Bun in the Sun

My Destiny?

Hi, and welcome. I record my own voiceovers. It gives you my voice delivering the words I write. At the end, I always play a snippet of a song that spoke to me while writing the piece. The song is linked at the end of every post.

xo - Jeannie

The other day I slid down a memory chute and landed in Texas.

I was seven years old. I swayed in my seatbelt in the car with a warmed face, asleep in the sun. My head bobbed up and down from my shoulders. Mom’s excited voice zapped me awake: “Bluebonnets!” My eyes darted out the window to pay my respects. It was an unsaid rule in my family to turn our attention to the Texas state flower whenever we were granted the opportunity to admire it. The sea of purple-blue petals always held my gaze, put me in a trance even.

I can recall going into that trance-like state quite often growing up. It started when I was young. The bluebonnets might be my first specific memory of it.

Photo by Delaney Van on Unsplash

I’ve shared before that my dad was in the U.S. military. The Air Force would give him a new assignment every couple years, on average. I think Texas was closer to a three-year stint for our family. After Texas, we were stationed in Colorado Springs. By that time, I was starting third grade. My brother, sister, and I were excited because the house we moved into had enough bedrooms for each of us to have our own room. I can’t remember how we picked who got which room, but I felt so lucky to get the room I adored the most. I stood in awe and wonder in my new room. I was in disbelief that not only was I getting my own room, but I was getting my favorite room in the whole house.

There was a very specific reason that room was my favorite. The far opposite wall from the door was essentially a big bay window. It had floor length curtains on a track, which closed along the outside of a long bench that was the window sill. When I first saw those curtains open, revealing the bench in the window, I knew immediately that would be my special dwelling place. That’s exactly what it ended up being. Over the next couple years, that window was my haven. My favorite time to weasel through the closed curtains and onto the bench was when the sun was shining directly through the window. Just like the happy, warm bun I was in the car in Texas, looking out at the bluebonnets, I would become that again in my bedroom window in Colorado. Now that I’m writing this, I think that window is the first memory I have of enjoying closed eyes while staying awake. The sun was so warm on my clothes and my skin. I would close my eyes and see sparkly glitter. I would just lay there blissful and mesmerized.

My parents were great about taking our family on fun beach vacations in the summer. I enjoyed playing and swimming in the water, pretending to be mermaids with my sister, and learning the science of everything with my brother. And sure enough, I would intermittently stop and become the happy, warm bun again. I laid in the sand, closed my eyes, and squeezed the sand between my fingers. I watched the glitter dance behind my eyelids while the sun wrapped around me like a warm towel right out of the dryer.

Photo by Mel — on Unsplash

I have a theory that I’m having these memories now for a reason. Somewhere along the line, I lost the ease of sliding into those trances… into that meditative state. I smile now too realizing the connection between all of this and my favorite flower, the sunflower. You could say I was like a sunflower too, always turning my face and figurative petals toward the sun. In those moments, I wouldn’t think about anything else. There was nothing else in the world besides the warm sun, me, and the glitter swirling around the inside of my eyes. Now, 20-something years later, I am finally having these experiences again.

Photo by Conner Baker on Unsplash

As a lot of you are aware, I am currently going through Yoga Teacher Training, which happens on Saturdays and Sundays. The time after lunch each day is dedicated to meditation and inquiry. For meditation yesterday, everyone was in a seated position next to each other in a circle around the room. We all placed one of our yoga blocks directly in front of us. One of the lead instructors walked around the room and placed a small candle on each person’s block and lit it. The other lead instructor guided us to hold our gaze on the flame of the candle. It was meditation with our eyes open. As my laser focus was locked on the candle, I entered the trance. It was the same trance as the bluebonnets, the sun in the window, and the warm, sandy beach. I even started to relate to the flickering flame. I noticed the solid, still center of the wick. I noticed the erratic movement of the fire. It was all over the place, yet always centered at the wick.

The instructor then led us to keep the image of the candle in our focus as we closed our eyes. Just like that, the flame was there behind my eyelids just like it was out in front of me on my yoga block. I felt lighter all of a sudden, like I wanted to smile. I was sitting in front of one of the windows in the room. It was a brief experience of time travel as I, once again, became the happy, warm bun in the sun. It was the same sensation at 33 years old as it was when I was eight. In that moment there was nothing else in the world besides that flame.

In training, we are going over five pillars of Power Yoga, according to Baron Baptiste’s Journey into Power program. The pillar we focused on yesterday was Drishti, or gaze, hence the gazing-at-the-candle meditation.

Drishti means “gaze.” In yoga practice, it means fusing your eyes to one point. This focus sends soothing messages to the nervous system and brings the mind from distraction to direction. The eyes are the lens of the mind, and with drishti you are focusing your consciousness. Drishti allows you to slow your mind and engage more deeply in your practice.

Journey into Power, Baron Baptiste

This is another one of those times when I hope it’s as obvious to others as it is to me that this can apply to anything, not just yoga practice. One of my yoga teachers is also an elementary school teacher. A few months ago, at the beginning of yoga class, she shared about her students’ math lesson earlier that day. She was helping them understand the placement of the equals sign. She explained to them that it is not there to simply say “this is the answer.” It is there to say that the equation of numbers on both sides of it are balanced… equal. She related it to our yoga practice by saying something like: “Yoga is like the equals sign. Yoga is not the answer. It is the balance between different parts of life.”

Photo by Andrew Dawes on Unsplash

It’s interesting. I started the writing prompt about bluebonnets a couple of weeks ago. I wrote out the memory and set it aside. Then came the connection to my state of being when I admired the bluebonnets. Then flowed in more memories of that state of being in other situations as I grew up. And finally, yesterday, a confirmation of it all arrived in yoga training during our lesson on Drishti- gaze, laser focus… absolute presence.

I think of Kiri Sully in Avatar: The Way of Water. If you haven’t seen it yet, Kiri is the main avatar character Jake Sully’s adopted daughter. She has a tendency to stop and intently gaze at things. She lets herself fall into a trance at any given moment with creatures of the forest and ocean alike… with anything at all really. There were even moments of commotion when it felt like an inopportune time for her to be slowing down and focusing on something in nature all of sudden. Yet somehow, it felt like she knew something everyone else didn’t. She was connecting to something, and it was powerful.

I relate to Kiri sometimes. Maybe that’s why I have come home to yoga at the same time I have come home to myself. Yoga affirms my need to slow down and focus, even close my eyes, in order to see some things clearly. It helps me understand why I am so much more productive when I focus on one thing at a time instead of trying to keep seven plates spinning at once. By giving what is in front of me my full drishti, I am fully connecting with it. As Baron said: it “brings the mind from distraction to direction,” even if that direction is to simply become calm.

I can’t resist sharing about one more synchronicity in all of this. I am finally starting The Artist’s Way with the subscriber group of

Little Things

by

Ali Vingiano

(thanks for organizing, Ali!) I flew to Colorado again this week and arrived back in Nashville Friday evening. As the plane descended into Nashville, I was reading one of the beginning sections of the book called The Basic Tools. Towards the end of the section, it says:

Our focused attention is critical to filling the well. We need to encounter our life experiences, not ignore them.

Right as I read that, I realized the plane was about to land in Nashville, the sun was setting, and the view out the window was most likely one to be enjoyed. I took the cue from the book, closed it, and chose to encounter my life in that moment. I directed my gaze to the aerial view. I kid you not. At the exact moment I looked out the window, we were flying over the street where we live! I saw my house from the plane! This is something I have tried and failed to do every single time we fly into Nashville. I have always been determined because I know our house is under one of the main airways for arriving aircraft. We have planes flying over all the time, going toward the airport. Whenever I am in one of those planes landing Nashville, I desperately look for landmarks trying to find our street.

Lo and behold, it happened effortlessly from a conscious choice to encounter the life experience in front of me.

This is all as simple as I want to make it.

When I prioritize:

Center,

Calm,

Breath,

Focus,

Flow,

I can see what I have always wanted to see from the sky. I can be the warm, happy bun in the sun, the same as I was when I was seven years old.

You know what that tells me?

I’ve always been here. I am here. I always will be here… with all that is.

with love, Jeannie.