Dissolving

 

Every life and every death begins the same way, with an exhale. We come into the world with a cry and go out with a sigh, each of these expressions floating on the out-breath.

Buddha’s disciple, Maudgalyayana, taught his own student an important lesson by showing him a huge pile of bones. When the student asked, “What is that?” Maudgalyayana replied, “These are all the bones from the bodies you had in previous lives.”

The bones are always the first to go; it is how the earth element in our body dissolves. Water goes next, followed by the element of fire. Then our wind blows out. After the air element leaves us, the only thing left is our consciousness and finally that exits the body, too.

Some say that after forty days we are reborn. The root of the word incarnate means “to cause to heal.” We leave our bodies behind, yet our minds become healed as we rotate through the cycle of arising, abiding, and dissolving.

We are lucky that we can embody this vinyasa without actually dying. The body that we leave behind could be the carcass of a hard idea, or the rotting frame of a destructive pattern of behavior.

We are lucky that we can practice dissolving without losing the good stuff. As we breathe out we really can just let go of all the hard thoughts, which make hard hearts. The Sanskrit word for heart is hridayam, which means “that which takes, circulates, and gives.” Hearts are meant to be pliant; to pump; their job the ultimate “placing in a special way.”

Without giving, there is no receiving. Without letting go, there is no letting in. Without dissolving, there is no new arising. Without an exhale, there is no inhale.

“What’s wrong with you anyway? What is it that you want? Who is not giving you the love you need?”

“I’d like to feel more love from my husband,” I replied meekly.

“Well, no wonder he doesn’t love you! All you do is complain and whine about your body!”

I knew I shouldn’t have mentioned how I’d avoided a beach date early on in my relationship with my now-husband-then-boyfriend, because I didn’t want him to see my cellulite.

What I didn’t know was that this verbal slap was a portent of things to come and certainly not the kind of comment I had been expecting from Louise Hay. After all, she is famous as a goddess of the self-help movement and the birth mother of positive affirmations. Her messages of love and healing uplifted the gay community during the eighties and this work bled into the dance community, where I was first introduced to her book You Can Heal Your Life by a dancer friend of mine who used it to get rid of her chronic yeast infections. Although Louise claims that she used affirmations to heal her own cervical cancer, she doesn’t make any other claims about curing, although she does clarify what healing means by saying that it is “not always of the body.”

“Well, great!” I thought. “That means she is the perfect person for me to talk to.” I was by now heartily sick of the whole drama, more than ready to heal my life, expunge the gnawing voice eating me from the inside out, silence the James Joyce–worthy run-on sentence endlessly telling me that my body was deficient. All this, I figured, could be purged forever, just like Louise’s cancer, by letting go of my body-obsessed approach and zapping the problem with a consciousness cocktail of positive mental work.

I’d met Louise previously upon the publication of OM yoga in a Box, a kit for practicing yoga at home that includes a candle, incense, a yoga strap, and flash cards, which demonstrate my instructions on the enclosed yoga class CD. I remembered her as warm and supportive. I’d been touched when she also sent me a note saying something super positive about my product, which I later figured out was an affirmation. Since then I hadn’t heard from Louise Hay and I could tell she didn’t remember me. The first time I’d seen her since then was the day before our talk, when she opened the I Can Do It! conference.

Yes, it is called that and not the You Can Do It! conference because this way whenever you and your girlfriend talk about your plans for going to the conference, and when you ask your boss for time off to attend this conference, and when you tell your husband you’re going to this conference without him because you need to find something just for yourself, you end up saying this affirmation over and over again: I Can Do It. I Can Do It. I Can Do It. Louise never tires of helping people find ways to affirm their potential, because she knows that we have to start with ourselves. I Can Do It affirms that healing happens not by our being cheerleaders for others, but by our being cheerleaders for ourselves. So why was I so surprised that she did not want to be a cheerleader for me?

Maybe because I thought of her as a saint. The conference opened with Louise flowing across a huge stage during a standing ovation from five thousand people—mostly women—who obviously adored her. Tall, slim, and elegant, as she walked to the podium I honestly felt that I could see a halo of goodness radiating from her blond bob. She arrived at the speaker’s podium, but then, to let us know that she loved us and that she didn’t want anything to come between us, she stepped out from behind the podium. She leaned against it casually and spoke to us in an ordinary voice, not as if she were giving a speech, but more intimately, as if we were all her best friends. I don’t usually go for talk about the inner child, but she was so down-to-earth about it that it just seemed sensible to admit that there might be a baby inside us that needed befriending.

“She’s an angel,” I whispered to David and to my surprise, he nodded, also happily under her unique spell.

The next day I found out that modern-day saints are like the rest of us, especially if they are eighty-five years old. Exactly the same age as my mother, Louise had no time to waste and certainly wasn’t going to spend the time she did have talking about theories when there was serious work to be done. Her secretary had managed to squeeze me into Louise’s busy schedule, and at ten A.M. sharp I rang the bell on her hotel room door, surprised when Louise herself answered. She boomed, “Come on in! Have a seat while I clean up this table from last night.”

She started clearing wineglasses off the round dining table as I walked over to the living room and plopped down in a corner of the couch. She joined me a moment later, looking fresh and vibrant and loose, sitting both with good posture and an easy slouch that reminded me she had once been a model. To suck up to her, I was wearing my favorite Japanese T-shirt, the cute one with the big pink fuzzy smiley face, that I hoped would immediately demonstrate that I was a deeply positive person. But right then what I actually felt was super nervous and even more so, since she was clearly super relaxed.

As I had suspected, she didn’t have a clue who I was or what I was doing in her hotel living room or what she was supposed to do with me. So I got the ball rolling by introducing myself, reminding her of our mutual connections and how I came to be sitting there.

She listened to my spiel—“an epidemic of women hating their bodies…always wanting to be and look different…destroying so many women’s self-confidence…I’m on a quest to find out how I can be of help and blah blah blah”—but she didn’t seem to get hooked by my pitch the way Jamie Lee Curtis or Christiane Northrup had been.

In fact, there was already starting to be some dead air in this meeting. Being with Louise was like being with a vacuum cleaner that was sucking up my already minimal confidence and leaving me hanging out in space to dry. I rushed to fill in the gap by mentioning that this interview was in the service of a book I was writing called I Hate My Body.

That elicited a grunt from her. “Oh. Well. A lot of people say that and think that.”

“Yes, a lot of people say that and think that, and it’s a huge topic. I’m clearly not the first person to tackle it, but it’s not really going away.” I was already overly impassioned, trying to cook up enough energy for both of us because she wasn’t biting.

She said, “Uh-huh.”

“So…I’m talking to some people that I admire and that I think have a lot of insight, like you.”

I was trying the buttering-up approach, but she was immune to that. She made no comment. Maybe I needed to tell her more about myself.

“I’m actually a pretty well-known yoga teacher all over the world. I have people looking at me as a role model and yet I feel a little like a fraud because—”

She interrupted me with a chuckle. “Oh, we all do! You know we have this idea that we have to be perfect if we teach, but if we could just realize that we only attract people to us that we can help. You know, you can’t do the whole world. You can’t!”

Then she sat up a bit as if agreeing to apply herself to the topic at hand. “I decided a long time ago I would make peace with my body. This is a progression that we all make—we come from a little fat baby and, if we make it, we go to one hundred. And we’re meant to experience it all.”

She continued. “I’ve noticed that just within the last three months I’ve gone into another shift of aging in my body. On one level I say to myself that it’s sad, and on another level I go back to ‘Louise, you’ve got to make peace with this. You feel good. You’ve got good energy. You take care of yourself.’”

I liked that. “So what you’re saying is that making peace with your body is not something that happens once and for all and then you’re done with it.”

“It happens continually.” She pointed to the skin on her arms. “Now the wrinkles are here. I’ve had these for a while, so I no longer wear certain things.” Then she pointed to her stomach. “And I noticed just two or three weeks ago that now wrinkles are here, and there’s really not much you can do about it,” she said matter-of-factly.

Hearing Louise talking about this made a lightbulb go on for me. I had learned in my yoga practice that there are some smooth days and some rough days, but practicing yoga is never something that you give up on. Neither is it something that you master. The whole point is that you maintain commitment to the process, stay open to the changes that arise and pass, and most important, always take a friendly approach to your experience on the mat. This seemed to be the same process that Louise applied to how she related to her own body.

But she didn’t want to dwell on the signs of aging in her body. I understood that she was teaching me something with that message, too: Not dwelling is an important part of the solution. As I was digesting this insight, she moved on to a larger view of her teaching:

“Whether we’re happy or not is up to us. It has nothing to do with anybody else. It’s the thoughts we choose to think and the foods we choose to eat that create healthy bodies.”

I confessed, “I would never be mean to anybody else the way that I’m mean to myself.”

Impatient with me, she barked, “So, what’s so bad about you, anyway?”

This question stopped my mind. Louise Hay was the first woman I’d ever met who didn’t say, “Yes, I know exactly what you mean, and I hate my body, too.” She could say, “I’m working on feeling good about my aging body,” but she wasn’t going to give me an ounce of support for my drama. And she didn’t particularly need to be sweet and sensitive about it either.

At a loss, I muttered, “Um, right. Actually there’s nothing so bad about me and in fact, I think I deserve better from myself.”

“But if you keep doing it, you will get more lines in your face!” She roared with uncontained laughter at that little dig. She’d caught me in her trap and she was having a ball! I was starting to understand that this was not an interview. This was surgery and she was a master of her craft. Louise was going to do whatever it took to get me to change my script, and she didn’t mind if things got a little bit bloody.

She cut to the chase. “Do the people in your life love you?”

Without hesitation I responded, “Yes, they love me. And I’ve even been noticing lately, as I teach yoga all over the world, that even though I think I have a terrible body, I can feel how much the students love me. They don’t care what my body looks like because they actually like me.”

Louise just sat there looking at me, her shit detector on high alert. She was waiting for me to stop with the Sally Field act and tell her something real.

Then I surprised myself by saying, “Well, I would like to feel more love from my husband.”

She jumped on this. “But you keep telling him what’s wrong with you all the time. And he’s tired of hearing it.”

“Yeah, he’s sick of it.”

“So why do you do it?”

“I don’t know. Why do I do it?”

“Beats me. Because you haven’t forgiven. Who do you need to forgive? How did you learn to hate your body? Did your parents hate your body? Did they tell you to hate your body?”

“My mother was always on a diet. I think she hated her body.”

“Okay! So you wanted to be a good girl like Mommy…and maybe her mother…?”

“Her mother. I don’t remember her that well, but she was always dressed…”

She knew the answer better than I did. “Perfectly?”

I nodded.

“Everybody had to be perfect.”

I thought about this for a moment. “Maybe it is about flawlessness. My mother was a minister’s wife. That means you can’t be sexy. It’s a good girl thing where your appearance has to be very clean and exactly right and then you’ll be acceptable. So I still want that, I still want to look good.”

“But, you see…” Louise shifted a bit and paused briefly. It seemed that this was all so obvious to her and that she had probably had this conversation a million times before. But she was willing to do it once more, so she leaned over to give me this news flash. “You’ve got to love the little kid inside…and you don’t.” Oh, I see, that inner child she was talking about yesterday meant me.

She softened her tone. “You’ve got to be willing to start trying.”

“How do I do that?”

“Well, by changing the messages in your head. You’re doing rotten affirmations. Nonstop.”

She got personal again. “What would you like your relationship with your body to be like? You are not going backward, you are not going to have an eighteen-year-old body, so what would you like your relationship with your body to be like now?”

“More free, more friendly.”

“What does that mean?”

“I feel like I have an addiction to hating my body and I’d like to be free of it.”

“But I see a person sitting here who is not willing to make any changes.”

“Well, I guess I’m talking about it but I’m not willing to…”

“You’re talking about it but you’re not DOING ANYTHING except irritating your husband!”

I responded meekly, “Yes, thank you for saying that. I’ll think about it that way.”

“You should! It’s a pain in the ass to have somebody whining all the time about something they won’t do anything about.”

Louise might have been tough loving me but she wasn’t ready to give up on me. She tried another angle. “Think of yourself as a new little yoga student. Because I feel you’re gentle with your students.”

How did she know that? It made me feel good that she saw that in me. Her method seemed to be that she cracked you open like an egg, separating the protein-rich white stuff from vitamin-heavy yolk so she could see what was rotten and then gently reintegrate all that gooey stuff into a stronger whole. She knew that you don’t have to be a perfect circle to be a good egg.

I softened, thinking of all the yogis in my classes. “Oh, with my students, I’m so…”

Louise turned a huge smile on me because she knew where this was going.

“…kind. So much kinder to them, you know….”

She did know. She knew I meant kinder to them than to myself. She encouraged me to go on. “Yes, yes.”

“I love them and I don’t care what they look like and I never think their bodies are wrong or anything like that.”

“And you see them become more beautiful.”

“Yes, and more confident. And it makes me feel great.”

Louise was chuckling, pleased with this little breakthrough. Now she was ready to let me go. We stood up together. “You’re looking younger than when you walked in. Wrinkles fade when tensions dissipate. They can do that very quickly.”

She stood facing me. “I want you to say to yourself a lot: I am my own yoga student.”

“I am my own yoga student,” I repeated.

“And…when you interview other people, don’t tell them how much you hate your body. Stop that. Just stop it. You can say this is a problem I used to have and I’m really working on it and I’m going to help other women. But don’t say”—and here she whispered because she didn’t want to say it herself—“‘I hate my body,’ because every time you say it, it just gets…worse.”

She looked me in the eye to elicit my agreement. “So we’re not going to say that anymore. If you do say it, then put it in the past tense. Because when you get it, you’re going to get it for everybody.”

I sighed. “Well, that’s my hope.”

“No, no. That’s what you know. That’s what you’re doing. You are in the process of doing that. Call me if you need a boost up.” She grabbed a pen. “Let me give you my number. Once you are on the path, you know a sentence or two can mean a lot.”

“That’s what I was wondering about. What happens when you backslide?”

“Don’t worry about that. The process of doing affirmations or doing any of these things is you practice, you forget. You practice, you forget. That’s when a lot of people go, ‘Ahhhh, you see, I can’t do it right, I can’t do it right.’ No, you practice and you forget and then you catch yourself. That’s to be celebrated. You know how it is when you watch a yoga student and they get into the posture and it’s wrong and then they make a self-adjustment. That’s when you think…”

I jumped in: “Oh good—they’re getting it!”

“Yes, and the student herself may be thinking, ‘Oh God, I’m wrong again,’ but she self-adjusted. Well, that’s what you need to do with affirmations—just self-adjust. You’re not going to go into every posture perfectly and have it perfect forever and ever and ever.”

She smiled at me. “Isn’t it interesting how we don’t see things that are right here? Right here.”

We walked to the door together and she gave me a final send-off. “So, be kind to this new student. You’ve got a new student, and new students often walk in a little shaky. And, one of those times when you get stuck, give me a call. You are entering a new posture.”

She gave me a big hug and I walked out the door back to the elevator, down ten floors and into our room where David was sitting on the bed with his computer. “Well, how did it go?” he asked. And I burst into tears.

It was Valentine’s Day, and I was out of town. I had brought my mom a dozen roses the day before I left the city. Though I didn’t like to admit it, she wouldn’t have known what day it was anyway. I cut the stems short and put the flowers in a small rose-colored ceramic vase. “Mom, I brought you some roses,” I said, holding them under her nose.

I rarely saw her with her eyes open these days. Tubby, the head nurse, told me that sometimes Millie did open her eyes, just not when I came to visit. “You put her right to sleep,” she teased me. “That happens with mothers and daughters.” Tubby had a theory that the moms felt safe when their daughters were there, so they closed their eyes and relaxed. I didn’t know. I thought that my mom’s brain just worked in a different way. Her vivid dreamscape held her attention more easily than the sights and sounds of the world that I was living in.

Twenty years ago, just before my mom’s sixty-fifth birthday, she and I had gone shopping at the Farmers Market in Dallas. We saw a display of pottery and a little card advertising classes. When she said, “I think I’d like to try that,” I got my dad to go in halves with me and we bought her a six-week session for her birthday present. She was hooked by the second class. Making pottery became my mom’s passion and one of the great joys of her life. Never mind that she turned out to be exceptionally talented, winning blue ribbons at the annual Dallas Craft Fair; she just loved doing it. I think it had a lot to do with the tactile aspect, handling the clay and shaping it into something beautiful and useful, the same way she had done with fabric when I was growing up.

Now my house is full of those memories: Leroy’s water dish with the painting of a puppy who has ears more like a cat’s than a poodle’s; the elegant footed fruit bowl on my dining room table; the pink handle-less mug that holds my drawing pencils; the tiny vases that hold one small blossom each.

I thought she might like to have one of her own vases in her room at the nursing home. She didn’t feel like opening her eyes the day I brought it to her so I placed her hand on the little rose-colored vase. Maybe she would recognize the double ridge she’d carved just below the narrow opening. She did! The minute she felt her vase she smiled and it was clear that she knew what she was touching.

The feeling for the clay was still in her fingers, even though she couldn’t do anything with her hands anymore. Up until a few months ago she would repetitively open and close her fingers, balling up the covers of her bed or the front of her shirt. Then she’d say, “Could you hold this for me?” I’d slide the fabric out of her hand, saying, “Sure, Mom. I’ve got it now.” Then she would relax. A second or two later, she would do it all again. But now she was too weak to even do that gesture, and so her ladylike hands stayed in her lap, fingers curled in, a constant tremor in both wrists.

There was something familiar about those hands in that lap. I recognized the quiet gracefulness, yes, and also the recessed aspect of my mom, too—a deep sense of privacy and shyness. Maybe I shouldn’t have been surprised that her interior life was more compelling than the reality of life in a nursing home. She was never great at engaging in any potentially uncomfortable exchange.

When it was time to teach me about the birds and the bees, she picked me up from school, took me home, handed me a pamphlet, and told me to read it. If I had any questions afterward, I could ask her. I felt total embarrassment, as in “dying of.” I stormed into the living room, plopped down on the couch, and skimmed the pamphlet on menstruation. God, do we really have to do this, Mom?

Now, of course, I realize that she was embarrassed, too, or she would have done the whole thing differently. But her im-personal approach also made me mad. I read the book in ten minutes and went to find my mom, who was primping in the bathroom, getting ready to go out with my dad. I glared at her as she worked on her hair.

“Did you finish?” She didn’t put her curling iron down.

“Yeah, and I already know all that stuff anyway.”

“Okay.”

End of story. Almost. She pulled open the drawer where she kept her fat pile of sanitary napkins. “Here’s the Kotex and a belt for you. Do you know how to use it?”

I didn’t really but, ewww, it was all so icky and awkward. “Yes,” I said in a snotty voice and stormed off to the living room.

A few years later I asked my mom if I could switch to tampons. It took me months to get up the nerve to even bring up the subject. As I expected, she resisted at first, and then very begrudgingly allowed it. I could feel that she thought there was something not quite “good girl” about tampons, maybe something sexual. I realize now she didn’t want me to be all that familiar with my vagina or the feeling of anything going in and out of there. I sensed something about her attitude, which made me feel slightly dirty. But I wasn’t a slut. I just knew that all my friends were using tampons and it was way better than having that lumpy thing sticking out between your legs, making the back of your skirt ride up in a way that let everyone know—including boys—that you were having your period.

Is it possible that I might have been more sexually confident if my mom hadn’t passed on her embarrassment to me? It is possible that I would have felt altogether different about my body? It wasn’t until many years after adolescence when I moved to New York and met a new friend, a lovely Wicca woman, who mentioned that she was having her “pyramid,” that I got a new perspective on what Christiane Northrup calls our “power spots.”

In the hallway, I grabbed Dr. Griffo, who had been treating my mom’s acute bedsore, for an update on her condition. He smiled a New Yorker’s kind of sideways smile. “Pardon me for saying so, but well, there isn’t really anything wrong with your mom from the neck down, if you know what I mean. Her vital signs are excellent, and she is not dying.” Within three weeks at the skilled nursing facility, her mind started to break down.

The home was full of people whose bodies and minds were on parallel but separate tracks. Maureen’s other client, also in her late eighties, broke her ankle and right away her mind just went. Chicken and egg was unclear to me, but there was no doubt that mind and body are intricately connected. Dr. Griffo wanted to put my mom back on a physical-therapy program now that her bedsore had started healing up, but he said she had to be willing to open her eyes.

So I held the roses under her nose. “Mmm, don’t they smell good, Mom?” No response. She was dissolving. She looked peaceful, though, and I thought how happy she would be if she knew that she finally lost those fifty pounds.

It was quiet when I walked to the yoga studio in Shibuya on Monday morning. I thought maybe I’d gotten my days mixed up—that can happen with jet lag. There simply weren’t enough people at the station crosswalk for it to be a Monday morning. The multidirectional Shibuya crossing is called the Scramble and it typically takes about five light changes and ten minutes to get across. I had been trained by my Japanese yoga friends to point myself straight ahead and when the light turns green, just go—never swerve or even look sideways, or the crowds will devour you. Today the Scramble was empty.

It was March 14, a cold, gray day with no hint of spring in the air. I hadn’t fully grokked that the power outages in Tokyo were keeping so many people home, even preventing some of the big chain stores from opening. I just knew something was off and I felt unsettled and low, as if the cold-and-gray-ness was coming from inside me.

I was in Japan to teach the second annual OM yoga Teacher Training course here, hosted by TokyoYoga. This was my fourth teaching trip to Japan and I’d been looking forward to it. I love the culture—the graceful way money is exchanged on small trays; the taxi driver’s white gloves and the lace doily cab-seat covers; the elegance of everyday bowing rituals; the shoes-off-inside policy; the deep respect for teachers; and the dinner custom I was taught in which one must never pour one’s own drink but must always wait for your friends to fill and refill your sake cup.

In fact, only three days earlier I had been admiring the refined manners of the immigration officer in Narita airport. I liked how he took each new visitor’s passport with both hands and returned it with a bow. As I watched him do that, I stood up straighter, gearing up my own mindfulness practice so that I could meet him with equal grace. But when I handed him my passport he turned his head and became very still. “That’s weird.” I got paranoid. “Is he trying to psych me out?” In the eyeblink moment it took to have that thought, I realized the officer was listening to something with his whole body.

Boom! I crumpled onto the edge of the luggage counter and felt an inner panic as the floor buckled and the overhead lamps started swinging. The room was suddenly noisy, full of wild grumblings in surround sound and violent pitching like airplane turbulence.

Long seconds later, as the whole thing just got bigger, I tried to comfort myself. “This must be the peak of it.” That’s when a ceiling panel fell down followed by a cascade of dust and the officer pointed to the swaying lights. Yes, I see, I should stand with the other people over by the baggage-claim area.

No one said a word. Passengers and officers and airport workers were all stunned into silence. I can’t say I was shocked to experience an earthquake in Japan. Last year while teaching in Shinjuku, in mid-vinyasa, all the students dropped to the floor. They called, “Shyndi, Shyndi, earthquake!” And down I went, too. My reaction time to feeling an earthquake was slower than my Japanese students’, just like it was with the immigration officer’s.

Finally, the rumbling stopped. I don’t remember it slowing down, just at one point the quiet included the environment, not just the people. I didn’t hear any more creaking metal or what sounded like a truck driving through the wall. A completely compelling 3-D event had come and gone, just like that. The officers unfroze and looked at one another, seeming to communicate although I couldn’t hear them say anything. A few stepped out of the room and a few others stepped into the room. Minutes passed, and then the immigration officer looked at me, nodding to indicate that I could return to the counter to retrieve my passport. I like to imagine that, even after having just experienced the biggest earthquake in recorded history, we still managed to exchange a final elegant bow but honestly, I don’t remember. I just know I felt shaky and unstable, but I pulled it together and walked out the door.

I figured I’d do what I always do when I arrive in Japan: exchange money and then cross the hall to buy a bus ticket to my hotel. There were already people lined up at the currency exchange table and it seemed all was proceeding as normal. Okay, I get it—impermanence. Things are one way and then they are a different way, and people in Japan are used to earthquakes. Yen in hand, it was time to buy a bus ticket.

Boom! The earthquake was back, almost as agitated as before. Two Japanese women in pink bows and knee socks dropped to the floor next to me. Cries and shrieking all around. No more business as usual. This much moving force so soon after the first can’t be taken in stride.

When the bucking slowed down, an announcement was made in Japanese. From the response I guessed it said, “Nobody move.” In this culture based on obedience and respect, people simply complied, putting themselves on hold. But for me—all this shaking and rocking and plummeting to the floor and no one to talk to—it was just too isolating. So I did what any true New Yorker would do. I leaned over to a blond guy in a red shirt and tortoise-shell glasses and asked, “So…what do you think is going on?” He turned an open face to me and said, “I have no idea but it seems like they want us to go out into the parking lot where there isn’t anything overhead that could fall on us.” Out we went.

Brad and I stuck together in the parking lot. At first we tried to figure out what was going on but when even the official-looking types didn’t have any answers, we just relaxed into the situation. We talked about why we were in Japan and where we came from and how we wished the announcements would be in English sometimes. What else could we do?

Two hours, three hours passed. We took each other’s pictures on our cell phones. I couldn’t get a Wi-Fi connection to email my picture to David but at least it would make a good Facebook post when I got to Tokyo. It was weird having no idea when that might be but at least having someone to talk with gave me a sense of grounding in that completely ungrounded situation.

If this had been a movie, the sky would have been dark, with sullen, threatening overtones. Instead the day was crisp and sunny, a refreshing almost-spring day, sending a confusing message of welcome. The weather seemed out of sync with the events of the day: sleep deprivation, jet lag, and terra non-firma.

By six P.M. the temperature had cooled off enough for us to really want to be back inside. We pulled our jackets tighter. Half an hour later, the crowd started moving back into the airport. I hadn’t felt any more aftershocks and assumed that we would be able to get on the bus soon. But who knew? We sheep were simply herded back inside, where I found myself standing beneath the arrivals/departures board, which declared the status of all flights as indefinite. “Got any news?” I butted my nose into another guy’s business when I saw him checking his BlackBerry. He said, “Eight-point-nine, off the northeast coast and there was a tsunami, too.”

That was Joe and he’d made friends with Maya and Gary. In one instant, we became a group of five. Maya is Japanese so she told us what the announcements said, which was nothing much. Gary, an American IT expert living in Tokyo with his family, shared his impressions of how the Japanese deal with emergency situations. He told us they aren’t facile with on-the-spot or out-of-the-box thinking. Clearly it was going to take a while for authorities to make a plan B and in the meantime, we were told that the trains weren’t running and neither were the buses, since the entire highway was now closed. Japanese caution seemed to require that everything would be closed down until everything could be opened up.

That included the airport restaurants and stores. Along with eight thousand other people and no food or drink, we understood we would be spending the night in Narita. We claimed our territory under a backlit poster of Mount Fuji and set up camp. We heard a rumor that sleeping bags were being provided, so Joe and I volunteered to wait in the long line, nearly the full length of the airport. Joe, a retired vice admiral in the U.S. Coast Guard, with tons of experience in rescue missions, was a good person to be with, calm and patient in an emergency. Forty-five minutes later, when we were about twenty people from the front of the line, we were told, with much bowing and apologizing, that there were no more sleeping bags. There were no more Ritz crackers, either, but we did score some bottles of water.

In the meantime, Maya found a vending machine, one of the complicated Japanese ones that I can never figure out, and managed to buy us some hot drinks: “cohee,” milk “cohee,” and cocoa. Brad approached some people with extra sleeping bags and between his Midwestern friendliness and the unwavering Japanese good manners, he was able to get one for each of us. It was midnight by now and very cold.

The phone lines were jammed and I still couldn’t get my email up and running. We all wanted to let our friends and family know we were okay but for now, we settled in. Gary pulled a few cords and other gadgets out of his pack and went to work getting online.

Sleeping wasn’t really an option and we ended up sitting on the floor with our legs crossed like yogis while we shared our stories. It surprised my earthquake buddies to learn that I taught yoga all over the world. “Oh great! Can you show us some stretches?” Maya asked. That made me laugh but I was glad that I, too, could contribute something to the well-being of our group. Maya followed along as I did some twists and side bends, which felt good, but everybody’s hips were starting to ache from the cold, hard floor and I knew I wasn’t the only one who felt toxified from the whole situation, stressed out from the unknown.

That’s where my earthquake friends came in. Maybe we were all in shock but not one of us complained even once. People tell me now that I was brave, but it wasn’t like that. After those first big quakes, I never felt as if I were in immediate danger. It wasn’t until later that I learned of the tremendous destruction resulting from the Pacific Rim rattling its bones and shifting the earth on its axis.

Twelve hours after we’d gone inside from the parking lot, I was back out there waiting for a taxi. At six A.M. on Saturday morning, I picked my way through sleeping bodies to the train station ticket counter, where a Japanese woman, still looking perfect in her uniform—accessorized with bandana and pillbox hat—kept repeating, “Yes, please. Train later.” We knew the roads were still closed so buses were not an option either.

I assumed there would be huge lines of waiting taxis and waiting taxi passengers, just as there would be if this were Newark Liberty Airport. But there were only ten people and zero taxis. It was cold, but I was determined. Every twenty minutes a lone taxi showed up. The taxi dispatcher said the highway to Tokyo was still closed, but we could get a ride to Chiba, an hour-and-a-half ride.

Chiba? Where is Chiba? Hoo, boy. Fortunately, Hiro was also waiting for a taxi and offered to help me get there. When we exited the taxi in Chiba, Hiro simply picked up my extra-large suitcase and went, me scurrying after him, pushing through the crowds to the one local train that was running toward Tokyo. Another train, several subways and a short walk through Shibuya—Hiro carrying my suitcase for the entire six-and-a-half hours—and he delivered me to the front desk of the Cerulean Tower Hotel with a deep bow. He still had another hour of travel to get to his home, but his generosity dictated he take care of me first. In these kinds of situations you meet some angels and some devils.

The Cerulean was party central. The dire consequences of the earthquake were still unknown so, at that point, being stuck in Japan became an unexpected holiday. The massive lobby was heavily populated with groovy people wearing the international groovy people’s uniform: jeans, T-shirts with a geeky phrase like LONDON ROCKS! that is really insider lingo for “I’m a hipster jet-setter”; brightly colored sneakers; porkpies or Yankees caps; necks wrapped with gingham. I relaxed back into civilization and started to feel safe again.

After I settled into my room on the thirty-third floor, I rang up my husband over iChat, grateful that Gary had finally managed to send an email to him the night before. Frantic about my safety, his big face loomed into the screen. “Have you seen the news? Do you really know what’s going on over there?”

“Well, yeah, David, sure I do. I’m the one who was actually in the earthquake.” I explained to him that what he was seeing on the news was hundreds of miles away and things in Tokyo were normal. The teacher training was going to go on as planned. After the cold, hard floor of the airport, I was ecstatic to be in my fancy hotel room and couldn’t wait to get into my cushy hotel bed. I calmed him down and then slept for nine hours straight.

The next day the training started and although two people were absent because of travel complications from the earthquake, I was able to lead the first day of yoga classes with a reasonable amount of ease. That morning while I was checking my email, I felt a couple of aftershocks, which unnerved me. I had a startled response each time the heat kicked on in my room, and when the plastic of my Perrier bottle popped, I nearly jumped out of my skin. I hurried through necessary things such as sitting on the toilet and taking a shower, not places I wanted to be if another big earthquake happened.

But I wasn’t nervous at all while I was teaching. Even though it’s my time to teach and not to “do” yoga, my own clear instructions and soothing voice affected me in a similar way as they did my students, and I experienced a kind of yoga contact high. As a result I felt balanced, openhearted, and confident as I walked back to the hotel. I passed a line of about a hundred nervous people waiting for the bus, clutching their bags and holding their arms tight to their chests, standing in silence across from a dimmed Shibuya Station, normally the most riotous wall of light and sound in Tokyo. That gave me a contact low.

Alone after a day of teaching and not yet hungry enough for dinner, I sat down at my computer and once again felt woozy—did I just feel another earthquake or was that my imagination? Feeling the motion of an earthquake even when there isn’t one is called jishin yoi, which means “earthquake drunk.” I didn’t know that one of the ways to treat it is to lie down, but that’s what I did. I got down on the floor, the closest I could get to the earth, and did what I do whenever I want to be home—I rolled out my mat.

Downward Dog is a magic pill. Pushing down with hands and heels feels grounding and turns my organs upside down, giving my heart a healthy massage.

If I had known about the radiation meltdowns, I might have hesitated to breathe so deeply and fully, but so far I only knew about the earth and the water. Finding a point on the wall to help me balance, I practice Tree Pose and Half Moon Pose and don’t feel wobbly at all. Training one’s eyes on a distant object is also a remedy for being earthquake drunk.

Down on my back, I scooch around, ending up on a diagonal, feet near the end of the bed, arms overhead in the space between the bedside table and the desk. From here I can lift one leg straight up to the ceiling and take it across my body into a nourishing spinal twist and hip releaser.

It is good to be back in my body, focused on my breath, reintegrated through the refuge of my practice. Yoga means “union,” but really, it’s reunion. We disintegrate all the time; it doesn’t take an earthquake for that to happen. A hundred times a day we notice that our mind and body are living in different realms of space and time, but that’s no problem. Yoga, like meditation, offers a method for coming together after you’ve come apart.

That day Japan was still shaking its skeleton while the massive tsunami pools were hardening into ice. Soon enough we would learn that the fires burning in the nuclear reactors were tainting the seawater and the air; bad winds were blowing south toward Tokyo. I knew that nothing is solid, everything is impermanent, everything is meant to change. But I tried not to think about any of that. I tried to keep my mind and my body in one place, the safe harbor I was creating in the five feet between my bed and the window, where I was afraid to look out because it seemed so far to the ground.

My practice ends, as always, with a headstand and shoulder stand followed by Savasana, a resting pose lying flat on my back. Finally, rolling over to one side, I let my head dangle as I round up through every single vertebra, settling into Sukhasana. I fold my hands the way Rimpoche taught me, fingertips touching with thumbs tucked into the palms.

All day I’d been fighting an intense longing to go home. But I feel better now, less scared. The feeling in my bones and muscles, lungs and belly reminds me that yoga is my home. It is a place I can always return to.

My practice always concludes by dedicating the benefits of my practice to all beings everywhere, but that day I aim my wishes for compassion, freedom from suffering, joy, and equanimity directly to the people of Japan.

While getting dressed for the second day of teacher training, I tried to watch CNN, but in contrast to the quiet void-like vibe of Tokyo, Anderson Cooper seemed hysterical, although he wasn’t yet wearing his disaster hoodie. I turned off the TV and left for the studio, crossing the empty Scramble without even stopping at the curb.

Already informed that even more students would miss today’s session due to power outages that had caused subway cancellations, I was asked to end the day early so those who were there could catch a train before dark. We decided to cut the lunch break short, which was fine by me. I never know what to do on my lunch break in Japan anyway, because I can’t read most menus, and my host always tries to send me to the local, smoke-filled Denny’s; perhaps he is under the impression that I will be comfortable with the familiar menu but Denny’s typical un-yogic fare of French fries is not what I want to eat in America and certainly not in Japan.

I decided to go to Seibu, a big department store that had just opened a new “food show” floor, where I thought I might be able to get something to eat that wasn’t completely mysterious to me. Just because I was spending my lunch hour in a store, I told myself I wasn’t really shopping, which somehow felt unseemly in the midst of a disastrous time. I might just browse a bit and check out what was “in” in Japan this season.

Good intentions aside, I soon found myself asking to try on a pair of red gingham Spanish espadrilles, which I happened to know you cannot buy anywhere in NYC. The escalator up to the restaurant passed several Japanese designer’s in-store boutiques, where I was once again magnetized to those bias-cut, baggy pants and blousey smock tops that are perfect on the typical waif-like Japanese woman. Nothing will look good on big old American me, I reminded myself. Even the espadrilles were too tight, my big toe gushing out of the pointy-toe peephole, the heel straps instantly giving me a blister. The shoe lady told me they don’t even carry size eights in that store.

After partially finishing a weird salad involving mysterious tentacle-like ingredients that I didn’t recognize and avoided eating, I left Seibu feeling diminished by the whole experience. It wasn’t just the overcast day or lack of the normal upbeat urban energy. I felt fat…again. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t eaten much. Being jet-lagged makes me bloated and gives me an excuse to visit my go-to place, which is “the land of I’m fat.” For me, feeling fat is not necessarily a physical feeling. I can feel fat even when I haven’t eaten anything. Feeling fat is actually my mental comfort zone; a little round bed for my grumpy voice to become full throated and tell me once again that I was fat…and old…and hopeless. To berate myself for being here again, back in Japan, traveling too much to ever get on a roll with my exercise program or consistent with a healthy diet and anyway…

I stopped at the crosswalk and joined the good citizens of Tokyo, who waited patiently for the long red light to finally turn green. Feeling chilly, I tightened the scarf around my neck and stared into space. I settled down a little bit and got bored. And as I waited, I relaxed. I thought about something and then I thought about nothing. Some space in my mind opened up in a natural way.

Then a new thought popped up. “Oh, my habit is really coming on strong today. That’s interesting.”

Ding! In that moment, I woke up out of my fog and saw that this whole thing, the whole I-Hate-My-Body drama, was something outside of me. For the first time, it wasn’t me and it wasn’t a truth. It was just a thing that sometimes comes up, like when I noticed that my hips were tight from sitting at my desk all day or my shoulders were sore from yoga. It was part of me, but not all of me. And it was only part of me for a little while and then it changed and went away. Just like my tight hips got loosened up with some stretching, this thought was not permanent or solid or even true.

For so many years I had been doing everything it took to strengthen the belief that my body was not good enough, which meant that I’m not good enough, which meant I needed to change something, do more, be different, take some action. I felt sure that if only I could figure out the right doing, the precise corrective, I’d finally have a good body and then I’d be happy. Just like doing reps with weights, I had exercised this neural pathway so many times that it had developed into a firm and muscle-bound point of view.

But in the past few years, this pattern had become more apparent to me as a self-imposed form of torture, which I was consciously working to dismantle. I guess that I had been working on stretching it long enough—turning it upside down, wondering how it started, trying to locate its power, pushing it away, tipping it off center—and it was finally loosened up and losing its hold on me.

Was it being in an earthquake that shook it all loose? Or perhaps it was the sense of loss and upset in my marriage that helped me see the holes in my ossified logic. Like a mini-satori, the Zen-like thunderbolt of sudden awareness, I thought, “Oh yeah, I recognize you. You’re that kind of thinking that always comes up when I’m feeling low.”

In the past, I would have responded to that thought with self-destructive strategies like shopping—even if the stores didn’t carry my size—or eating and drinking too much. In fact, wasn’t I just trying on too small espadrilles and longing for a skinny Japanese body so I could wear those baggy pants? But at this moment, I simply didn’t respond. Like an advanced yoga student, I heard the words but I stayed steady and rested, using the gap to give myself a chance to find out what was really going on.

Just like puzzling out the source of a bad feeling in my stomach, it was the familiar feeling of the negative thought that caught my attention. What was really bothering me? As the tide of habit ebbed, I realized that I was very anxious about the situation in Tokyo. I thought, “Give yourself a break. You’ve just been in a bunch of very big earthquakes. You are in a foreign country where you don’t know the language, and the country is in a crisis. You are alone and it’s cold outside. No wonder you are feeling out of sorts. You need to find someone who can help you.”

I had been stuck, and now I was unstuck. I didn’t know what to do next but I felt stronger than my habit in a way that was liberating and put a fire under my ass.

As soon as I got back to the studio, I asked my translator Yukiko to let me talk to John, her Canadian husband. She rolled her eyes as she auto-dialed his number, telling the other yogis that he was going to scare me. She was right. John told me that things were only going to get worse. “There’s already no bread on the shelves, and who knows what’s going to happen next. The Canadian and U.S. embassies are recommending all citizens return home.” John had already left Tokyo and taken their children to Osaka, where he said the hotel was full of ex-pats concerned about lack of food, gas shortages, and radiation poisoning. I thanked him profusely, went back to my hotel, and booked a flight for Newark.

It was the 6.4 that struck while I was having dinner with my hosts that evening in a fourteenth-floor restaurant that finally did me in. My host had just finished expressing his appreciation for how well I handled the students that afternoon. “You were so professional,” he said with a small bow. We made a toast but after only one sip of sake I felt swoony. Embarrassed, I thought, “My gosh, am I so fried that I’m drunk on one sip of sake?” It was another big earthquake, and then another one struck ten minutes later. That was it for me. My nerves were shot. There was no way I could handle another night on a high floor, swaying through more aftershocks.

When I got back to my deserted hotel at midnight, the fun vibe had morphed into a palpable sense of foreboding. The vaulted lobby was empty, every restaurant closed, hotel workers in their uniforms waiting to be helpful, but there was literally not one person but me to help. There was one taxi in the driveway and I nabbed it. Seventy-five minutes and four-hundred dollars later, my driver bowed and left me on the curb. Five nights after I arrived in Japan I was back at the airport. The entire first night I’d spent at Narita the fluorescents remained on, but now with the imposed power outages, it was quiet and dark.

I was nervous and wondered if the airport was even open, but I saw a few people schlepping bags, so I followed them, hoping they knew where the door was, because I sure didn’t. The hotel receptionist had cautioned me, “There will be a lot of people at the airport tonight. Please be careful.”

As I stepped inside the dim entryway of the departure terminal, I saw a security guard on patrol. I figured after I made a pit stop I’d settle in for the night, so I asked him directions to the ladies’. Like Hiro, he didn’t just point but politely escorted me all the way to the door of the bathroom. When I came out, I didn’t feel afraid, just a little bit lonely.

So I did what had worked before—I looked around to see if I could find someone who might speak my language. And guess what? There was Brad, sleeping on a bench right in front of me! I rolled my suitcase over and plopped down on the floor, prepared to wait through the night with my earthquake friend.

When I’d first told David my earthquake story he said, “Really? The minute you handed the guy your passport the earthquake hit? Wow, Cyndi, you’re so powerful!” David wasn’t kidding. From his vantage point—twenty-four hours a day in front of the TV—the hyper-agitation of CNN’s reporting filled him with anxiety and perhaps a sense of the mythological.

To some, the massive earthquake and the constant aftershocks seemed like an urgent message from the earth. I read email conversations on CNN’s website from viewers who argued that the cause of the earthquake was Japan’s insistence on killing sharks for soup. Others replied that that’s not how karma works; some wrote that there is no meaning to any of this and everybody should get a grip.

Before I left for Japan, David and I had been in the Cleveland airport and we stopped to watch a charming Rube Goldberg display. It was a brightly painted contraption made up of wire spirals, scales, ramps, ladders, and springs through which Ping-Pong balls traveled in various directions, depending on how or when the next ball arrived. The first ball didn’t get pushed out of the tunnel until one, two, three, four, and then finally the fifth ball’s force pushed it over the edge. From there it landed on a spring that bounced it to the top of a chute, down which it slid, landing on the bottom rung of a mechanical ladder that carried the ball back to the top to begin again. A visual example of interdependence, this motorized perpetual motion machine came to mind as the situation in Japan devolved further each day I was there. The earth shook, the water rose up, the power plants shut down, the electricity went off, the people dealt with it as best they could.

We’d been in Cleveland to teach our workshop on the Six Perfections—the actions of a bodhisattva—an almost Buddha with perfect compassion. But in Japan I found that nobody needed a teaching on generosity, discipline, patience, diligence, meditation, or wisdom. It was natural for people in Japan to take care of one another, control their minds, remain calm, maintain their stamina, stay focused, and make choices that would be good for everyone.

It had taken courage on my part to make a decision regarding the teacher training. Yesterday I took my teacher’s seat, legs folded in Vajrasana, the Basic Goodness Pose, which is also called Hero’s Pose. It means that the Hero is you, the person who sits quietly and openly, brave enough to face your own fears. I faced my Japanese students and took a moment to feel connected to my Basic Goodness. Then I expressed myself with honesty as I told them that I felt it was best to postpone the training. There were lots of tears from them but no bad vibes. When BG is on full display everyone feels it. Inspired by the nobility and elegance of the Japanese people, I managed to express graceful leadership in a manner that I hoped left the door open for my future return to TokyoYoga.

Sitting in the semidarkness of the airport, I felt as if I were on a threshold, a liminal space between now and then, known and unknown. I felt strong and oddly grounded, in a land where the ground is hyper-mobile. I felt good that I had figured out how to take care of myself in a very challenging situation, with minimal support and a lot of mixed messages.

I read that according to Shinto, the ancient religion of Japan, the invisible space of a doorway is what both separates and unites two opposite worlds. It is still everyday tradition for a visitor approaching someone’s home to call out, “Ojama shimasu.” Used in the same way, we might say, “May I come in?” The literal translation is, “I am about to disturb you.” I didn’t know what my life would be like when I got back. It might be full of disturbances. But I was strangely confident that I could handle whatever I met upon my return.

David was so relieved that I was coming home early that he rented a car to pick me up at the airport. In seventeen years, he had never done that before. He also emailed that he was praying to the water and earth gods and dragons to protect me. I appreciated that, I really did.

But I liked it better when my earthquake friend, Joe, said, “It’s gonna take a while for those shifting plates to settle.” No need for more drama, thank you. If I took it personally, there would be a feeling of malignancy, which led only to confusion, fear, anxiety, guilt—all kinds of stuff that wasn’t really needed or useful or accurate. The earth moved. It does that sometimes. It was not about me.

As my Continental flight began its descent into Newark, the senior flight attendant finished her disembarkation announcements by saying, “From the beaches of Waikiki to the oranges of California, from the majesty of the Rocky Mountains to the Statue of Liberty, may I be the first to welcome you home to the golden arms of the USA. I am glad to have brought all two hundred seventy-eight of you home safely. Our prayers are with the brave people of Japan.” Maybe that was corny, but it meant a lot to me, and when I looked around the cabin I saw that I wasn’t the only one crying.

I’m down in a low squat, demonstrating how to help a yoga student use blocks in a forward bend. Jackie has been working hard on her yoga practice, but she still can’t fold all the way forward without rounding her back and bending her knees. So I patiently explain that if she places her hands on blocks it will lift her spine, allowing her to straighten her legs. Then she can extend through her spine and start to feel the benefits of this wonderful pose.

We’re in the middle of an OM yoga Teacher Training course, and the students are fascinated by these detailed explanations. They watch closely as I work with every student, and each time someone improves even incrementally, it feels like a victory for everyone. The class bursts into applause!

I say to Jackie, “If you keep working, you’ll get where you want to go. You can’t skip steps and hope to arrive magically at a full forward bend. But using blocks will help to lengthen your hamstrings and strengthen your back muscles and you will get there soon enough. And”—I pause to emphasize that I want to encourage her and acknowledge her hard work—“you’ve come a long way. Your pose is much more open than it was when you started practicing. You’re doing great.”

Jackie rolls up through her spine, arriving back in a standing position. She smiles and I can tell she really appreciates what I said. But I feel that she is holding something back.

I look at her. “Do you want to say something?”

With a rush, she confesses, “I think maybe my arms are just too short.”

Everyone laughs, including Jackie.

I say, “Oh yes, let’s blame it on the arms! I can guarantee you that in this class there is someone who has arms that are too long, or their legs are too short or too thick, or they are too old or too stiff or too tall or too loose or too tight…” The class is really laughing now.

“The thing is, Jackie, we are used to thinking yoga will change our body to the way we want it to be—taller, thinner, stronger, more fluid—and then, and only then, will we really be able to ‘do’ yoga. But we can only ever do yoga with the body we have in this very moment, right now.

“The first sutra or line of scripture from the traditional philosophy of yoga reads, ‘Yoga is now.’ It’s a mandate to relate to yourself as you are. When we take our short arms and flabby thighs and gripped abdominals and bunions and muscle-bound shoulders, not to mention our bad mood and our burning ambition and our irritating, competitive nature—take all of that onto the mat with us and do yoga with all that in the mix—then we are doing yoga. And then if our arms get longer and our legs get thinner we won’t care anymore. It’s not about that. We will be integrated—my favorite definition of yoga.

“So, I’m sorry to break the news, but you can’t blame anything on your arms. And what’s more”—I pause again both for dramatic effect and because what I am about to say is the most important lesson of teacher training—“there’s nothing wrong with you.”

The class is suddenly still and quiet.

“There never has been and there never will be.”

Jackie’s face is open and a little bit pinky and flushed. I hold her eyes with mine. She doesn’t cry, but I almost do.

The couch in our West Village apartment molded to my body in a way that suggested I need never get up. Perfect. I accepted that invitation and curled into a ball where I stayed for hours, sobbing and cooking up more reasons to feel bad. I was having a total relapse from positive thinking. Just like any kind of recovery program, in which the addict makes progress and then finds herself back in a bar, smoking and drinking, I had lost faith in the possibility of lightness. My heart was heavy and so were my thoughts.

“Can I ever get a new boyfriend? Will anyone ever want me: a gray-haired, fifty-something with flab? No, everybody wants women twenty years younger than I am. No one will ever want me. My whole life is a mess. How did it happen that the promise of my young life became such a big, fat mess that all I can do is lie in a puddle of sorrow on my couch in the middle of the afternoon?” Thinking this way made me cry more.

Back in my familiar surroundings, the awakening I’d experienced in Japan had dissolved but nothing had arisen in its place. Without another big trip or project to focus on, I had no choice but to hang out in the confusion of my life. I’d been trying to abide in a state of not knowing, as one of my meditation teachers once recommended. He also kindly said that doing so takes a lot of composure.

My original plan for that evening had not been to collapse in a heap and become immobile. In fact, I’d really been looking forward to going to the Shambhala Meditation Center to see Jetsunma Tenzin Palmo. Jetsunma was an inspiration to me and many others for her profound commitment to becoming enlightened in a female body. After being on retreat in a Himalayan cave for twelve years, she now traveled around the world giving teachings in order to raise funds for the nunnery she founded to educate Indian girls.

Years before, I’d met her at a private tea given in her honor. I’d read that while she’d been in the cave she had practiced yoga daily, so when we met, I shyly asked her about her yoga practice. She just laughed. “Oh, I’m a lazy one! I haven’t done yoga once since I left the cave!”

She was scheduled to speak tonight at seven P.M. At six thirty, I was still a couch puddle in sweatpants. David texted me:

D: Where are you?

C: Here.

D: Are you coming?

C: I don’t know.

D: You love JTP. I think you should come.

C:…

D: I’m already in the meditation hall and I’ve saved you a cushion. Are you coming?

C: I don’t know.

D: Please, please, please come.

C:…

I really didn’t want to see David or anybody else. But I knew that if I didn’t go see Jetsunma, I would regret it, so I dragged my heavy heart off the couch, washed my face, and grabbed a taxi.

I made it to the center just in time to plop down on the meditation cushion David had saved for me and then stand right back up again. Jetsunma was entering the meditation hall. I bowed to show my appreciation and respect as she entered the room.

Of course, she couldn’t care less about that and when she got up to the front of the room motioned for everyone to please sit down. Like everyone there, I was riveted by this bald old lady with the wide grin and a look both wrathful and compassionate and definitely full of spit and vinegar.

She began where it always begins in Buddhism, reminding us of the preciousness of human life. “If we could only realize how everything really is changing in every single millisecond…” I loved everything she said even if I did space out a little bit. And then her voice cut through my daydreaming.

She said, “Let go. Let go. Let go.”

It is said that a sign of a true master meditation teacher is that each person in the audience thinks the teacher is talking just to them. In that moment, I knew she was talking to me. I knew I was holding on to something I really wanted to let go of, but I just didn’t know how. I didn’t know who I would be without the part of me that judges, that expects perfection. Who would I be if I didn’t have my negative story line? Who would I be if I wasn’t mad at David and hurt by his betrayal? I couldn’t find any kind of clear visualization for that, but I knew that I wanted to find it.

After Jetsunma concluded her talk, I was the second in line to get her book autographed. She had picked up her fountain pen and started writing her name in old-fashioned English calligraphy when her assistant said, “Jetsunma, this is Cyndi Lee, the yoga teacher.” She immediately stopped writing and looked up at me with recognition. I was surprised that she remembered me and I felt, as I had before, a genuine connection to her. Her face split into a crooked smile that charmed me, and she squeezed my hand. I was already all cried out or I’m sure I would have started crying again right then. The kindness that came through her soft palm into my hand was something new and I realized I hadn’t been the recipient of that kind of genuine caring for much too long, probably since my mom and I had traded places with caretaking.

That night I sent an email to Jetsunma’s assistant requesting a private meeting. I knew it was a long shot, and his return email matched my expectation, telling me that the schedule was very tight and it was unlikely since Jetsunma was going out of town and had important meetings with high lamas and rich donors. Two days later, another email popped up inviting me to meet Jetsunma the next day at four P.M. I confirmed immediately.

It was a 3-H day: hot, humid, and hazy. A committed New York downtowner, I will go to Moscow or Hong Kong or Rome, but I never go above Fourteenth Street unless absolutely necessary. This day I gladly made the pilgrimage up to Forty-Ninth Street to the apartment where Jetsunma was staying. It turned out to be a fancy building, and my arrival was announced by the doorman while I waited for the elevator. I knew you didn’t have to dress up for a meeting with a Buddhist nun, but I wanted to show my respect, so along with an armful of flowers, I was wearing a pretty flowered summer dress and gold sandals.

When I stepped off the elevator, Jetsunma was waiting for me, literally with open arms. Her assistant took the flowers so that Jetsunma could put her arms around me as if we were old, dear friends and suddenly we were.

“Would you like some tea? I’m going to have some.”

As the assistant nun went to the kitchen to prepare our tea, Jetsunma took my hand and led me over to a love seat where we sat together. She sat sideways on the little sofa in Sukhasana, legs crossed beneath her, so she could face me. It took some negotiating with my slim summer dress but I managed to do the same, and we sat facing each other.

I was a little bit nervous but not terribly because Jetsunma was so friendly she put me at ease. Realized beings are always relaxed. Jetsunma was not out to get anything. She didn’t have an agenda. Being around someone that open shifted the atmosphere. There was no need for small talk.

I told her of my suffering, and mentioned feelings of betrayal and rejection, and a lack of clarity about how to move on. I confessed that I wanted to let go but kept getting snagged by my emotions; so much confusion and sadness and anger, too.

“Oh my dear.” She took my hands again. She might be a celibate nun, but she knew suffering when she saw it.

“I’m so hurt and lonely and I can’t seem to get through to the other side. I’m stuck.”

She said the most obvious and perfect thing: “You have to take it into your practice. Turn it into the path.” It was encouraging that she thought enough of me as a dharma practitioner to say that. I knew she was right and said so.

“I know you know. That’s why you’re here.” Her advice was gentle but clear. “You have to go to your husband and tell him thank you. ‘Thank you for giving me something to work with on my path.’”

I took in a deep breath but didn’t respond. I wondered if I could really do that. Wasn’t that letting him win? My righteous anger toward him flared up, but Jetsunma wasn’t done with the advice.

“And you have to forgive the women, too. You know, they are just lonely women.”

I bristled at that, and she saw it, and said, “Oh, this is going to be tough for you.”

She rustled around a little bit, reorganized her robes so that she could lean forward and hold my hand again.

“You must practice Maitri for yourself. Loving-kindness. Start to do it every day. You do know how to do that practice?”

“Yes.”

“Well, normally you do it for others, but you must do this for yourself right now. Recite these phrases:”

May I be safe,

May I be healthy,

May I be happy,

May I live with ease.

I repeated them with her and then she nodded. “Yes, do this for yourself. This will really help you.”

Instantly, I knew she was right. This ancient Buddhist practice of cultivating feelings of loving-kindness was something I’d practiced for many years. It was always popular among my students because it cuts through thinking and goes right to the heart. Whenever I taught it as part of my Yoga Body, Buddha Mind workshops, I would make sure to have plenty of boxes of tissues on hand. Maitri uses the concentration that has been developed from basic mindfulness meditation to focus on positivity toward others. The scripture instructs the practitioner to cultivate specific thoughts of goodwill, compassion, and unconditional friendliness toward all living beings everywhere, without exception. You learn to hold your attention on these thoughts with a soft heart, which the scripture calls a practice of mindfulness and sublime abiding.

The instruction I had originally received was to say the four lines for three living beings: someone you love; someone you are having a problem with; and finally, for someone who is a neutral person to you. It is easy to wish happiness, health, safety, and a life of ease for those you love, but it gets more challenging to do that for someone you don’t like, and surprisingly, it is often most difficult for those you feel neutral toward. So the power of this practice is that it wakes us up to the fact that every single living being is like us; we all want to be happy and loved. It’s really as simple as that. Once that sensitivity is aroused, we begin to experience our own heart breaking in a beautiful way. This open heart no longer allows us to ignore other people or wish them ill, when we see so clearly that we are all suffering in some way or another already.

One of the concepts around cultivating anything good inside ourselves is that we are a bit like sponges. When we get squeezed or pressured, what we’ve practiced is what will come out. Just like making imprints in yoga class, these loving-kindness imprints will show up when push comes to shove.

Of course, this takes time and that’s why it’s called a practice. But drip, drip, drip, the bucket fills, and eventually Maitri practice is said to create awakening in the heart of the meditator; and traditionally that is a prerequisite to attaining the state of a bodhisattva.

I’d sent these four lines, like prayers on the wind, to my beloved, difficult, and neutral people many times. I definitely have a sense that practicing Maitri has created loving imprints within me. But it was not the same as coming right out and doing the practice for myself. How had I never thought of that before? A bodhisattva must work for her own liberation, too.

We talked about other things, her need to do more exercise now that she was over sixty, and how wonderful it would be if I could visit her nunnery in India. Maybe I could give the nuns a yoga teacher training since they already had a daily yoga practice. But the conversation continued to circle back to me and she stayed consistent in her advice. “Take it onto your path. You know how to work with obstacle as a path, don’t you, my dear? And don’t forget to practice Maitri for yourself.”

A generous hour and a half later, we hugged good-bye and when I hit the street, I didn’t care that it was still a 3-H day. I didn’t care that it was five thirty and I was in Midtown, where getting a taxi is a dog-eat-dog event. I started walking downtown and my gold sandals chewed up my heat-swollen feet, just as they had in Hong Kong. But I didn’t care. It wouldn’t last forever, and anyway, the need to find something outside myself as a landing pad for my hurt seemed to have lifted.

Jetsunma’s genuine caring and gentle straightforward manner had been the soft knife that I needed right then to cut through confusion and open the door to clarity. She not only helped me untwist my mental Moebius strip, she gave me a new direction in which to go. Like coming out of a dark movie theater sometimes makes you notice the brightness of the world, I had a new perspective on my life and another way to live it. It was about letting go, of course. Letting go of my own habits that prevent me from feeling safe, happy, healthy, or at ease.

It would take hard work to break the bones of those old ways of thinking, but I was ready to work with obstacles as my path. I was ready to pull the plug and let my emotional tsunami whirlpool down the drain. And I knew I could do it, because Jetsunma had faith in me and I had faith in her and that equaled faith in myself.

This inspiration rose up in me as I walked down Second Avenue, across Twenty-third Street, past my old apartment on Fourteenth Street. As I took a right on Twelfth Street, heading back to my studio, I noticed that I was coated with city schmutz, stuck to my humid skin. But just like the shower that was in my near future, I felt purified inside, too. Finally, my body and my heart felt light.

Maitri gave me a hook to work with. The practice became my new go-to place, instead of where I used to go, which was the “land of negativity and self-judgment.” Letting go of thoughts when they arise, even in a friendly “oh, you’re here again, but I don’t need you anymore” way had really only been the first step.

It was what I had learned in Deer Park and from Rimpoche so many years before. First, we have to recognize our suffering. Then, we acknowledge the cause of suffering, which is always resisting things being as they are. That understanding points the way to the end of suffering, so that you can begin to walk the path of wise and compassionate living. I simply hadn’t recognized the road that would lead out of my self-critical perfectionism until Jetsunma pointed it out.

Whether it came to my marriage, my yoga studio, a request for a work commitment, or a meeting with an employee, I started listening even more closely to the sensations in my body. When signals of discomfort arose, such as a bad feeling in my stomach or exhaustion for no good reason, I practiced Maitri. I rarely got past the first two slogans.

“May I be safe” turned out to be much more potent than I’d thought. When I asked myself what it would take to make me feel safe, my question wasn’t about needing physical protection in a dark alley. I felt more endangered in certain relationships, at home and at work. I imagined what it would look like if I felt safe in those situations, and just doing that one thing was such a huge act of kindness to myself that everything began to shift.

It worked the same way with “May I be healthy.” I started to recognize the unhealthy habits in my life—overworking, traveling too much, over-committing, and caring too much about what other people might think of me. I admitted to myself that I was afraid of getting overbooked and ending up with an ulcer like I had the year before. I was afraid to return to Tokyo. I had never wanted to admit these kinds of fears before because I thought that buffalo-ing through life meant I was strong and capable. But it was a huge relief to acknowledge what was unhealthy for me—a natural first step toward taking better care of myself in every way. I rejoined the gym, just as I told myself I would, which helped me sleep better, which helped me eat better, which made me feel better about myself.

That old grumpy voice was the one thing not being fed. As she began to dissolve, I had another insight. The most important safe and healthy environment was inside my head. I was no longer willing to live in a place where the law said I had to be perfect. And I was not going to live with someone who didn’t like me, respect me, or take proper care of me, so I broke up with that person—the woman who hated her body—and decided to become the kind of person I did want to live with.

Finding happiness and ease seemed to flow naturally from giving myself a guarantee of safety, making the best safe haven my own mind. I felt more relaxed living with a self that loves me—warts and all.

Louise Hay said, “Look in the mirror and say, ‘I love you.’” Another favorite teacher of mine, Sakyong Mipham, said, “Look in the bathroom mirror every morning and repeat three times, ‘It’s not about me.’” Gelek Rimpoche said, “Equanimity begins with you. Treat yourself better. You can’t divide yourself into parts and hate one part and love another—both parts are you.”

I had come to realize that these words were conveying the same message. I was sick of being sad and mad about being betrayed but I was also sick of thinking about myself so much. I understood that if I took proper care of myself, I would also be taking care of everyone, including my husband and my mom. I needed to cut myself some slack and create my own mental refuge, a place that didn’t mind wobbly bits but did mind a life without joy. I saw that I had a path now—one that doesn’t just steer me away from the old stuff, but moves me in a compassionate direction. When I had left home at eighteen, my friends said, “You must have really hated your parents,” but they’d gotten it all wrong. I loved my parents. I wasn’t leaving to get away from them. I was leaving to go toward something, an undertaking full of unknowns, the whole big world. Self-compassion as the foundation for compassion for others was now my new big adventure.

I met David that night and right away he could tell I was happier and more open. He asked me what Jetsunma had said, but I didn’t tell him. I couldn’t yet get the words out to say thank you for giving me something to work with on my path. But the lightness was still there, lifting my heart.

The Yoga Body, Buddha Mind workshop had come to an end. The core of the OM yoga teachings, this weekend program offers a detailed integration of mindfulness meditation and yoga practice. After learning how to Make Friends with themselves on Friday night, the students practice Dynamic Equilibrium and bravely approach Obstacle as Path on Saturday. Following Sunday morning’s session called Awakened Heart, the teacher training students were once again sitting in a circle with me.

We had gathered in the Space studio, which is the least popular of the five yoga rooms at my center. The design of each studio is based on a natural element: the Earth studio has a terra-cotta-colored ceiling; the blue ceiling in Sky studio expresses the air element; the Sun studio has a saffron ceiling for fire; the Forest studio’s avocado-colored ceiling represents the wood element, and the hallways, the areas of traffic flow in between studios, are painted blue for water.

Some people find the Space studio claustrophobic with its low white ceiling and lack of windows, but that’s just why I like it. New Yorkers are always desperate for bigger spaces, but of course, it doesn’t matter how much external space we inhabit if we don’t have space in our minds. So this pristine studio is my little “inner space” statement. It’s a meditation cave, offering no distractions to going into deeper aspects of our yoga practice, such as learning how to transmit the practice of yoga through teaching.

The teacher trainees looked different, more processed, than they did at the beginning of their course. Their posture was uplifted, their eyes were clear. They knew exactly how to use their yoga props; everyone was sitting up on at least one meditation cushion or blanket, some people using blocks to support their thighs and relax their hips. As a group they had become more dignified and yet more open.

On this Sunday afternoon, they had me all to themselves. They weren’t feeling shy around me anymore. In fact, they were full of questions. What they mostly wanted to ask me were questions we call “What if’s?”

Eric started it off. “I have a question about something I saw recently. What if a student totally ignores the teacher and does her own thing in class?”

Everyone laughed, glad he had asked that. They’ve all seen students act that way and know it can be awkward. They looked to me for the answer.

“Well, there are various things you can do. First of all, you need to make sure that she doesn’t have an injury. If she does, of course, you must help her find a safe way to modify her practice.”

Maggie nodded. “Yes, absolutely, but what if this person is not injured?”

“Well, instead of singling out that student, you can say something to the whole group. For example, you might mention how wonderful it is to be together that day because one of the main reasons to come to yoga class is to be with other people; to practice wakefulness, compassion, and curiosity in a group setting as a template for how to be in the world. Or”—I got an idea—“how about this? Everybody stand up.”

“Us, right now?”

“Yes, everyone stand up and pretend you are not in teacher training right now, but that you are in a regular yoga class.”

They stood in Tadasana in front of their cushions: feet together, quadriceps engaged, shoulders balanced directly over hips, gaze steady and alert. They were ready to follow my instructions.

“Inhale and extend your left arm forward straight out in front of you. And exhale, lower your arm down by your side.”

These students were so into yoga that even a simple movement like this was intensely interesting to them. They made this gesture with complete attention and precision.

“Now, inhale and extend your right arm straight out in front of you. And”—I took a pause—“walk around and shake hands with three people here who you haven’t met before.” This got a laugh because, of course, they’ve been spending every day together for months and months, but the point was made. As they shook one another’s hands, Parker said, “I get it! You’re building community.”

“That’s right! And you will all be able to come up with your own creative ways of doing that.” Clearly inspired, they sat down on their cushions and began writing in their notebooks.

“Although”—I paused, remembering a challenging situation from years before—“I did have a guy who regularly came to my class and did whatever he wanted. One day he started doing the splits while I was leading a quiet, seated meditation! At the end of that class, I tried to be totally non-aggressive when I asked him why he didn’t follow the group instructions. He admitted that he preferred to do his own yoga practice but his apartment was too small, so he had to come to a larger space. It wasn’t easy to tell him that he would only be allowed back to class if he was willing to follow the instructions, but it is the teacher’s responsibility to hold the space in a way that supports the entire group.”

Hands flew up for the next question. “What if a student starts falling in love with you?”

“Well, one thing you can tell them is that lots of people get love feelings when they start practicing yoga, and it’s natural to think it’s about the teacher. But I think really what’s happening is the students are falling in love with themselves.”

“Ahhhhh.” The teacher trainees nodded and looked at each other in a way that reminded me how much they had all fallen in love with one another during this intense training period. Their training was almost over and they were feeling very tender toward one another. Perhaps that’s what brought up the next question.

“What do you do if someone starts crying?”

I knew this question wasn’t just theoretical. They had spent that morning learning Maitri practice and the tissues had been plentiful. I turned the question back to them. “What do you think?”

“Give them a tissue.”

“Leave them alone.”

“Bring them some water.”

“Tell them it’s okay to cry in yoga, that emotions often come to surface and it’s a safe place to feel them.”

I let them run through all these options and when they ran out of steam, I gave them a pop quiz: “What is the first thing you look at when making an adjustment in yoga class?”

They went silent for a second, knowing they’d been taught this key point and not wanting to get it wrong. Renate calmly said, “The person.”

“Yes. Remember, we’re teaching people, not poses.”

“Right, right.”

“You’re almost done with your training. By this point, you’ve got an excellent bag of tools for working with all kinds of students. But the answer to any of your questions is always going to be the same: ‘It depends.’ Good teaching is not formulaic. What you do depends on the person in front of you that day and what you feel when you connect with that person. Any of the answers you suggested could be the right one, depending on circumstances. Figuring this out is where your teaching comes alive. Teaching yoga—and living yoga—is not about reproducing anything. It’s about seeing what is needed right here, right now.”

Heads nodded thoughtfully.

Suddenly, the gap of silence was broken as the Space cave door opened. Cherie, the studio manager, poked her head in. “I’m sorry to interrupt, Cyndi, but it’s your mother…”

Trying to stay calm and dignified, I excused myself, but once outside the Space studio, I rushed down the blue hallway to take the phone call in my office. My mom’s heart rate had dropped to a dangerously low level and the nursing home’s interim weekend doctor, who didn’t know one thing about my mother, was recommending that she be sent to the emergency room.

“No! Do not take her to the emergency room. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

I knew that doctor was covering herself and I did not want my mother going into the hell realm known as a New York City emergency room.

My own heart was pounding as I zoomed up the highway along the East River, wondering if this was going to be the end. My emotions were tangled and complex. There was a seductive sense of relief that this might be the end of the painful journey for my mom, after which maybe I could get my life back. But I also knew that when my mom passed, I wouldn’t get my life back. I’d have a different life, in a world that didn’t include my mom. That thought made me deeply sad. When those thoughts collided, I cut them all loose and tucked my legs—still in yoga pants—under me, sitting tall in the backseat. I tried to stabilize my mind by deepening my breathing, which immediately made me realize this taxi had B.O. Just like yoga practice, coming back to sensation when your mind strays wakes you up and returns you to the present. Rolling down the window shocked me out of my cave-mind. My mother might be dissolving, but there were still tugboats on the river, people fishing off the pier, and kids eating street pretzels on this pleasant Sunday afternoon.

The taxi pulled up in front of the nursing home and I jumped out into the sunny day. On either side of the front doors were elderly people swaddled in their wheelchairs, tended by caretakers like Maureen. It was hard to look at them because they seemed so empty of life. Even the well-groomed uptown ladies, who’d been dressed by their daughters in fur-collared coats and cashmere scarves seemed unkempt, which was less about their appearance than the lack of consciousness in their aura. I smiled at them anyway but got no response as I rushed inside the building.

Millie didn’t respond to me either. It was unclear whether she was sleeping or in a coma, but the nurse said her condition had already stabilized. Maureen was sitting by the bed, working on her crocheting. She reached over and took Millie’s hand. “You should have felt her earlier today. Her skin turned so cold.” She started rubbing lotion on those familiar hands. Maureen had already tucked Millie’s hair neatly behind her ears and rubbed Vaseline on her lips. Maureen hadn’t been able to put a cute T-shirt on her today because she was intubated with IV fluids and oxygen in each nostril.

Maureen looked at me and said, “She’s giving up.”

It’s true that Millie hadn’t taken any food for two weeks, but I wished Maureen wouldn’t say things like that out loud in front of her.

“Yesterday I saw a woman at the end of the bed. A ghost, dressed in an old-fashioned skirt and blouse. She was pretty.” She paused to see whether I thought she was nuts. “Does that sound like it could be your grandmother?”

“I don’t know, Maureen. Maybe.”

“I think it is. I think your grandmother is visiting Millie. She wants her to come home.”

“Maybe, Maureen. I don’t know.”

David says I have to let my mom go, and I know he’s right. But letting go is not the same as giving up, and I’m not ready to give up on her. Neither is Dr. Griffo. He told me she was in renal failure again and may have had a small stroke on Sunday. When the IV fluids and oxygen get her levels up to where she was when she first came to the nursing home, he’ll take her off support. Dr. Griffo has persuaded me to let her take the lead at that point. If my mom doesn’t accept food and doesn’t open her eyes, she will cease to thrive and most likely pass away in a few days. As she is now, she can’t walk, she can’t speak straight, she can’t take solid food, and she can’t die. What she can do is dissolve, bit by bit. Her bones are frail, her skin is dry, her breathing is shallow, and her consciousness is leaking away. But Dr. Griffo said her heart is still very strong.

Millie started slipping sideways off her stack of pillows. Maureen got up to adjust her, tucking an extra pillow under her right side, which seemed to even her out. Her hair began to spread out and her nightie slid down one shoulder. If I didn’t know her, I’d find her hard to look at, too. I wouldn’t think of her as a person who was once vibrant and smart and pretty, a fun mom who taught her five-year-old daughter how to turn cartwheels on the beach. But I do know her and she looks beautiful to me. In fact, the more frail and messy and confused she gets, the more clearly I see her as a person.

I know she wasn’t perfect. Like any daughter, I can think of things she could have done better. She could have been more open with me, shared more of her inner life and asked me about mine. She could have been less scared of her own sexuality and less protective of mine. But she was also the cool mom who slipped me the car keys on school nights and thought it was funny when she found condoms in my high school purse, believing me when I told her I had no idea what they were or how they got there.

My mom was all those moms to me, and all of them were here dying in front of me. David said I should tell her she can go, but I don’t think she needs me to say that. She has never indicated to me that she wants out, and anyway, she’s my mom. I don’t tell her what to do; she tells me what to do. She used to talk to me a lot, and often she’d talk to people who weren’t actually there. But she’s shut down now, and I can’t remember the last time she said a word to me. I talked to her anyway and then after sitting with her until dark, I gave her a kiss and went home.

The nursing home was like being in a cave, too. When I exited onto York Avenue, Manhattan pumped life back into me. I walked the streets for a while before catching a cab back home, where I collapsed into bed. I was exhausted, but I couldn’t fall asleep. What if Millie died in the night? When I did finally sleep, I had disturbing dreams that made me feel guilty. I woke up feeling wasted, dragged myself out of bed, and made the dreaded trip back uptown.

I slowed down as I entered the nursing home the next morning, nervous about what I would find when I got to Millie’s room. Please don’t let it be an empty bed! Maureen didn’t arrive until eleven A.M. and I didn’t really trust the nursing staff to do the right thing, to treat Millie with enough tenderness, to call me if there was a change. I wondered if they were treating patients or people.

But there she was, and nothing had changed. She was alone. Her eyes were closed and she looked peaceful. It was hard to believe she was eighty-six. In a weird way, it’s been a gift to be able to care for Millie. As her illness has deepened, so has our relationship. We’ve become closer, more intimate, more honest with each other. I guess that happens when you have to go into the bathroom stall with your mom to help her with her diapers and make sure she doesn’t fall down. And the big fat surprise of it all is that the more I reflect on how my mom raised me, the more faults I see, and the more faults I see, the more I love her. I can only hope she knows that.

I stepped over to the bed. I knew she couldn’t respond, but maybe she could still hear me. I whispered, “Hi, Mom.” Did I see a slight lift in the corners of her mouth, or did I just imagine a smile? “How about a hug?” I leaned over the hospital bed and scooped my arms under her frail shoulders. When I tenderly placed my face next to hers, it felt as if we were almost the same person. And then, for the first time in many days, she spoke clearly and right out loud: “Love. There’s nothing but love.” She didn’t die that day, but she did speak clearly to me, giving me those words as her final gift.

One last sip of coffee and then I had to get a move on. It was time to get ready to teach yoga. I leaned over to fluff up the cushions on the couch, smoothing the wrinkles in the silk and velvet fabric. I had brought the brightly patterned silk all the way home from a roadside fabric shop in India, and it was delicate. It hadn’t been easy for me to sew these two slippery fabrics together, and I was really proud of how elegant my cushion creations had turned out. I loved this fabric and didn’t want it to get torn. It was worth it to me to take a moment to give proper care to these cushions.

Getting into the shower meant passing the bathroom door, which meant walking past the full-length mirror. I used to say “Ugh!” when I saw my reflection or, on a good day, sigh with disappointment. Today I looked up and smiled at myself. That made me laugh.

Lately I had stopped weighing myself, instead getting feedback about how I felt from, well, how I actually felt. It really wasn’t better to look good than to feel good. When I felt good, I almost always looked good, but when I looked good, I didn’t necessarily feel good. I had begun to appreciate that life is too short to waste it feeling bad.

I had looked up the numbers. In 2011, an estimated 77 percent of American women and girls thought they were unattractive and had low self-esteem. Other studies showed that this way of thinking leads to destructive behaviors like alcohol and drug use. On any given day in America, 45 percent of women were on a diet; 81 percent of ten-year-old girls were afraid of being fat; 91 percent of college women had tried to control their weight through dieting; and 35 percent of “normal” dieters would become pathological dieters.

Girls with self-esteem issues are having sex younger and younger—not for pleasure but because it makes them feel attractive and loved.

So why was I smiling in the mirror? Because something was changing with me. When I looked in the glass now, I saw myself and my body—not just a body, but my body—which is part of me. When I was fourteen, I had hated showing off my new clothes to the church ladies. I still didn’t like being appreciated only for my appearance. It created too much pressure and was, I now realized, an incomplete appreciation of a complex female being.

I mourned the objectification of women, propagated by porn and gentlemen’s clubs among other social ills, that creates a mind-set in which women are interchangeable and ultimately supports a world where rape and sex trafficking flourish. But if I was going to be totally honest, I had to admit that I also propagated the objectification of women through my own hyper-focus on my body, along with harsh self-judgment, constant comparisons with other women, and jealousy of those younger, thinner, or prettier.

I stepped into the shower and the hot water helped me tune in to my body even more. Every day is different, I realized, and depending on whether I felt light or heavy, loose or tight, tired or refreshed from a good night’s sleep, I have an egg for breakfast or cook up some oatmeal. I was getting pretty good at taking proper care of myself, a direct result of liking myself at least as much as the cushions on my couch.

Stepping out of the shower, I thought about my plans for that afternoon. I was going to meet my dear friend Diane at her doctor’s office. She had asked me to go with her to her post-breast-cancer-surgery checkup. It was only a few months ago that we were debating whether she should go for chemo or undergo a double mastectomy, a dramatic option, yet one that would reduce the possibility of her developing lymphedema, which could threaten her career as a high-end hair stylist.

We met for dinner, laughing as we hugged and greeted each other with our mutual nickname.

“Hello, my dzolly!”

“Hello, my dzolly!”

She had requested that we eat at Souen, since the menu had many organic, healthy vegetarian options. In a straightforward, non-pushy, non-guilty way, Diane was simply taking proper care of herself through diet, prayer, yoga, and surrounding herself with loved ones. I was happy to support her by eating at Souen and wondered why I couldn’t do as good a job expressing my needs without feeling selfish.

I always learned a lot from Diane and that’s one of the reasons we had been friends since the late, great eighties in the East Village. She had done my hair for my first wedding—a short, black, spiky do with a tiara. Another time she dyed my two-inch hair blond with a long, fluffy turquoise fringe in the front. A few marriages, many apartments, and even more gigs later, we still looked to each other for help in making important decisions. We were the executors in each other’s wills, and we were always there for each other, no matter what, no questions asked, no judgments made.

“Can I start you off with a drink?” The waitress interrupted at just the right moment. After reviewing her upcoming surgery options, Diane had just asked me what was new in my world. I hadn’t told any of my friends about the book I was writing, although Mary came close to guessing. I had learned that talking too much about a new project could disperse my focus and energy. But I wanted to tell Diane about it because I trusted her to keep a secret. I also thought she would be a great person with whom to discuss body hatred and confused self-perception. Over the years she had experimented with a wide repertoire of clothing styles, including dressing like a man in public. Tonight she looked lovely and slim in a pair of jeans and a pretty spring blouse.

I had been just about to tell her about my I Hate My Body book project when the waitress interrupted. That momentary gap in our conversation was just long enough for my intuition and compassion to kick in. I realized that there was no way I could tell this woman who was battling breast cancer how much energy I had been expending over the years complaining about my looks and my legs and all those other parts of me that were actually perfectly fine and perfectly healthy. What was I thinking?

As Diane calmly ordered Mu tea, I held back tears. “Mu tea for me, too, please,” I said. The waitress left and I told Diane about some exciting yoga gigs I had coming up. She didn’t know it, but Diane had just taught me something new. Through all the years of dancing, working out, practicing yoga, I had never really cut through the ambition to make my body look better, never let go of dissatisfaction with my appearance. But looking at her open face, full of goodness during a time of such tough choices, I realized how fortunate I actually was.

There is a famous Buddhist story about a man who has lost his fortune. He looks everywhere for it, never realizing it has been under his floorboards all along. The message is that we already have what we need, but we are stuck in the cycle of suffering, a pervasive feeling of disease that we think is solid and can’t let go of.

But there is a hidden treasure in all of us all the time. Our spiritual practices—yoga, mindfulness meditation, Maitri practice—offer us paths for uncovering the treasure within, our own Basic Goodness. The sticky stuff inside us that we thought was just a clod of dirt begins to shine and turns out to be a nugget of gold. Sweep the dust and sweep the dirt.

Seiko is filled with craving for a handstand. A regular in my Tuesday intermediate class where we work on inversions, she wants to do a handstand so bad that when I say, “Okay, everybody take your mats to the wall for handstands,” I can see her mind and body turn into a fist. Her focus is not the useful kind, but more like an obsession.

I work with her every week, trying to get her to slow down, to incorporate mindfulness into her efforts, to be interested in her process. I know this is what she needs in order to understand herself—where she is clear and where she is confused, where her leg is in space and why that is not going to take her upside down the way she wants.

“Stay steady for a moment, Seiko, and just feel what it’s like to be you right now in this shape.” She sighs loudly, not unlike my dog when I tell him to sit and stay.

I share a personal story in an effort to inspire Seiko and the whole class: “My dad taught me to drive at the shopping mall. This was back in the day when malls used to close at 7 P.M. After dinner we would go to the mall parking lot, which was empty and therefore, the perfect place for me to learn to drive our German car with the heavy stick shift and clunky pedals. Again and again, I stalled the car and then jerked it forward, grinding the gears as my dad grinded his teeth. But eventually I got the hang of it. Soon he allowed me to drive on the quiet side streets. And now? I’m all grown up and I can drive all by myself on the interstate highways! Get it? Yes, it’s because I went slowly at first that I was later able to keep my awareness at eighty miles per hour.”

I try to get my students to understand that we are going slowly through the preparation for each pose so that we can find out when and where we go off track. Later, when your mind and body are more clearly aligned you can just kick right up. But for now, what they are practicing is paying attention to their habits, to noticing when they occur, and in that very moment, to making choices about how they want to relate to those patterns.

I think this goes in one of Seiko’s ears and out the other. She jumps up and down and up and down, getting frustrated. I could talk about how we all create our own suffering but perhaps that would not be well received right now. Teachers need to pick their spots, too.

But I wonder how I can help Seiko to slow down enough to feel what she is doing. If she did, she would be surprised to realize that she is already doing a handstand. She’s already got what she wants. It’s just that she kicks up so hard that she ends up banging her foot into the wall every time, which rebounds her off the wall and right back down to the floor. It all happens so fast she doesn’t even know she’s up before she is back down. She thinks she needs to work harder, do more, even though I tell her to take it easier, to do less. I know that is the only way she will feel the connections. But for now, she is stuck on the end point, which is why she was super-excited when she finally made it all the way up into a handstand the other day. “Cyndi, I’m up! I’m up!” she squealed in class and then promptly fell down again.

I’m the teacher; my job is to be helpful. What Seiko needs now is a boost up, just like Louise offered to me. I walk over to the wall ready to catch her legs the next time she kicks up. I’ll hold her up in her balance long enough for her to feel that she already has what she has been wanting so badly. If she can get a flash of awareness, a mini-satori, it will plant a seed that might help her suffering dissolve, at least for a few breaths.

The ficus plant in my corner window has managed to keep itself alive for decades. It lives by the window in the house that once belonged to David’s mother, out on the east end of Long Island. Nowadays it’s our private retreat spot; we call it our happy place. We New Yorkers get used to living in a pressure cooker where we are in constant negotiation with buses, bikes, umbrellas, and way too many people just to get across the street. The prevalent nature experience of the city is human nature and, of course, doggy nature. Out here there is open space and more than just a patch of sky. The minute we arrive, I feel my skin expand and my brain fist relax.

I opened the door to the backyard for Leroy to go out, then started in on my comforting arrival rituals, which included taking care of The Plant. Since it’s the only one we have, I’d feel bad if it croaked from lack of attention. That’s why it’s a good plant for me. Sometimes weeks pass between our visits here, but all I have to do is slowly empty a full pitcher of water on The Plant whenever I return, and it starts to thrive again.

I walked over to the kitchen where the red-and-yellow-striped vintage pitcher that David and I had bought together at a flea market was sitting on the windowsill. As I filled it with water, I thought back to my experience in the big earthquake. I’d been home long enough to process some of it, and I felt grateful that nothing much had happened to me except for some inconvenience and a bit of upset. I’d been worried about my friends in Japan but they had written that they were okay and things were pretty much returning to normal.

David went outside to walk around the yard, checking to make sure the fence was still intact and Leroy couldn’t get out. The sun was just starting to set between the still-bare branches. I felt sadness rise, I touched the feeling of that, and then I watched it start to dissolve.

I walked over to the corner window, tucked the lip of the pitcher into the thicket of ropy strands around the ficus’s mini-trunk, and let it start drinking. The ficus didn’t seem mad that I hadn’t been there sooner. It didn’t seem to have abandonment issues or to hold a grudge. It accepted the water. As I moved the pitcher to the other side of the big clay pot and poured, I saw fresh green buds peeking out. Empty pitcher on the floor, I knelt down and gently tugged off the dried-up leaves and stalks so the babies could get the nourishment they needed.

That’s one thing I had learned from the earthquake, the tsunami, and the unsuccessful attempts to stop the nuclear power plant fires: fighting a situation is not as effective as meeting it. Our first impulse might be to fight, to hit back, to meet aggression with aggression. But the earth and all the other elements—water, fire, air, and space—they aren’t aggressive. They aren’t trying to hurt us. They are just doing what they do. Finding the courage to stay steady and meet the situation as it is, without running away or running toward—this was the message I tried to bring home.

Just as I was walking back to the kitchen, David stepped inside, waited a moment for little Leroy to follow him in, and slid the door shut. He followed me in and we put our arms around each other, another one of our arrival rituals that naturally occurs because we are so happy and grateful to be here in this restful, beautiful place.

Almost right away, I stiffened because I remembered that I was mad at David. I was working through my feelings and I’d come to understand that I didn’t always feel safe hugging him. Touching the front of your body to the front of another person’s body, even your own husband’s, is a vulnerable thing to do and that can be scary. I whispered to myself, “May I be safe, May I be healthy, May I be happy, May I live with ease.” That relaxed me.

I still didn’t know what was going to happen in my life, but then again, do we ever know, really? No one knew that earthquake was going to happen, or all the other known and unknown results of that event, which are still unfolding and will continue to unfold for years and years. It’s a big vinyasa; everything that happens plants a seed and everything that is happening is the fruit of a previous seed. I’m becoming more aware of the seeds I’m planting, and I’m becoming more aware of the seeds that have created my current experiences. That also means I can choose which seeds I want to water. Interdependence includes everything, so everything always matters; every thought, word, and action on the spectrum of arising, abiding, and dissolving. Without dissolving, I reminded myself, we can’t grow again.

My Maitri practice has been growing a new highway inside my mind/heart and I have pretty much forgiven myself for being so mean to me. That habit is dissolving. And I have stayed in the hug. Louise Hay’s voice comes back to me: “When you get it, you’re going to get it for everyone.”

Maybe everyone included David, too. If I can forgive myself, maybe I can forgive him. Being in his arms felt like being in another kind of home, another kind of happy place. With my arms encircling his big body, I felt like a human prayer wheel as I whispered to him, “May you be safe, May you be healthy, May you be happy, May you live with ease.”

The reason I can teach so many classes is that I keep up my own yoga practice. After all, you can’t clean the floor with a dirty mop. Nearly every day you can find me down on my hands and knees, or upside down on my head, stretching and strengthening on that special piece of rubber that some call a yoga mat and I call my magic carpet.

Each time is different but the beginning is always the same. Inhale. Then I exhale and begin my practice, perhaps starting with a balancing breath exercise or a body awareness scan.

But today I reached over and pushed play. After teaching so much lately, I needed a break. I was happy to let someone else teach and to be a student following her lead. The DVD started up, and there I was teaching an OM yoga class.

This DVD had been filmed eight years earlier, and before I caught it, I thought, “Ahk! I’ve gotten so much older! I was so firm and smooth and fit back then.” Non-aggressively but firmly, I escorted that thought out of my head and began to take my own yoga class with the body I had right now.

As instructed by my video self, I drew attention to the physical sensations that always arise, abide, and transform as I moved through simple seated stretches into a series of Sun Salutations. I was comforted by the natural feeling of honest heat that grew gradually with continuous motion. The radiant warmth softened up the stiffness of the old dance injuries that lingered in my right wrist and left knee. The tightness in my neck reminded me of the whiplash I got from a sexy dance video move, but I breathed into it, and that hard spot began to melt, too.

Another memory came up. I remembered that while making this yoga DVD, I threw a drama queen fit about having to wear the microphone on the waistband of my yoga pants. For at least six weeks prior to the shoot, I had cut out all sugar, alcohol, bread, grains, and dairy so that I would look as good as I did that day. And then the director told me I had to wear a wide, fat belt holding a heavy metal box, all of which made my waist look thick. The weight of the box pulled down the front of my pants and I thought it made me look like I had a potbelly. And, as usual, I was not happy with the shape and size of my body, anyway. I took care to hide my butt by walking backward or sideways as I moved among the video yoga students. I stood sideways to disguise my schwahangas.

But now, eight years later, I could see that the microphone did not make my waist look thick at all. In fact, I looked terrific. The habitual moment of being jealous of my own ex-body quickly turned into compassion for that person, that me who was so unhappy about all the wrong things.

Could I apply that compassion to myself right now? The first burn of muscular effort in my legs showed up during the fierce standing pose sequence. This sensation was so well-known to me that I was able to relax into it, as if we were old friends. My body and I have always been a team, and we have done this dance together for decades. Thankfully, struggle was no longer part of my yoga practice.

Momentarily, I spaced out, which made me lose my balance. As I began to topple out of Tree Pose, my DVD self said, “We don’t care if we fall over, right? Trees fall over all the time.” Hey, how did she know that was exactly what I needed to hear?

This DVD yoga teacher is pretty good, I thought—perceptive, clear, and compassionate. I was actually still using some of this material in my classes but I also knew that I was a much better teacher now. I had the confidence of eight additional years of experience under my belt.

Another thing I had gained in those years was the commitment to stop criticizing myself. If I thought I looked bad then, when obviously I looked good, I was not going to tell myself I looked bad now so that I could regret that eight years into the future.

These arms that could hold my whole body upside down for five minutes—I was not going to call them flabby.

And these legs that could hold a fierce Warrior Pose—why call them squishy? And what about my stomach in Boat Pose? It was the same V-sit shape we used to call the John F. Kennedy President’s Fitness Club, and I knew I still could do that core builder until the cows came home.

It was time for backbends, and I decided to ignore my own instructions. Instead of doing three beginner backbends, I went for ten advanced versions. Backbending is often called heart opening, so I decided to combine it with Maitri practice. Each time I pressed my chest to the sky, turning my body into an inside-out version of Brunelleschi’s Duomo, I said someone’s name out loud.

The first time I said my own name, “Cyndi.” In between backbends, I rested on my back and whispered:

“May you be safe

May you be happy

May you be healthy

May you live with ease.”

On an inhale I went back up and exhaled the name of my precious teacher: “Gelek Rimpoche.”

The third time up was for someone I loved unconditionally. That was easy. “Millie.” Exhale and I was back down.

Resting for five breaths, I placed my hands on the front of my body and felt my blood pulsing in my belly and my chest. It felt like my whole body was my heart.

Up I went again, and as I exhaled, I tried to think of the name of a difficult person, but here I got stuck. At that moment, I was not feeling negative and I wondered if my theory was really right, that you can’t feel hatred, jealousy, or anger when your chest is this open and vulnerable. I exhaled and came down.

The backbend I was doing, commonly called Wheel, is a big, full-bodied pose. It takes most people a couple of years to accomplish because it requires coordination, strength, and flexibility in your spine, hips, and shoulders. I had that all going on right now. My body, breath, and mind were in a rhythm, and my skin and muscles and bones were working in alignment. Each Wheel gets easier, looser, and stronger at the same time.

I devoted the last six backbends to neutral people. I did not know their names but I could think of plenty of people I had passed by during my day. As the backbends kept unfolding, it occurred to me that there were an immeasurable number of beings to whom I wanted to send wishes of safety, health, happiness, and ease. But ten backbends was enough for today, and anyway, I remembered what Louise Hay had told me: “You can’t do everyone.”

I met back up with the DVD yoga class, moving through twists, forward bends, and a shoulder stand. Then my yoga teacher told me to lie down on my back for a period of relaxation. I slid the hair elastic off my ponytail, and my shiny, thick, gray hair fanned out around my shoulders.

This is called Savasana, Corpse Pose, traditionally one of the most important asanas of yoga practice. My teacher voice told me that Savasana allows the physical body to cool down and thoroughly digest the benefits of practice. In this position, the earthly body absorbs the seeds planted in the previous poses and starts to bear fruit.

At a more profound level, Corpse Pose gives us the opportunity to practice for the moment what we will all face, the experience of becoming a corpse. When we practice Corpse Pose, we acknowledge that we are only temporarily renting this body, and that some day we will have to let it go. Ironically, Savasana is about embodying the experience of no longer having a body.

Lying in this pose was a good time to reflect on the seeds I had planted. Ending my practice session with Savasana helped me embrace more fully the understanding that I am meant to age and change. How fortunate I am to have experienced so much in these bones. As my body relaxed into the floor, my mind relaxed into the acceptance that my life, like every life, is a flowing vinyasa that arises, abides, and, ultimately, dissolves.

I haven’t come into the pose completely yet. I’m lying on my back. My legs have fallen open in a natural way, and I’ve started to do the “work” of this pose, which is letting go of all physical effort. The instructions for Savasana also include letting go of mental focus. So I let my mind wander and observe my thoughts with a light touch, as if I were watching birds playing in the sky. But I was taking my time putting my arms into the traditional alignment alongside my body.

Of their own accord, my hands came to rest on my upper chest and my attention followed. I liked the way my hands felt on my chest. It was comforting to feel the constancy of my own breath and the rising and falling of my hands as they rode the tides of the air ocean.

And I liked the way my chest felt under my hands. The muscles were firm and my skin was soft. As I moved my hands around that area, a familiar sensation began to arise. I touched my collarbone, a place that had always felt elegant, and that sense of familiarity grew stronger. It was because I had been here before so many times. This lovely place of strength and vulnerability, the moist feeling of my après-yoga skin, the quieting of my breathing pattern—this felt like home.

Of course it did. This was the body I use to work, to play, and to rest. This body was the vehicle, the only vehicle that could take me along my spiritual path. I could not get enlightened—or kinder, more compassionate, more stable, truly happy—until I stopped trying to get rid of the body that I had.

I realized that I had decided to accept the assignment of working with this body. Not to get rid of it; not to resent it; not to wish I looked more like somebody else; but to take this body as it was at this moment on the path toward more goodness.

I knew it didn’t have to be perfect, but right then, it felt perfect and I was content. All the bodies I’ve ever had were here with me right now. The young body, the too-skinny body, the aerobics-teacher body, the lying-in-bed-after-sex body, the aging body, the partied-too-much body, the sore-muscles body—they were all with me all the time.

I lay quietly and calmly, letting yoga heal me, as it always did, because it’s not about thinking but always about feeling. And what did I feel? I felt love. I loved my body. Maybe I would not feel this way all the time, but right then, I did.

I didn’t want to be different because I knew there was nothing wrong with me. I knew this because my bones and blood and breath were telling me through the skin of my hand, which felt the beating of my heart. I felt right and good in my body—this body that I had been given for this lifetime and thank you very much. It had done a good job for me so far. Since this was the only container within which I could experience happiness, I wanted to take good care of it, no matter what size or shape it was. If I loved it unconditionally, I might learn to love myself unconditionally, and then to spread this unconditional love to others. That was a good day’s yoga practice.