Meeting the Muse

photo by Andrea Killam

At the end of 2019, I asked Alex and Brittany to help me with some business-related projects. I was struck by the fact that, while the word on the street was that millennials are hard to teach,  uninterested in alignment-oriented yoga, and display little interest in yoga philosophy, here were two young women eager to learn, passionate about transformational principles, and knowledgeable about modern systems of media-based communication.  In addition to convincing me to collaborate  with them on a podcast,  improving my marketing materials, and upping my Insta-game, they encouraged me to write weekly blog entries. 

I have kept a blog since 2007, when Anne and I went to Pune, India to study at the Iyengar Institute.  From long rambling  rants, to accounts of my daily schedule, to musings on life, practice, and teaching methods, I have recorded my thoughts and feelings on a web log for over a decade. As a highly verbal person with strong opinions and a somewhat neurotic drive toward self-expression, writing typically comes fairly easily for me. I almost always sit down with something to say.

Today, however, I am sitting down as an act of practice, not as an expression  of inspiration. I am sitting down to write because I committed to weekly entries and a week has passed since I last wrote. I am not starting from having something to say, but I am simply starting, in the hopes that the act of writing itself will encourage some insight to arise. Stephen King, in his book On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft,  writes about how, in order for the muse to find us, we must be in place. He has a very disciplined regime for writing and his book is an excellent and instructive read for anyone dabbling in the creative life.  

My sister, a certified Iyengar yoga teacher, told me a story she heard at a teacher training with one of her teachers.  This teacher was in Pune when Mr. Iyengar was interviewed by a reporter from a local paper. The reporter asked Mr. Iyengar, “What do you do when you do not feel like practicing?”  Mr. Iyengar said, “I do one or two poses and if nothing comes, I do something else. I do not worry if nothing comes for two or three days, but if more than three days go by, then I am fiercer with myself.” 

The first teaching of the story is  the reminder that even the greats do not always feel like practicing. If there is some fantasy lurking around in your mind that one day you will always want to do your practices or that if you were a real yogi you would never face resistance, this teaching should be enough to settle some of those unrealistic notions and point you toward a modicum of self-compassion. 

The second teaching from the story is that wanting to practice is not required for practice. In the face of not wanting to practice, Mr. Iyengar reported that he did a few poses.  Kinda like me today—having something to write about is not a requirement for sitting down to write. (Of course, maybe it should be a prerequisite for actually publishing a blog entry, but I digress.) Wanting to do asana is not required for rolling out a mat and making the shapes. Wanting to meditate has little to do with putting my butt on the cushion, repeating my mantra, and staying in place until the timer goes off.

So like that. 

I have contemplated the third teaching of the story ever since my sister recounted this little vignette. Right after Mr Iyengar says he does one or two poses,  he says and if nothing comes….

“What is this thing that he hopes will come and yet  acknowledges does not always arrive? ”

I figure the muse comes. Not a muse like some fantasy fairy-tale figure clad in billowy robes and singing words of poetry from the heavens full of wit, wisdom, and pithy tales of transcendent glory. Perhaps this muse might best be described as interest and then, curiosity. Perhaps this muse is a clarity of awareness with a dose of absorption that allows for time to warp, deep knowing to emerge, and creativity to arise within the structured form of the practice itself.  I figure at some point his practice must have stopped being about the ten thousand things to do to improve the poses  and became about meeting the muse. (Not that I am claiming to speak on BKS’s behalf, mind you.)

The fourth teaching of the story is that, if it doesn’t come,  he stops. For all of the tales of Mr. Iyengar’s  ferocity, tenacity, and disciplined practice, inner freedom is knowing one can walk away from the mat, the cushion, the computer, etc.  without that choice meaning much of anything beyond today it is not coming. He didn’t say, “If it doesn’t come, I beat myself up, I call myself a terrible yogi and feel like an imposter who is not worthy of my seat as a teacher”  and so on. Nope, he lets it go. For a few days even. 

Ultimately the muse, like so many things in life, can not be forced.

The fifth teaching from this story is that, if the muse does not come after several days, he hunkers down. He brings his will to bear on his efforts with greater focus. While the muse can not be forced, she can be invited, enticed, and perhaps even seduced by our willingness to show up, stay in place, commit again, and  begin again, if and when, it has come to that. All these efforts, while not the muse itself, surely must make an attractive offering that will eventually lure something into being that is beyond the effort itself. 

And, just like that- 1000 words of a blog entry gets written and perhaps, whether or not  the muse came for me today, and whether or not your practice feels juicy and engaging or dry and somewhat remote, you can find yourself somewhere in this story and its teachings. Lee once advised me to worry less about how well I was practicing and focus more on the fact that I was practicing at all. He also told me, “You know, 99% of spiritual life is staying in place.”

So, well, that I can do. 

Locket behind me while I was writing this entry. She clearly knows how to stay in place.