A Labor of Love

I have no excuse for not sharing. I have been writing, just not sharing.

Rather than dwell on that, I figured I could just jump right in to what's been going on for me lately and how yoga ideas help. (Speaking of yoga, I will be teaching new classes with Visalia Park and Rec so stay tuned!)

I talk about this idea of Dharma Peak as the mountain we are climbing in our yoga practice. I talk about the climb, the work, and the effort we put in while trying to get where we are going. Here's a secret, I think that I talk about these concepts because they are easier for me than some of the others! It's easier for me to think about what I can do than try to figure out this idea of non-attachment. Easier than even just sitting still. I'm always trying to do something.

Which is fine. But... This "doing" could be done as a labor of love. 

I’ve been working, searching, and studying. I have come back around to this yoga idea of pain or hard work (tapahs) as a means to purification. What I have realized it this. Accepting the hard work is one challenge. Understanding and awareness of the reason that we accept it is another.

The hard work, the struggles, the challenges we put ourselves through in the pursuit of something better would be more beneficial to us if our intention was to do so out of love of ourselves.  If we think that we are not good enough and that is our motivation, we are only setting ourselves up for more disappointment. "All grief comes from expectations." – Amma

"Doing" because we are not good enough goes against this other yoga idea of underneath everything we are perfect and whole exactly as we are. "Doing" because we love ourselves, now that's another angle. A slightly new one for me. I get love. And I get work/effort. I just haven't always put them together. How can work come from love? 

I am not talking about work as in what we do as an occupation, although that is a good place to start. If you think about work that you do because you have to versus work that you do because you love it, do you see a difference? The work in either case is not the variable, our ability to come from a place of love is what is changing.

When I grow up...

"When I grow up I want to be an astronaut!"

Or at least that's what I thought when I was in grade school. That was my answer to the big life question that we were already supposed to have the answer to... at age six. Since birth maybe. I remember it now; coming out of mom, seeing the world for the first time, and thinking, "this is alright but I want to go up into space!"

A few years later I had to get glasses, big nerdy blue frames. My dreams of being an astronaut were shattered. All was still well, I was going to be a professional soccer player! In High School I tore my ACL and had to have surgery, another dream shattered... well... actually I am not sure I was really ever good enough anyway so really it just gave me a valid excuse for why I couldn't make it.

Somewhere along the line my High School Calculus teacher caught me drawing in class. Despite the fact that it was a pretty true to life picture of her, glasses and wrinkles included, she seemed quite impressed and began to put my artistic talents to use. Long story short I ended up an Architectural Engineer and I started my real job in the real world.

Sure, I took pictures even then... but mostly of cracks in concrete and water damaged wood. I started trying to think of a more interesting way to capture cracks, a way to get better light or more variety. But all the cracks started to run together. It was then that I realized something...

No, it's not what you might think. I had no idea I wanted to be a photographer. What I realized was that I was bored. So I did what any rational person would do. I quit my job. It really wasn't as simple as that, but for times sake let's say it was!

For the first time in my life, I suddenly had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up. It was refreshing! I knew I wanted to work with people and that I wanted to make them happy... but that was as far as I got. Luckily I had some things to keep me busy, I had a wedding to plan. But one can only plan their wedding once and then they need to get a job.

A couple of photography related things happened...
We hated didn't like our wedding photographer. Our fault, we knew better. We gave matted 8x10s as wedding favors to our guests. They were pictures Marc and I took, but mostly Marc. People loved it, they even fought over them! Suddenly I saw it, a way to make people happy! And once we were married, "what's mine is yours, right honey?" So I used Marcs talent to build a business and now... here I am! Brenda Bergreen of Bergreen Photography, a husband and wife photography team!

And once again I know what I want to be when I grow up...
HAPPY!

Sequoia National Park Yoga

Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart. And try to love the questions themselves.

-Rilke

I just returned from a backpacking trip in Sequoia National Park . I was so busy hiking and taking pictures that I didn't get to write in my journal. Typically the wilderness helps me clear my head and find inspiration. I think it still did both but I do not have any insightful words to share. Pictures on the other hand... I have tons of pictures! 

While hiking I go through phases ranging from "I love this" to "my feet hurt" to "what was I thinking" back to "ahh beauty." I sometimes get frustrated with myself for not being able to move past those thoughts and feelings of frustration that come with hiking long distances or steep climbs. But then again, if it was easy...

Stress 101

Trained as an engineer, I often seek outlets for the "softer skills" of life with desperation. I feel a need for teamwork, healthy communication, and empathy. Maybe it is a result of living the "little sister" role or perhaps my thin skin... but either way I think that we study hard on a lot of subjects but neglect some of the most important things in life. Where do we learn how to have a healthy relationship? What class is it that teaches us how to manage stress, emotions, and dealing with bullies? I feel like I was fortunate enough to have some amazing mentors in my life. However, I sit here able to solve complicated mathematical equations but am unable to figure out why certain people push my buttons...
Insert Yoga.

I wanted a share a little excerpt from The Science of Yoga.

"What ever happened to mental hygiene?" he asked rhetorically. "It doesn't exist- and never did. When you went through high school, you were never taught how to deal with stress, how to deal with trauma, how to deal with tension and anxiety- with the whole list of mood impairments. There's no preventative maintenance. We know how to prevent cavities. But we don't teach children how to be resilient, how to cope with stress on a daily basis.

Love and do what you will...

I am going to re-post the same picture from the last blog...
Simply because "love" keeps turning up. All my "yoga" and "life" books and thoughts and things keep coming back to this theme of love. That's kind of why I haven't posted in awhile. I have nothing new to say...
 But hey, if I have to be constantly reminded of something... there could be worse things!

Love, because it is the only true adventure.
New addition, "Love and do what you will." What will you do if your foundation is love?

"Dilige, et quod vis fac."  
"Love and do what you will."
St Augustine on 1 John 4:7–8

"Love, and do what you will: whether you hold your peace, through love hold your peace; whether you cry out, through love cry out; whether you correct, through love correct; whether you spare, through love do you spare: let the root of love be within, of this root can nothing spring but what is good."

The "root" of love... what will grow? Planting seeds...
Just in case you are a fan of St. Augustine, here are a few more of his famous quotes to ponder...

"Late have I loved you, O Beauty ever ancient and ever new! Late have I loved you! And, behold, you were within me, and I out of myself, and there I searched for you."

"You have made us for yourself, O Lord, and our hearts are restless until they rest in you."

"Patience is the companion of wisdom."

"Hope has two beautiful daughters. Their names are anger and courage; anger at the way things are, and courage to see that they do not remain the way they are."

Yoga for Spring Cleaning!

We went to visit my mom to help her with some house cleaning. Not your typical broom and dustpan type cleaning but the complete overhaul of a house that our family lived in for 20 years! It was emotional tug-o-war as we tried to figure out what we "needed" vs. what we "wanted" vs. what we were attached to because of the memories associated with it.

"It's just stuff." The stuff is not the same thing as the memories. But that association is strong and hard to detach from.

I will say this, my mom did an amazing job letting go of a lot of stuff. The local GoodWill is now newly stocked with truckloads of stuff. It seems like mom is even almost ready to let go of the house. It's crazy to see the home I grew up in look completely different and to recognize that "it's just a house." When does a house become a home and when does it go back to being just a house?!

It's not the mess, the stuff, the full house, that is the problem... but rather what it represents. We hold on so tight to things that at one time were so important to us, we need to remember to let those things serve their purpose and then let go of them so that we are able to move forward. Marc and I made the trip because we didn't want to be the reason that she had to hold onto the house. The house should not be a storage unit for my stuff. The grandkids will visit grandma even if she doesn't live in the house that we grew up in.

We need to remember to de-clutter our "stuff" as well as our minds and hearts in order to make room for growth.We want to grow and become better people but we are unwilling to let go of old habits. Hmmmm?

Self-ology

I find myself on a soapbox once in awhile regarding what is important for us to learn... 

In school, I'm not sure I had a singular favorite subject... I loved them all (I know... nerd!)

It is interesting to look back on my few or many years (depending on who you are) and think about what are the most important things that I have learned. 

I'll fast-forward to my conclusion..

 I wish that I would have learned more about "me." I think that when we go through changes, challenges, and choices in life it seems that it would be nice to know more about ourselves. Our minds, bodies, hearts, spirits. Our emotions, reactions, strengths, and weaknesses. Our likes and dislikes, our pleasures and fears. Our beliefs and morals.

I graduated with a BS in engineering and what I have found most useful in the "real world" is surely not calculations and solutions. No... what I have found most useful is conversations and friendships that have led me to understand myself better. People that encouraged me to follow my dreams and trust myself. People that encourage me to live passionately. THANKS to those people.

So, I did a little internet searching and have some quotes and inspirations on the subject below.

The secret of success is concentrating interest in life, interest in sports and good times, interest in your studies, interest in your fellow students, interest in the small things of nature, insects, birds, flowers, leaves, etc. In other words to be fully awake to everything about you & the more you learn the more you can appreciate & get a full measure of joy & happiness out of life. I do not think a young fellow should be too serious, he should be full of the Dickens some times to create a balance.

http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2012/02/02/jackson-pollock-father-letter/

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.  ~Henry David Thoreau, 1854

“Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom.”
Aristotle (384 BCE - 322 BCE) quotation

I only went out for a walk and finally concluded to stay out till sundown, for going out, I found, was really going in.  ~John Muir,