From an Instagram post I made 58 weeks ago when pandemic was young:
🌿My survival strategies: breathe, nature, allllllllll the immune-boosters, hand-washing (obvi), flower essences, kriya for the 10 bodies, metta meditation, extra dance parties, sewing, reading, cleaning the kitchen, frequent hugs from the people I already share every germ with, visionary fiction writing, CBD salve, more yoga, tending the altars, texting randomness to my apocalypse survival team (it’s informal), WORK, studying for finals, hugging my cedar tree/earth-mom. How about you?
@kelly_sunrose on instagram
To state the obvious: the last year has been challenging, devastating, clarifying. I do not want to go relive any part of it. However, in these months of ongoing adaptation, inventiveness, care and resilience, there were so many lived lessons that I do want to remember, that I do want to analyze and refine, that I do want to bring with me into the future. And so I am remembering.
That Which Is Remembered
Yoga originated in India, and it is a Darshana (worldview) made up of different margas (paths). The texts from which so much of yoga’s wisdom, perspective and nourishment come are traditionally categorized in two ways: Shruti (that which was heard) and Smrti (that which was remembered).
Shruti texts are said to have been heard directly from their Source, that is the source of all things. Smrti texts have been shared and remembered. Smrti texts have been transcribed in the intervening centuries, and particularly in the case of the Ramayana, the result is heterogeneous: the stories and teachings reflect the places where they circulated and the lived experiences of the people who heard and told them. As I share often whenever we chant mantra or engage with a sloka or sutra, by engaging with these teachings, we become a part of what brings the lineage from the past into the future.
So, too, are we the lineage holders of the stories of these times. The teachings of yoga that have been braiding themselves into your methods of adapting to pandemic and your ability to recover from the shocks and losses of the year(s), these have the potential to become your own smrti texts: for yourself and for the future.
What Is Memory?
“Memory is recollecting past experience.” Yoga Sutra 1.11 In a practice that centers presence, and advocates a state of being that is beyond thought, what place does memory hold? Ravi Ravindra writes, “To dwell on memories is clearly to live in the past. However, memory just as valid knowledge and clear thinking, can also lead to a deepening of search for something which is in a dimension other than that of time, and therefore quite other than thought, knowledge, or memory.” Remembering, thus, can be a portal for transformation.
Memory brought forth seminal texts such as the Mahabharata and the Ramayana, stories in which the teachings are embedded in the lives of their characters. By remembering the past– seeing clearly both the mistakes and the medicine–, we inhabit the present more completely and dream a future beyond what we know to be possible, having learned from the impossibilities that came before. Moreover, re-collecting the past through journaling, recorded conversation, artifact assembling and art making is a way to both remember the events of our lives, what was important to us in the moment and how we felt. All of these are powerful totems.
Walter Brueggeman writes, “Memory produces hope in the same way amnesia produces despair.” But we are not engaging in a nostalgia project, here; rather, we are re-collecting our lived experiences as a reminder, a talisman to our capacity to adapt, to survive, to heal.
Memory as Prompt for Resilience
Resilience is our ability to cope with a shocking, painful or stressful situation. Coping with stressful events (such as we have all done in varying degrees over our entire lives, and especially the last year) increases your resilience.
In spite of the word resilience’s proliferation in contemporary culture, and in spite of attempts to systematize the ingredients for its expression, resilience remains mysterious, mystical even. Under what conditions are we able to heal and grow from an event rather than shatter and collapse? (Let me be clear: sometimes the collapse is what leads to the rest that ultimately allows for healing; incorporating ample opportunities for rest is a clearer path to resilience.) We don’t entirely know. We do know that expressions of resilience thrive when we practice awareness and reflection (The Community Resilience Reader). As yogis, awareness (buddhi) and reflection (svadhyaya; self-study) are part of our practice’s infrastructure. We are in a practice of creating conditions to support resilience.
Personally, in the moments where I felt the most stretched this year (when wildfires left our air unbreathable and literally off the charts for air quality hazards), two things specifically brought me back from the panicked, “I need to get out of here now” place: 1)seeing a sunflower bloom in my front yard when we returned from our safer air retreat; 2) remembering my place in my own lineage— I was here because people before me survived. I would characterize these instances as observing and recognizing resilience in nature and remembering my place in the web of life. Since that time, I have called on the sunflower, the ancestors and my own resilience throughout this year in particular to flex resilience in new challenging situations: it feeds itself.
By re-collecting our resilience, we prime ourselves for the future AND we envision a future audience who can learn from our work and carry it forward.
How to Begin
- One of the simplest ways to engage your memory in this way is to practice recalling the highlights of your day at dinner or bedtime. I love to do this in conversation, but even calling back the events of the day as you tuck yourself into bed and close your eyes is a powerful shift towards reflection and intentionality.
- Journaling is magic. I place no requirements upon myself with respect to content (sometimes I need to vent, sometimes I want to write about a global news event, everything is welcome). Over the past year, I began journaling first thing in the morning, before my meditation; this has helped my meditation practice, too.
- Creating writings, artwork, collections, interviews based on prompts. This is profound, because it invites us to consider our lives from a perspective that might not have been instinctual; in other words, prompts invite us to consider things from a new angle.
What is your practice of remembering like?
I’m sharing an online meditation and re-collection practice beginning May 15. If you would like to join, I’d love to practice together. Learn more here.
LOVE TO ALL+++
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