Taking Risks and Being Zen

I don’t drive over the speed limit.  In fact, I don’t drive as fast as the law allows if I judge that the state has recklessly set the speed limit higher than is really safe for the road.  I don’t gamble, and I don’t in any way understand people who find gambling fun. I am careful and rational, I tell myself, and I don’t take stupid risks.  

I might even describe myself as a person who is governed by fear: I look at the world and have a pretty clear understanding of the many ways in which it just isn’t very safe.  I pass this on, without meaning to, to my daughter.  When she was about five, we were having a discussion about some kind of undesirable behavior she had observed and found fascinating in one of her friends.  I asked, “Do you know why that’s a bad idea?”  She said, “Because I might die.”  This answer wouldn’t have bothered me if in fact there had been a risk of death associated with the bad behavior, but as a default response, it did give me some concern that perhaps I talk a bit too much about worst-case scenarios.

Is it just a coincidence, then, that friends, loved ones, and total strangers often encourage me to relax?  For some years before I ever practiced yoga, various people had been encouraging me to try it on grounds that it would help relieve  my habitual tension.

So I take some pleasure in the irony of how anti-relaxing yoga is for me, especially lately when I show up at the Yoga Shala wondering what crazy scheme Lisa has this week.  The week we did Crow, I listened innocently enough while she described various body parts that might feel...she wouldn’t say pain, but you could kind of tell what she  meant.  It wasn’t until she was a pretty long way along the path of guiding us into the position that I realized she meant for us to be perched on our hands with our feet off the floor -- that, apparently, was Crow.  The idea that someone could imagine that I could do such a thing -- fat, uncoordinated little me -- struck me as pretty hilarious.  Guess what she had in mind for the next week, though -- a headstand.  I couldn’t even laugh at that, just shake my head in disbelief.

I can also say that I was genuinely frightened at the thought of doing either of these things: frightened I’d get hurt, frightened I’d fall, frightened I’d humiliate myself in front of people I might have occasion to see again (such as, for instance, myself).  But what’s a little abject terror between friends?  I certainly wasn’t going to let being afraid stop me from trying.

You won’t find line drawings of my attempts in any yoga methods books any time soon, and I don’t have an inspiring story of triumphing over my fears.  I don’t have the kind of courage that laughs in the face of danger.  But I did try, and I managed an approximation of Crow and the abominable headstand. Given that I only manage an approximation of Down Dog, what more could one ask?

I did  jump right into another kind of risk, though: I started taking piano lessons.

Okay, I had an offer that was too good to refuse, a chance to study with Carla Cash, who’s way too good to be messing around with the likes of me.  And I have been realizing for a while that my seven-year-old already has better technique than I do despite my having had years of lessons, albeit during my childhood in the Dark Ages.  And I would like to play for my own amusement in a way that doesn’t hurt my ears: I sound like elephants jumping none too nimbly on the keyboard, not the best effect if you’re attempting a sweet little minuet.  And I had read a rather inspirational essay about the benefits for experienced teachers of being a student in some other field -- the insights that gives you into coaching as well as reminders of what it’s like to be a student.  So I was really excited and looking forward to getting started.

But what I hadn’t reckoned on was fear.  The closer I got to that first lesson, the more worried I was.  What if I humiliated myself?  I have, in fact, fallen off a piano bench -- though there were cats involved in that incident.

In the end, no animals were harmed in the making of that lesson.  Turns out that wearing your shoulders in your ears is just as counterproductive on the piano bench as it is in the yoga studio, so I’ve added  yet another area of my life in which I have to relax, but honestly, at this point, I’ve heard that so many times that it’s no longer distressing. I’m anxious, I’m tense -- what else is new?  

Piano playing, Carla says, is about managing tension and relaxation.  There’s tension involved in striking a note, followed by release of the tension: fluid wrists, not static ones.  The body has to be relaxed, too -- which means I’m going to have to figure out a way to get my shoulders down that doesn’t just create a different kind of tension.  But eventually, she says, you don’t have to concentrate on relaxing: you can just think about what you’re hearing as you play.  Nice.

I often wish that I could be more zen.  It’s not for want of trying.  But I’m not made that way, I think.  Years ago, as a graduate student teaching for the first time, I had to learn that I come into the classroom with myself every day.  It’s no good wishing that I were more like my imaginary ideal teacher or scholar or person. Rather, I had to learn to use the qualities I actually have to give my students the best learning experience I can.  Some of my qualities are good qualities that I like to think any right-thinking person would wish to have.  Some of my qualities suck big time and are an enormous inconvenience to me in all kinds of ways.  But if my compassion comes into the classroom, it’s a pretty sure bet that my anxiety will too.  I can’t change this leopard’s spots; I have to use what I’ve got.  And I’m actually pretty zen about that.  It’s not the worst thing in the world to pass on to your child the idea that you should try, even when you’re afraid, and that failure doesn’t cancel out the virtue of the attempt.

But that doesn’t mean I want her to be stupid: I’ll never be zen about speeding or gambling.