follow your nose

Mindful biking

May 12, 2012October 6, 2013 Katharine Asals5 Comments

A couple of weekends ago I went to Montreal to see one of the special guru type people I have in my life. Though actually she is not a guru the way Robert Moss or Ohki Simine Forest are in the sense of giving workshops and teachings and publishing books, still she has been a major influence. Really, technically, she is simply a psychic. But she is a special psychic – not a corner store neon sign flashing crystal ball type psychic, but a real bona fide seer – special enough to take the bus to Montreal just to have a session with her.

The first time I saw her – sent there on the recommendation of a friend who had heard of her but said she didn’t have the courage to see her herself – she completely spooked me out. The spook was in part because her eyes remain half closed, flickering, the whites of the eyes showing through her eyelashes while she talks. Partly she spooked me simply cause she saw everything in my life with such a searing clarity it was like a knife slicing open my clothes and cutting into my chest and ripping my heart out into the light of day.

However. She never remembers what she says or even your face if you were to meet her in the street – a fact that I’ve become grateful for, as it makes the session entirely private.

She explains the first time you see her that what she does is not about predicting the future, but is about serving as a kind of mirror, reflecting back to you the deeper voices inside your life that need to be heard.

Part of what I love about her is that she’s a Buddhist – well, she doesn’t declare herself as such, but it’s obvious from the few books on a shelf, from the minimalist decor, from the mockery she will make of things like attachment to desire and hope – evidence of Buddhist teachings and philosophy.

This trip I took I’d been craving to see her for months – I knew she would be able to speak to something I was struggling with in my own creative projects, a lack of focus, too many ideas. I’d been struggling with myself and knew I was flapping in the wind, not on track, not clear in my direction. I got on the bus essentially hoping she would tell me which project I should do.

She didn’t.

She didn’t – instead she chastised me (as she always has – or perhaps as my own internal voices always have) and the entire experience left me in a terrible funk for several days.

But pulling out of the funk, I focused on her instruction, her teaching, which was: GO DEEPER. Take up serious practice. Get a life coach, meditate, do yoga, something, anything that will make you Go Deeper.

So as a first step I’ve loaded up the iPod with some meditations and teachings by greats like Pema Chodron and Lewis Mehl-Madrona (a very interesting physician / story teller / healer of the indigenous persuasion) and a new-to-me, but very known and experienced teacher, Thich Nhat Hanh.

Well, Thich Nhat Hanh talks a lot about mindful breathing and mindful walking – and I’ve been listening to all this on my bike ride to and from work. And at first, I thought, well I don’t really have time for mindful walking, I need to get to work, so maybe mindful walking is like mindful biking in a way…. but the distractions of traffic, and trucks unloading in the bike lane, and the dicey characters on the way down Sherbourne who eye the purse in my back basket, and the terrible bumps in the state of the roads in Toronto these days…. and although I loved the amazing peacefulness of his voice, I thought perhaps it was just all too spiritual for weaving in and out of the cars and streetcar tracks, trying not to get side-swiped by the cube trucks talking on their cel phones….

But then I got to a bit in the recording about mindful driving.

He takes you into the possible moments for mindfulness while driving – he talks about being grateful to the red light for slowing you down to breathe and pay attention and go deep…

Well then, true love. I love this man’s knowledge and appreciation of the human condition so completely….

And slowly I’m starting to shift my anger at the trucks in the bike lane ever so slightly. The bumps in the road seem more like an opportunity for an ab exercise to suspend myself above the bike and not feel the bounces of the path. And I’m starting to look at the dicey characters on Sherbourne Street with some affection and compassion.

Animal Friends and Strangers

June 11, 2011October 6, 2013 Katharine Asals5 Comments

At Nicky’s Sunday morning Nia dance class there is a dance she does every once in a while that involves a series of moves which she performs as if she is both a hunter and a bird – several steps take her over to the right where she draws one arm back as if drawing an arrow in a bow, then several steps to the left are taken as the bird flapping its wings, flying away. I’d always thought it was the nature of the dance that drew out this bird and hunter characterization.

But in this Sunday morning’s class, during a totally different routine, she tried to get us to do a chicken flap of the wings while carrying out some steps, and it occurred to me, no it’s not the dance. The thing is, Nicky IS a bird.

What kind of bird? I don’t know, I don’t know all the different birds that well or I can’t see it that clearly, I don’t have that kind of shamanic sight, but something slender, with quite a long neck I think – perhaps a heron.

And her husband is just so obviously a bear – big and bumbly and sweet and generous but with a surprising sudden temper – all around larger than life. As a couple they are quite an interesting combination.

My animal is described in one book I read as “short and stocky”. Oh well. I still love her.

I was thinking about this whole animal spirits idea on the plane coming back from Santa Fe and Ohki’s teachings. My first flight was from Albuquerque to Atlanta, where I had a changeover to a flight that would take me up to Buffalo. But looking at my itinerary on the first plane I realized I only had half an hour to get off one plane and onto the next, and I knew from the flight down that Atlanta is quite a large airport.

First I tried speaking to one of the stewardesses to see if they might help me out – make an announcement to the other passengers to let me out first given the tight time frame. As I told her my plight, her face remained unmoved – no help forthcoming there.

My seat was just behind first class and beyond them was the front door of the plane where we had boarded, so when the plane came to a stop in Atlanta, I grabbed my purse and shot forward into first class, hoping to get close to that front door when it opened.

The passengers in first class were already getting to their feet, so I was stuck in the midst of them and could feel the hostility instantly. I made noises about having a very tight changeover time, explaining my presence. One man on my right looked at me with a sour face and said, “In Atlanta they usually use the middle doors of the plane”. I thanked him for this information and together we stood watching out the window to see where the accordion corridor contraption would go – front or middle. When it became clear that it was moving towards the center doors and I was therefor even worse off than I had been, his look was a triumphant smirk.

I turned towards the back, to see if I might be able to push my way through the crowd somewhat, improving my time, but the man directly behind me had risen to his feet and stood towering over me. He was maybe 6’5″ and wearing a tall cowboy hat and sharp nosed cowboy boots. He had a bit of bloodied kleenex stuck in one nostril and as I gazed up at him with a mixture of amusement at the kleenex and the stress of my hurry and the decades of training in Canadian feminine politeness, he looked down at me with a cold glare that clearly said, “I do not move for you”.

We stood for a minute, feeling each other out for size, attitude, power, and I wondered, where does this man derive all his self-confidence, superiority and entitlement. Clearly physical size and class are a big part of what was going on there, but it did also cross my mind….What animal is that?

Power Animals and Santos

June 2, 2011October 6, 2013 Katharine Asals1 Comment

One of the teachers I follow – travelling when possible to her workshops in the States cause yes, she is that unique and interesting – is Ohki Simine Forest.
An important element of the work she does with people is helping each person discover and build a relationship with their personal power animal. It’s a modernized, workshop-able version of what was pretty traditional Native custom. Ohki herself is Mohawk of the Wolf Clan (clan animals being entirely separate from power animals) and she currently lives in Chiapas amongst the Maya, so she is influenced by both Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) and Mayan cultures, with a dash of Mongolian shamanic education thrown in.
The idea of a power animal or animal totem is that an animal guides and influences your spirit throughout this life. It’s not really as exotic as it sounds – chances are you already have an inkling of your animal, dream of them often or feel some affinity for a particular species. But this relationship can be developed, enriched. As Ted Andrews, author of Animal Speak writes –

By discovering your animal totem, studying it and then learning to merge with it, you will be able to call its energy forth whenever needed.

Ohki expands on this, suggesting more of a two-way street kind of arrangement –

In all cases, this exchange of energy between soul and power animal must be understood as a trade… In the exchange for mutual evolution, it obtains some of your mind’s energy, which you probably have in excess, while it gives you back the instinctual and intuitive power, powers often relinquished by humans.

According to Ohki, the power animal resides behind our backs and above our heads, attached to what she calls the “dream body”. So when you see someone wearing an animal skin or dancing with a skin draped over them, it approximates the location of their power animal living just ever so slightly behind, ever so slightly above the physical body. And dancing, descending into trance with the rhythm of the drum, the heartbeat of the earth, is a way to connect deeply with your animal.
Santeria, the religion of Afro-Cuban culture, has a somewhat similar current in its use of drums to connect with spirit, and in that when someone is born, they are not seen simply as individuals, but are considered a child of one of the various Orishas or Saints, incarnations of characters from Yoruba tradition. Some are found as children to be so highly charged with an Orisha, they are encouraged to follow the path, learn the Yoruba language, and as they get older will go into trance and channel their Santo at religious events. The use of drums, complex rhythms and song to enter into a state of deep connection with the spirits, is a huge part of what has created the spectacular range of Cuban music.

In the fall, my husband and I went to Cuba for his first visit back since he moved to Canada. His mother told us to come over on Thursday night as there would be a party at the house, a Fiesta de Santo – a Saint’s Party, a Santeria event – in honour of Eleggua, the Trickster, dweller of crossroads, opener of gates and pathways.
When we arrived at the house – an apartment, really – people were crowded on the front balcony, spilling out from the tiny living room, the closet of a kitchen, and we could see through the half-open door to the bedroom the Eleggua, not yet dressed, but already deep into his trance, holding court, waving a half-empty bottle of rum as he channeled the ancient spirit. His voice rose with animation and agitation, speaking half in Spanish, half in Yoruba, calling various people into the room and looking deep into their souls and lives and telling them about themselves, what they must do to ease their burdens in life, to clear their paths.
Eleggua’s character is infantile and tempestuous – he sulks and plays tricks and demands candies and rum and songs, exhausting his hosts. At one point, swaggering around the drummers and dancers squeezed into the living room, he took a swig on his bottle of rum and sprayed a mouthful all over my husband. No one reacted. My husband simply stood up, walked to the kitchen and wiped himself off. Apparently the thing is, one must endure his behaviour. And he will test and test and test the limits of that endurance.
I asked my husband who the man was in his everyday life and he said he would just be an ordinary man with an ordinary job who a babalao would have singled out at a young age as embodying the Eleggua. And so he would be called on to do these ceremonies, exhausting as they might be, as little as he might even remember of them.
At a certain point a chicken appeared from the shadows of the back porch, and Eleggua began to dance with the chicken poised on his shoulders. Holding one arm out he balanced the chicken on his shoulder and began to dance the most natural symbiotic fusion of man and chicken, then without missing a beat dropped the chicken into his hands, clutching it in tight, lovingly, to his chest as he danced, and then up went the chicken onto the other extended arm, until he passed the chicken off to someone and began to dance AS a chicken, squatting down amongst the drums and drummers, his head jutting out in sharp pecks, arms as wings flapping, strutting around the room.
Of course the real live chicken didn’t make it to morning, and at some point there was a rather gory spectacle of the chicken’s demise. I was out on the front balcony talking to my sister-in-law when the chicken’s head came flying out, landing small and sad in the dust of the road, and I peeked into the living room just long enough to see the body of the chicken tipped up as Eleggua drank back the flow of blood.
But that image aside, what was most striking in his performance that night was the man’s ability to channel both the physicality of the chicken and the spirit of the Orisha Eleggua, the faculty, the facility for entering fully into a trance state and allowing the self to be coursed through with animal and ancient archetypal energies truly affecting and memorable.