Keep It Simple

Seven years ago, I took my first trip to India by myself without a cellphone for 2 months. I was in a confused place, and India had a strange and wonderful way of giving me clarity and simultaneously adding to the chaos. She was messy and colorful, just like me. It was where my meditation practice flourished, thanks to the best advice by a teacher: “Keep it simple, keep it short, do it often, trust the process.” It simplified and sweetened a practice that had been continuously eluding me. 

I began to find meditation everywhere. 

Sitting solo by the Ganges for hours with the ache of loneliness. The river herself was alive with birth, death, rebirth, change, hope. I watched bright orange marigolds from prayer rituals floating by, wondering what my prayers were. I became voyeur to families with both elders and babies, bathing and simultaneously washing their clothes, and wanting that same ease of belonging. I chanted, prayed, and passed the oil lamp during riverside Aarti ceremonies, watching the earnestness in the congregants’ devotional faces, wondering if mine looked like that too, even when I didn’t know the meaning of the Sanskrit words I was singing. I filled my copper pot with the sacred water to put on my altar, appreciating the substantial weightiness of the curved vessel once it was filled. I traced the riverbank through the villages, getting accosted by monkeys who wanted my food.

Sitting, watching, walking, praying, filling, not knowing, wanting to know. 

This was my India. 

Stand still and life will continue to move. I was tired of standing still. 

So, I moved like the locals - crossing the street in between the oncoming cars, rushing ahead to keep my place on line, not flinching on flights when people climbed over me in my aisle seat to get to their windows. I kept meditating: in all the temples, on the overnight trains, while hiking the Himalayas, during chanting and philosophy lessons, through Vedic astrologists suggestions, I listened, watched, absorbed, got lost - I wanted to be found. 

But what I kept discovering was in the consistency of doing, there didn’t have to be any answers. Just the doing was enough to keep me grounded. India was a force of nature, like turbulence, and just in the way I revered the sky, I deeply respected her too, and trusted the process. 

I still meditate that way: wherever, whenever. Sometimes it calls me for just a few moments, or just one breath, sometimes it’s in movement, and other times I have to lie down. It’s usually when my senses are on high alert, sometimes it’s when I’m totally captivated, sometimes it’s when I’m half-asleep, and it’s always part of loving and being loved. I don’t have the standard twenty-minute practice at dawn and dusk. Most of the time it’s spontaneous. I don’t plan it and I never know when it’s going to show up. My life experience is layered as a 55-year old woman, cancer survivor, mother, lover, going through deep, agonizing pain and full-on ecstasy all at the same time. It’s a challenging time for my nervous system, but my practice is my ground, even when my kids tell me I’m too easily annoyed and impatient to be a yoga teacher. 

I hope to make it back to India soon.

In the meantime, I understand love and I understand pain. Let me help you make peace with yours.

Private coaching is available anytime, contact me.