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OPEN MIND OPEN BODY The Yoga of Connection |
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WEEK
17: Fully Showing Up
Things
have been unusually quiet on the discussions board this past week or so. I get
reports from my web site serve on how often people are visiting and reading the
boards, and I know that many, many, many more people are visiting than posting.
In the online world, this is called "lurking." It's an example of
something we do all the time in many situations: show up with the expectation of
consuming some information or experience, without necessarily having the
expectation of contributing to or creating a shared experience. It's
an interesting dynamic that I'd like to explore. You may or may not be someone
who lurks on our discussion board, but I'd bet that there is at least one area
of your life that you are only partially showing up for. Partially showing up
may mean showing up physically but not really looking around at the other people
involved in whatever you are doing. Or it might mean expecting other people to
do whatever needs to get done, especially if you are preoccupied with immediate
personal concerns. Fully showing up is the willingness to engage with life,
where you step out of the role of observer or consumer and ask questions like,
"How can I help?" or "What needs to be done?". Fully showing
up is also noticing things, like how other people and institutions are
supporting you, and how many opportunities and possibilities are present in the
moment. You don't need someone to walk up to you with an invitation and Mapquest
instructions to figure out that there might something worth doing, somewhere
worth going. I
once read a simple story that illustrates this point, and it has stuck with me
for years. A woman staying in retreat at a meditation center noticed this old
dirty pot outside the front steps to the meditation hall. Everyday as she
entered the hall, she had a fleeting thought, "Someone really should take
care of that! It's disgusting." After several weeks of this, she finally
had a different thought: "I'm someone." And she took care of it. Fully
showing up can sound exhausting, if you think it means taking on everyone else's
responsibilities or never having a moment of peace alone. But it really isn't
about that. What you find is that it's more like fully connecting yourself to a
network of support. By fully showing up - eyes open, ears open, energy willing
to be engaged - you become embraced by a great system of interdependence. It's
amazing. It works whether you ask for help or offer it. It works whether you
need something (and give others an opportunity to provide it) or have something
to provide. What
is really exhausting is being a lurker, or a passive consumer. To find
out how true this is, it's as simple as noticing how you feel after a night of
watching bad TV or mindlessly shopping or surfing the internet or eating or
whatever your form of checking out is (especially if you're doing it by
yourself). You think you are enjoying yourself, but if you notice how you feel,
these things never seem to recharge you the way something that fully involves
you (physically, mentally, or socially) does. If you are showing up for life
that way - as if you were a consumer of life - everything Yoga practice is a good example of how fully showing up works. Yoga seems like it would take energy, and sometimes we put it off because we think we don't have the energy for it. But if you are connected to the practice, it gives you energy. If it doesn't, you might not be doing the best kind of practice for you, or you might not be approaching the practice in the most useful way. But ideally, yoga is a practice of being fully present to experience, and meeting experience with deliberate action. Teaching yoga takes this one step further. Ideally, teaching should give you more energy than it takes. If not, I would guess that either you are not fully showing up in your personal yoga practice (so you can't fully show up as a teacher) or that your students are not fully showing up in class (which is a energy drain on them and you). So, all this is an elaborate way of saying, "Hey, let's have some more participation on the discussion boards." As in life, it can be in the form of showing up for someone else - answering a question, responding to their experience - or in the form of simply throwing yourself into the mix - an introduction, a question, a reflection. Notice what you tell yourself if you decide not to - "I'm too busy", "I have nothing interesting to say","Nobody will respond to what I write", etc. Any excuse can be true *but* we often use the same excuse to keep up from engaging with things that really do matter. http://openmindbody.com/discuss/ login: yoga password: connect And while you're at it, notice where you're lurking in the rest of your life. Where do you show up with the hope or expectation to do as little as possible or interact with others as little as possible? Is there a way to see this situation in a different light, and to show up more fully? Take care, Kelly
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