Ahimsa: Taking My Own Ripe Journey

The eight yamas and niyamas are a set of yogic guidelines that are similar in purpose to Christianity’s Ten Commandments.  Both serve as a set of rules or laws that support the functioning of relationships and society through tasking the individual to act in certain ways.  However, the yamas and niyamas are not undergirded by the threat of “Thou shalt not…” with the implication being “Or else!”  There is nobody to be afraid of with these restraints, whereas the Ten Commandments are based on the fear of God’s—and by extension, society’s—wrath. 

This is a good thing, because if ahimsa, which is often translated to “nonviolence,” were an actual law, I would be on Death Row.    I violate it multiple times a day toward myself, hopefully less often toward others.  For me, this translates into the fear of not being good enough and not doing enough.  One result is that I have become a slave to my planner and email inbox.   Deborah Adele talks about this very thing: “I had created a violent inner world of pushing, overdoing and under-sleeping…” which leads to this:  “…how we treat ourselves is in truth how we treat those around us.  If you are a taskmaster with yourself, others will feel your whip.” 

I believe that these pressures are not just personality traits that she and I share, but are also deeply political.  The emotions I feel are partially internal, but they are also external, resulting from gendered and cultural forces outside myself.  For example, there is the guilt for not meeting certain expectations for professional women, like being good at my job, having a clean house, and being nice, all on the same day.  That pressure, and then the subsequent anxiety, anger, and guilt at not living up to some invisible, unreachable standard, are socially driven.  Thus, that violence I commit against myself, and subsequently others as I take the role of stern taskmaster, is fed upon by socially constructed cues about what it means to be a woman, a teacher educator, a wife, a sister, a daughter, a friend. 

Ahimsa, and other elements of yoga practice, provides a counternarrative to these pressures.  The idea that I am okay—not just okay, even, but perfect--just the way I am, is radical in western thought.  How can I be perfect when I forgot to shave my legs, dirty dishes are in the sink, and there are 114 unanswered messages in my inbox?  Self-acceptance feels Stuart Smalley-ish:  “I’m good enough, I’m smart enough, and doggone it, people like me.”  This seems faintly ridiculous because our culture provides archetypes of perfect women, wives, mothers, etc., and it is clear that I most certainly am not “good enough.” Instead, yoga tells me that the external does not matter; that I am indeed a worthy human being, just like everyone else.

Running and yoga are good lessons in ahimsa, as my expectations are necessarily limited by my physical body.  My lungs, heart, and legs can only be taxed so far, so fast.  My hips and hamstrings will only stretch to a certain point.  Wise coaches and yoga teachers tell me to listen to my body.  This listening has become part of my running and yoga practice, and as a result, I have been able to push my own perceived boundaries in unexpected ways.

If I am to practice ahimsa, this acceptance of my physical boundaries will necessarily carry over to the rest of my life by recognizing and respecting my personal and professional boundaries as well.  I have a job in which, as one colleague said, there is no end.  I could work 24 hours a day, and there would still be emails to answer, proposals to write, papers to grade, classes to plan, ideas to consider, students to support, colleagues to share.  This is what drew me to this work in the first place:  it requires engagement of my mind and my heart.  I cannot imagine a better fit for my personality than this profession. 

In order to have the energy to do my life’s work, then, it seems I must try to understand and appreciate all that is mine to do, and all that is others’ to do.   One of the ways I violate ahimsa is that I try to fix things for people instead of letting them figure it out for themselves.  Deborah Adele suggests that being a fixer and worrier is a violation of ahimsa, because when we worry about others, we imply that they are not capable of, as one of my student teachers said, “taking their own ripe journey.”  When I consciously withdraw my worries and fears on behalf of others, I have more positive energy to give to the world.  

In this way, ahimsa is both personal and political.  It is personal, because it means living with integrity through recognizing and respecting my own boundaries.  It is also political in that it asks me to resist gendered and classed pressures that are implicit and explicit in this culture. However, ahimsa does not require that I withdraw from the world; just that I make deliberate, thoughtful, and compassionate choices.   It is both freeing and frightening to step outside the familiar zone governed by fear and judgment.  Like everything, this will be a nonlinear, recursive process, in which I get it right sometimes, and fail miserably at other times.  I may not have Stuart Smalley’s confidence, but at least I can get off my own personal Death Row.    

A Runner's Valentine

This year, I knew I would be at a conference for my class that was scheduled to meet from 4-6 p.m. on Valentine’s Day.  I asked a colleague to cover for me, and she said, “Sorry, I can’t.  My husband is a romantic and I know he will have made wonderful plans for us!” 

You would think that she was a newlywed in the first throes of early love.  But no, she has been married for many years and has a grandchild in high school.  I began thinking about the role of romance in my own marriage.  We will be married 18 years in June, and the romance, as traditionally constructed, has been gone for awhile now.  My birthday is within a few days of Valentine’s Day, and Nels has been known to ask, “Do I have to buy a Valentine’s Day card too?”  If he has to ask, there can be only one answer.  On a Valentine’s Day a long time ago, I shamed him into buying me flowers, and it was just all wrong.  Instead of being a gesture of love, it was a gesture of guilt based on my culturally constructed feeling that flowers=romance=love.

Ironically, I have received the most beautiful flower arrangements from him for my last few birthdays, even when he is out of town, as he was last week.  This is from a guy whose normal idea of a gift for me (and anyone else) is from the clearance rack at Marshall’s.  The bargain is part of the narrative of gift-buying for him. 

Over the years, my ideas about romance have changed.  I love the pure beauty and riotous scents that my birthday flowers bring to our late-winter, scratchy-heat home.  Not only are they an expression of Nels’ recognition and appreciation of what I enjoy, but they contain the early promise of spring.

 However, the real romance occurs not in a fancy restaurant or B&B, but on the East Bay Bike Path.  When we are running, we can talk about all the easy and hard things we are experiencing as individuals and together.  For some reason, hard truths are more palatable while running; maybe because we are not looking at each other, or because we are both engaged in physical effort, or because we are engaged in a shared experience even as we are talking about something potentially polarizing. 

In addition to these potentially difficult conversations, though, there is also the encouragement Nels provides for me as a runner.  He can compute numbers in his head (I love to test his actuarial skills by throwing out random equations about money or running times) and his newest calculation indicates that it is possible for me to run a BQ (Boston Qualifier) in my late 40’s.  “All you have to do is get down to 3:45!”  he enthuses.  I ran my last marathon in 4:26.  I have my doubts, but he does not.

For me, the ultimate in romance is someone who believes in me more than I do myself.  So, no, honey, you never, ever, have to buy me another Valentine’s Day card.  I love you. 

Still Running?

“Still running?” my mom asked me during a recent phone conversation.  My first reaction was the exasperated, “Of course.  Why wouldn’t I be?”  But then I realized that I haven’t been a runner all that long.  Four years almost exactly, in fact.   My mom has known me as a non-runner for a lot longer than she has known me as a runner. 

I did a little running during high school and college, mostly to keep my weight down.  At IU, I would jog at the HPER indoor track with my Walkman on, singing to Led Zeppelin and Van Halen loudly and off-key. After graduating, my workouts were intermittent.  I would get a gym membership for awhile and then let it lapse when I got bored with working out on machines.

When Nels and I moved into our first house, I started my almost-daily walks around the neighborhood.  Nels would join me sometimes, and we developed an hour-long route in which we managed to pass all the houses with outdoor cats and see how many we could pet.  There were regulars who trotted down their driveways as soon as they saw us.  Others regarded us with wary disdain. 

We established another walking route when we moved to Rhode Island in 2005 and made some new feline friends.  Because I kept a brisk pace for an hour 5-6 days a week, I considered myself reasonably fit.  My weight stayed stable for the most part, and I assumed that my lifelong lack of speed, agility, and flexibility meant that walking was all I would ever do.  It never, ever occurred to me to run. 

That changed after a visit back to Indiana for Christmas in late 2006.  We had a short layover in the Philadelphia airport and had to run from one terminal to another.  I remember trotting along the horizontal escalator, lugging my giant backpack, just to see the plane pulling away.  For the next hour, I coughed uncontrollably and couldn’t catch my breath.  We sat in white rocking chairs in the middle of the terminal as I hacked and wheezed, trying not to call too much attention to myself. 

“What’s wrong with me?”  I whispered hoarsely to Nels, between sips of water.

“You’re not in shape,” he said.

“WHAT?”  I thought.  Luckily for him, I couldn’t muster the breath to cuss him out.  “Of course I am in shape.  I walk almost every day!” I said to myself. 

Slowly, slowly, as he ate breakfast and I continued to gag, I realized he wasn’t insulting me.  He was telling the truth. 

So I started running, and he joined me.

We started to run sections of our former walking route, carefully rationing the running parts to be downhill or at least level.  At one point, Nels got injured, but I kept going, and decided to enter a 5K race in Colt State Park that summer.  I looked at training plans online and bought a real running watch.  Much to my dismay, when I timed my first mile at the local high school track, it was over 12 minutes.  For that entire spring, I alternated running days and walking days, finally running 3.5 miles in 40:30.  I wanted to make sure I could run at least that far before doing 3.1 miles in public.

The race was on a balmy June evening.  I was scared.  Would I come in last?  Would people make fun of how slow I was?  When I pulled in to the parking lot, it was reassuring to see kids and dogs, as well as runners of various shapes and sizes.  I had never realized that there would be other runners like me.  Real runners, especially those who entered races, were skinny people with ropy muscles, I had thought.

I finished the race in 33:58, faster than expected given my practice times.  I didn’t come in last, either.  My grin lasted for a week.       

I ran my last marathon at a faster pace than that first 5K, but nothing has surpassed it as far as joy and pride.  That’s when I became a runner, and I haven’t stopped since. Luckily for me, long distance running does not require speed, agility, flexibility, a skinny frame or ropy muscles. It simply requires health, perseverance, and listening to my body. 

For me, running is not a seasonal occupation, nor is a certain race on my bucket list.  Running is now part of my lifestyle, part of my identity, and part of my marriage.  So, yes, Mom, I am still running.