Volume 3 Issue 10

November, 2002

Olene Atkins Burdette

1934 - gloriously - 2002

Please Don't Take My Sunshine Away

I talked briefly with Judith Lasater after my father died.  She said to do lots of restoratives.  You may know that her book on restoratives was born from her work with her own personal grief.  She knows it helps us to come to peace with situations that are difficult.  I took her advice.  I did lots of restoratives.  It really wasn’t a hard decision for me as I have become intrigued by my restorative practice.  I did have some concerns though.  With so little time to myself each day I worried that my regular practice was placed to much by the side as I filled practice time with study and restoratives.  We teach what we practice.  I was finding it difficult to teach active classes.  I was withdrawing.  Students may not have known the dynamics but we all felt the difference when my week had more active practice compared to mostly restoratives except, of course, during pranayama week, always stellar.

In early October I attended a workshop with George Purvis who renewed my enthusiasm for my course of study.  He spent so much time with the feet, he wanted us to know how to have “buff feet.”.  I have since reviewed a video I purchased at the Institute last year.  In this video, Guruji is admonishing, not the student who is the center of attention, but the  teachers that he has trained that do not have the patience to point out the details he is now describing.  Some details were very basic, some more difficult to see, but all within his teachers’ ability to see.  I thought of the times in class when I let an issue slide just because I didn’t feel like dealing with it that day.  I thought of the practices I had wasted, merely doing a posture so I could get a feel for it, but not really looking for more intensity. 

I found myself back on track.  Time is not a problem.  I can practice a few postures with much greater intensity and intelligence than I had been for some time.  I can continue with the restoratives that bring  deep peace. 

All of this couldn’t have been more timely.  The week after seeing George, my mother died.  To say that she died unexpectedly is not entirely true.  My mother has had debilitating illness most of her life.  For the past 20 years she has rebounded from acute conditions when doctors said there was little or no hope.  Her family has been at her side countless times contemplating her last only to have her spring back.  She would become a little less healthy with each event.  We knew there would be a time when she would not be able to overcome the onslaught of physiological degeneration. Even though this time it was reported that there was no EEG activity, I still had hope that she would spring back, show us all.  When making my airline arrangements the representative kept me on hold as she checked with my mother’s hospital to verify that I was eligible for bereavement fare.  I was thinking/hoping that the woman would come back on line and ask me what I was trying to pull, that my mother was awake and yelling at her caregivers.  Instead, she gave me her condolences and arranged my flight.

My mother loved a good fight.  She would never back down.  I think that may have been why she was able to bring 5 daughters into this world, raise them, and live a full life even with her very real medical problems.  She was not going to let it get her down.  She used the medical world.  She knew how to manipulate doctors, nurses, hospital administrators.  She knew what she could expect, and knew how to get more. 

My mother knew how to waste time.  At least that’s how I saw it.  She knew how to be quiet.  She knew how to be patient.  She knew how to wait for what she needed and wanted.  She usually got it.  My mother did not wait unless she knew it would provide her with success.  She would display her temper and terrify anyone near her if she thought that would meet her needs.  She would stand back and demure if that tactic would work.  She often talked about how her daughters didn’t have common sense, though they were well educated and intelligent.  We didn’t have the tactical sense she had, that is true.  She didn’t know how to teach us her ploys.  We didn’t know how to pay attention well enough to catch on.  She was the southern lady who knows how to get her way.  And, in the end, that’s exactly how it always worked.  She lived her life as she wanted.

I hope that I can finally use the lessons my mother’s life provided.  I want to be able to be quiet when it is time to be quiet, speak up when I must, and never back down.  There was never a time when she did not exude strength.  On a hospital bed with tubes running hither and thither we still felt she was somehow in control of the situation.  It may be that she controlled this last one as well.  It may be that her death was finally her way of stepping away.  My mother and father were lovers.  Their family was important to them, their source of companionship and pride.  But, their source of joy was with each other.  We are taught to not grieve the loss of loved ones, but to remember the happiness that our time with them brought us, their gifts of love and compassion.  That I am trying to do.

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Savasana II

You are my sunshine,

my only sunshine.

You make me happy

when skies are gray.

You'll never know, dear,

how much I love you.

Please don't take

my sunshine away.

- My Mother's lullaby

to her daughters.

Our Times -

Anxiety and Depression

There are times when  closing our eyes brings fear, anxiety and demons.  My mother suffered from depression and could never relax in a room full of people in Savasana with eyes closed.    BKS Iyengar  instructs that in cases of depression a student should practice Savasana supported on a lengthwise bolster and with eyes open. 

Further elaboration was given to students experiencing anxiety in India after a particularly devastating earthquake in 2001.  Teachers in New York used these instructions  after  9/11.  For emotional healing the eyes are kept open.  We are instructed to imagine the eyes located at the temples and to open these eyes. 

The breathing instruction is to breathe so that the breath touches the lateral side of the chest during the inhale, especially  when supine.

With this month’s sequence, during the standing postures with eyes open, head supported, take the opportunity to observe the length and width of the feet, ankles, shins, knees and thighs.  Note differences from right to left.  Where is the skin shining?

Om Ah Hum Vajra Guru Padma Siddhi Hum

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