How does your garden grow?

Yesterday I spent a good portion of my afternoon pulling weeds in my yard.  We had been gone for a week and, boy, its truly amazing how quickly unwanted plants can creep in and take hold when you aren't keeping watch.  In a garden it is obvious when you haven't been paying attention.  Large weeds sprout up, overshadowing your fruits, vegetables or flowers. They take more than their fair share of the sunshine, rain, and energy and suddenly, the things that you really wanted to grow and prosper are suffering.  It's the same in the body and mind of a person, but perhaps not so obvious to the untrained eye when things haven't been attended to regularly and with discipline.  That's where yoga comes in.  (Doesn't it always?)


Yoga is a practice to watch your body and mind with the utmost care.  A yoga pose is a mirror.  It reveals to you what areas you've been tending and also the areas you may have overlooked.  It is a framework for systematically 'paying attention'. 


When I first started doing yoga, my downward facing dog was a mirror that shocked and upset me.  My hands and feet slipped in sweaty pools along the mat.  My shoulders sagged.  I felt like a tent about to collapse in on itself at any moment.  I was not stable or comfortable.  I didn't understand it.  And my mind was particularly disgruntled that I couldn't "get" it; because it was the pose everyone else seemed to do easily about 75 times in one yoga class.  Ugh.  My mind insisted that I didn't have the right mat, telling me that my hands are excessively sweaty -- way beyond any normal person's hand perspiration levels!  (amusing, right?)  My mind also tried to tell me, "But you can do other poses, like back bends and hip openers, very easily, so this down dog thing must not be our fault.  It's some sort of fluke!"


I indulged my mind's excuses for quite awhile, avoiding down dog in my home practice or shopping for yoga mats that would "fix" my sweat problem.  Then I spent a weekend on retreat for my yoga certification and my down dog became an impromptu lesson for an audience of rapt would-be yoga teachers.  My certification instructor attempted to adjust my down dog countless times, each unsuccessfully.  He used me as a model for the class, breaking the pose down piece by piece; studying whether I could perform the actions necessary in the context of other poses and I could.  Each action necessary to down dog, I could perform in another pose; but I simply could not put them all together.  That day there were no more excuses.  I had to admit it.  I had to accept the image I clearly saw in the mirror of down dog.  Finally, he said, almost off-handedly, "I think you just can't organize all the information in your nervous system yet.  It'll come."


Organize.  I heard that word loud and clear.  I couldn't get organized; or maybe the better description was:  I couldn't stay organized.  Not in my drawers at home.  Not in my random thoughts.  Not in my paperwork or house cleaning or cooking or grocery shopping or teaching....oh, the list went on and on.  I struggled to organize myself and stay within a framework of organization.  There it was.  AHA moment!


So, in my garden, I hadn't seeded any structure or carefully tended any organization skills.  My garden was like a crazy, overgown patch of wildflowers, tangled together, growing haphazardly and every which way in an attempt to get some sun.  In my garden there had been no planning for rows; accounting for hours of sunlight; no prepping of the soil.  That day I looked in the mirror and saw a true reflection of myself and, while I love tangles of wildflowers, I also knew that they would overwhelm everything, eventually even themselves.


I knew now what I needed to weed and what I needed to tend.  I stopped making and listening to excuses.  I started over, prepping the soil, plotting out space and sowing seeds.  I kept some of the wildflowers, but I payed attention to them; kept splitting them and sharing them before they could overtake my garden.


I accepted that my weeds were all forms of avoidance.  I was avoiding tasks I didn't like.  I was avoiding struggle, decision-making, and conflict.  It was going to be hard work to bring structure to my down dog, but that day I planted the seed for structure and organization by simply becoming aware of the issue and accepting it.  Do I excel at bringing structure to my down dog or my life now?  No..... I think it will always be a struggle, but at least I have yoga showing me the way; reflecting the truth to me and pointing out where I need to pay attention. 


Namaste....
Tammie