Nadine Feldman, Author

celebrating strong female characters and whatever else strikes my fancy

Yoga

U is for Underneath #AtoZChallenge

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As we hit the home stretch of the AtoZChallenge, I want to congratulate all of the participants on a job well done. I’ve met so many great people in this process and had a blast. I hope you have, too.

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Throughout this month I’ve posted photos of my garden. You’ve seen lots of flowers and lush, green leaves. But it’s what’s underneath that fascinates me. To have beautiful flowers and nutritious fruits and veggies, we need to tend to what’s underneath…the soil.

There’s a whole universe underneath our feet. Soil, untouched by pesticides, is alive and vibrant with microbes. When we eat organic food, we’re not just ingesting an absence of something, but the presence of microbes that can keep our gut healthy and strong in a toxic world.

Acid soil for blueberries, alkaline soil for asparagus…my soil varies from bed to bed, depending on the needs of the plants. As with everything else in life, one size does not fit all.

Recently, while digging in the garden, I encountered a large population of worms doing their thing, aerating the soil and leaving their rich castings behind. My compost bin is loaded with them, wriggling, turning, and crawling around, turning my food scraps into rich, black, nutritious food for the soil. When worms are hanging around, you know you’re doing something right.

Our soil needs nurturing just as our bodies do. Come spring I add plenty of compost, both homemade and store-bought, mixed with composted chicken manure. I spray my fruit trees with teas made from comfrey, nettle, neem, and kelp. It’s the same time of year I do my spring Ayurvedic cleanse, in which I load up my body with cleansing foods to improve digestion. Yes, my trees and I are all eating nettles, dandelions, and other healthful greens.

The soil is the foundation of all life. When I tend to the foundation, the plants are sturdy and better able to withstand the challenges of pests, fungi, and other diseases.

Each day I tend to my own foundation first. I begin each day with a routine that strengthens me: Ayurvedic self-massage, gentle yoga, breathwork, and meditation. This brings me a sense of peace that grounds me throughout my day. I started doing this last fall after our legal woes ended as a way to rebuild my strength, and now I don’t miss it. It takes some time, but it’s worth it.

Looking at what’s underneath, we can find hidden aspects of ourselves. Recently I came up with an idea for a one-act play…I’ve never written a play before, but why not? Looking underneath, I discovered the need to end a marriage to someone I still cared about because, love or not, it wasn’t a healthy relationship for me. Underneath, where noise and busyness cease, I find a truer self.

I’m hardly perfect at this. Some parts of my yard are overdue for protective mulch, and the weeds are threatening to take over. Some days, despite my best efforts, I am off center or cranky. But each morning, back on my mat again, I start over. I let go. I try again.

Flowers and food are sexier subjects in the garden…but the hidden, what’s underneath, is what really matters.

 

New Year Reflections

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When we first thought about moving to Port Townsend, we visited in November and December to see if we could handle the darkness. Not only are the days shorter than in Houston, but in this small town we have fewer electric lights. Even after nearly three years here, we are not jaded to the sight of a night sky with thick layers of stars.

I love the winter. As a writer, I am always fighting the distractions of life. This time of year, friends are out of town, the garden needs little work beyond pruning the fruit trees, and I can curl up on the sofa with a cup of hot tea and FOCUS. I am a hibernating bear here, enjoying the solitude and quiet. In the darkness, the nothingness, my world begins anew.

We are, of course, starting a new year. This is a natural time for reflection, to revisit dreams we set aside yet again, to hope, to start fresh. Of course we can do that on any given day, but there’s something special about making new commitments in the dark of winter.

My resolutions work better when they are fairly general. I plan to get healthier in 2015. This includes following a more seasonal diet, and to that end I’m taking Dr. John Douillard’s Three Season Diet Challenge. Dr. John bases his work on Ayurvedic principles, and the more I practice them, the better I feel.

I’m also taking Gaiam TV’s 21-Day Yoga Challenge. Gaiam TV requires a subscription, though they do have cheap starter deals for anyone who’s interested. Having practiced yoga for more than half of my life, my practice can sometimes get a bit stale. Taking the challenge exposes me to styles of yoga that are different from my usual routine, allowing me to mix things up a bit.

One of my big issues is giving my own hopes and dreams the time and energy they deserve. I intend to finish my second novel this year. What She Knew is coming along well, but I’m giving it more punch. To help me with that, I’m using the book Writing with Emotion, Tension, & Conflict by Cheryl St. John, and it’s providing me with some marvelous help. My goal is to get the book done, including multiple rounds of editing, by the end of the year. I also hope to blog more this year and to extend my reading audience.

From the darkness, hope rebounds. I reset, recalibrate, recommit.

What about you? Do you make resolutions? What is your vision for 2015?

 

Small Town Life and the Random 5

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It’s time again for Random 5 Friday, thanks to Nancy over at A Rural Journal, with a special shout-out to Tina Fariss Barbour of Bringing Along OCD. Check them out!

Here’s my Random 5:

  1. Ever since I moved to a different webhosting service, I’ve had problems getting my blog out to my readers. It’s all been user error. Sometimes I wish this techie stuff were easier to deal with. I’m lucky to have in-house tech support since hubby is a software developer, but still…sometimes I feel like my day is spent with updates and troubleshooting instead of the tasks that really need to get done. Hopefully I have things fixed now, but I’m not so sure.
  2. I just joined the “Farmgirl Sisterhood,” and I’m thrilled about being a part of this wonderful concept. The more I immerse myself in this new life, with my gardens and my knitting and whatnot, the more I see the eyes of family and friends glazing over. My stepdaughter calls me a hippie, but I like Farmgirl a lot better…not that I have anything against hippies, but I think Farmgirl is a closer fit. Besides, they have merit badges. Maybe I can redeem myself for my failure as a Girl Scout (another story for another time).
  3. This week I finished reading Erica Bauermeister’s The Lost Art of Mixing, which is a sequel to her first novel, The School of Essential Ingredients. Both are full of heart and interesting characters and, well, food. Lots and lots of mouth-watering food. Now I’m reading The Dirty Life: On Farming, Food, and Love, by Kristin Kimball. It starts out with a scene describing a fresh, home-cooked meal, that takes you right into the smells and flavors. I’m sensing a pattern here.
  4. Speaking of food, I picked plums off the tree to have with my breakfast. Woo hoo! Happy dance!
  5. Last night I listened to a webinar by Ram Dass, the spiritual teacher known for his association with Timothy Leary at Harvard back in the 60s. Ram Dass is 83 now, with slow speech due to a stroke some years back. While I didn’t hear anything new from him, watching his commitment to teach and share at his age inspired me. He’s one of my “wise elders,” which I’ll share more about in a future blog post…though since I saw him in person in the 1980s, I was reminded that we are all getting older, like it or not.

How are you doing? Join us in the Random 5 by linking up with Nancy at A Rural Journal! Happy weekend!

Poser by Claire Dederer

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I know I’ve written a lot about yoga lately, and I promise, I’ll get on to other topics. However, I ran across a wonderful book that I couldn’t put down, so may I share just one more?

In Poser: My Life in Twenty-Three Yoga Poses, author Claire Dederer explores her life with yoga as the backdrop. While the book at times gets heavy on yoga explanations and history, it’s more about the yoga of life. Dederer grew up in an unusual family situation, and her yoga practice helps her come to terms with how her unique upbringing affected her marriage and how she raises her children. As she examines and unwinds the knots of her earlier life, she begins to let go of her need to “grow,” to “improve,” to “get better.”

When reading Poser, there were times when I felt annoyed with Dederer for a variety of reasons. She could be, at times, pedantic, self-absorbed, spoiled. Though only a little more than a decade separates our ages, I felt the wide gulf of our different generations separating us from each other.

As a writer, though, I admire her for telling her story so honestly that I would feel these emotions and judgments. There is an element of fearless authenticity to her work that grabbed my attention. I kept finding time in my day to pick up the book and read yet another chapter. In the end, I applauded her journey. She has written about ordinary life — marriage, children, and work struggles — but in a way that never gets boring.

Whether or not you’re into yoga, if you have ever found yourself trying to be the perfect wife or mom, or perfect woman of any kind, Poser will remind you that self-acceptance, not self-improvement, brings greater peace and joy to life.

Yoga: Another Day, Another Scandal

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I love yoga. If you’ve spent any time reading this blog, you know that. I’ve spent more than half my life engaging in this powerful, life-affirming practice, and I credit much of my current health and well-being to the cumulative benefits of yoga over the years. I am and will continue to be a cheerleader for yoga. Yoga, however, is getting beat up in the media these days, and I feel compelled to respond to the various allegations coming to light in recent weeks.

First, author William Broad came out with a book that points out the potential for injury. His NYT article, How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body, has showed up everywhere.

On the heels of Broad’s article and book, a well-known teacher, John Friend, has been embroiled in scandal. Friend developed a yoga system known as Anusara, meaning “flowing with grace,” building a huge following and training a number of teachers. After Yoga Dork published allegations of sexual and financial impropriety, Friend has decided to resign as head of Anusara, Inc., and is taking time to reflect on his behavior. William Broad, who now apparently is the spokesman for all things yoga, gleefully weighed in on his assertion that yoga originated as a sex cult (not true — I’ve included a rebuttal here), and why should we be surprised?

In my years of study, I have encountered many teachers, both male and female. I have never encountered inappropriate behavior on the part of a teacher, and I believe that most teachers demonstrate a sincere desire to observe yoga’s ethical practices, the yamas and niyamas, which read similar in some ways to the Ten Commandments.

Still, success and adoration can blind even the best teacher to integrity, and John Friend is not the first to fall from grace. Sadly, this has happened more often than it should.

I will not excuse or defend Friend’s actions, some of which he has admitted to (he disputes others). A teacher-student relationship is a sacred one that must be handled in the same manner as a therapist-client or doctor-patient relationship is. I hope that Anusara survives as a practice, because it is worth preserving. While Friend must face the music, his work remains admirable.

Many who surrounded Friend enabled his behavior to continue by lying and covering for him. Those who studied with him had a responsibility to recognize where the teachings contradicted his actions. Like a dysfunctional family covering for an addict, Friend’s behavior continued because people didn’t dare speak out.

This dysfunction also shows up in the discussion about William Broad’s book. While I don’t agree with everything he says, we should be talking about injuries in yoga practice. My primary audience for this blog is women at midlife, and we need to take particular care to avoid injury, especially if we have other conditions such as knee problems, back problems, osteoporosis, etc.

I know of many teachers who want to “challenge” their students to “overcome” their self-imposed limitations by pushing their bodies further. Yet when I taught in a corporate environment, my observation was that most students pushed themselves too hard already — and I needed to gently bring them back, showing them the place where effort and self-compassion meet in the middle. Forget “Om” as mantra; mine was “safety first.” Don’t get me wrong, we worked hard, but we worked with loving care, too.

If you find yourself drawn to a yoga practice, and I hope you do, find a teacher who will help you work hard but stay relaxed and injury-free. And for God’s sakes, if a teacher shows any evidence of impropriety, find another teacher. If you have to sacrifice your integrity or values in a yoga class, it’s not the place for you. Do not do any pose that causes you pain (discomfort is okay, pain is not), regardless of what the teacher tells you. Be curious, but also be discerning. It’s your body, mind, and heart — take care of them.

 

I’m Guest Blogging Today!

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Hi, all,

I’m beginning my virtual yoga conference at YogaHub, where I will spend the next five days. In the meantime, thanks to Michele Tracy Berger for offering me a spot as a guest blogger, talking about creativity. You can find my guest post here.

See you next week!