Tag Archive | Hotchkiss Yoga Tree

Breath

Jun22

I’ve expressed my gratitude for breath before: “Oxygen is the real drug; breathing, the ultimate high.” Quoting myself! I’ve thought about breath a lot over the past decades, more since I began meditating, which curiously coincided with the end of a couple year asthma phase. My precious teacher told me at the time that sometimes people with breathing difficulties do better meditating with a different anchor than the breath. Did I take that as a challenge, or was I simply drawn to the breath because I had been all along? Either way, I’m grateful for how the past twelve years of meditation have increased familiarity with my breath.

I had a grade school understanding of how our lungs work, but until today I didn’t really comprehend how blood gets oxygenated. I’m grateful my NP sent me for pulmonary functions tests today, and grateful for the kind and focused attention of the respiratory therapist Melissa who gave me a quick lesson on lung anatomy, asthma, oxygen saturation, and why altitude matters. Yes, I suffered second-hand smoke from in utero until I left for college at 18; yes, my alveoli are functioning ever so slightly below normal; yes, I have what could be described as mild bronchial obstruction (asthma) that did not improve with an inhaler; but, unfortunately, her tests didn’t seem to reveal the reason behind my chronically low oxygen saturation. We’ll know more after the pulmonologist reviews the results, but in the meantime she concurs with NP that the next step is to get me onto night oxygen. She doesn’t think I should move to the coast of Maine, as the pressure gradient in humid sea level climes often exacerbates breathing difficulty, so there goes that fantasy.

There are complications to be worked out with the night oxygen, primary being that living on solar power I simply don’t have the electricity to run an oxygen concentrator. Period. I’m researching options. More will be revealed. Meanwhile, this whole exploration reminds me how grateful I am for each breath, and for the impaired but nevertheless miraculous lungs that diffuse oxygen into my blood and pull carbon dioxide out.

And in that perfect timing sort of way, a new avenue of respiratory therapy has opened up synchronistically. My dear teacher at the Hotchkiss Yoga Tree now offers a Pranayama class that can be taken via Zoom. I joined for the first time yesterday, and am excited and grateful to add this Tuesday class to my calendar, and incorporate the magic of Pranayama into my daily practice. Wishing you all Happy Breathing!

Angry Monk

Oct8

This monk is pissed off! Bottled water in Tibet these days: He’s tying together plastic, pollution, greed, and climate chaos, with his personal experience growing up in Tibet in the 70s and 80s, when you could dig fifteen feet underground almost anywhere and be rewarded with pure, fresh water. Tibetans would have laughed at the idea of paying money for water! These days, he gesticulates, bottled water everywhere. The best thing you can do for the planet is stop buying bottled water. It’s heartbreaking, inspiring, delightful–miraculous, actually…

I’m grateful that I can be watching an actual Tibetan Buddhist master (who is 7500 miles from the roots of his tradition, and is actually present at the Yoga Tree down the road), from the comfort of my recliner twenty miles away, on the screen of a foldup super-computer. I’m grateful for the Yoga Tree and the Creamery, and all the other people in this valley and everywhere who make it possible for these monks from Gaden Shartse Monastery to travel to small towns with their ancient wisdom. It’s amazing that I am receiving profound teachings from a representative of a lineage going back to Gautama Buddha 2600 years ago. It’s technology, among many other things, that enables this astonishing connection. And it is technology, and our insatiable desire for more and better of everything, that has led to climate chaos.

“We all have responsibilities to be more content with our life and try to protect Nature as much as we can,” he continued, after explicating the six primary delusions of attachment, anger, pride, ignorance, doubt, and wrong view. We need to do the inner work to understand these issues, he taught, and from our balance will flow more balance for the world. A couple of people pointed out that we need to do something now, we don’t have time to rely on doing inner work.

“Recognize interdependence. When self-cherishing is reduced, cherishing of others will grow…. Start from yourself and then teaching your family, friends, near and dear ones,” he explained, “and one becomes ten becomes a hundred… like the coronavirus, this too will spread,” he said. It was a hopeful image, this goodwill for the planet and commitment to the well-being of all creatures great and small spreading exponentially like a virus, until, in my imagination, even our governments, our policies and laws, entire cultures across the globe begin to truly reflect the interdependence of all life on earth.

He concluded the lesson with this pearl: “Die without remorse, and your next journey will be great and fortunate.” I just wonder, where do we come back to in our next life if we’ve destroyed our species and much of the planet? Meanwhile, I’m just grateful when I can live one day without regret.