Hello friends!
Over the last few weeks there have been quite a lot of new people joining Drip, Drip, Drip the Bucket Fills, so perhaps a small intro is in order.
Welcome!
You might be wondering why this Substack is called Drip, Drip, Drip the Bucket Fills. That’s what my Buddhist teacher, Gelek Rimpoche, always said to help me develop patience and curiosity. Over the last 40ish years this reminder has helped me stay steady along the course of my spiritual life.
Drip, Drip, Drip is a good reminder that our aspirations don’t manifest in one big dramatic starburst. Step by step, breath by breath, we create the path we walk on.
So here I write about how meditation practice shows up in real life and enriches my ordinary days here in Santa Fe, NM. As best I can, I unpack the teachings behind mindfulness, compassion, self-compassion and loving-kindness that I have studied all these years. Sometimes I offer you a practice to try out.
And, of course, yoga! I’ve written 1 memoir and 5 yoga books and my latest is Long Life Yoga.
After many years of traveling around the world teaching yoga and meditation, I don’t have much of a jones for long distance travel these days. Unless it is really special. And last month was really special.
Brad and I took a 3-stop trip: Berlin, Cheltenham and London where I taught yoga workshops based on Long Life Yoga.
It took us two days to get to Berlin. We slept for 12 hours the first night and woke up fresh and free of jet lag. Our hotel was blissfully quiet despite being on the same block as Checkpoint Charlie, a major tourist attraction that was once the spot where brave, frightened people passed from East to West Berlin in the Cold War. Our room even had a little balcony overlooking a lush green courtyard in the middle of busy Mitte. (Totally recommend it: Wilde Aparthotel)
After some strong German coffee we went to see Marina Abramovic’s Balkan Erotic Epic at Gropius Bau. The museum promoted Nude with Skeleton as the main event.
I really wanted to see this piece, because I assumed that it referenced the traditional charnel ground practices found in Buddhism. We entered a large room crowded with people all focused on a naked woman lying on her back on a large platform. Placed on top of her was a skeleton in the same supine position the woman was in, something similar to a savasana.
There was no movement and after 30 seconds you basically saw what there was to see. Nevertheless, people walked around the piece as you might circle a statue, pausing here and there to see it from all angles.
But there was nothing more to see and I didn’t experience any kind of emotional hit at all. The atmosphere was not charged with the fear or panic you would expect when spending the night in a charnel ground, a.k.a. cemetery, alone and naked. Or perhaps, not alone but with a corpse or dirty skeleton with a few strands of hair, perhaps a few teeth left, mouth frozen in rictus. This exhibit of a perfectly immobile woman and a clean skeleton were too sanitized to honestly convey what it is to confront one’s death through physical communion with a skeleton.
Yet, over the days ahead I found myself coming back to this seemingly empty experience.
On Sunday, I went to Yoga Sky in Kreutzberg where I have been teaching for 25 years. The students were greeted by my beloved yoga/dharma friends, Hans and Detlev, who welcomed them and made tea for everyone. Over the years, many of the workshop participants had taken 200-hour TT, 300-hour TT, Meditation TT and Yoga Body, Buddha Mind, so it was a grand reunion!
The joy level was very high! When I started to say the Dedication of Merit, 37 people from Iceland, the U.K., Poland, the Czech Republic, the US and all over Germany joined me in this OM yoga tradition that means so much to us.
Next, Brad and I flew to London on the way to Cheltenham. I loved that when I was offered tea, the flight attendant gave me a tray not just with a cup of tea but with a scone, strawberry jam and clotted cream. YUM.
Orange Yoga in Cheltenham, owned by Ian Davis, is one of the best yoga studios anywhere. After the pandemic, he restructured the studio and made it a non-profit. The vibe reminded me of NYC yoga studios in the 90s. Nothing fancy. No shop. No juice bar. Just a kitchen where everybody brings homemade cookies and makes tea for each other.
The practice rooms are simple, open spaces with potted plants, a couple of lamps on the floor and windows that open nice and wide. You can tell Orange Yoga is all about community and I felt that warmth and friendliness during the four days I was there.
When Ian collected us from the train station we immediately got into a conversation about how the yoga community had changed since I was last in the UK in 2019. He told me that less people are coming to yoga classes, but there is a growing interest in curated experiences such as sound baths, intuitive soul healing or receiving an egg reading.
The Tibetan word for practice is “gom” which means a process of getting familiar, and I wondered if one can get familiar with their mind, body, heart, and habitual patterns by letting someone else do a practice to or for you.
And my thoughts about Nude with a Skeleton popped up again, my mind seeming to find a connection between curated experiences at yoga studios and museums.
The next day I taught a class called Sati, Gom, Cho, Saddha and Sustainable Yoga. Yes, I know that title is too long but anyway… the class takes people through a process of developing a personal practice. Many newer students only know how to practice exactly the way they learned from their teacher. I suggested that is just the launching point of a lifetime of evolving your own multi-layered practice of “getting familiar.”
I began by asking them, what is a practice? I told them about a friend of mine who had a serious, dedicated yoga practice for many years as well as a practice of teaching yoga. Then she moved across the country and began a practice of bike riding, flying very fast down huge hills. The experience of velocity intrigued her and she began to explore ways to express speed through her painting practice. Eventually she shifted to slow walking, which allowed her to see the subtleties of the earth, and this became her walking practice.
So… is everything we do a practice? Do we actually have to do something or is it still a practice if it is something we receive? Of course, my answer is that activity and receptivity are both practices. Who am I to say that a soul healing is not a practice?
I googled Marina Abramovic’s Nude with a Skeleton and found a video of her doing this piece in a more involved way. She is lying on her side, almost spooning the skeleton. She is holding hands with the skeleton and slightly animating it through her own deep breathing. You can really feel the power of her death contemplation. It is intimate, engaged, mobile and completely personal.
https://www.moma.org/audio/playlist/243/3132
I also taught Long Life Yoga Teacher Training for the first time. I had worked out some class plans before this, but being with a group of eager students shifted everything. The ideas I wanted to explore around specific pacing, rest intervals, combining the pillars of movement with anti-inflammaging—well, it came alive and really resonated with the students.
My particular way of layering instructions helps yogis maintain attentional balance and avoid glucose spikes. The dynamic of “not too fast, not too slow” cuts through goal-oriented striving, which also keeps your nervous system balanced. The students especially liked exploring letting go without dropping out.
I got the same enthusiastic feedback in London, too. The students told me they were inspired and excited to have a new approach to yoga.
These teaching experiences were nourishing for me, and I realized that I’ve come up with a timely and valuable offering. Long Life Yoga has a different emphasis, yet it is still very much a yoga practice.
Practice. All along I kept thinking about practice. How it changes? How it changes us? What is required for something to be a practice?
I took this to heart when I got back home to Santa Fe. Brad and I practiced Conscious Resting, a.k.a. napping, walking around the neighborhood, slowing unpacking and doing the laundry, and eating out at our favorite healthy gluten-free restaurant.
After three days I felt my molecules reintegrating and got on my mat. Then I knew I was home.
When my students asked me to define practice, I said practice has structure, boundary and requires commitment.
What do you think?
(I LOVE reading your comments and always respond to every.single.one.)
It’s not too late to make a commitment to meditation practice and sign up for all 4 retreats. Each session will be different. You will learn more about meditation, dharma and yourself in 20 minutes/day.
You can also sign up for just one or a package. All sessions will be recorded.
Lifting the Gaze is an opportunity to withdraw from the demands of your life and gather yourself together within the beauty of Menla and the warmth of community.
Traditionally, a spiritual retreat is a time to touch your mind and touch your heart. It offers you a concentrated period of practice to help you get familiar with who you are, as you are, right now.
Personal practice is never about being better or different. It is not about rejecting any part of you, no part of your body and no part of your mind, your emotions, your anger or your love. It’s about opening to the basic goodness that lives inside you right now.
We will use the tried and true practices of yoga and meditation to experience the traditional benefits of joy and ease.
MORNING SESSIONS will include silent meditation, a dharma talk, Q & A and sustainable yoga practice.
AFTERNOON PRACTICES will include pranayama, restorative yoga, group discussions and outdoor walking meditation
ONE EVENING SESSION will offer a silent guided meditation.
During the retreat you will:
develop your mindfulness/shamatha practice,
strengthen your practice commitment by recognizing and relaxing your obstacles; and
gain the skills and awareness to bring your innate goodness into the rest of your life.
Together we will connect the dots between why we practice, how we practice, and the results of practice.
We will show up for ourselves and we will show up for each other…and we’ll make it fun!
All levels are welcome. Modifications will be offered to support those with injuries or physical limitations.
Join Cyndi Lee for two workshops at Souk Studio in NYC: Long Life Yoga Intensive on August 1st and The Dharma of Engaged Yoga on August 2nd. Sign up for them individually or join for the whole weekend.
Thanks to all of you who pre-ordered the book and for all the positive feedback! It means the world to me. Can I ask another favor? If you bought it from amazon can you leave a review on there? It helps with sales and exposure.
Why You Might Be Breathing Wrong
8 Walking Meditations
Yogic vs Buddhist Breathing Techniques
How to NOT Pick Your Meditation/Breathing/Yoga Guru
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