Retreating and Transformation

Hi, Boomers,

Sometimes you just have to say: Enough! I'm full. I can't take it anymore. There is no more energy left. I'm spent. Basta!

Sometimes destiny plays a role in my life. Sometimes the "others" get in the way of my life. And sometimes I'm just plain tired.

It was a week of practicing the Tao. Daily losing. I had to pick my self up emotionally, spiritually and physically. It began on Saturday night at the milonga - the place where I dance tango. I lost someone I thought was a friend. I don't know why. Men retreat when they are emotionally tied up; women plow forward to explain and explore. I couldn't even begin to penetrate my male friend's feelings and angst. I had to let it go. I'm not sure I have just yet. Daily losing.

My book arrived via UPS at and my door: Sixty, Sex, & Tango Confessions of a Beatnik Boomer. I had read the manuscript for months, edited it, stared at the cover endlessly, and when I got the books - hard and soft cover - I didn't know what to do and I didn't know what to feel. It was familiar and yet foreign. Who wrote this? What's it about? What kind of value does it have, if any? Was it a dream? Did someone else write it? A swirl of emotions and feelings engulfed me. I wanted my mother at that moment. Mom, I did it. I wrote it. Are you proud of me? "I knew you could do it, honey. You can do anything you set your mind to." I missed my mother intensely for days. Where was my dad? Smiling and laughing at his daughter whom he adored. Daily losing.

Endless decisions about marketing the book. Google ad decisions. Book signing decisions. Meta tags. What is everyone talking about? No one was speaking English. I was out of my element I had no learning curve left. You have to have a public relations arm. Why? I'm selling the book on Amazon and Barnes so why do I have to hire a someone? Press releases. I can't decide on which cities. Frustration mounting. Daily losing.

Over a month ago, I had thought it time to go on a yoga retreat with one of my yoga teachers at my home studio - the place where I started teaching yoga. I had gone on several retreats over the years but I hadn't been on one for years. I committed to going on the retreat without knowing exactly why. It turned out it was a good decision.

I leave tomorrow for 3 days to Ojai in order to leave myself behind. My brain is in over-drive and I am challenged daily because I want my old self back. Too many tapes playing in my head. More stress than I can handle. I want to find emptiness and peace, and maybe, a little transformation along the way.

My state of being needs a wake-up call. I realize that some things need to change in this moment.

So what is my intention on this retreat?

Stress is uncomfortable and disturbing. The way I work through stress is in my yoga practice. I've neglected my practice. I have left no room in my life to practice except rarely. I'm teaching way too much. I need to return to the spiritual nature of my being, to the teachings and practices of yoga and meditation, to chanting, to exploring paths to enlightenment all the while remaining unsure and insecure about my path, and I need to reside in the center of my path with acceptance and surrender.

I have been blessed with so many gifts in my life: my incredible sons, my four vibrant grandsons, and my soon to be born granddaughter, my beloved Penelope. I was nurtured by loving parents and supported unconditionally by an amazing brother. I have been blessed with some talent to teach and inspire in theater and in yoga and I want to be daily aware of these gift and not get lost in situations and frustrations. I'm going to take my gifts with me to my retreat and absorbed the light.

Namaste

Joan

The Brain Matters

Hi, Boomers,

I was strolling on the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica Saturday morning, walking toward the AMC theater to see "Inception" and enter the dreamscape of the mind. The annual UCLA health fair was in full swing. Booths lined either side of the center aisle of the Promenade. It was a health information overflow. I was proud. UCLA is my employer. One of the places I teach yoga on campus is in the Public Health department, a building which also houses the brain mapping imaging center. It is in this building that meditation classes are held and the effects of mediation on the brain are studied - or mapped.

I was a women who spent most of her life on the floor of my bedroom or in a gym for early morning aerobics to keep fit. I loved the effect of releasing endorphins. It made me joyful and gave me unending energy. One of my fondest memories was attending a 7 am aerobics class in the trendy Las Vegas gym called The Sports Club and working out with a room full of executives, judges,lawyers before we all took off for work. Our teacher was AJ an Army drill instructor, who put us through our paces non-stop for forty minutes. I then went out to lift some weight before going home to make my boys breakfast and start the day. It was all sweat and work for the next twenty years until I discovered yoga - and that was after a trail of Jane Fonda aerobics, step aerobics, spinning, cardio machines, and a variety of pumping iron.

And then yoga entered my life at the most perfect moment. My long term relationship was in trouble and it would be winding down eventually and I was not in a good place emotionally. He was away for quite awhile in the last six months that we lived behind Muscle Beach in Venice. I was alone a lot. I worked and came home and there was yoga to comfort me. I followed my son and his girlfriend (now wife) to yoga classes at their favorite studio and it became my home, too. And then I learned to meditate and chant and there was the promise of peace.

Push-up, crunches, gyms and personal trainers - all strategies for toning the body and building muscle. But what did it do for my brain?

Not much. And know that as as I aged, my brain was going to begin the long process of shrinking. Oh, yes, the brain gets smaller and smaller as we age.

In a story published in the journal NeuroImage, UCLA researchers who used high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to scan the brains of people who meditate report that certain regions in the brains of long-term meditators were larger than in a similar control group.

I pay close attention to these findings because meditators show significantly larger volumes of the hippocampus and areas within the orbito-frontal cortex, the thalamus and the inferior temporal gyrus. These are regions known for regulating emotions.

Brain researchers have known for a long time that meditators have the ability to produce positive emotions, retain emotional stability and engage in mindful behavior; in other words, raise the level of awareness and stay calm in the middle of daily stress.

The study of brain anatomy can give researchers clues as to why mediators have some exceptional abilities in the area of positive behavior. Studies have been conducted on meditators who had practiced various forms of meditation that ranged from five to forty-six years, with an average of twenty-four years. Most meditated between ten and ninety minutes every day. Deep concentration played a pivotal roll in their practice. Researchers measured differences in brain structure; they found significantly larger cerebral measurements in meditators compared with controls, larger volumes of right hippocampus and increased gray matter in the right orbito-frontal cortex, the right thalamus and the left inferior temporal lobe. These are areas of the brain are closely tied to emotion. It may be that is why meditators have the ability to regulate their emotions and allow for well-adjusted responses to whatever life thrown at them.

More study is needed. Does meditation produce an increased number of neurons? Does meditation produce the larger size of the neurons? Does it produce a particular wiring pattern in meditators? Lots more of the brain to study as it relates to meditation. But it's certainly exciting to realize that our brains don't have to shrink, we don't have to devolve into early senility, and we can stay mentally active well into our 90's.

See, it's fun to age gracefully. It's fun to explore our inner being and find inner peace. It's a heck of a lot better than listening to AJ every morning barking order to a room full of sleepy zombies and walking out of an aerobics class brain dead.

Can't wait for my yoga retreat at the end of the month. I'm logging enough meditation hours to last me at least three months.

Oh, yeah, "Inception" was fascinating. I got to use my brain. It's about dream espionage and sharing dreams in order to get people to do what other people want them to do. Too long but so very interesting a concept. My gray matter wasn't shrinking that's for sure.

Namaste

Joan