find out we have cancer, a brick is going to fall out of the sky and hit us on the head, somebody’s going to spill tomato juice all over our white suit.”


I’ve always loved the line about the tomato juice. It’s like, even if for one millisecond you do have all the boxes checked, some completely ridiculous thing is going to happen. And that is life. There’s always something.


And so, too, there are always the tiny miracle somethings. The afternoon sunlight on daffodils and the surprise of spring. A hot shower at the end of the day. The fact that we are alive at all, to feel the aches and pains. To be aware of pain is also to be aware of not-pain. With each hurt is a chance to heal. And what revelation and a true kiss of love that is.

A note on strength

How do you feel when someone says, admiringly, that you are a strong person? For me, it’s usually a mixture of emotions. I feel proud, because I know that generally strength is considered a “good” quality. And when I’m going through tough times, part of me wants to say, “But it’s hard. I don’t find it easy. Often I feel like I’m going to collapse. Sometimes I do.” So that’s what I’d like to talk about with you today: What it means to be strong.


One of the most helpful pieces of advice I’ve learned in my yoga studies is from Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras. It is, “Sthira sukham asanam”, and you can translate it from the Sanskrit to mean, “Your asana practice should be strong and sweet; a balance of effort and ease.” To move in a yogic state (a state of union) is to embody both of these things simultaneously.


More than likely you’ve taken a class where you’re tired or you’ve felt creaky, but you’ve muscled-through it—you’ve used your body’s strength to pull you through the class like an ox with a cart—and more than likely you’ve felt exhausted by the end of it. And you’ve probably also had those beautiful experiences where your mind is with your breath and your body and your heart, and your whole being feels part of something altogether wider. And those are the times when you magically float up into a headstand, or you jump to the front of the mat with grace.


This wisdom applies to our hearts, and our health in everyday life, too. And applied to the day to day, I take this verse to mean, be strong and stay soft. Keep your heart open. As anyone who has worked with grief or heartbreak can tell you, it can feel murderously difficult to even contemplate doing this—you feel wounded, and your heart feels so incredibly soft and vulnerable. We may have the instinct to cover it up, to tamp it down as fast as possible.


At times like this, a lot of us will have turned to Buddhist texts like Pema Chodron’s When Things Fall Apart. Thinking, “Ah, yes! Things are falling apart! Now what do I do?” And her suggestions at first can seem bracing to say the least. In the lineage of Shambhala Buddhism, there’s a sense that our greatest courage is to let our heart be broken open; to accept it, to be curious about it, to feel the great torrents of love moving through us, and relax.


How does this look in real life? Well, I went on a course on Buddhist meditation and love at New York’s Shambhala Center, led by Susan Piver, author of the beautiful book, The Wisdom of a Broken Heart, and Lodro Rinzler, who wrote Walk Like a Buddha. There was much valuable discussion on the quality of leaning in to whatever you may be feeling, especially when it’s uncomfortable.


Lodro Rinzler remembered a time when he was heartbroken. There was one particular evening, he said, when his head was just swimming with questions and stories, and he felt in so much pain and completely overwhelmed. In the end, he chose to lay down on the sofa with his hand on his heart, and just listen.


I was deeply moved by this story, and recognised so much truth in it, from my own experience. It is scary to be with yourself. Why would you want to tune into the voices of sadness or anger or fear? (Or all three! Woohoo!). Well. In my own experience, yes, it can feel intense to do this. To put your hand on your heart, literally or figuratively, and listen. But there is also a kind of relief that comes with it, and certainly a deep peace of sorts.


It’s as if when you surrender to what’s real inside you, those feelings make a surrender of sorts, too—like they no longer need to be tugging at your coat, or wailing for your attention. There may still be tears and deep, deep pain, but it’s a different kind of feeling to when you’re wrestling, and desperately trying to push something away.


Equally, in your everyday existence, there are times when you need to get on with your work, or see friends, or do whatever it is you need to do. And a different kind of strength comes into play here. The strength of putting one foot in front of the other, the strength of letting yourself laugh and have fun without feeling weird or bad about it, the strength to be present.


Sthira sukham asanam. You’ve got this. It is hard, but it’s nothing that’s not already a part of you. For those of you working with your strength and softness—which, really, is all of us—I salute you.

Flowers

We all need flowers.

Groaning season

There is a point, for most of us I think, where winter starts to lose its luster. For me in New York, it’s around about now in February where there’s been one snow storm after another—and it’s been so cold and dry between snows that the snow becomes ice and turns black, so then there’s more snow on top of that old ice and you decide to stay home forever or maybe migrate to Barbados. When I lived in England, it was winter’s relentless grey skies—months and months of them—that gave me that same sinking feeling. I remember driving to the airport with my mum a few winters back and her cheerfully saying, “Oh look! It’s the sun!” And pointing to the most sickly looking patch of light in the sky. Again, that winter sinking feeling.


So it was with something of a wry chuckle that I recently remembered the sound that winter is associated with in the Traditional Chinese Medicine system, namely, groaning. All the seasons in TCM are linked to the elements: water, wood, fire, earth and metal. And these elements are linked to particular organs, which in turn are associated with different emotions and sounds. In TCM, the spring (wood) is linked to the liver, which in turn is linked to rising energy and the sound of shouting. In the summer, we look to the heart (fire) and the sound of laughter. Late summer (earth) is the spleen and singing. And in the fall (metal), the lungs come into focus with a sense of letting go and grief and the sound of crying.


Winter is tied to the water element, and the organs that tend to need special love and care at this time of year are the kidneys. In TCM, the kidneys are really the mission control of our whole body, governing all its water-related processes (urination, cooling and so on), our reproductive systems, and both the yin and yang aspects of our body; hence, the kidneys are described in TCM as “the palace of Fire and Water”. They’re closely connected with the adrenal glands, which sit right on top of them, affecting proper kidney functioning.


When there is imbalance in the kidneys at any time of year, the kinds of physical symptoms you might notice are bone problems (particularly knees and low back), hearing troubles and dizziness, hair issues, urinary and reproductive imbalances, disorders of the nervous system, and premature ageing. The emotion associated with kidney imbalance is fear. It’s a pretty serious list, right?


And the kidneys come into focus in the winter is because that is when they’re especially vulnerable—now is the time of year when you’re most likely to experience the symptoms listed above. The good news is that there are many, many lifestyle attunements that you can make to strengthen your kidneys. Eating optimally is really important, and I highly recommend Paul Pitchford’s excellent book Healing With Whole Foods for a full outline of dietary recommendations. Whole grains are great (millet, quinoa, wild rice), yams and dried foods like seaweed and fruit are also good, as are berries, nuts, seeds and beans (especially dark beans). If you choose to eat meat, organically-sourced bone broth is absolutely packed with kidney-loving minerals. You’ll also want to make sure you’re eating nice, warm foods (so save the iced-latte for summer).


You know what else is good for your kidneys? In fact, essential? Rest. And lots of it. It can be really hard to follow this kind of advice when you live in a city and have a day job. There are few organizations which are likely to say, “Hey, it’s winter—come in an hour later every day, go home a little early”. Slogging through the snow to get to your office can be tiring, too. So it’s even more important to give your adrenals a break. Try going out less, and giving yourself an earlier bedtime when you can; with its quiet, reflective qualities, winter is a good time for paying attention to your dreams. Listening more and speaking less is also recommended.


Last winter I experienced ringing in my ears for about two weeks, so I stopped listening to my walkman on the train, and started using earplugs on the subway (a strong look, I assure you). The ringing passed after a few weeks and I felt more peaceful. Listening to music at home and chanting can be deeply soothing in the winter though—there’s something supremely special about listening to a much-loved piece of music in the coziness of your own home while the wind blows outside. Your kidneys will give you a thumbs-up for this.


Any activities that encourage a grounding quality are helpful; so, restorative yoga, pranayama (working with the breath) and meditation. Your kidneys are seen in TCM as your body’s root and foundation, after all (and it’s certainly a productive way to work with that winter sinking feeling!). The kidney meridian runs along your inner legline and up through the midline and chest, and the bladder meridian runs from the top of your head all the way down the spine and the backs of the legs. Restorative yoga poses which help open up these energetic channels include supported shoulderstand, supported plough pose, forward fold with a bolster for the head to rest on, supported bridge pose, and supported bound angle pose.


My personal favorite kidney-booster, though, is this partner exercise. Find child’s pose on the ground and breathe deeply; breathe into every part of you that’s in contact with the ground, releasing tension as you exhale. As you inhale, start to feel your back-body opening up. When you’re ready, you’re going to start groaning—as loudly as you like! And at the same time, your partner is going to rub enthusiastically on your kidneys; so that’s your lower back, a little above where your belly button is on your front. This always makes me laugh at first, and then you settle into the groaning and the rubbing, and it feels great. You can do it on your own, too, any time.


I know that winter can feel very bleak, especially when we’re on the home stretch and we’re tired. But that’s exactly why it’s such a precious time to rest, and such a sweet gesture to try to give that to yourself. May this next month be a peaceful time for you, groans and all.