The Gratitude Tingle

I really suck at meditating. I think that my friend Erin is really good at it. I say, "I think", because I haven't actually watched her doing it. Reflecting on that last sentence, I realize that even if I could spy on Erin meditating, there probably wouldn't be any visual clues as to her success or failure at meditating. Even I can sit really still with my eyes closed and fake it, mind racing silently along all the while, like a fine motor car.

Erin does that kind of meditating with a pillow (preferably of a sustainably farmed, biodegradable material), a statue of Buddha, some incense, and utter quiet and stillness. I think that the goal is a progressively longer period of time spent turning inward - the mind a void, the body calm - with the ultimate goal of increased peace and acceptance of oneself and one's world.

Erin, correct me if I'm wrong.

This sounds like a super plan. I have tried, earnestly, (on at least two occasions), to accomplish this tranquil centering upon nothingness. I sat, eyes closed, and focused intently on my "third eye". I even managed to feel an odd, yet not unpleasant, pulsing in the center of my forehead. However, my inability to quiet my mind while sitting so still left me feeling frustrated. Frustrated, with aching buttbones. 

Instead, I do yoga. Yoga was a revelation for me: It's a solid workout while meditating at the same time. Ha! It took me some time to realize this; I'm sometimes a bit slow on the uptake. The slowness seems to accelerate with the increasing number of children birthed and years gone by. 

My extensive background as a dancer (think "technique" not "tips") prepared me to kick ass at yoga in a way I could not have anticipated. So, every time I go to class, it's an ego boost. Yeeeees, (I hear voices), I know that the yogi ethos is to distance oneself from the ego, but dammit, I need a boost now and then. In fact, now more than ever. 

I'm really good at it. That is nice. It makes yoga satisfying and relatively easy to do. The ego boost is a nice little ancillary benefit, as is my butt that looks better than one would think for a 35 year-old with three kids.... But the real reason that I go, five, six, all days a week? The Gratitude Tingle.

I suffer from what I call Fake Problems. I have seen and do currently see a therapist for these Fake Problems. We can also call them First-World Problems. Why are they fake? Partly, because they are in my head. Why are they First-World? Because I have never heard of a woman in Uganda, or Bangladesh, or North Korea seeing a therapist to help them with their negative self-talk. If I were in Uganda, or Bangladesh, or North Korea, I'm not sure that I would have the time to do much more than make sure that my kids were safe, healthy, and had enough to eat.

Even in our First World Nation, however, I consider myself to suffer from Fake Problems. Quite recently, I met a woman who has led a life filled with Real Problems the likes of which I hope to never know, and still, bless her, she stands.

She got pregnant at 16. Her Mom told her to abort - she didn't. Her Mom told her to put the baby up for placement with an adoptive family - she wouldn't. At that point, her Mom told her that when the baby came, she would have to get out. She had raised her own children and wasn't about to raise her daughter's. 

So she moved in with the Daddy. Only he didn't act much like a Daddy. He was young, too. He drank. He beat her up. The police were called. The neighbors were involved. He sent her to the hospital on more than one occasion. So, with a little boy to care for, she left.

He called and he begged and he promised and she had nowhere else to go, so she went back. He convinced her that if they had another baby, everything would get better. It didn't. And then she really left.

She pulled herself together and toughed it out and made it work and met a really good guy, a guy who is the biological father of her third child, but the practical and real father of them all. Twenty years after it began, she's still standing, smiling and looking damn good and putting her whole self into her life. Those are Real Problems.

I really do have Fake Problems. 

But the point (there's a point?!) is that yoga melts the fake. In motion, I am so centered. Literally. If I weren't, I'd fall. My body is this beautiful machine and I trust it, hell, I even forgive it when it tweaks or wobbles or makes my head spin. I am not thinking about much at all when I wipe the sweat away. The instructor is a voice and I am there to listen.

Tonight, as is common is a yoga class, the teacher asked us to bring to mind a purpose for our being in class. She asked us to name, in our minds, the reason for our presence. And so I answered, (in my head, because otherwise people would have thought that I was weird), gratitude. This was funny, to me, because at the end of class, she read several passages from what she later showed me is titled, "The Book of Gratitude". 

She read several passages and they all meant something to me, but the one that she wrote down for me is this:

The way you think is how you feel. The way you feel is how you behave. The way you behave is the world you create for yourself.

Erin, I think that you might already know this one....

When I am well, when I am not suffering a "mood", I am able to see my life rightly and to understand that my Fake, First-World Problems are diminished by the gratitude I feel for healthy children, a husband who loves and provides for us, and a life perhaps not of plenty, but certainly enough. 

When a yoga class ends, I am so hot and so sweaty and my blood is moving through me and lying there in the humid calm, I tingle. In my mind, I thank my husband for pushing me into this time for myself. I can see and hear my children laughing. I am fortunate. 

I come home and I still have three boys and it's still loud and there's still madness and I may have to consult the orange Post-It upon which the yoga teacher wrote for me, "The way you think is how you feel..." and I know that now is not more than now.

Gratitude.