Aparigraha - Non-Attachment

In Bittersweet, readers are introduced to Min, an extraordinarily gifted violin protege.

Min spent years training under the best violinist in the world -- who instructed her for free because he said he would learn just as much from her as she learned from him. Then, miracle of miracles, when Min turned 21, a 300-year-old Stradivarius violin came up for sale at auction.

She took out a second mortgage on her apartment to buy the instrument that became the Great Love of her life. In what I cannot fully comprehend, it was apparently the only one in the world that really fit her. (Harry Potter? Wands? Anyone?)

Then it was stolen and sold somewhere in the art underworld. Min went into a deep depression that lasted for years. When she finally emerged, it was to write a memoir.

"The moment my violin was stolen, something in me died... I thought for a very long time that it would recover. But it never did. I have to accept that the person I was...with the violin is gone."

Author Susan Cain (Min’s friend) goes on to ask us: What are you separated from? What or whom have you lost?

Loss is the one great certainty of life.

One of the petals of yoga is the yamas, or code of conduct for restraint (how NOT to be) in the world.

Aparigraha is the final yama in yoga's ethical code. It means non-possessiveness or non-attachment.

Perhaps what I am most attached to is my belief about how Life “should” look: find a partner, get some foster kids, edit books for a living. 

Failing that, Life is supposed to look like this: be single and fabulous, teach high school English, spend the summers traveling and writing, eventually find a partner sometime in my middle age, a la Elizabeth Gilbert.

None of that happened quite as I intended. Instead, I am a single woman with 2+ jobs teaching middle schoolers how to be functional human beings who do not intentionally flood the bathroom in the 500 wing every other week.

For me, the tension of aparigraha is in figuring out how to let go of the desire for what I wanted life to be and at the same time continuing to stretch out my hand, to work for more. There it is - that fine balance again.

I want to not be where I am. I literally cannot fathom teaching Fort Zumwalt's scripted 8th-grade curriculum for the next 12 years until I retire. 

I want to keep changing and challenging myself, but I have applied for and been rejected from 17 other teaching positions in the last two months, some within my own district.

What does it look like to un-attach from my idea of how life *should* look so that I can make peace with where I am? How do I hold the tension between where I am and the yearning for something more? And as importantly, how do I let go of what I think I want or need so that I am open to whatever the Universe might have in store?

***

When it comes to attachment, I think one of my strongest attachments is also to the idea that I’m a teacher. I don’t remember the moment I first realized I was a grown woman. But I remember after 5 years with 8th graders, realizing that I was now a Teacher. It was a magical moment.

Now, I don’t know. Teaching seems to have lost a lot of its luster. I’m snappish and jaded in a way I wasn’t before. One of the principals with whom I interviewed said, “Hats off to you middle school teachers. We didn’t realize quite how much socialization you were responsible for until this freshman class arrived, having stayed at home the final year of middle school. They are INSANE. We can’t even teach them the content because we’re so busy putting out fires with classroom management that you guys normally handle in middle school.”

On one hand, that was nice to hear and made me think, maybe the problem is not me, it’s the pandemic-crazed buckets of hormones sitting in my classroom right now.

But on the other hand, did that Fort Zumwalt principal offer me a job teaching freshman English in her building? No. No, she did not. Because my teaching experience is “only middle school.”

In Bittersweet, Susan Cain talks about her time as an attorney. She had been working 16-hour days for seven years in order to make partner at her firm. In her mind, partner at a law firm meant this beautiful red-brick townhouse in Greenwich Village where she’d once been invited by a law partner. She wanted that townhouse or one of its neighbors, the ones with the scripted plaques denoting what famous writer or singer or poet had once lived in that very spot.

And then one day she was informed that she hadn’t made partner. All those 16-hour days, up in smoke. So she quit. 

It turned out that what she really wanted was a sense of belonging and home, and to be one of the writers who’d lived in the Greenwich Village townhouses. So she started writing.

“I’d misinterpreted the signpost,” writes Cain, who then went on to write the NYT Bestseller, Quiet.

***

If I’m honest, what I'm most attached to - more so even than teaching - is the desire to live a meaningful life. If I could go back and redo everything, maybe I’d join the Peace Corps or major in something completely different and work for the UN. 

In Bittersweet, Cain highlights the importance of taking your area of pain and sorrow and making that your creative offering to the world.

She talks about the old tale of Franz Kafka meeting a distraught little girl in the park one day. She'd just lost her precious doll, and after looking high and low, was disconsolate about its loss. Kafka started writing letters from the doll to the girl, telling the little girl all about the amazing places "she" (the doll) was visiting. This went on for a very long time, until one day Kafka presented the girl with a new doll, obviously a different one. "My travels have changed me," read the final note.

The love, the meaning, the purpose we had and lost will come back to us eventually, but it will never be in the same form. Like Min's violin or Kafka's doll or Cain's townhouse, we have to train ourselves to recognize the love and bounty afforded us, even if it looks different than we thought it would.

Aparigraha asks us to un-attach from the things we think we *need* - relationships, job titles, a certain home in a certain place. It is a challenge, at least for me, a person who romanticizes the past. Nonetheless, I'd like to try being open to whatever it is the Universe might have in store. After all, being a high school English teacher is not the only meaningful thing...

Brahmacharya - Non-excess

I just finished reading Dr. Anna Lembke's book, Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence. One of the things that stood out to me in this book is that pleasure and pain always seek equilibrium. When you experience too much pleasure, your body stops responding and you tilt toward the side of pain. When your body receives pain -- as in, say, a prolonged ice bath -- it responds by feeling pleasure afterward.

As humans, it seems we are hardwired for stasis. We do not handle extremes well.

The 4th yama of yoga is brahmacharya. It was understood by the original (all male) practitioners to mean living an esoteric life of chastity. Now it is more about living without excess.

I think it is a pillar of yoga because yoga is about balance -- the dark and the light, the strength and the softness, the difficulty and the ease. To live in or with brahmacharya requires notice and intention. It does not happen accidentally.

Here's another fact I learned from Dr. Lembke's book: Recent research from several independent sources, amongst them Virginia Commonwealth University, has revealed troubling findings about the pleasure/pain paradox: there is reason to believe that the extended use of anti-depressants actually causes depression or tardive dysphoria in patients. We cannot stave off pain forever.

So that's nice.

For the last month, I've been in very dark place. Cara told me it had lasted way too long and that I must call my doctor. He forgot to call me back. When I called again, he doubled my medication.

I never took it. I mean, I kept taking the normal amount. But I didn't double down. All I could think of was Lembke's book and the pleasure/pain paradox. What if it's possible that we are medicating ourselves into oblivion? And brahmacharya - what does it mean to practice non-excess when it comes to both pleasure and pain?

The fog began to lift a little this week. What remained was the realization that I had managed to sit in deep, deep discomfort for an entire month without doing anything.

Maybe I didn't do anything because you genuinely do very little when you are depressed.

But maybe I didn't do anything because I am building a tolerance to discomfort and an ability to stay present in pain.

Pranayama is one of the petals of yoga. It is the art and practice of breathing. I do not like manipulating my breath, so I asked why we had to practice breathing. Isn't breathing like the one thing we shouldn't have to practice? CHECK, I'm breathing! A+

But no. You have to practice breathing, so when you are in the midst of a difficult pose and breathing does not come automatically, you continue to breathe anyway.

My least favorite pose is Dolphin pose, Catur Svanasana. I freaking hate that pose.

You probably can't tell this is very hard by looking at the picture, but it is. Or maybe it's not that hard, and it's just hard for me. It turns out some of the easiest poses known to yoga are hard for me - Reclined Child's Pose; Downward Facing Dog. 

But nothing is as hard as Dolphin.

I feel like my head is going to explode with all the blood rushing into it. All my insides are squished together. I want to die.

Here are some other poses I do not like: 

(Wheel)

 (Crescent)

In all of these poses, my insides are stretched, my torso is under strain, my arms have too much pressure, and I feel I will eventually do one of two things: die or fart.

Obviously, either would be equally as unacceptable.

The one other thing these poses have in common is that I cannot breathe in them. I know Jade and Yoga Elsa would say I am breathing, I am just breathing "shallow sips of air." That wording makes me sound like a fairy, and what I actually feel like is a dying warthog about to expire.

One of the things with teaching yoga is that you have to have a calm and encouraging voice, so you can say things like, "Don't forget to breathe! I promise I'm watching the clock and I won't keep you in this forever. You can do anything for 10 more seconds."

But when I am in Dolphin or Wheel or Crescent, I do not feel like I can do it for 10 more seconds.

Ultimately, what both yoga and therapy teach you is to sit (or backbend or sidebend) in discomfort. They teach you to stay with the thing that is deeply unenjoyable and to breathe through it. Without seeking escape. Without jumping to action. Without railing and mitigating and ameliorating the pain. They teach you to remain in the raw and naked now, knowing that eventually it will end and you will breathe normally again.

Brahmacharya is non-excess. For me, the excess has been seeking to avoid pain and discomfort. I find ambiguity and uncertainty incredibly uncomfortable. Where will I work? How will I pay bills? When will I feel normal again? These are my Dolphin Pose. The challenge is to remain with the anxiety and to breathe through it, shallow sips of air at a time.

And that is the work of a lifetime.

Asteya -- Non-stealing

Fourteen-year-olds have the attention span of a fruit fly, particularly in the last 6 weeks of the school year. For this reason, it was not especially surprising when I asked them to diagram a sentence and one girl started squealing.

“Oh my God, you guys, my order was just delivered from XXX!”

Without thinking, I said the same thing I say to my sister when she says that sentence: “Dang, you know that’s coming from a sweatshop, right?” 

“No one cares,” said another girl.

I was torn. I shouldn't have said anything. But now that I had, and now that this other student had responded, I was in a tough spot.

This year I taught my most challenging group in the city, where I volunteer: about a dozen souls who had just been rescued from a human trafficking ring and didn’t speak a word of English. 

To be honest, I don’t think the organization I volunteer with even realized what these people had been through  -- how could they, when communication was nearly impossible? By the time I taught the group, some of them were under federal protection. I don't even know their names.

Sweatshops are now personal for me. Now that I’ve looked in the eyeballs of people that have been part of a human trafficking ring and lain my hands on theirs while I teach them the English QWERTY system, sweatshops are not just theoretical. 

As everyone pulled up the sentence we were supposed to be diagramming, I finally said, “A sweatshop is a place where people — even children — are forced to work, like, 18 hours a day.”

“Yep. Children, got it. 18 hours. No one cares. Like, literally, no one cares, so stop talking.”

We talk about a lot of things in the 90 seconds it takes students to boot up their shitty Chromebooks and find their vocabulary documents every morning. We’ve talked about everything from lawnmower brands to soccer games to curriculum design to when Mike is going to bring back the book he borrowed from me 7 months ago.

Still, I was angry at myself for commenting on the ethicality of fashion choices. It’s not my job to teach students about sweatshops.

Except that... I've seen the fallout where most people have not.

The third ethical pillar of yoga is asteya: non-stealing. It is the responsibility to give back just as much as one takes - from the earth, from each other, from oneself.

This is hard for me. The OCD part of my brain that ruminates in a continuous loop about literally ANYTHING that I am anxious about does not like the idea of balancing what I give and take.

*should I keep a ledger in my head?

*must I give and take equally from each person or place? Or is it more like a general “I can give this, so I will”?

*what will happen if I take more than I give?

*I’m bad at recycling cans of beans but good at recycling paper towel rolls. Where does that put me?

*my neighbors mowed my lawn for 5 years (over my protestations) because they’d gotten used to doing it for the single mom who lived here before me. Now they can’t. Does that mean I have to mow their lawn for 5 years? I just bought my first lawnmower and I could only afford a tiny one whose battery charge is highly questionable. Also my neighbors have grown kids to help them. And I handled the grocery-buying and trash days. I really hate mowing lawns, and I suck at it, but it seems like asteya implies I’m a real asshole if I don’t mow their lawn. You know. After my two jobs and yoga training.

That brings us to the real crux of the matter.

I am deeply depressed. It got significantly worse after I did everything right -- knew the right people, had the right experience, got the right certifications -- and didn't even pass the initial screening process at a district where the principal WANTED to hire me.

I've spent the last year thinking, "This is my last year here. I can do anything for one more year."

So when that fell through, when I wasn't even allowed to interview, it's like something inside me broke.  I lost all motivation to try anymore.

The teacher's union -- that I pay $700 a year -- sent constant emails and updates about negotiations for next year's salary. My contract just arrived in the mail yesterday. It was for an additional $250. After the withdrawal of pension and taxes, that amounts to $7 per paycheck.

So essentially, my union bargained for me to get an extra chicken sandwich.

I always thought my yoga teachers were being hippy-dippy when they began class every so often with the words, “We’re going to be doing a lot of hip-openers tonight. For those of you who don’t know, the hips are where our emotions are held, so it’s not unusual for people to cry or get really angry after practicing. Just roll with it.”

I honestly never paid attention to this until one night I was out with friends, ran to the bathroom, and started BAWLING for no apparent reason. I felt like a complete LUNATIC. And how do you even explain that to people?

“Don’t mind me, my hips are just open.”

(Also…is it worse the MORE open your hips naturally are?)

So imagine that mystifying bathroom-crying but amplified by 12 because that’s how many hours of yoga we’re putting in per weekend of YTT.

“At least once per 4-hour session, someone starts crying!” I gesticulated wildly to Lucy. 

“Be honest,” Lucy said, whilst rocking her baby. “It’s you every time, isn’t it?”

GAWD, SHE IS ANNOYING.

But also, yes.

I find myself now avoiding the studio and dreading training because I feel like one giant, exposed nerve. And that makes me even more sad.

I don’t really know what the answer to this is. 

Priya, my dear colleague and friend from Bangalore, India, says I must always be thankful that things are not worse. And I am thankful: I am not working 18 hours a day in a sweatshop. I live in a country where I speak the dominant language and people understand me. I am not under federal protection.

But also, I am sad. I don’t know if depression is stealing my joy or if training is. Or if sheer exhaustion is, since every day I’m not at training or at school, I’m at Job #2. Literally every day.

Asteya is non-stealing. I don’t want to steal from my own future by staying mired in this inability to DO anything other than tread water.

But also…I’m too tired to do anything else.

Samskara - Groove

 

Here is a confession: I dislike one of my yoga textbooks so much that I decided the only thing to be done would be to read the entire thing as quickly as possible, so as not to drag out the misery for another 6 months as homework is assigned incrementally.

I love books, but this one is making me feel dumb. I don't get it. There's only so much of "Let your eyes blossom like flowers" that I can handle. I keep falling asleep while reading, which I feel is the opposite of eye-blossoming.

So because I'm a couple hundred pages further than everyone else, I've already gotten to the part on samskara. (For those who are interested, B. K. S. Iyengar includes a multi-page conversation between the mind, the memory, and the intelligence about vanilla ice cream. You read that correctly.)

(look at his eyes blossoming like flowers)

Samskaras are grooves or patterns into which our minds fall. These contribute to our overall patterns of behavior. For a long time now, my pattern has been to think of myself as a secondary school English teacher. I am stuck in this pattern and limited by the choices it affords.

People suggest things like, “Quit teaching and become a tutor full time!” 

I find myself thinking, “Oh, I see you are forgetting I need insurance for the $20,000+ in face shots I need annually.” - samskara

(how I'm supposed to look)

(how I look without shots now)

Or they say, “Quit your job and move to Europe!”

And I find myself thinking, “I see you do not understand the process of moving to a new country without a work visa.” 

And also, “Face shots.” - samskara

Or they say, “Use your international certification to teach English overseas!”

Italy offered the equivalent of $26,000 annually (room and board not included) and a 2-year commitment. Even if you could somehow live off your savings (which I do not have, thank you Fort Zumwalt) for a year, you're committed to making $26K for a whole other year! - samskara

Portugal was like, “It's great here! We pay $36,000 and don’t forget that our tax rate is 40%!” - samskara

Switzerland wanted to be sure I understood the job would be lonely and isolating, as the school was in a remote location and the sessions 6 days per week, so travel would be difficult, if not impossible. - samskara

I know there are people who do this, of course. There are lots of people who find ways to make things like this work, who thrive off of change and uncertainty.

I am not one of those people. You know what I thrive off of?

Safety.

Stability.

Stability is probably my #1 core value. When you are raised by someone with a personality disorder, you place a premium on safety and stability.

Nonetheless, all this yoga homework has made me realize that my job title is my samskara. What if the fact that I love books DOESN’T mean that I should be an English teacher?

“You made a chart, didn’t you?” said Lucy the other morning over coffee.

I gave her the stink eye.

“I knew it. You made a color-coded chart to determine which life path you should take.”

Lucy’s dumb. I didn’t make a chart. 

(Lucy is on my right)

Yet.

I wrote this blog. How important is it that I...

* teach English?

* teach high school?

* make a livable wage?

* could I teach social studies happily?

* work in a more diverse and inclusive environment where my values fit better?

                Questions I run up against:

Would I rather teach high school or make a livable wage?

Would I rather make a livable wage or teach English? 

Would I rather teach at a place that aligns with my values or teach high school?

Would I rather teach English or teach at a place that aligns with my values?

The problem is that I do not know the answers to all these questions. It's a crap shoot. While I'm pretty sure that my primary objective has shifted to earning enough money to support myself on just one job, I don't know what I'm willing to sacrifice to secure a teaching position that would allow me to just teach: 

* English (which I love)

* Values (which make it easier to integrate)

or

* High school (which I've been angling at for years)

I am in the middle of a stint of about 40 hours of yoga in 21 days. I have bruises and aches that I don't even know how I got. But part of teacher training is also sitting in discomfort. And let me tell you, I am deeply uncomfortable.

I’m too tired to think straight, and with every interview I go on and DON’T get, I sink further and further into depression. — Samskara