Just a Goddamn Cheetah, Trying to Save the Koalas
If I have any hope of beginning to heal things in this world, I needed to heal the way I see myself first.
This post was originally written in early 2020 as a reaction paper for my Pranayama & Breathwork Training at Y7 with Michelle Martin. I originally planned to edit it, but decided to publish it in it’s entirety here on my blog.
Before we even left class of the last day of training, I chose to submit my reaction paper on the practice of Tonglen. This practice is something I became aware of in the fall, as I was reading the work of Sheryl Paul, author of “The Wisdom of Anxiety.”
In her book, Paul described her experience with the use of this practice of Tonglen. She describes this practice as a way to meet yourself with kindness, and reverse the habit of pushing away unwanted feelings. Her focus throughout the book is on allowing yourself to be whatever you are, and to feel whatever you feel, in the moment, rather that meeting ourselves with a conditioned response that certain feelings are inherently “bad” and deserving of shame or silencing. Instead, in its most simple form, as described by Pema Chodron, she offers the new habit of “taking in pain, and sending out spaciousness and relief.” She then describes the second step of Tonglen as connection with others who are experiencing the same grief as we are, and breathing out love and connection to them.
Later in the book, she describes using this practice to help her children cope with the pain of seeing a dead animal on the side of the road. She states, “---our kids still fall prey to the natural response to retreat from pain....encouraging the practice teaches our kids that every feeling deserves attention. So I’ll say something like, ‘I can see how sad you felt when we passed that dead prairie dog. Let’s put our hands on our hearts and breathe into the pain, the breathe out comfort and love to the prairie dog and it’s family’.” This story really resonated with me, because I was a highly emotional and sensitive child, and did not have a way to be guided through grief. I am that same highly sensitive and emotional person today, and although now it has been given a name - empath - it certainly does not make feeling things so deeply any easier.
When we practiced Tonglen as a class, it was a huge “aha” moment for me. Being led in the Tonglen meditation was the first time I had felt the effects of the practice so deeply. As I took a moment to envision all the things that were causing me pain at that moment, from the loss of my relationship, to the koalas suffering from the effects of the wildfires in Australia, my eyes flooded with tears, and I realized that even though I knew the intention of the exercise was to allow us to feel our own pain, and the pain of the world deeply, I was still attempting to stifle my emotions because of the group setting we were in. Once I realized this, I made the concerted effort to let go, and imagine my tears cleansing both my soul and the world, much needed water washing away the devastation.
One community I held in my heart during this time was a conservation group in Queensland, Australia that I had seen posting on social media over the weekend of our training. They were trying to save a population of urban koalas from having their homes lost to deforestation, as a new housing development was slated to be built. I pictured these koalas, who managed to survive the wildfires, being killed during the logging process, dying from starvation as they lost the trees, their only source of food and shelter, and being killed by cars or mauled by dogs as they wandered into more urban neighborhoods in search of trees. This all has happened recently (even after the wildfires) in other communities in Australia. The most recent post from the group was that there was a council vote on the new 129 lot housing development that very day, begging for community members to turn up and speak for the wildlife who could not speak for themselves. While I was in our class, it was Tuesday in Australia and I held this group of conservationists and the koalas they were valiantly fighting for in my heart. I cried, as the situation seemed hopeless, with politicians and developers trading favor for favor.
When I woke up the next morning, I was shocked to see a post from the group that the housing development had been unanimously rejected. I immediately wanted to write my reaction paper on the power of meditation - that the collective group in our studio space, the collective group of the conservationists in Queensland, and all those elsewhere meditating on nature, the earth, and those who can not defend themselves, caused this shift in the universe and saved this small, yet vital, local population of koalas. I took a screenshot of the victorious post to include in my paper, and was pleased to have such a beautiful story to share with you.
Then, before I completed the paper, the developers submitted an appeal. The greed in these industries is something I will never understand. I suddenly felt unable to write the paper as planned. I went back over our course workbook, looking for another option that resonated as strongly with me to write about. In the meantime, I worked on my sadhana, doing the pranayama we had learned each day, and bringing it into my work as my patients and clients grew more anxious and uncertain and were in need of grounding throughout the beginning of March, as COVID-19 concerns grew. I missed the paper deadline. Surely a worthy topic would come up in the next day or two, I told myself. Perhaps a client with a story about how the practice had changed them. A neat and tidy ending, a success to share. But no inspiration came. In fact, I grew more unmotivated to write by the day. I would put it on the “to-do” column in my planner, then push it to the next day. I would write an opening paragraph, then delete it and resolve to start again that evening. I even spoke to my therapist about it. Even when I do procrastinate, missing a deadline is highly unusual for me, missing it by weeks, unheard of. She encouraged me to take it completely off my plate for the week, in the hopes that if I did not have it hanging over me, I would feel inspired once again.
This morning, I saw the conservation group in Queensland post again. They were urging residents in their area to write letters protesting the appeal and the housing development. I was deeply saddened by the feeling of hopelessness of the situation, as while the world’s eyes are on the pandemic, environmental regulations are being loosened behind our backs in multiple countries, including the US and Australia. I headed out for my daily morning quarantine walk, and queued up a podcast I had saved, where Glennon Doyle was speaking about her latest book, “Untamed.” In the podcast, she told a story about her daughter Tish, who had the exact reaction I would have had as a child to learning about the plight of polar bears. I realized it is the same reaction I still have today, in this case, about koalas, which are my absolute favorite animals. I laughed at myself for having the same reaction as a five year old. But then, Doyle went on, and when I got in from my walk, I immediately pulled up an excerpt from her book where she tells this exact story, because what she said made me stop in my tracks.
“In most cultures, folks like Tish are identified early, set apart as shamans, medicine people, poets, and clergy. They are considered eccentric but critical to the survival of the group because they are able to hear things others don’t hear and see things others don’t see and feel things others don’t feel. The culture depends on the sensitivity of a few, because nothing can be healed if it’s not sensed first.
But our society is so hell-bent on expansion, power, and efficiency at all costs that the folks like Tish—like me—are inconvenient. We slow the world down. We’re on the bow of the Titanic, pointing, crying out, “Iceberg! Iceberg!” while everyone else is below deck, yelling back, “We just want to keep dancing!” It is easier to call us broken and dismiss us than to consider that we are responding appropriately to a broken world.
My little girl is not broken. She is a prophet.”
Thinking about this as I type, I realize that I can still write about the power of meditation, and more specifically, the power of Tonglen.
What I can not do is write the paper I wanted to write, on the power that I wanted it to have - the power of a group of hearts and souls in a room in NYC, sending energy and love out to the Earth, to change the decision of a group of people in Australia to protect wildlife over wallets.
What I can speak on is the power of meditation to allow me to begin to love another part of myself, a part that I have, in the past, hidden, and become scared and ashamed of, because I was told it was “too much,” that I was too much. Going back to Pema Chodron, as she states in “When Things Fall Apart,” this avoidance or labeling of parts of ourselves is exactly what creates energetic discord. To acknowledge my emotion, as I did when I allowed myself to cry during our practice in a room full of people I didn’t know, was allowing myself to begin to heal. To shift my view on these parts of myself, as Doyle shifted her view of her daughter in the story above, is a powerful next step, because if I have any hope in beginning to heal things in this world, I need to heal the way I see myself first.
