You can hear Nick read this piece here
I was raised in a secular family with a hint of nature worship. We may not have attended church, but we did have our own sacred rituals. Making lists was one of our core practices, especially for my mom. She was writing lists - things to do, things to remember, questions to ask - right up until a few days before she died.
So come January 1st, following ancestral custom, I produce elaborate multi-level lists of all the things I'd like to learn, practice or just do more of in the coming year. "There, got it all planned out!" I think to myself, momentarily satisfied. In the next instant, the weight of my ambitions settles into my stomach. "You'll need many hours each day to do all these things," quails my inner pragmatist, "What about your existing commitments? Barely enough time to do those well, as it is!"
The next morning, I wake late after tending my daughter's middle-of-the-night fears. Then the get-ready rush takes over, and soon my daily meditation plan surrenders to time-sensitive emails. This has happened enough times that it doesn't surprise me anymore. In truth, I rarely look back at that New Year's list. It is something more like prayer, an offering to my ancestors, a forecast of where I can imagine the tides of life and desire taking me.
There are lots things we'd like to imagine ourselves wanting and doing. The list of things we actually find ourselves wanting and doing is much smaller. How do theoretically good ideas become something we actually do? How do vague desires become driving desires? Could it be as simple as making good lists and working hard? This seems like one of the fundamental mysteries of being human, and a satisfying answer remains elusive... but I have a few suspicions. This essay is me working out my thoughts on the matter, in preparation for a new 6-weeks series I'm teaching in February.
A recent example from my life
This fall, after entertaining the idea for a long time, after writing it on many lists, I began running 3-4 times a week. Unlike previous attempts, this routine has lasted 4 months with no injuries and no signs of stopping. I can now run for 40 minutes with occasional walking. I feel great afterwards and I'm excited to see how my capacity will grow in coming months and years.
Was this a big change in my life, or a small one? From the up-close, phenomenological perspective (the first person, felt experience), the change was small: one day, I simply chose to go for a short run instead of choosing to do something else. Theoretically, any of us could choose to do something different in any moment... but the odds are pretty low.
What tips the scales in favor of taking an unfamiliar path? There was a lot underwriting my seemingly-fateful choice to just start running. I was inspired by the book Chi Running that teaches a low-impact way to run based on tai chi principles. A friend mentioned the book to me over a decade ago. I read the book Exercised that makes a compelling case for endurance running as something the human body evolved to do, which has massive health benefits as well. I read this book to prepare for my fall series in experiential anatomy.
Guided by those books, I chose to start modestly with a focus on my alignment, so I didn't injure myself. In fact, I felt good afterwards. I live right across the street from an indoor track, so my routine doesn't depend on good weather. My wife also got an Apple Watch and loved it, which helped me break through my Luddite suspicion of smart watches and get one myself. The workout tracking and mild gamification of daily exercise works well for me, child of Nintendo that I am. So many stars aligned to make it possible to "just do it".
It's one thing to start something new - another to keep it going when difficulties arise. I started to have some old tension and pain patterns show up after running for a couple months. I tried all my yoga therapy tricks, but the discomfort persisted. It was a chance guest on J. Brown's podcast, Esther Gokhale, who reminded me of a spinal alignment principle I have previously discovered then forgotten, that seems be helping resolve the issue.
Can I really claim that I chose to start running, when my ability to make that choice depended on so many circumstances beyond my control? This contemplation bottoms out at the perennial mysteries of "what is a self in an interdependent world?" and "do I have agency or just feel like I do?"
Setting aside these fundamental questions for a moment, assuming that individuals exist and have choice, I wonder again: how do humans change life for the better?
While this question has been weaponized by marketers to incite endless consumption of cosmetics, exercise equipment and self-help webinars, its roots go deep - perhaps to the origins of life itself. It seems to me that one of the fundamental purposes of a mind, from an evolutionary perspective, is to perceive salient details about the present moment and then change behavior to improve the chance that the next moment will be as good or better than the prior. Whether an amoeba sensing chemical gradients or a human tracking social media likes, the evolved mind is deeply concerned with how things could be better in the future1. (Whereas a mind that just revels in the beauty of cosmic suchness - while phenomenologically lovely - wouldn't contribute much to survival prospects.)
Thus, setting New Year's resolutions simply continues a 4 billion year old tradition of life seeking to flourish in the future.
One of the remarkable things about humans is that we can look far beyond our present circumstances and take action to improve a future that we may not even live to see. The musical Hamilton provides an inspiring example of this perspective. When I listen to the album - especially songs like "My Shot" - I sometimes find myself overwhelmed with emotion. Beyond Manuel-Miranda's virtuosic lyrics, I get high on the incandescent desire and ambition. But then I realize I'm just in my kitchen, loading the dishwasher once again, preparing to go teach a class at my modest yoga studio. Have I thrown away my shot? Could I have done "better" with this life? Maybe this is the year to do something really ambitious: write a book, go viral, return to school and become a cellular biologist...
The second half of the musical astutely shows how the very ambition that fuels Hamilton’s successes leads him to take actions that undermine his legacy, harm his family and perhaps lead to his own death. We might read it as a morality tale about the dangers of letting our innate desire for betterment run rampant in our lives. The desire for more and better is insatiable, the hunger returning as soon as one goal is obtained. This dynamic is vividly demonstrated by billionaires seeking to become ever richer, though they have more money than could ever be spent.
I can see this dynamic more subtly in my running practice. "Ok, I can do 3.5 miles now. It feels good to accomplish something difficult. Why not try for 4 miles next?" I can start to imagine how one ends up running marathons, ultramarathons, barefoot marathons. I don't have that much spare time to train for hours a day, so it seems unlikely I'll go down that route. But if I do, it will not be because I seared a crystalline intention into my psyche and pursued it doggedly. It will happen because it's interesting to gently lean into my edges, and that expands my edge further, etc. It's my pet theory that this is how many of the more complex yoga poses were developed. "Ok, that's cool to do a headstand. Now what if I only use one arm? Now what if I cross my legs in Lotus Pose?"
This all has me thinking about one of the most quoted lines of the Tao de Jing:
A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.
To me, this aphorism often feels either blindingly obvious or subtly judgmental. Like: "Hey asshole, you could be <insert admired person's name> if you'd just get off the couch!" But now Wikipedia reminds me of an alternative translation:
A thousand mile journey begins where one stands.
I like that a lot more. I only have conscious access to this place, this sensory moment, these feelings and thoughts. From that, a decision arises on what to do next. It is my experience, and a tenet of many spiritual traditions, that the more clearly we perceive where we are standing, the more likely our choices will move us in a fresh direction. The more clearly I can sense my body while I run or do yoga, the better I can adjust my alignment and degree of exertion to fit the reality "on the ground". Whereas if I ignore my present state and push through gritted teeth to achieve some arbitrary goal, I risk injury and general misery.
What is this journey? "A thousand mile journey" is not necessarily "a journey that you plan in advance". We love stories of grand plans realized. We dream that we could conceive such a plan and see it through. Probably that works for some people? For me, life seems to proceed largely through improvisation in response to circumstances2. Sometimes my adaptations take the form of planning, but in between the writing of to-do lists, it's mostly sensing and responding to what's happening now. Indeed, sometimes what's happening is that I'm looking back at my to-do list, but what I do next - begin a new task vs. distract myself by checking my email - depends on dozens of other factors besides just having a task written down.
One day I look back and realize I can now run 4 miles. "Wow, look where I ended up!" I'm proposing that what has the most influence of where I end up is how I meet my present moments, rather than coming up with a perfect plan and executing with adamantine will. All I really know is the ground where I stand, and the single step that I can take from there.
A fortunate quirk of the human condition is that we have the ability to choose how we meet the present moment, sometimes called meta-awareness. We can attend to how we attend, and even practice different styles of attention. Many esoteric traditions, including yoga and Buddhism, have identified this - adjusting our relationship to present moment experience - as the primary point of leverage for affecting present and future happiness.
Toltec teacher Theun Mares put it this way:
[It's] a bit like having to scale a sheer cliff face - at first glance it seems impossible, but then we see a handgrip, a foothold and we begin to climb, only to find more grips, more footholds. But the golden rule in such a climb is never to look up except to find another grip, and never to look down, to avoid being overcome by fear of failure.
A high stakes image but it conveys the situation. We don't need to understand how to climb the whole cliff - just look for the next grip.
This February, I'm launching a new 6-week course that explores this strategy for positively affecting our path: tuning to what is available in the present moment, allowing novel perceptions and choices to arise from there.
It is a substantial revision to the Calm Within Chaos course I taught in years past, based on the Phoenix Rising Yoga Therapy group format but updated with new material drawn from modern Buddhism, tai chi, improvisation, nature therapy and everything else that's composted in my brain over the past 5 years. I’m working with three main principles:
Simple, modest goals
We moderns are fortunate to have access to an abundance of spiritual traditions, wrought from millennia of human experimentation, but it’s easy to get a bit greedy as we browse the marketplace of self-betterment offerings. Following the ancient mantra of “more is better”, we amass a collection of methods and metaphysics to address every possible style of suffering. But how many spice blends can we realistically use in our daily cooking? How many self-help books can we read at once?
As the enchantingly-embodied Samin Nosrat demonstrates in her book and documentary Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat, learning to work with fundamental ingredients takes our cooking much farther than learning elaborate recipes. Getting the right amount of salt makes a big difference, but we can’t just blindly add 1 teaspoon because the recipe says so. We must taste and adjust, taste and adjust.
I think the same is true when it comes to yoga. How do I learn Mountain Pose? One approach is to follow a checklist of alignments: parallel feet, level pelvis, lower front ribs, skull back and up, etc. I find this quickly overwhelming. My attention, anxious to get everything just right, barely perceives my feet before rushing off to check my pelvis. I end up relating more to my ideal Mountain than the actual pose itself, more to the end of the journey than the ground on which I stand.
In fact, starting with the ground on which I stand is the perfect place to begin with Mountain. “Grounding evenly into the corners of your feet” is like “add salt to taste”. There is no discrete measure of when this is accomplished, only my own ever-fluctuating experience. Ultimately, the rest of my body is implicated in how my feet meet the earth, and many other alignment ideas naturally emerge from this one.
Thus the thesis of my course: pick a few simple bodymind experiments and give them enough time and attention to really bear fruit.
Interpersonal yoga
Retreating to woods and caves to escape other people and focus on yourself has been a popular yogic move for a long time, going back at least to the era of the Upanishads around 500-700 bce, probably as long as folks have lived in settlements. It still has great value for getting in touch with the Self that is unconditioned by the human drama. But it seems to me that it is exactly the conditioned, social self that could use a little work these days, as we emerge from our pandemic Zoom caves and reckon with the effects of so much time spent in the algorithmically-enforced solipsism of living Online.
We are social mammals, with brains shaped by the demands of group living. I think it is high time for yoga to develop practices of interrelationship. I am thinking of something more than partner yoga here, more than just making shapes together. I want to bring awareness to the “postures” we take in relationship to each other: speaking and listening; pushing or pulling; resisting or accepting. Tai chi push-hands exercises and improvisational theatre games both offer rich avenues for safely engaging social dynamics and practicing different ways of responding. I am also inspired by the social meditation practices developed by Kenneth Folk and Vincent Horn, in which a group practices mindfulness of we instead of just me.
I can’t just spring improv games on drop-in yoga students, so I’m looking forward to seeing what’s possible with a dedicated group, meeting regularly in person.
Bringing the experiment home
The hope of any yoga teacher is that in-class experience will inspire continued practice at home. Of course, daily repetition is optimal for establishing new habits. But intimidating lists of new commitments can be discouraging, especially for the already-overwhelmed. There has been so much disruptive change recently, motivating ourselves to make more is tough.
Thus, I’m going with the frame of “small experiments” to lower the stakes. Short and sweet, they can be done anywhere. What happens if I pause and take three breaths before choosing what to do next? What happens if I bring curiosity to my neck tension, before I try to stretch or fix it somehow? To encourage daily experimentation, I’m going to try creating an ongoing group chat thread (probably on WhatsApp or Signal) where the participants can share insights and receive occasional nudges from me. Might be useful, might be annoying… it’ll be my own small teaching experiment.
If you live around Evanston and feel called to join this inquiry, you can read more details and register here.
This writing journey of about 3,000 words seems to have reached an end. Looking back, I followed a fairly sinuous path through a bunch of different metaphors and then the path sort of petered out. Like the mysterious process of growth and change, there isn’t a neat and tidy conclusion to be found. But now, as I sample the metaphorical broth, it tastes well-seasoned - good enough to serve, at least. Thanks for reading/walking/eating with me!
Recommended: this iconoclastically-readable scientific paper showing that we may have a bias towards imagining how things could be better, not worse:
Read Oliver Burkman's wonderful article, “Everyone is totally winging it” for more on this very forgiving line of thinking.