Covid-19: The Perfect Teacher

This could be a random moment, one grand, human error where a virus jumped from an animal to the human population and where that population was woefully unprepared. That’s one way of viewing this experience we are all in together, a series of fuck ups with enormous ramifications.

I’m not suggesting we dismiss this perspective, but it is only that, one way of viewing this time. And it’s one that leaves me cynical, scared and hopeless, with only three options: being mad, afraid or falling into a pit of despair. These three basic human reactions generate more suffering in the world than is needed.

Another point-of-view-and not necessarily the only one or even the correct one-is that Covid-19 is the perfect teacher. The uncertainty it presents in our lives and the lives of our loved ones might be the ideal curriculum we need to wake up to our purpose, to find our unique path, to give our gift, our medicine. And for each of us, that’s going to be something different. For one person, it might be the calling to step up and lead. For another, it might be about taking a new career path, one that is more aligned with our values.

While humanity has never experienced a pandemic of such proportions, we know in our DNA, how to ride this wave. Crises are not new to humanity. Our ancestors were all once part of tribes, and when tribes got decimated, either by illness, war or famine, the survivors had to reassess. They couldn’t go on in the same way. And what did they do?

They struggled, but eventually, they went inward and touched the fear, vulnerability and grief. Deep below the heartache, they also found a well of hope and possibility, a place where discoveries could be made and where new and unique ideas and approaches could alter their lives and the lives of those they loved and were connected to. That’s one possibility for this moment, not just for the so-called elite or leaders, but for each of us. It might just be the ideal curriculum we need to wake up, to reassess our values and priorities, and to connect ever-deeper with the well of love and connection that exists beyond the rational mind, beyond the fear and hurt we carry.

To know that well, to touch it, requires patience, focus and presence. It requires going inward and wading through the whole catastrophe we are in until we find that spark of insight, of wisdom that we each carry as our birthright. I don’t know what this new time will bring us, but when I hold the possibility that this moment is the perfect teacher, I am profoundly hopeful we will find our way.

Befriending the Inner Child

One of my clients describes this experience she had in grammar school. Being the chubbiest and slowest of the other kids performing wind sprints in Mrs. Wahlberg's P.E. class, my client would often come in last. Already tired and overwhelmed from being beaten, Mrs. Wahlberg would make her run several more wind sprints on her own while been scoffed at by the other kids. To this very day she pulls out her own Mrs. Wahlberg when the tax bill hasn't been paid; the bags from last weekend's vacation haven't been unpacked; and, oh yes, when she has totally forgotten to write a thoughtful response to that person who emailed her last week. As the "to do's" build up, so does the overwhelm.

The anxiety can be so debilitating that it swirls inside of her, almost like a lava lamp. Throughout most of her day, she anxiously wonders to herself, "What have I let slip through the cracks? Am I doing 'the right thing' at this moment? Am I on the right track?" Secretly she wonders, "Will I ever know what 'the right track' is?"

Instead of gathering her wits about her, my client invites Mrs. Wahlberg and the kids in her class to mock her: "You're chubby. You're slow. You're weak. You're lame." All the while, my client mistakenly believes that this will somehow motivate her to get unburied from the mountain of tasks, known and unknown, that await her.

This may sound like someone else's story, but it's actually all of our stories. We've all come to believe in some particular way that we are weak, slow, defective, ugly, unlovable or just plain, "not enough." We've gathered plenty of evidence that validates our insufficiency. When we find ourselves yet again in situations that confirm our flaw, we beat ourselves up.

Here's the kicker. We mistakenly believe that if we're mean or cruel enough, somehow we will slough off our bad habits. Instead, we're practicing being cruel to ourselves, which stimulates the stress hormone, cortisol, into our blood, sending us into a depression that deepens the hole we're already in.

Below the self-loathing and the accompanying longing that we'd just get this part of ourselves handled is a deep and old wound. It's the kind of wounding that can happen in Mrs. Wahlberg's P.E. class; when dad married the bitch that wished I hadn't existed or; as in my case when my brother took his life and nobody knew how to help.

These experiences leave exquisitely tender marks on the mind, body and spirit. To make contact with these imprints can be like putting our hand on a hot stove. They burn. We don't know how to keep these parts of ourselves company; in fact we've spent a lifetime wishing they would just go away.

There comes a point for many of us, however, when we stop running from them, when we stop attempting to beat ourselves into submission. Maybe someone shows up who can help us, or maybe we end up completely overwhelmed and can no longer keep up the facade. However it happens, instead of running from them, we turn around and look. We find a gentle and tolerable way to keep these parts of us company. When we do, we begin to discover that instead of needing to be excised, these parts of ourselves are actually hidden with treasures of insight, compassion and wisdom.

As my client learns to keep this underlying pain company, to welcome it, to have compassion for herself, she's starting to discover that when she's triggered, she can use it as an invitation to come back, come back to the chubby, little girl being abused in Mrs. Wahlberg's class.

"Above all else," she says, "We don't abuse children. Above all else, I don't abuse myself."

Burnout

Several years ago, I completed burned out in my work. I had started to feel a dimming of interest in a work project I’d been involved in.  I'd been co-running a yoga program in San Francisco with a colleague for five years, and I had stopped feeling that magical feeling.  I kept bumping into a kind of been-there-done-that fatigue along with a nagging sense that there was something else out there, something unclear waiting for me.  I'd had these sort of feelings before. I'd been started yoga programs like the one I’d been co-running for more than fifteen years, so aversion was not new hat.   I thought this one would fade like the previous times, but in this case, my frustration persisted.

Sorting Through the Confusion

It's often hard to detect when feeling associated with burnout are just a passing reaction or when it's a message from the deeper interior that change in needed.  We all have periods of time when our jobs or our relationships are just kind of blah.  That's normal.  The notion that we're always supposed to be happy all the time is b.s.  Even the best of job or relationships can go stale on us or just irritate us to the core.  That's normal as long as it doesn’t last forever.  

When that difficulty is prolonged, however, it can be a message that it's time to slow down and reflect on what we're bumping into.  Sometimes it is a message that it is time for a change.  Deciphering burnout can be difficult, though.  It can be immensely helpful to have wise counsel we can trust enough to help us distinguish the wisdom of our inner callings from the voices that deceive us.

I shared the experience with my coach.  I said, "Okay, I'm feeling burned out. I'm starting to wonder if it’s time for me to let this project go.  I want to name this urge, but I don't want to make a decision just yet. I want to use these next two months to see if, in fact, I am done, or I am just a little fatigued or bored."  

Sure enough, after two months, the feelings had passed.  I felt reinvigorated by some responses I'd had to some blog writing I was doing about the intersections of yoga and life coaching and started to see that the project I was in was a great platform for the expression of this cross-breeding.  

Then a friend contacted me and said, "I'd like to partner with you to do some consulting work in corporations.”  I'd really wanted to explore that possibility, but I was too tired to take on another project.  I just could not muster the energy to begin.  My days were too filled with teaching classes and working with my coaching clients that I couldn't possibly give it the attention it deserved.  Not being able to do this left me completely frustrated.  Once again, I began thinking that it was time for a change, but somehow I wasn't quite ready.

 And then I had this experience that absolutely changed me forever…

Letting Go

After an arduous bike ride to the top of Mt. Tamalpais, I stood on a hillock overlooking the Pacific Ocean, San Francisco Bay, The City of San Francisco, and the East Bay.  As I stood there taking in the scenery, I felt a sense of gratitude for the beauty that surrounded me. I started to do a little, improvised gratitude jig, somewhere between a yoga sun salutation and a dance.  

As I did so, I started to hear a clicking noise behind me that kept the rhythm.  And when I turned around, I saw this raven standing only a few feet from me with a seed of sorts in its beak. The clicking was coming from the raven's beak making contact with the seed, and I had this clear sense that the raven was relating to my movements by keeping the rhythm.  

I continued to dance my gratitude dance around the hillock.  Each movement I made to the left, the raven moved to the right.  Each movement I made to the right, the raven moved to the left.  We were in a dance together, and the raven was keeping the rhythm.  At the same time this dance was taking place, I'd had this intuitive sense that the raven had a message for me.  Who knows whether I was making it up or not, but it was a message that moved me:

"It's time to let go, to stop dancing someone else's dance, to dance you're own steps, and to trust them."

For me this was code. I'd spent the last 20 years being faithful to my yoga teacher and the tradition he taught me.  I'd been his student and I’d taught hundreds of people his method. The crow’s message for me was that it was time to let go, to trust a deeper and more personal wisdom, rather than following someone else’s path.  

Gulp.  I'd been a student of and run these sorts of programs for so many years because they had given me access to deep teachings, the security of a teacher, a community, some sense of authority to back up my own teachings, and an identity.  Now, the raven-teacher was giving me the the sage advice, “Let it go!"

My need for change wasn't so much about leaving the program or about being burnt out.  Rather, it was about making room for something more personally truer to enter.  I realized that I had to make space for that to come about.  And for that brief moment, I felt released.  Released from the burden that by leaving, I was betraying my students, my business partner, or the tradition.  It was a visceral experience, this clear sense that not only was it okay to make a change, but I was being called forth to make it.  And while I'd been preparing for this moment for the nine months of back-and-forth, the inner teacher's message had clearly arrived.

Living with Uncertainty

Within a week of this experience, my partner and I met.  I shared my decision, and we both wrote a public announcement about that decision.  By the way, this doing, this action required little to no effort.  The challenge was living with the uncertainty for almost nine months.  One of my teachers used to call this form of waiting, "holding the tension."  Holding the tension is another way of saying, living with uncertainty.  It's called holding the tension because it feels uncomfortable to live between a question, to live in ambiguity.

Each of us has a propensity to try to get ground underneath our feet by wanting certainty or clarity.  That's why we turn to self-help programs, gurus, yoga traditions, techniques, methods, and philosophies.  But if we're following our inner guidance, the messages come in only when we're really ready.  Sometimes we must undergo a trial by fire before the message is clear.  You can't always coax the interior into a "yes or no decision."

But when the message is announced, it comes in declarative tones from what the Quakers call that still small voice within: "Call her."  "Go to New York." "It's time." "Let go!"  And when we disregard these messages because they're inconvenient, we sometimes find ourselves in the throws of depression.

My doubting voices continued to peep up, even after I had made that decision; in fact, the moment I made it, I started to really enjoy teaching, again.  All of the previous feelings of burn out completely vanished.  In fact, some aspects of my teaching, which previously had been driven by a proving energy, altogether diappeared  I no longer had to prove anything to anyone anymore.  And as that went away, I began enjoying the process again.

But I knew at a much deeper place of my being why I was doing this.  This decision was not whimsy.  I had struggled valiantly with it.  I had endured lots of back and forth while continuing to live with uncertainty.  And since that certainty came, I had to be willing to trust it in spite of the fact that I wanted to second-guess my decision. 

If we want real and substantive change, we have to be willing live for sustained periods with the discomfort of ambiguity and doubt.  In fact, one might say that most of life requires us to get accustomed to uncertainty.  The sooner we get that message, the less we'll fall prey to quick fixes and the more our lives will become aligned with our higher calling.

Facing Negativity

When we lose a job, get a bad review, experience burn out, or our heart is broken, we often can’t help but experience a sense of groundlessness and paralysis. We struggle with meaning and end up feeling stuck.  Who am I now?  How do I recover from the sense of frustration, overwhelm, or loss? 

What stops us is not the situations themselves.  It’s never fun to lose a job or have our hearts broken, but there’s no inherent meaning in these losses.  In other words, the circumstances of our lives don’t make us unhappy.  Rather, our experience of them depends entirely on the meaning we bring to them.  Some perspectives empower us when faced with even the most difficult of situations and some render us incapacitated.  How we hold the circumstances of our lives can either grow us or take us down.

Part 1: Uncover your interpretations of the situations you find ourselves in.

We have an automatic, unconscious propensity to add meaning to the experiences of our lives.  We have the tendency to fit each experience that shows up into an ongoing story we have about our lives and who we are.  In fact, rarely do we regard ourselves in relationship to the immediate circumstances we find ourselves in.  Instead of relating directly to our experiences, we often just relate to our beliefs, opinions, and judgments about the experiences.  And so when things fall apart, and we lose meaning in life, it can be incredibly helpful to reassess how we make meaning of our lives.

A 48-year old client, Mary, had been driven her whole life to make it big in the corporate world.  A year ago she arrived at my office and declared: “I am totally burnt out and am just going through the motions of my life.”  She didn’t sleep well; she’d gained ten pounds over the last few years; and her relationship with her girlfriend was suffering from her tendency to what she called “workaholic tendencies.”  She’d been to a psychologist already, and while that work had clued her into why she felt stuck, it still didn’t propel the change she desperately needed.

When I asked Mary why she didn’t leave or alter her situation in her job, she responded that to do so felt like torture.  Mary’s sense of purpose in life, up until that moment, revolved entirely around her work.  Her sense of self and the qualities of her relationships went down when her work went down.  Likewise, they went up when her work went well, not to mention the fact that she’d spent her whole life working her way to the top.  Now that she’d finally made it to the “big time,” she couldn’t help but look around and scratch her head, asking, “Is this as good as it gets.”  Her health and her personal relationships were suffering, and she found her colleagues, in fact, intolerable.

While Mary felt that to make a change would put her family in financial jeopardy, she knew, rationally speaking, that they’d do fine if she took a pay cut.  She, like most of my clients use the “financial card,” as an excuse not to make a change.  But when she looked closely, she was really afraid to upset her relationship with her girlfriend.

As a child, her alcoholic mother had been inconsistent, sometimes present and sometimes altogether absent. When we looked at her “life’s story” it was obvious that she’d done everything in her power to give herself the security and safety that her mother constantly took away from her.  She’d lived her life in service to accruing professional accolades so she wouldn’t feel the way she felt as a little girl, scared and destitute.

Part 2: Meet the feelings you’re avoiding.

To make profound, lasting change not only must we uncover the background stories that help us make meaning of our experiences, but we also must meet the nervous system’s response to the experiences.  Embedded within each of our narratives is a statement like, “I never want to feel "x" again.”  "X" might be loneliness, sadness, anger or fear. The narratives that live in the subtle background of our lives help us not only to succeed but also to avoid certain feelings.  If we’re ever going to really transform, we have to be willing to meet the feelings we’ve spent a lifetime avoiding.

In Mary’s case, her workaholism protected her from the fear of being destitute. As Mary examined her life’s narrative and discovered her propensity to be risk averse, she started to confront bodily feelings of terror: fluttering feelings in the chest, queasiness in the stomach, and a knot in the throat.

This part of the journey can be very uncomfortable and equally counterintuitive. Each of us spends a whole lifetime avoiding these feelings.  Turning around and looking at them can be like turning around and facing the demon we swore off almost a lifetime ago.  It takes incredible courage, even-mindedness, tenacity and compassion to ride the waves of emotional pain.  And to do so can feel like this:

Heavy-heartedness… irritation in the chest… boredom… really heavy heartedness… tightness in the ribs…. burning rage…heat in the face…tight throat… boredom… fatigue… numbness… impatience and boredom…. nothing… nothing…nothing…hurt

Often times my clients will ask, “Why would I want to be with this shit?”  Often my response is that to meet it is to transform it.  To avoid it is to let it rule you.”  If we don’t meet the body’s response, we miss a deep learning that our suffering has to show us.

Part 3: Reinterpret the experience in such a way that it leaves you empowered.

So as Mary met the fluttering, queasiness, and knots in one of our meetings, her “fear of change” lost its hold on her. At that point, she was no longer afraid to feel her terror.  She could see that she didn’t need to be a workaholic her whole life in order to avoid “ending up broke, homeless, and alone.”  Instead, she was at choice to create a new narrative, one that created possibility and that empowered her. 

When Mary tapped into the wiser and more intuitive parts of her being she could see that instead of her burn out being an obstacle, that it could be seen as an omen for change.  “I could work less, maybe even go to yoga class, and have time to eat a meal with Donna [her girlfriend].” Instead of creating less safety, this crossroads might give her an opportunity to explore a new way of being in the world, one in which work wasn’t the only focus, but, instead, included family and intimacy.

Part 4: Make the insight real through action that leads to specific and measurable outcomes.

All it takes is a moment to see our situations in a light that renders us free, powerful, or expressed.  But to make the changes necessary to fulfill this recognition a clear set of goals accompanied by practice. Once Mary committed to a change in her work, she started to look for new work opportunities, both within her corporation and outside. 

She made a point of meeting colleagues within her network.  It took time and a lot of what I call “t.s.o.-ing”—trying shit out--to stumble upon an opportunity that excited her and gave her the flexibility she needed.  She knew that she’d have to surrender some of the clout of her previous job, and so she also established some practices that made this transition easier on her nervous system.

Part 5: Practice mind-body techniques that support the nervous system and facilitate the change.

Each morning she did some movement, whether it was yoga or taking a walk with her girlfriend.  I also taught her a few simple meditations, which she could practice for 15 minutes.  Finally she wrote in her journal on an inquiry I’d assign her each week. An inquiry is an open-ended question that can be answered from many different sides that gives new insights each way we look at it. One inquiry that uncovered a landmine of insight for her was, “What must I drop in order to gain something new?”  This question helped her discover the confidence that she wasn’t just dropping off altogether but that her change would put her in touch with something new.

Slowly, over a six-month period, Mary discovered the right fit she’d been looking for in a new company. To an outsider, that move might have been seen as a demotion, but to her the move enhanced the quality of her life immensely.  She worked less; had more time to explore new ways of relating and playing with her girlfriend; and found time for herself.  Essentially, this move provided the breathing room Mary needed to replenish the well that had dried up inside of her.

Exercise

1. Very briefly, write an account of your life and conclude with the situation you currently find yourself in. Keep the writing to a minimum of one page.

2. Reread your brief account once.

3. Notice how your life’s story influences the current circumstances you’re in. Does it empower or disempower your circumstances?

4. Review your brief account, again, this time, reading your account out loud.

5. Notice how it makes you feel in your head, throat, heart, belly, and genitals once you’ve completed the account. Do you notice any emotion, sensation, or charge in these areas of the body?

6. If you notice that you do, read the account out loud, once again.

7. Repeat steps 5 and 6 until any feeling of constraint has altogether gone away.

8. Notice if there’s a new meaning you start to derive from the circumstances you find yourself in accompanied by new possibilities for yourself and your life.

9. Write them down on a piece of paper.

10. Hire a coach. A coach will hold you accountable to making the changes in life you sense you need to make. Don’t bother trying to do this part alone. Creating something new can be incredibly daunting. A good coach is really a skilled change agent. He or she will collaborate with you in designing practices that will make the process of change easier, fun, and intelligent, too.

Staying Open is a Choice No Matter the Circumstance

The picture above is of my most favorite aunt, Jeannde. She was one of those very special souls who embraced life with joy, openness, and wonder no matter the circumstances. In the photo, you can see that she’s got whipped cream smeared on her face. She was playful all the way to the end.  She had a way of bringing light and laughter wherever she went.  

Melissa, my wife, and I got to say goodbye to her a few days before her passing. The evening when we walked into her room, I could feel a profound peace, beauty, and light.  At the time, she was in limbo, not quite in this life but not quite in another.  She wasn't scared but, in fact, at peace.  She was clearly in a lot of bodily discomfort, but her spirit was palpably in total acceptance.  We managed to exchange a few powerful words, letting each other know how much we meant to one another; saying, "I love you"; and then, eventually, saying, "Goodbye."

I left that night with a deep peace that reverberated in my heart for weeks afterward.  Jeannde showed me that it is possible to continue to stay curious, not only in the twilight years but even up to the moment of death.  I always like to tell others that at the ripe age of 87, she was coming to my yoga classes, bending, twisting, and breathing, just like every other 20-something student in the room. I once told her that a few of my students were inspired by her presence in the room.  She couldn't understand why.  Age meant nothing to her except for the fact that her body was quite a bit less responsive than it had been in her younger years as a dancer.

Jeande taught me that circumstances don't make the light dim within us.  At each threshold, no matter what we face, we have a choice, to stay open or close.  On her deathbed, on the threshold of the great unknown, in agonizing physical discomfort, she was sharing her heart, expressing her love, and accepting the calling that it was time for her to go.  Not only did the circumstances she was in not dim her.  They only seemed to add to her luminescence and awe-inspiring capacity to stay in curious and open.

Burn Out & The Mind-Body Connection

Western science and philosophy have artificially divided the mind and body as if they were two distinct domains. We have almost altogether denied the mind’s influence on the body and vice versa. Think heart attacks, stress-related illnesses. This reductionism didn’t always exist for humans.

Our hunter-gatherer ancestors relied heavily on their senses. They did so to sense where their next meal could be found, where dangers lurked and to identify healing plants. Then ten thousand years ago, human lives shifted dramatically. They began cultivating grains such as wheat and rice. As their lifestyle changed, so did their awareness. In agrarian societies, humans had to become more predictive of the seasons. They had to get more cunning about how they managed their land and resources. The sensitive bodily awareness needed when they were hunter-gatherers weakened and was replaced by a sort of mental deliberation.

While the senses, feeling, and intuition all have their roles to play for the agricultural person, the primary function through which this kind of management is achieved is the thinking function— conceptualizing what needs to be controlled, making plans, convincing others to align themselves with projects, evaluating what worked and didn’t work, keeping track of assets, and so on. You can’t really grow crops in a sustainable way without a lot of thinking and planning. (1)

The distinction between mind and body has become increasingly exaggerated since the industrial revolution. Human body's were regarded as cogs in a big machine supervised by the all-knowing minds of the managers and bosses. And now in the information age, the mind and body are even more divided. We have become like "brains on a stick" trying to take in evermore information. The body is increasingly becoming an obstruction to our addiction to knowing.

We don't want to feel anything. If we do, we need to find a remedy for it. Advertisements promote this mindset with slogans for pain-relieving pills like, "I haven't got time for the pain." So we mask any discomfort we feel with pills, alcohol, pornography, binge-watching series or whatever it is that will dull the pain we feel inside.

Not only can the body not hurt, but it also must look pretty or fit, depending on our gender orientation. We then starve ourselves or over-exercise to fit some external images we believe we need to achieve. When we don't, we seek out plastic surgeons. We have come to regard the body as an object that needs to fit into some abstract form. When it does not, we wage war on it and as a result, on ourselves.  

How the Body Speaks To Us

This long term war takes a toll on our lives. The more we objectify the body, the more disconnected we feel from ourselves. As we ignore and stop heeding its messages, we can’t help but sense a dullness, a malaise alternating with a vague and sometimes overwhelming sense of anxiety. The more we ignore what we feel, the more the body will try to break through, to scream at us to let us know that it won’t be ignored.

Burnout is on the rise. The corporations we work for hold us to dehumanizing metrics. In the same way that we treat our bodies as objects, the corporations we work for treat us like objects. Their hunger from profitability demands we perform at a pace that is beyond our capacity.

When I began working with Bob, he was experiencing panic that kept him up throughout the night. He was on a mission, not only to be financially successful but to do good things for our environment, and he worked tirelessly to achieve his goals and aspirations. He’d been using sedatives to get to bed and amphetamines to keep himself focused throughout the day. Like many hard-driving, young professionals these days, Bob was on his way to burning out. His doctor prescribed a cocktail that initially worked, but by the time he had reached out to work with me, it had stopped working.

The body can withstand this demand for only so long. It demands a modicum of rest to repair itself, but because we’ve learned to ignore its signals, it eventually gives way. We may initially sense fatigue. We might mask that fatigue with caffeine. One cup of coffee in the morning gives way to another cup around the 3 PM dip and maybe another cup of coffee before coming home so that we can stay present enough with the kids.

The added caffeine so late in the day makes it hard to fall asleep, so we start taking a sleeping pill. And because the sleeping pill only sedates us, we don’t wake up feeling rested. So the first cup of coffee is replaced by the double-shot of espresso. And because the body gets habituated to stimulants, that double-shot will have to give way to something stronger. The same is true of that sleeping pill.

At some point, the body cannot sustain what we are demanding of it, so it gives way. We might experience one or more of the following symptoms associated with burnout: worthlessness, helplessness, exhaustion, irritability, pessimism, apathy, frustration, disillusionment, difficulty focusing, sleeplessness, abdominal pain, etc. And then we wonder why we aren’t as effective as we used to be.

It’s because we have created a false expectation of what the body “should be able to sustain.” We should be able to make poor food choices, to barely exercise, to give ourselves no time for rest and repair, to not need time for solitude or reflection. We should dictate what our body feels and not the other way around.

How We Listen to the Body

Even though we may not always be able to decipher everything it says or remedy what ails us, we can learn to listen to it. It's speaking to us all the time. To create the "mind-body connection," we have to tune in, to bring a curious and open quality of awareness to what we feel.For most of us, that means descending from our head downward to the rest of our bodies.

Many of us identify ourselves as this entity somewhere behind the eyes, and we have this appendage down below us called “my body.” The body is just a thing, a slab of meat and bones, not who we are. As I said above, that’s a natural response to living in and working in a time in history where our cognition is highly valued over our manual dexterity. For most of us, that means dropping our attention downward to include the rest of our bodies. If we are honest with ourselves, most of us identify as this entity that resides somewhere behind the eyes, and we have this appendage down below us.

If we let ourselves feel what's happening in our bodies, we can sense a plethora of information in the form of feelings and sensations: tingling in the fingers, rumblings in the gut, pressure in the chest, coldness in the toes, a thrum of excitement throughout the body. By attuning to these felt experiences, we begin to intuit or sense another quality of knowing than the one we are used to.

When we hangout only in our heads, we listen only to the surface layer of the mind, its wants and desires, its reactions and frustrations. By hanging out at this layer of the mind, we only see the surface layer of things. It’s like seeing broken reflections on the surface of choppy water. We see all sorts of problems and confusions, but we don’t understand or can’t make sense of how apparently disparate frustrating phenomena fit into a cohesive whole. When we hang out in our heads, we only see problems needing to be fixed. From this point of view, the challenges we see appear like a great chaotic mess. When we sense from the body, we access a deeper layer of knowing. Going back to the case study above:

I taught Bob how to contact and find language for his inner feelings by dropping down into the body. By doing so, he could access a kind of knowledge associated with the struggles he was feeling about the stress and anxiety keeping him up at night. It wasn't a pleasant experience for him, but what fascinated him was that the feelings he was contacting had been with him since he was a teenager. 

When he was seventeen years old, he had reached out to his father to share a happy moment. The high school basketball team he'd captained had become state champions. Instead of his father rejoicing in his son's success, Bob's dad shot back, "That's 'child's play." His father's put down made him feel that his accomplishment was not good enough to win his father's respect, something he deeply longed for.

From that point on, Bob felt a searing almost maniacal drive to be worthy of his dad's admiration. The pain of never being enough in his father's eyes compelled him to seek achievements where he overrode his body's limits. For him to find a new relationship with his work and sleep, he would have to learn to heal his need for his father's approval. 

If we can penetrate through the apparent reality to a sensual, more direct way of knowing, we can begin to weave together a more cohesive grasp of what’s taking place. We can then make choices that heal and support our well-being.

Why What We Feel Matters So Much

In 1997 neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux discovered that all data entering the brain from outside had two neural pathways, an upper and a lower pathway. The lower pathway was shorter and more primitive than the upper pathway. In other words, it took less time for data entering the lower pathway than the upper one. That data first went to less evolved structures in the brain, structures that mount fight-or-flight reactions. By the time those brain structures kicked into gear, the data would enter structures with higher cognitive functioning. These structures enable us to orchestrate tailored responses based on our goals. 

What makes LeDoux’s discoveries significant is that we feel or sense things before we even comprehend them. Feelings precede thoughts. That’s why we reflexively jump first and then afterward distinguish whether what we are avoiding is a snake or a stick. In spite of the fact that this is the case, culturally speaking we have given preeminence to our thinking nature and have disregarded our feeling or sensing nature. 

Corporations, generally speaking, don’t hold feelings in high regard, and yet feelings are what motivate us. It’s not thoughts or concepts that cause us to move mountains. It’s feelings like exhilaration, inspiration, excitement, and interest that motivate us. Even feelings like regret, guilt and fear can be great motivators. The problem with these latter feelings is that they’re fuel is short-lived compared to the former. We can only run on fear for so long. Eventually, we fatigue. Nevertheless, the more our culture glorifies higher thinking centers of the head and either disregards or condemns the feeling experience’re going to have to learn how to motivate the heart and gut in addition to the head.

What the Body Knows

In some ways, the notion of the heart and gut are metaphors. We all connect the heart to poetic ideas of love and connection and the gut to instinct. Biologically speaking, these are not merely artistic notions. More than a simple pump for blood, the heart is a brain unto itself. It has somewhere between 40,000 and 120,000 neurons. The heart sends more information to the brain than the brain sends to the heart. Like the brain, the heart is neuroplastic; it can grow and change. It continues to create new neuronal connections as our emotional and empathetic capacities continue to expand.

We now have scientific evidence that the anatomical heart sends us emotional and intuitive signals to help govern our lives. It does so through several different hormones, the primary one being oxytocin—the hormone associated with labor and maternal bonding, and is also involved in relational bonding, emotion, passion and values. The heart produces equal amounts of this hormone as the brain itself.

Our gut is known as the second brain. It consists of more than 500 million neurons, about the same amount as in a cat's brain. Our bowel produces over 95% of our total serotonin, the neurotransmitter that regulates our feelings of happiness. The gut is quite distinct from the thinking mind in that it speaks in declarative tones via sensations. It says things like, "Yuck," "Yum," "Ow!" "Mmm," "No way!" "Yes!" and "No!" Unlike the thinking mind, the mind in our gut doesn't second-guess. It merely calls out what it senses.

Complementary medicine advocate Deepak Chopra used to tell the story of an interview he had with the late co-founder of Sony Corporation, Masaru Ibuka, who liked to "swallow" a deal before he signed it. If Ibuka had a vital choice to make, he would do his due diligence: consult with key people, review market data and research sales reports. But he didn't stop there.  

He’d have his assistant prepare a Japanese tea ceremony, which is actually a type of meditation. Once the tea was prepared, he’d hold a “yes” or “no” question” in his mind. He would then take a sip of tea and listen, carefully observing how his body responded to how the tea felt in the stomach. If it felt good, he interpreted that as a “yes;” if it didn’t, it was a “no.” 

“I trust my gut and I know how it works,” he said. “My mind is not that smart, but my body is.” 

As a culture, we have attempted to disconnect the mind and the body, but they are intricately connected. If the body’s subtle power is tapped, it can become a sensitive antenna for tuning in, whether into others to motivate and inward as a way to generate creative breakthroughs. The body has the potential to be a master teacher. If we listen, not only can we learn to be healthier, more vital, more balanced, but also wiser, more compassionate and more relatable.

Centered Body Centered Mind

One way we can strengthen the mind-body connection is to bring attention to the way we stand. By standing erectly, we stimulate hormones, such as testosterone, that give us a sense of confidence. This confidence is conveyed throughout all of our interactions and helps us feel more aligned in our head, heart and gut.

Plenty of us, however, stand with our heads jutted forward. This posture puts our heads in a primary position and, at the same time, closes the heart's wisdom, putting us out of touch with our ability to connect and to be connectable. Some of us stand weakly. Metaphorically speaking, we don't know what we stand for. We're unwilling to stand up for what's important. Many of us stand in an unbalanced way. We either stand too far forward or we stand too far back. By standing back, we are seen and, in fact, experience ourselves as timid or holding back in some way.

As mentioned earlier, many of us believe that the center of our gravity lies somewhere behind the eyes when, in fact, biomechanically speaking, the center of our gravity is about two to three inches below the navel. Yogis and martial artists have known this fact for thousands of years. They cultivate balanced and centered postures and movements, not for the sole purpose of being able to either defend themselves, throw their opponents or twist into acrobatic positions. They recognize that by cultivating equipoise in their bodies that it translates into mental, interpersonal and spiritual equipoise. Through practices that strengthen the mind-body connection, the body becomes the metaphor for how the practitioner thinks and acts in the world. All subsequent actions in the world are influenced by focusing on harmonious centering in the body. When through years of practice, equipoise becomes our natural state, we can easily sense what decisions will throw us off center, how an interaction needs to go in order to achieve our goals and when not to insert ourselves because to do so would needlessly sap our energy.

An embodied approach to life is intuitive rather than proscribed. The truth of the matter is that there are not enough tips and tricks that can get any of us through the crises and catastrophes we face. All prescriptions tend to come up short, and when they do or when they eventually fail us, we tend to revert to what we know. But if we cultivate our mind-body connection, if we learn to listen and sense when we are off-center, we can equally sense what will bring us back to our center. The expert is not outside of ourselves, it is with us always, if only we will tune in.

Partner Exercise

1. Have your partner stand behind you. 

2. Stand with your feet hips width apart. 

3. Ask your partner to gently push you forward two separate times. 

   • In the first time, place your attention behind your eyes, keeping all your awareness in your head. 

   • On the second time, place you awareness 2-3 inches below your navel. 

4. Notice how your stability shifted as your awareness moved from your head to your biomechanical center. 

Footnote:

(1) Ray, Reginald. Touching Enlightenment: Finding Realization in the Body. Sounds True. Boulder, CO. 2008

The True Meaning of Faith

Several years ago, I came across this TED Talk by Karen Armstrong, author of comparative religions, that I think is particularly important because it points to the difference between spiritual practice and modern, religious expressions of faith.  

While this talk is about the Golden Rule--'don't do to others what you wouldn't want done to you.'-- what I found of particular interest was her commentary on the etymology of the word, belief.  We have an awkward relationship with the word, belief today.  

Belief, in its original, 17th century sense meant, "an intellectual ascent to a set of propositions; I commit myself, I engage myself."  In other words, trust in God was not something that one simply decided.  It was through committed action that rendered one's relationship to God.  Belief was something that was discovered through practice.  

It wasn't just something you just swallowed down while ignoring common sense.  You engaged in a set of disciplines on a day-in and day-out basis that gave you access to the deeper mysteries that lie at the heart of the teachings.  As Armstrong says, "Religious doctrines are meant to be summons to action. You only understand them when you put them into practice."

The source text of yoga, The Yoga Sutras, which is dated to the first century, around the time of Jesus, describes the results of all spiritual practice--higher powers, subtle states of awareness, and, clarity-- but the bulk of the text is organized around the practical application, "the doing," how we attain these experiences of yoga.   While there is a sort of worldview that The Sutras hinge on, it's never explicitly described, nor does it particularly matter whether the yogi believes in it or not.  Following the practice is enough, not because it leads one to being a good, moral yogi.  Morality--good versus bad--isn't the game of Eastern spiritual practices.  Instead, through commitment to practice, a sort of wisdom or insight is gained, the sort of insight that one can trust.  By the way, that's the same thing as belief as Merrian-Webster describes it, "a state or habit of mind in which trust or confidence is placed in some person or thing."

In a way, I can't help but see that our attraction to the East stems from our modern religions having lost their way.  Instead of providing us with a path, as they used to, many expressions of modern religion ask us to adhere to a comprehensive understanding of the world that divorces us from our common sense.  At one point several years ago, I tried to evoke a debate with an orthodox Jewish friend's interpretation of the Torah.  His response was that we couldn't carry on a discussion because he understood the Torah to be written by God, whereas I understood it to be written by men.  In other words, in order to carry forward a good discussion, I'd have to disbelieve what I knew to be true.  What makes this even more of a bummer is that modern religions sanction this sort of divide.  Some even sanctify wars.

I am not suggesting that all Eastern spiritual practice is perfect or that all religions promote xenophobia.  The problem isn't the religions, it's the people that practice them, the one's that bring a sort of rigidity and orthodoxy to them.   I've seen meditation and yoga teachers who's whole lives are dedicated to adhering to and promoting a severe approach to tradition, even when it creates injury, both to themselves and others.  These people may be adept at contorting their bodies, but they never really grow.  Practice, like religion, has the potential to be a trap, as well.

The role of discipline is to enlighten us, to awaken us to that which isn't obvious.  It's designed not to be an end unto itself but to allow us to comprehend mysteries. A mystery is a religious truth that's hidden.  It's only through practice that it becomes obvious.  Once obvious, we can trust in it.  To get there is a journey.  In a way, each of our lives is a journey that's revealing one great mystery.  And for each of us, that mystery is very individual.  To take a set of propositions on faith is a sort of bypass of that journey.  Blind faith is like claiming to know a subject we never studied before.  

Our job, as I see it, is to be willing to take that journey.  It can help to have signposts of those who have come before us--whether they come from spiritual or religious traditions--to guide us on that journey.  Ultimately, though, that journey is very individual.  But if it is taken, wholeheartedly and with courage, the result is a sort of belief that is different from that of blind faith because it's the sort of thing that you know in your bones, even in those moments when you've lost your way.

An Alternative to the Guru for the Path of Transformation

This afternoon I’ve been perusing various Youtube videos on Ashtanga Yoga looking for inspiration when all of a sudden I got what I was looking for. I came across this video in which Richard Freeman, a well-known Ashtanga Yoga teacher, is speaking on a panel at the Urban Zen Well Being 2007 Forum.  What struck me about that clip was that he was making the point that “it’s no longer the age of the guru;” in fact, a new model is being born in the West in which the relationship of student to teacher is one of  “equal partnership on both sides.”  In this article, I intend to explore what the traditional guru-disciple relationship was like; how it is no longer valid in this day and age; and what we might replace it with.

The Guru-Disciple Relationship

The role of the guru dates back to the period of the Upanishads, around 1000 B.C.E. Prior to this period, Hindu spirituality was expressed in the act of sacrifice to the gods.  The gods were thought to be outside forces that needed to be manipulated in order to maintain order.  The Brahmans (priestly caste) were in charge of maintaining the spiritual order in the form of sacrifice.

But by the ninth century, a new revelation began to be expressed.  Instead of gods, like Shiva or Brahma, dwelling outside, the gods were considered inner experiences, inner energies that could be met and used for personal transformation.  Anyone could, now, have a direct access to the gods.  It wasn’t just the Brahmans (priestly caste). The term "Upanishad" derives from the Sanskrit words upa (near), ni (down) and şa (to sit) — so it means to "sit down near" a spiritual teacher to receive instruction in discovering these powers within.

The role of the guru was to illuminate the shishya (disciple) from the darkness of illusion through esoteric knowledge.  Gu means to dispel.  Ru is the darkness of ignorance. In order for this new revelation to be expressed, the guru’s knowledge needed to be vast.  He needed to have been someone who had already awoken from the dream of maya (illusion), awake to the direct experience of the purusa (indweller, soul).  Additionally he needed to have been a shishya of a guru, himself and to have received his guru’s blessing to impart the wisdom.

Hierarchical Roles

The role of the shishya’s was primarily devotion, commitment, and obedience.  In exchange, the guru taught through discourse, through silence, through medicine, and through imparting esoteric practices.  The guru offered what he could to illuminate his disciples into the truth, knowledge, and experience within.  But the role was hierarchical.  The shishya was in the hands of his guru.  If the guru took advantage of his position, then that was the risk the disciple took.

In Aṣṭadaḷa Yogamālā: Articles, Lectures, Messages by B. K. S. Iyengar, the author describes the brutality, at times, of his guru, T.K.V. Krishmacharya, how “his moods and modes were very difficult to comprehend and always unpredictable.  Hence, we were always alert in his presence.  He was like a great Zen master in the art of teaching.  He would hit us hard on our backs as if with iron rods.  We were unable to forget the severity of his actions for a long time.” (Iyengar, B.K.S. Aṣṭadaḷa Yogamālā: Articles, Lectures, Messages. Mumbai: Allied Publishers Private Limited, 2006. Print. p. 53)

And in an interview I dug up in my files dating back to 1993, Pattabhi Jois says this about his guru:

My guru was a very difficult man…One example of his callousness, which I tell about is this:  on the Sanskrit College’s anniversary day a large celebration was staged which the Maharaja attended.  We were to give a demonstration on the ground…There was no podium so my guru told me to do kapotasana (an extreme backbend) and stood on top of me for 10-15 minutes giving a lecture.  There was a small tree coming out of the ground that had been haphazardly cut several inches from the ground.  The sharp end of the stick stabbed into my shoulder and stayed there, penetrating more and more deeply as the lecture went on…After the lecture I stood up and was covered with blood…For 15 days I could not move my arm. 

Imagine the lawsuits that might have taken place had Krishnamacharya been teaching at the local Yoga studio these days?  Clearly, times have changed.

Guru Projections

We in the West have an awkward relationship with this sort of authority.  We tend to think of the guru-shishya relationship as one of projection.  The shishya abdicates power to the guru by projecting all things parental onto him. 

I saw this, and even experienced it, first hand when I studied at Pattabhi Jois’ Ashtanga Yoga Nilayam throughout the 90s. Guruji could play the face of our good father quite well.  He could also be the fierce father, the tender father, the wise grandpa, and many, many more.  Much of the relationship we shared with our guru depended on our unfinished business.  In a lot of ways, many of us were working out our daddy stuff with him, whether we wanted to admit it or not.

Today, I have little doubt that most of the projection I had with him had almost nothing to do with who he actually was, but being a great teacher, he willingly took on the various fatherly roles and allowed us to act them out with him in order to move through some of the leftover childhood stuff.  While a lot of us got great benefit from this form of relating, I saw some of my fellow guru bhai (disciple brothers and sisters) leave the practice altogether because they could never separate the projection from the man that he was.  And some left because when they did, they were sorely disappointed.

Guru or Snake Oil Salesman?

But unlike an authentic guru, who is regarded with great respect in his culture, our teachers in the West are looked upon with a degree of skepticism. We do not have the same opinion of the spiritual dimension that Asian cultures do.  In the audio CD, The Roots of Buddhist Psychology, Jack Kornfield describes the experience of being a monk in Thailand and accepting alms from people who could barely feed themselves. The work of the monks was so important and valued, that the lay community would starve to feed them.

We, in the West tend to hold people of spiritual authority, with doubt and distrust.  Fundamentally we resist being conned.  It is not uncommon to see leaders of spiritual movements initially elevated by their followers and eventually disgraced by those same people.  Just look at the recent John Friend-Anusara Yoga and Diamond Mountain University scandals.  I don’t know the inside scoop, but what’s clear is that students revere their teachers as if they were gods and then they, somehow, fall off the pedestal.  They're human.

But we as a society tend to hold people who run or lead spiritual movements to a higher standard than we hold even our politicians.  Because they’re leading us into spiritual practice, they have to be unblemished by any one of the seven deadly sins; in fact, in some way or another they need to be perfect.

However, when you look closely at the lives of some of the great teachers from the East, the so-called illuminated gurus, what we’ll find is nothing but humans, people steeped in tradition and teaching and, at the same time, riddled with human foibles. Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche, the Tibetan spiritual leader that founded Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado, had the reputation of drinking beer all day long and had quite an appetite for young women.  Osho, also known as Bhagawan Shree Rajneesh, the founder of Osho Ashram and Rajneeshpuram in Oregon, was addicted to nitrous oxide and also was known for his affairs with his female disciples.  Amrit Desai, the yoga master who founded Kripalu Institute, had to resign as director after his multiple extramarital affairs were exposed. My own yoga teacher, Sri K. Pattabhi Jois, publicly fondled his female students genitalia.

Does that make these men any less spiritually advanced?  We in the West would like to think so.  It’s quite possible that we want to believe that our spiritual leaders represent the perfect parent, the one we didn’t grow up with.  The truth of the matter is that we all make mistakes, sometimes even very big ones, ones that hurt others badly.  I am thinking, at this moment, of the priests who mistreat(ed) children.  Without a doubt, this behavior is inexcusable; however, it demonstrates that we can no longer afford to completely relinquish our power to the charismatic individuals that lead our spiritual movements.

God is Dead

These people are human, just like you and me.  Perhaps there was a time when there were gurus who were truly unblemished, but we’re living in a very different period, historically speaking.  When Nietzsche said, “God is dead,” what he meant was that we can no longer rely on the church, the mosque, the monastery, the lama, the guru, or even a philosophy for our salvation.  For him, these forms of authority had become completely discredited.  As a result, it was up to each of us to find our way.

I am not suggesting that we do it alone.  We need others to support our growth and development, but when we are always looking for the wisdom, the compassion, and the answers outside of ourselves, we forget that we're just projecting.  

It can help immensely to love and revere our teachers while simultaneously never forgetting that that which we love and revere is The Self.  Essentially, what I am arguing is that when we take the projections back, when we take responsibility for our own transformation, we stop the game of elevating teachers or the spiritual lineages we come from in a way that does not serve us.  Likewise, we also stop being disappointed when our gurus turn out to be human, just like you and me.

Not everyone who comes to spiritual practices, like yoga, looking for the full-promise of yoga.  Many just want to get stronger, feel better, or have a positive group experience.  There is absolutely nothing wrong with these approaches. However, I am starting with a little bit of theory to point out the fact that the work of personal transformation has the potential be deep and profound.  And, in this case, it can be extremely helpful to have a teacher or guide.  Not everyone wants to go there, and that’s perfectly fine. 

Why Having a Teacher At All Matters

The description that follows is what’s possible from the practice of yoga, as described by Patanjali in The Yoga Sutras, a text dated sometime between the 2d centuries B.C. and A.D. and considered by many to be the authoritative source text that describes the path of yoga. Historically the role of the teacher was to help the disciple to distinguish (viveka) temporal from eternal, relative from absolute, truth from fiction, and light from dark. 

The tricky part of this work is that asmita, the ego—the overidentifiaction with I, me and mine—often wants to assert itself.  And the truth of the matter is that the ego is not particularly adept at distinguishing truth, eternality, or the absolute.  It is constantly grasping to what gives pleasure and trying to avoid that which is uncomfortable.  This hell realm is known in yoga and Buddhism as avidya, which can be translated as ignorance or misunderstanding. A lot of the work of spiritual practice is a slow, gentle a dismantling of this misunderstanding associated with this excessive 'I-clinging.'  

One might argue that the role of the guru was to make sure that this 'I-clinging' didn’t get in the way of the process of realization. That’s why most traditional schools of yoga or Buddhism emphasized the teacher-student relationship and not the practice of postures or meditation, alone.  Without a teacher the aspirant risked misleading him or herself.  He or she risked being led around by a craving for pleasure (raga) and a repulsion of discomfort (dvesa).  

For Patanjali, yoga wasn't about feeling good, nor was it about feeling bad, either.  It was a game of noticing that which was beyond pleasure and pain, clinging and aversion.  It was a game of noticing essence, truth, and the absolute through a long, steady process of discernment.  According to Patanjali, this process takes continuous practice (abhyasa) and the skill of non-clinging to pleasure or aversion to discomfort (vairagya) to be able to see clearly (1.12).

Very few of us naturally have this discipline.  It's not easy to be with discomfort.  Many of us can be with some discomfort. Few of us can be with it for extended periods of time. Nor are we apt to give up our 'I-clinging.' The process of letting go of what we cling to and being with what we’re averse to is counterintuitive.  Additionally, the role of the guru presupposes that no matter how earnest we are, we can all get pretty slippery from time to time, and this can take us off of the path, even when we think we're on it.  In other words, it can be pretty useful to have a relationship with someone who is committed to our growth and transformation, someone who can offer an honest reflection and guidance, too.

What Qualifies a Teacher?

And yet, we're living in a time when none of our teachers are fully illuminated.  So what kind of criteria do we employ to choose someone to teach us?  Do we choose a teacher because he or she has been on the path longer than we have?  I don’t think that this is a valid reason to study with someone. Length of time does not qualify someone to be a teacher.  So what standards shall we use to determine the qualification of a teacher?

▪   Years of practice?

▪   Years spent with the leader of the tradition?

▪   Displays of mastery?

▪   Teacher trainings?

What determines a qualified teacher?  How the heck are we going to experience the full promise of yoga without someone who's qualified?  And how are we to determine those qualifications?

Collaborative Relationship Designing

The problem is that it is impossible to be qualified to be a guru in this day and age.  Gurus are 'fully-cooked,' so to speak.  And most yoga and meditation teachers aren’t even close.  We all have some clarity and a lot is still obscure.  And while some of the prerequisites I list above can be helpful, I don’t think that any one of them can prepare a teacher to support a student on their path.

So I am starting with a basic premise: no one is perfectly qualified for the role of a teacher.  Everyone in that role will be imperfect, flawed, and will make mistakes.  It can be extremely helpful to start from the most basic recognition that our teachers will be and are human, people with good intentions who might fail us, nonetheless.  Given that, how do we find ourselves in loving, trusting relationships with a teacher that can support us in our evolution along the path of yoga?

It starts with an agreement that I call relationship design.  In relationship design, the context for a relationship is spelled out.  In other words, it is a conscious contract that provides clear boundaries and a sense of direction for both teacher and student. When the agreement isn’t clear boundaries are crossed that can do damage. 

I once had a really bad experience with a teacher in which I abdicated my own common sense in favor of my teacher’s common sense, thinking that her’s was ‘more enlightened’ than mine. By doing so, I made a decision that went totally against my own code of ethics.  As a result, it kind of ruined me for a period and destroyed some significant relationships that meant a lot to me. Had we designed clearer boundaries along with the space where I could struggle with decisions myself, I might not have had to experience that suffering. 

As a result of that experience, I am acutely aware that as a teacher, I cannot presuppose anything about my students wants or needs.  In other words, I don’t know what’s best for my students.  I am constantly asking my students to design with me what they need.

So when it comes to the relationship of teacher and student, it can help the process immensely for that relationship to be crystal clear.  When it’s clear, both student and teacher can feel confident in their respective roles. The more committed student and teacher are to staying in communication, even and especially when the going gets rough, the more powerful that relationship can be. The more communication around the structure of that relationship, the safer it is for the student to delve inward and to know that he or she is supported.  Additionally, it is critical that the relationship be continually tended to and be kept tidy.  At the end of this piece, I give an example of how to start the conscious design of a student-teacher relationship.  Have a look.  Give it a try.

Humanity as the Doorway to a Sacred Friendship

Given the premise stated above, that no teacher is perfectly qualified to teach, it can be immensely helpful if both teacher and student start by recognizing the sanctity of the relationship.  This relationship has the potential to be a form of yoga itself.  It has the potential to be something quite unusual.  It is one rooted in collaboration and based as much as possible in agreement, transparency, and intimacy.  When both teacher and student fathom the honor of the relationship, both naturally hold one another to a particularly high standard.

In the few times that I taught classes for a friend in Tokyo, I have been struck by the way Japanese students regarded the sensei.  As the teacher, I sensed the students’ reverence in a way that we in the West have difficulty comprehending.  Given the level of surrender these students demonstrated, it would have been quite possible for me to take advantage of the situation, but I personally found it the case that I couldn’t help but step up in a way that I’d never stepped up as a teacher before.  It was a great honor to be held as an authority, one that I couldn’t help but want to meet.

Likewise, I’ve experienced students walking into my classes with a sort of disregard for the role of the teacher.  That’s perfectly fine.  Not everyone would like a teacher, and many of us have experienced wounds at the hands of teachers.  At the same time, without a regard for the sacredness of the roles, the teacher-student relationship takes on the quality of being a financial transaction, “payment for poses,” kind of a boring way of relating.

So honoring the sacredness is one part to this premise.  Another part is that because the teacher is never perfectly qualified to teach, he or she can be regarded as human, warts and all.  Some of us want our teachers to be extraordinary, but they're not. This is a real set up for failure, the teacher failing the student and visa versa.  But when the student can recognize and interact with the teacher’s humanity, a true connection can start to be established, one that encourages a quality of human-centered friendship.  It is rare to have a relationship where one’s humanity is honored.  Very few of us experience relationships where we have permission to share all of ourselves and all parts are welcome.

Another boon associated with recognizing the teacher’s humanity is that it allows for both the teacher and the student to make mistakes.  Relationships where mistakes are valued are dynamic and creative.  Both people aren’t afraid to try things, to mess up, and to have breakthroughs.  If the teacher has to play-it-safe for the sake of not upsetting the relationship, the relationship lacks a sort of dynamism that’s necessary to face the tough stuff that comes up on and off the mat.

The Shadow: Trust and Transparency

Both students and teachers have their limits of what they’re capable of working with in the shadow-work that shows up in the relationship.  Playing with this edge can be very useful.  For the teacher to take the student past the student’s edge, he or she must be confident in that territory him or herself.  The teacher has no business shoving students into areas that are unfamiliar to the teacher.  Below, I describe the prerequisites of teachers: self-study, peer feedback, and mentor feedback.  All of these ensure that the teacher is doing the inner work necessary to support their students when they enter unfamiliar and uncomfortable territory.

Because the work of transformation confronts some of our most intimate spots, the student must be able to trust the teacher as much as possible.  And so there has to be agreement between the teacher and student such that the student grants the teacher permission to head into a particular area, especially areas that feel vulnerable or scary.  All it takes is a simple request, like “Is it okay if we go here?”  Sometimes it can be helpful to create more dialogue before entering in.

In my first year as a yoga teacher, I ran into a situation that I am not proud of but feel that it’s pertinent to share.  I had a student who was very, very proficient. I thought, “This guy is good.  Let’s keep him going!”  So I kept giving him pose after pose.  Eventually he started to say stuff like, “I’m good.  I don’t need any more, now.”  But I kept adding poses on.  At some point, he stopped coming to class, and I found out through the grapevine that he’d had a psychotic break that he considered a ‘kundalini rising.’  I was pushing, thinking that I knew best, when, in fact, he knew better.  That experience taught me a lot about both trusting the wisdom of my students and keeping the conversation clear.

Throughout that work, it can be helpful to be transparent.  Transparency isn’t just in the hands of the student.  It can be extremely helpful and useful for the teacher to share when they’re confused, concerned or scared in relationship to what’s happening with a student.  If the teacher has to pretend to be okay when he or she is not okay, it creates a low-level of distrust in the relationship.  Transparency feels counterintuitive, but it’s honest.  And being honest is an incredible gift that the teacher grants the relationship.  It creates trust.  When there is trust in the relationship, students and teachers enter into an intimate dialogue that is not misconstrued or taken advantage of by one or both parties.  When there’s a lot of trust in a relationship, there is no telling what's possible for the student.

Selfless Service

The role of the teacher can be tricky.  Occasionally students adore their teachers.  Sometimes they loathe them. If the teacher is caught in the ‘popularity game,’ he or she will end up being manipulative.  I've been caught in it, myself, from time-to-time.  Occasionally, I will notice myself trying to use my charm to get students to like me.  Once again, I am not proud of this, but it happens, and I don’t think I am the only teacher that’s fallen prey to wanting to be liked.

My proudest moments, though, have been when I've seen a student uncover something she or he'd been confused about or struggling with; when I've seen him or her diligently stick with something even when it was really uncomfortable; and in those moments when his or her wisdom, brilliance, and insight emerged with more clarity than that of a diamond.

In these moments my focus was not on me but on my students and their discovery process.  That doesn't mean that I was perfectly objective, neutral, or impersonal.  It just meant that my stance was first and foremost about my students, not about getting my personal wants and needs gratified.  In short, the role of the teacher is one of self-less service for the sake of evoking the student’s evolution.

In Service to Evolution/ Granting the Respect of Autonomy

Part of the challenge this relationship faces is the fact that the student is paying the teacher to provide a service.  In most service positions, the role of the server is to provide both care and comfort.  While care and comfort may be useful qualities to cultivate in a teacher-student relationship, they cannot be the only qualities.  If the student’s aspiration is transformational, then the relationship has to have room to be edgy and uncomfortable, as well.  Without that, the relationship remains a ‘feel-good space,’ and this doesn’t really have anything to do with this path of distinguishing (vivieka) misunderstanding (avidya).

The teacher’s primary responsibility, then, is to the evolution of his or her students, not to the perpetuation avidya.  This is where the role of the teacher can get tenuous.  Manipulative teachers have been known to take advantage of this aspect to the role of the teacher.  They’ve justified narcissistic behavior as something that’s “best for the student” when, in fact, it’s actually best for the teacher.

Being in service to the student’s evolution means that the teacher isn’t always in agreement with the student and is granted enough trust by the student to assert what needs to be asserted for the student’s growth. At the same time, the teacher grants the student the respect for their capacity to make decisions.  Decisions of the student are of their own choosing and those decisions have to be respected.

Presupposing Our Students are Whole Rather Than Broken

Early in this discussion, I was speaking of the basic premise that no one is perfectly qualified for the role of a teacher.   Similarly, it might also be useful to start from another premise, that students are whole and complete.  They’re not broken.  They don’t need to be fixed.  In fact, the role of the teacher is to empower the student to trust him or herself, especially those parts that are innately wise, compassionate, and clear. This is a very unusual premise.

In most teacher-student relationships, the role of the teacher is to presuppose that the student has something wrong that needs to be altered, changed, or reworked. Rarely is this, in fact, the case.  In the years that I have been teaching, I have rarely come across someone looking to be put back together again.  When this is the case, psychiatry and psychotherapy can be extremely useful adjuncts to yoga therapy.  But more often than not, students that have shown up to my classes are resourceful enough to make good decisions.  Sometimes, it can be helpful for me to offer my expertise or to ask questions.  Ultimately, I leave the decision in the hands of my students. If I regard my student either as broken, confused, or lost, it can be nearly impossible for him or her to access his or her own clarity.  If the student cannot trust that something within is innately wise, then he or she will remain lost at sea.

I personally have had mentors and friends that have wanted to fix me at certain low-points in my life, people who had very good intentions, in fact.  The problem with those relationships was that I would often abdicate my will to them, and while they may have steered me away from dangerous rapids, I never learned to either ride the rapids or to identify them in the distance.

When I can cultivate my students' confidence in their decision-making capacity, magic begins to happen for them.  They begin to trust the wise parts of themselves to lead with clarity.  So much of the baggage my students come in with is not from being egotistical.  They don’t need to be knocked down and then eventually rebuilt.  On the contrary, most of my students struggle with a degree of self-doubt, lacking the confidence that they know how to make good, sound decisions. When a teacher can cultivate a student’s innate strength, the process of clarifying (viveka) can take place.

Prerequisite: Svadhyaya: Continuously Growing and Evolving

If a teacher is not actually walking the path, he or she probably shouldn't be teaching it. Now, there's a lot of wiggle room in terms of what that means.  If, for example, a teacher has a knee injury and doesn't practice various asanas, it doesn't mean that he or she is not qualified to teach.  That's too literal a translation.  The essence of what I am suggesting is that a teacher needs to be growing and evolving and in self-study (svadhyaya) in order to be able to help his or her students sort out their struggles.  That really must be a prerequisite to teaching.

Prerequisite: Peer and Teacher/ Mentor Feedback

Another prerequisite must be that a teacher has a teacher or mentor of their own and a peer body to get honest feedback from.  If the only people a teacher receives feedback from are his or her students, he or she risks becoming narcissistic or bipolar.  Sometimes students love the teacher.  Sometimes they don’t.  And student feedback is biased, by nature.  Peer and mentor feedback is not.

I've been very lucky in my years of teaching.  I have had some smart teachers that I've partnered with who I've given permission to give it to me straight. It doesn't always feel so good to know when I am off base in a particular situation, either with a student or in the classroom, but with that feedback, I've learned a lot.

Having peers also gives one a sense of camaraderie, the sense that while the experiences of teaching are different, the essence of it is the same.  I often find it comforting to have a space in my peer relationships where we can commiserate about the ups and downs of teaching.  It normalizes experiences and situations where I do not feel confident.

Finally, having a teacher or mentor is critical for most teachers.  It can be extremely useful to have someone to share confusions with, to seek clarification from, and to learn the art of deeper inquiry.  Teachers need teachers and peers! These simple measures ward off the possibility of vainglory, a common pitfall associated with being in any role of authority.

A New Conversation

We’re living in different times, spiritually speaking, now that the age of the guru is over, but that does not mean we cannot experience the promise of yoga.  It just means that we have to get a little creative.  What I’ve presented above is very preliminary.  I welcome all of your feedback.  I have no intention of this being a ‘final statement,’ but, instead, something to evoke a conversation, something that we as a community have the courage to struggle with.

The Sangha May Be the Next Guru...

Before I end, I want to share a suggestion that Ken Wilbur posited, that the new guru is the sangha or community of like-minded individuals on the spiritual path together.  I have actually had several experiences of living in and amongst communities.  More often than not, there is no uniform agreement within it to use it as a tool for transformation.  When there is, however, the experience can be absolutely brilliant and searing, at the same time.

I notice that we’re in a time when we long for community and yet we’re all frightened of it, of exposing ourselves and of being exposed.  Likewise, many of our most painful moments have been in community, so we all have a lot of wounding around community, as well.  But we’re also lonely, disconnected, and disjointed.  And community can be a powerful place to reconnect, again. That’s why I think Wilbur might just be right.  It might just be the perfect opportunity to wake us up to our true nature.   Your thoughts?

Exercise:  Designing a Relationship With Your Teacher

It may seem a bit artificial, at first, to have a ‘sit down’ with your teacher, especially if you have an ongoing relationship with him or her, however, the results can be very powerful and pivotal for you, him or her, and your practice. By the way, the design doesn’t end after the first conversation. It is constantly being re-negotiated. That way, the relationship remains both flexible and tidy. Below are just a few pondering questions that may give you a sense of what might be shared in such a conversation.

1. What exactly do you need and want from your teacher? From your practice?  For yourself physically, emotionally, spiritually, etc.? If your relationship with him or her were to have a huge impact in your life what would it look like?

2. What’s your sense of what will really support your growth in the practice?

3. How do you want your teacher to handle you around risk taking?  Does it help to push you, to be gentle with you, or to be somewhere in between?

4. When and how do you tend to get evasive?  Do you stop coming to practice?  Do you get angry?  Do you shut down? How do you want your teacher to be with you when you do?

5. Where do you usually get stuck, either in your practice or in relationship? When you are stuck, what can he or she say that will bring you back to the present moment?

What does your teacher need from you in order to support your evolution?

Sharing Words of Appreciation

A client has recently begun asking her boyfriend to tell her that he loves her.  When she introduced this idea of requesting that he verbally appreciate her, he responded: "I'm with you, aren't I?  If I wasn't with you, I wouldn't love you.  Isn't that enough?"

No, that's not enough. The honest truth is that we need to know that we are cherished.  We need to know that we're treasured by those people around us.  I'm about to get a puppy, and so I've been doing all sorts of reading about how to train and interact with her. What's clear to me is that we're a whole lot like puppies.  While we don't thrive from being rewarded with kibble, we do thrive when our essence is recognized.

Open-Hearted Seeing

Our essence is who we essentially are at the depth of our being.  Merriam-Webster defines essence as " the individual, real, or ultimate nature of a thing." When we value another's essence, we're not just acknowledging the qualities of an individual that are unique to that individual, we're acknowledging who they elementally are to us in that moment.

To detect essence, requires a quality of open-hearted seeing.  We need to be able to look with appreciative eyes. Noticing essence is distinct from noticing something that that person has done or that they have.  Being appreciated for doing a job well-done feels good.  Being acknowledged for who we are essentially feels amazing!

I See You

So my client showed him how she wanted to be acknowledged.  So often we ask our significant others to just guess how we want it.  We ask them to be mind readers, to just know.  Most of us need to be taught this.  As advanced as our culture is scientifically, we have some catching up to do when it comes to emotional intelligent behavior.  

In order to show him, she looked at him for a second or two, connected with his essence and said, "You are a deep, sensitive, and sexy man."  When she did, she said that she saw him melt, that all of his defenses came down.

Why?  Because he was seen.  When we share our appreciation for  another, we're basically saying, "I see you, and I love what I see."  So rarely do each of us have the experience of truly being seen or known.  When it happens, it's like a healing balm.  Truly being known, being seen, is what each of us longs for.

Creating Connectedness

Once people learn how to acknowledge, they start to see how powerful it is.  It's powerful because it creates a sense of connectedness.  People around us feel connected to us when they know that they are seen.  And when they do, their best comes out.  But there's a timing to it. I know people who acknowledge so much that it loses its potency.

In addition, there are times when it should and should not be used.  The bottom line is that it has to come from an authentic place.  We all can sense an authentic boiling up of love, care, or affinity for another.  It's in those moments when we feel or sense that that acknowledgement can and does create connection.  When it's used in the form of manipulation, it feels saccharine and manipulative.

And there are recipients, who no matter how authentic our words of appreciation are, have a hard time receiving.  Some people just have a hard time being admired.  To receive words of appreciation are seen as prideful.  When that's the case, no matter how authentic our words, they will never land.

Each of us must develop the capacity to express our care for one another.  It has to come from an authentic place.  And, at the same time, that care must be backed with acts that represent that care.  The two have to occur, not necessarily simultaneously, but without action, words are just that, words.  When our word and action are one and the same, our expressions of love and care for one another are powerful and transformative for all to see.  The very few relationships that I've seen that express a depth of caring consistently marry both words and deeds.  At the heart of their expression is care.

The Basics: How to Share Appreciation

1. Start to pay attention to those moments when you sense love, care, or affinity for another. That's often the best time to acknowledge them. If you're not habituated to noticing this sense of love and care, make that your practice for a week. Notice each time it arises.

2. Once you notice it, give expression to the feeling. You might say, "I feel love for you," or "You make me feel warm inside," or "My life feels whole with you in it," or "I really appreciate the joy you bring to my life."

3. Next, take a moment to look in the direction of the person. When you look, you're looking with a different set of eyes. You might say that these are the eyes of appreciation. You want to notice, in the moment, what you deeply and profoundly appreciate about the other person. Remember, it's just a moment. Don't take too long. Essence is obvious. If you keep looking for something, you will totally miss the mark.

4. Next, offer your appreciation in a "You are..." statement. For example, "You are a bright light who brings warmth wherever you go," or "You are deep soul," or "You are gorgeous." Because essence has a poetic quality, metaphor can be a powerful form of acknowledgement.

5. Once you've offered a "You are..." statement, don't keep talking. Pause and notice how your words landed. Were they received? Were they blocked or deflected? And if they landed, notice what's present between you and the person your acknowledging. Is there more love and affinity?

Love & Support

One of my clients feels badly that she wants her boyfriend to tell her he loves her.  She thinks that she shouldn't need the acknowledgment.  She says she should feel solid enough about herself-- about how attractive, intelligent, sexy, and special she is--that she shouldn't need his acknowledgement.  She wants to find the hidden secret to confidence, the magic potion that will take away her sense of wanting.

Another client is trying to get a new business off the ground, one that really excites him.  His current job is "soul crushing," but his wife offers him no support whatsoever; in fact, she's sabotaging his every move by criticizing him and laughing at his ideas as if they were the antics of a juvenile.  No matter how much he wants to switch gears and how many times he starts and stops the movement in a positive direction, he can't really get traction.  He knows his wife doesn't support his ideas, but he can't seem to connect the dots in terms of why he's stuck.  Like my client above, he's hoping for that tool, that shift in perspective, that stroke of magic that will get him out of his current job and into the career of his dreams.

Both of these clients have something in common. They're both doing it alone. Neither of them realize that we can't.  I'll say it again.  We can't do it on our own.  This thought is so contrary to the New Age concept that we have to love ourselves first before anyone else can love us or the all-American "Lone Ranger," pull yourself up by your bootstraps mythos.  Either way, there's a hardcore ideal within American culture of self-reliance, but really, that's just a bunch of bullshit.

A lot of the heroes we read about in history books are individuals who overcame odds to create great change, people like Martin Luther King Jr. or Nelson Mandela.  But nobody speaks about all the love and support they had along the way.  These men had people who believed in them, who offered them their energy, their resources, and sometimes even their lives in support of their goals.  What's discussed is the greatness that these men achieved.  Very little is mentioned about their collaborators.

The Magic of Partnership

Certain relationships come into our lives to remind us that we are brilliant, creative, capable, and beautiful.  These are the relationships that feed us.  And if each of us looks closely at whatever excellence we've accomplished or created, we will never find us and us alone in the creation of it.  We will always find collaborators, people who believed in us and/or people who shared a common goal.  Either way, we didn't--and by the way, can't--do it alone.

Midlife

Midlife Crisis? What Midlife Crisis?

Recently, I have become fascinated with the notion of the midlife crisis because I sense that I am crossing over some invisible mark. The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines a crisis as an "emotionally significant event or a radical change of status in a person's life." While I do sense some radical change afoot on a subtle level, it doesn't have the sense of angst that the word "crisis" implies. It feels more like a "midlife evolution," which is "a process of gradual, peaceful, progressive change or development."

One way that I sense an evolution is that my wife, Melissa, and I are in a fascinating, new discussion about whether we will or will not have a child. When we first married three years ago, we were both adamant that kids were not for us. Neither of us felt the imperative that many of our friends did in their late 20s and early 30s to have a child. But, now, as we approach the middle of life, we can feel the stirrings of new life wanting to be created. Whether that means we will have children or we will create new things in the world is still to be seen.

What's significant about this discussion is that it's not being driven by a need either to rebel against the system or acquiesce. Instead this inquiry is about searching deeply for our shared heartfelt desire. It's not about what's wanted (or, in the case of rebellion, not wanted ) "out there," but about what's wanted "in here."

Shifting from Outer Goals to Inner Purpose

For the first half of life, we all tend to take someone else's path. We develop a personality and identity that allows us to survive and succeed within relationships, family units, and society as a whole. I spent most of the first half of my life in school or learning various spiritual and healing practices in the East. Since my early thirties, I have been earning my chops in practice, as a yoga teacher, life coach, and acupuncturist.

But now, I sense that I am crossing over some invisible line. In a way, it's a line I have been aching to cross over. I finally am being recognized for my gifts and talents on a professional level. And while I am thrilled to finally start to have the impact I have been wanting to make for so many years, there's a part of me that wonders whether my work alone will completely satisfy me. In addition to my professional life growing in a positive direction, I also sense a deeper stirring within my spirit. I have always felt connected to spirituality, but now, more than ever, I feel called to connect to spirit.

Taking Stock at Midlife

Sometime in the middle of life, most of us wake up to the realization that in spite of the energy we've put into our careers, roles, and relationships, something else wants to find expression. For those who have already realized a dream, often times the question we ask, “Is this all I get? I thought that there would be more.” And when a person fails to realize the dream, it is a time to account for the never: “I suppose I will never be a millionaire or have children of my own.” Essentially it's a time to come to terms with the carrot we've all been chasing. But, in addition, we also feel called to something more. That something shows up in the form of a mystery or one big question mark.

When my clients are in the throes of "midlife evolution," we work to look deeper than the urges to quit a job, or leave a marriage or buy a Ferrari to uncover the deeper, heartfelt desires. I've worked with clients who are good husbands and fathers. They work hard, earn a good salary, and have provided a safe and beautiful home for his family. But while they love their children and wife, a part of them feels absolutely trapped by the conventions of marriage and family.

Midlife Choices: Self-Enlarging or Diminishing

People tend to take the urges that arise at this point, to find a secret lover or quit their jobs, at face value. The midlife evolution calls the meaning we have made of life into question. And when it does, we have a choice. That choice can be either enlarging or self-diminishing.

The second half of life is a very different one than the first half. And midlife is where the path shifts significantly. The maps that got us to where we are when we reach the middle of life no longer serve us the way they previously did. Previously, our orientation was towards outer world: goals, graduations, successes, wins. While this does not end in the middle of life, since most of us have household responsibilities that we need to tend to, we also notice that we are in a totally different period, a new form of adulthood.

Midlife as an Initiation into Mystery

And if we embrace this new form of adulthood, this second half of life, it has the possibility of enlarging self. Recently, I have been reading The Power of Myth, which is based on interviews that took place between the journalist, Bill Moyers, and the mythologist, Joseph Campbell, in the late-80s. Campbell essentially says that in the second half of life, our access to the deeper mysteries increases exponentially. The orientation of life in the first half is about forming the structures of success and survival. In the second half, it's more about the uncovering of the deeper meaning of life. In the second half of life, the doors of perception are cleansed, and we have access to this inquiry in a way that we hadn't in the first half. It's my hunch that this is the deeper purpose behind the "midlife evolution." This period marks that transition. And the point is not to lead us back into adolescent strivings but to guide us into having access to the deeper mystery called life.

What's missing for all of us is the honoring of this transition. We have no ritual, no myth, nothing that recognizes this evolutionary leap we go through at this stage. Instead of saying that this is a time we get to deepen and become wiser, we tend to just want to cover our heads in the sheets and say, "I'm forty, and I feel old." While nothing dramatic like that has happened to me, I get hits of this. I was recently teaching a workshop for several 20-year-olds, and I was noticing that I was the only guy with gray hair there. Now, I don't mind my grays, but I just found it weird that I wasn't young anymore. It's subtle, but I am paying attention, and what I am noticing is that there really is no dialogue in our culture about this transition.

Learning from Midlife Crisis

Midlife crisis can be a big wake up call to those of us who are asleep. But what about those of us who strive to be awake? What about those of us who are watching this transition taking place and don't have a forum or a language that can help us meet, embrace, and learn from what's occurring? I am not sure I know what the answer is. I tried linking it back to the four stages of life described within Hindu culture, but this transition really isn't recognized. The same is true of Shakespeare's seven stages of life. It makes me wonder, whether this transition is a modern phenomena rather than a historical one. In any event, it's my sense that those of us who strive to be awake are looking for a sort of honoring of this transition, and it starts with a dialogue, a dialogue that enters us into the deeper meaning of our lives and, ultimately, our purpose on this planet.

The Saturn Return: Ages 28 to 31

A 28 year old client of mine came in yesterday feeling absolutely overwhelmed. He’s at a moment in his life when he feels the pressure of time. He was saying things like, “There’s not enough time in this life to accomplish what I want.” “I know I am meant to be doing much more meaningful work, but I am seriously scared that I won’t make it up the mountain or that I will fail.” This sounds a lot like The Saturn Return.

The Saturn Return is an astrological phenomena when the planet Saturn returns to where it was when you were born. For most people, the Saturn Return happens sometime around 28 to 30. The deal is that Saturn doesn’t just land and then leave. It lands on the spot, goes retrograde, lands again, leaves, etc. So when we go through the Saturn return, it happens over an extended period of time. It kind of is like having a mood over a period of time.The mood is often pretty serious.

I, personally, think it’s really good news. It doesn’t always feel like it, but it’s an amazingly transformative period of life. If you think about it, most of our 20’s are spent trying on varieties of masks. We pick up ‘the partier mask’ and then put it down. Then we try on ‘the professional mask’ and then put that one down, or we try the ‘philosopher mask,’ ‘the adventurer mask,’ ‘the lost person mask,’ etc. Throughout our 20’s we’re trying out lots and lots of stuff. Well, the Saturn Return is all about taking a few masks that do work and fit and refining them into a persona that works for what the soul needs to learn in the 30’s. The whole point of this refining process is to have a useful set of masks that can be worn throughout the 30’s. They create a sort of solidity or foundation.

One thing I think is interesting is that this period of time is when the frontal cortex of the brain completes its development. I have a hunch that this is why a lot of people in their early twenties are not particularly adept at seeing the long-term consequences of their decisions. Choice in our early 20’s is primarily about what’s going to make us happy, now. When we get into our Saturn Return, we start to see that the choices we make have the possibility of creating long-term ramifications. This is probably what that final development of the brain creates, foresight.

Most Saturn Returnees feel a ton of pressure to BE something. Often this this the time when they go back to school and get a degree, when they get married and have a kid, or they just feel paralyzed with fear. This is when Saturn can feel like a malefic force and when a good coach can be really useful, especially if you’re not particularly skilled in the arena of decision making. Coaching during this period is the perfect time to get connected to a sense of who you authentically are where you want your life to go.