Tag: Yoga

My cat, chanting, purring, and my experience at my meditation center

I shared this story about my cat and my own experience chanting and becoming more joyful through chanting and meditation when I hosted a program earlier this month at the Siddha Yoga Meditation Center in Ann Arbor.

My cat’s name is Floyd, and the reason I want to tell you about him is that my experience with him parallels a little bit my experience in Siddha Yoga. It’s a story of purring to share increasing comfort and joy.

Close to 15 years ago, we adopted a stray cat. We were walking into the door of my apartment building, and a cat started calling to us. He came to us from across the little street, meowing the whole time. He was scrawny and bald in places where he plucked out his fur in response to flea bites. He looked ragged, and he was really hungry. He seemed sweet, not feral at all, and I brought him inside. He seemed to understand living with humans. He was hungry. He fattened up and his hair grew in and he remained a talker. He also had a very soft, very subtle purr. I recall being surprised by a cat with such a loud and demanding voice had such a tiny purr.

Well, the other day I realized in an affectionate moment, that he has a much louder purr than I remembered when we first met. His purr is more fervent now. I think that over time, as his comfort level and his trust have deepened, and so has his purr. When he purrs, he draws me in. His purr expresses happiness and prompts me to give him more affection so that he’ll continue to purr.

I did a little research on why cats purr. It was interesting. Cats purr as kittens when nursing, when receiving affection from us humans, and they purr sometimes when they are sick or scared. So, cats purr for communication, and depending how you interpret why ill cats purr, it is either for self-soothing or maybe healing. According to an article in Scientific American, the frequency of the vibration of the purring actually may help bone density and healing.

Well, you might wonder where I’m going with this. As I thought about all of this, I thought about my own experience with Siddha Yoga and how I have opened up like he has, how tuning into his purring and the practices and has helped me enjoy life so much more.

I showed up the doorstep of the Siddha Yoga Meditation Center just like that stray kitty, hungry for knowledge, hungry for peace of mind. I was restless, looking for something. I had always known I wanted to meditate. I tried a local class, and I ended up frustrated and sore from the sitting positions or asanas and no closer to the peace of mind I was seeking.

At one point, I shared this urge with my scientific mentor. It turned out she also had a meditation practice and a community, this one, and she invited me to accompany her to a satsang one Thursday night.

I arrived at the Siddha Yoga Meditation Center in Ann Arbor in late spring in 1998, right after the death of my father. That night, like most Thursday night satsangs, we chanted and sat for meditation.

It was the chanting that caught me. I was struck by how the chant started solemnly. In those slow early verses, I experienced a lot of the sadness I was carrying around. But then, something magical happened, the chant sped up, and I found myself carried along with its momentum, and the end was fast and joyful and fun. And I had the experience of going along that entire arc. And I had the sense that by giving myself to the chant that I would be soothed, met in sadness and brought to joy. And I had the sense that when I was singing solemnly, I felt solemn. When I was singing joyfully, I experienced joy. I had thought it was the other way around, but acting in those ways drew forth that experience, drew forth that same energy from the world around me.

I also found, as I still do, that the chants continued to give to me, sticking with me as melodies or words or just that lovely well being that I experience in the chant. The words or melody would popping back up in quiet moments, reminding me, reconnecting me to the experience, to joy.

So, chanting was like my purring. It was and still is a form of self soothing, but it is also a practice of expressing and of cultivating joy, and drawing it to me and sharing it with others.

June 18, 2009
Considering Commitment – How to Choose?

I must confess, I have been an exercise dilletante. I am following my whims and switching between my Iyengar-based Yoga for Scoliosis DVD, cycling outdoors or spinning at Vie, and then rope yoga at the Ann Arbor RussaYog studio. I’ve been attempting balance – the scoliosis yoga once a week, and something else (Russa Yog or spinning) once. And in between, I might binge on stress or food or computer work or volunteer work or all four together.

I talked with Jasprit at RussaYog yesterday. He said that if I was to focus on RussaYog, I should do it three times a week. I recall when I researched the requirements to teach Iyengar Yoga, I read I needed to be in three classes a week to prepare. What’s magic about three? Three seemed impossible to me at the time, but with other life changes, it might be do-able, if I focus and work to eliminate another obligation or two…But it would soak up any time I’d otherwise give to a cardio activity.

I also have the sense that yoga elongates me, stretches my body, and derotates the spine, but spinning is good for my heart and being more vigorous, it releases pent up nervous energy. Spinning does aggravate my neck, tho. I am leaning towards yoga in some form, but I am concerned about missing any cardio. I do walk to work, and I suppose I can go back to walking up the stairs to my 5th Floor office….

I’m doing a little reading online, and the argument is perhaps alternating between the two – so three times a week of EACH yoga and of spinning, but I think jumping from twice a week to six times a week is simply impossible, especially with work and other non-athletic volunteer/service activities. Sigh. Hard to choose.

November 5, 2008
Rope Yoga at RussaYog in Ann Arbor (gratitude #33)

After my first experience of Rope Yoga at Vie on S. Ashley Street in Ann Arbor, I’ve been going to the RussaYog studio on S. State Street. There are only a few blocks in between them, but I thought that I would experience the classes taught by the founders, Jasprit and Teresa Singh.

I’ve really enjoyed my classes there. I like the music they play, I like the challenge of the classes and how soundly I sleep afterwards. I like the athletic and diverse posters on the wall (from Marilyn Monroe to Scotty Pippin (I think).

Even better, my massage therapist has reflected back to me that my upper back and spine really seem to respond well to it. She essentially told me that if I knew what was good for me, I’d keep going back to the RussaYog studio. Happy to do so!

August 7, 2008
Wise words on meditation

I was trying to explain meditation to a friend the other day, and I found myself struggling. She asked how I quiet my mind in meditation, and I said, well, I am not always successful, but that meditation gives me a set time to practice. She asked what it was like, I said it varied. But I said that I knew that whatever happened when I sat down for meditation, no matter what it felt like, was meditation. That was hard to get across, and I’m not sure I did.

It had taken me a while to get to this understanding, and I think it came through watching the effect of the meditation on myself and on my day to realize that even if the meditation felt choppy or even not like meditation at all, sitting down for it always benefitted me.

So, I was thrilled to see this passage in The Heart of Meditation, confirming this experience.

Much of the work of meditation takes place underground, and much of it is imperceptible. That is one reason why we measure our progress in meditation not so much by what happens during a particular session of meditation, as by the subtle ways in which a regular meditation practice changes our feelings about ourselves and the world. p. 273. The Heart of Meditation: Pathways to a Deeper Experience.

August 1, 2008
The Happiness Hypothesis
I first heard about The Happiness Hypothesis from twitter, from @zappos tweet on having finished it, to be exact. I was especially interested in the premise of this book–a look at ancient wisdom and modern psychological research. Jonathan Haidt carefully reviews 10 ideas that have been threads in ancient wisdom and have been addressed in psychological research. Specifically, he looks at
1. The divided self. The notion of a divided self (mind vs. body, left vs. right brained, new vs. old, controlled vs. automatic responses).
2. Changing your mind. Our experience of the world comes from our perception of it. He goes on to explain that some people just “win the cortical lottery” and have a higher happiness set point (S) than others.
3. Reciprocity with a vengeance. How reciprocity binds us together as a society. Why gossip is actually not as bad as the sages said (it provides a feedback loop on who can be trusted and is a form of bonding).
4. The faults of others. How we’re so good at seeing others’ faults, and so blind to our own shortcomings. He details research on the four main causes of violence and cruelty (the obvious – greed/ambition, and sadism, and two less obvious and seemingly good – high self esteem and moral idealism). He then reiterates how meditation and self-examination can be used to reset the storytelling and encourage cooperation.
5. The pursuit of happiness. How both lottery winners and paraplegics return to their set happiness point after the initial adjustment period ends. How we adapt to the conditions of our lives and take them for granted soon after they arrive. That happiness (H) is determined by the biological set point (S), the conditions of your life (C), and the voluntary activities (V) you do.
6. Love and attachments. The stages of attachment to parents, caregiving to infants, and how it relates to our attachment to romantic partners. The differences between passionate and companionate love, and which is true love.
7. The uses of adversity. Is it true that we need obstacles to fully realize ourselves? When is an obstacle a hindrance? It appears that family and social integration help people weather crises. So, for the isolated, adversity is more damaging. Youth confers a benefit of resilience as well.
8. The felicity of virtue. The differences between character and actions. The 24 principle character strengths (test at authentichappiness.com).
9. Divinity with or without God. The relationship between Flatland and the Bhagavad Gita. The effect of witnessing someone do a good deed: elevation.
10. Happiness comes from between. The meaning of life, the meaning within life we create. Altruism, competition, and cooperation.
The final message: it isn’t all about retreating to a mountaintop and meditating. We have to work on the internal (S) and on the external (C and V) to increase our happiness/well being. More on the book at happinesshypothesis.com
July 21, 2008
A decade in my meditation community (gratitude #23)
I just realized that this is my 10th year in the local Siddha Yoga Meditation community. At the time I first went, it was about a block and half from my apartment, but it took me several months to get there. I don’t know the date of my first visit, though it would have been around this time in 1998. That was a hard year for me: my father died at the end of April that year, and I was also pushing myself to finish a dissertation in biology but my passion for academics was depleted.

I came with the hard questions in mind: how to be at peace with my father’s life and death (lived on his own terms, not in agreement with mine), how to be still, how to be present, how to let go of my expectations and be open to life as it really is.

I had an intuition that meditation would help. But sitting in meditation was excruciating. Moments passed like hours, my body ached and my mind worried and fretted. I came to the Siddha Yoga Meditation Center of Ann Arbor at the invitation of a friend, after a frustrating meditation class elsewhere. I came with the intention of learning to meditate, but my heart got caught up in chanting. Good thing, too, because it took me several years of chanting to be able to sit well for meditation. I suppose I had to clear my system, or else get comfortable, or maybe just grow into it. Hard to say. But now, after 10 years, I can see all that I have received from Siddha Yoga.

What a blessing the center, the community, the teachings, shared chanting, shared meditation, the friendships, and the grace of the guru have been for me.

Over the last 10 years, I have become:
- more gentle with myself,
- more thoughtful and grateful,
- more able to receive,
- more connected to others and more open to connection,
- more content.
Some of this is, perhaps, the wisdom acquired through an additional decade of living, but much of it was gained through the inspiration and teachings of the Siddha Yoga tradition and through applying the practices of chanting, meditation, and self-inquiry modeled at the center.

The Siddha Yoga Meditation Center in Ann Arbor is at 3017 Miller Road Ann Arbor, MI 48103. It’s just west of Ann Arbor, on the NW side of M-14. We have public programs Thursday evenings 7-8:30PM and Sunday mornings 9-10:30AM (often followed by breakfast/brunch). (edited to reflect new location in 2012).
May 19, 2008