Relentless desert sun and stinging mega-raindrops. Stalwart rock walls and delicate cryptobiotic soil. The lilt of laughter punctuating endless desert silence. Lazy flatwater and heart-pumping rapids. Sand in everything.

Last week I spent four days on the Colorado River as it winds its way through Canyonlands National Park. I’ve traveled this route before, but it was not at all the same trip. Sure, the cliffs, mesas and hoodoos have been here all along. Both times the river was rust-colored with silt. Our talented and spirited Western River Expeditions girl guides followed a familiar framework for scheduling, meals and safety. But the canyon’s own surprises; the stubborn indolence of technology; and the small, diverse group of powerful women who populated this particular adventure made the trip an unpredictable, soul-satisfying experience.

It was a trip of firsts. First among these was the weather, which refused to cooperate with our trip leader Kristina’s insistence that in the unlikely event of overnight rain, it would be a quick 20-minute blow-over. She assured us we could likely wait out a squall by wrapping up burrito-style in our tarps. No tent necessary. Our first night’s rain careened from a gentle patter to a percussive deluge—and it lasted all night long. Even our guides reluctantly erected a tent after a few hours. For one of them this was a first in her three-year history with the company. For the other two, it was only their second tent stay on the river.

Further, it rained each day of the trip. In most cases, a rain-filled vacation is considered ruinous. But river trips are all about water. If you prefer staying dry, it’s best you skip the trip. (This also goes for folks who don’t like to get dirty.) The river cools on hot days and provides silty-water baths that nonetheless make you feel pretty darn fresh after a day of slathering on sticky sunscreen mixed with sand and sweat. And when you’re going through Class III to Class V rapids, it’s impossible to stay dry. While the rain—and the slippery, muddy slopes that go with it—created some inconvenience (have you ever tried to put up a tent with quarter-teaspoon-sized raindrops pelting you?), it also obliterated the predicted 105- to 107-degree temperatures. The rain also produced another first:  a dramatic temporary waterfall caused by a flash flood in a side canyon. Our guides, who had camped dozens of times in this place, had never seen a waterfall here. Ahhhh, rain.

Another first:  multiple technology failures. Even the most stalwart, anti-motor river companies use a motor to travel the last 25 miles of the Cataract trip. These last miles are on Lake Powell, where there is no current, and there’s often a headwind that makes rowing futile. Both our motors struck out on the last day. After changing out motors and fuel lines, our guides determined that while our spare motor was likely okay, neither of our two fuel lines was functioning. Motoring became a two-woman job. One guided the raft (a flotilla of all three of our 18-foot rafts lashed together) while the other fed fuel into the motor manually. It was not long before we ran out of gas, another first. With no satellite-phone service, we snailed along to the rhythm of the oars until a party of guys enjoying the canyon with Adrift Adventures motored by and lent us a functioning fuel line and a fresh can of gas. We emerged from the canyon an hour-and-a-half after our predicted time. In our normal, schedule-bound lives, this would be unacceptable. But after four days on river time, we all enjoyed the chance to continue in each other’s company and in the presence of the spectacular Glen Canyon cliffs. Temperamental technology brought another unexpected gift:  Because we returned late to the takeout, I elected not to drive back to Salt Lake City that night. Instead, I met my river cohorts for a satisfying Mexican dinner in Moab.

For me there was yet another first:  All the guests and guides practiced yoga. I was hired by Western River Expeditions back in 2002 to teach yoga on their women’s trips. I’m happy to say I’ve been able to do this on all but three of their trips since then—four in Desolation Canyon and two in Cataract Canyon. Small but mighty, the 2010 women’s group was the most cohesive I’ve experienced. Everyone enjoyed getting to know everyone else. The spirit of cooperation and friendship was overwhelming, as women ranging in age from early-20s to late 50s, guides and passengers, came together as a community to enjoy conversation and laughter. And we practiced yoga as a community as well.

The yoga experience-level varied. Some had practiced for many years, and at least one woman, a guide, was practicing for the first time. With no props but Western River-supplied mats and tarps, and the soft earth and expansive sky, we relaxed muscles taut from fire lines and sleeping on cots. We breathed the rain-washed air. We settled into the welcoming sand.

But the formal yoga sessions were not the only yoga of the trip. The poses themselves were only a small part. I observed all the passengers and guides, each in her own way, express equanimity and humor in the face of our often uncomfortable circumstances. Patanjali’s describe asana practice in these three verses:  Sutras 2.46-48. They say—and I’m paraphrasing:  When we have come to stability and comfort in our asana, we can let go of effort. When we let go of effort, our minds can relax into the Infinite. (This is the yogic definition of mastery of asana, not performing “perfect” or “advanced” poses.) When this happens, we are no longer upset by the play of opposites in our lives. An extraordinary and inspiring claim for a body-oriented practice.

A common river cliche espouses the philosophy of “going with the flow.” In a way, going with the flow, no matter what obstacles present themselves, is the place we come to in practice. While we can’t control things like rain, technology failures, mosquitoes and dangerous rocks on the river; or disappointments, tragedies or triumphs in our lives, we can moderate our response to them. This is what yoga asana is designed to do. It helps us tread the middle way among the many ups and downs we will inevitably experience in our lives. This is its gift in pursuit of yoga’s highest intention:  the settling of the mind into silence.

I am grateful to the yogic women of the 2010 Cataract Canyon—yoga-experienced and not—for their steadiness, comfort and levity throughout the river trip of firsts. And I’m grateful for the gift of these firsts, that they remind me of the unknown jewels that reveal themselves whenever we choose to venture into uncomfortable territory.

Charlotte Bell has practiced yoga since 1982 and meditation since 1986. She writes a monthly column for Catalyst Magazine and is the author of the book Mindful Yoga, Mindful Life published by Rodmell Press. A lifelong musician, she plays oboe and English horn in the Salt Lake Symphony, Red Rock Rondo and blue haiku. She lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, where she enjoys the mountains and desert wilderness.

Last night I returned from what has become the most consistent annual mile marker in my life, the Telluride Bluegrass Festival. I first attended on a lark after seeing a poster on the bulletin board of a local music store in 1983. Among the stellar roster of musicians listed on the poster was New Grass Revival, who I’d seen—and been wowed by—several times in Bloomington, Indiana, in the ’70s. If New Grass was going to be in Telluride, so would I.

If you’ve ever been to Telluride, you will know I’m not exaggerating when I say that this picturesque little hamlet sits in one of the most gorgeous box canyons anywhere. The whole experience was stunning—the scenery, the amazing musicianship, the unusual musical collaborations, the beatific crowd. I haven’t missed a Telluride Bluegrass Festival since then.

No matter where I’m working or living, I make time in my schedule for Telluride. The third week of June is off limits to anything else. Many times I don’t bother to visit the website to look at the roster of musicians before the festival. I just know that it will be phenomenal, and I’ve never been disappointed.

In 1984, I began a working relationship with the festival. My husband at the time wrote a pre-festival promotional article for a local independent, and I shot photos. This gained us access to the press area in front of the stage, more notoriously known as the “poser’s pit.” Being able to see the musicians—their flying fingers and accompanying facial gestures, as well as their entertaining off-mic banter drew me in. I continued shooting photos for seven years, produced their festival program for four years, and have written feature articles in the program since the early 1990s.

I’ve come to know the production, security and backstage crews, as well as some of the musicians whose talents often leave me stunned. In the past 28 years, the luckiest of these have aged and mellowed; others have passed on. This year, I was sad to learn that one of my favorite Telluride characters, Jack Carey, a longtime press pit security guy, lost his life not long after the 2009 festival in a bicycle accident involving a head-on crash with a pickup truck.

In April of each year, I get to research and write two or more articles for the festival program. I love this because it puts me in my “festival head” two months before the event. Most of my research involves talking with people who likewise cherish the festival. The joy and anticipation are contagious. From that point until the time I round Society Turn on the road into town, I think of my upcoming trip to Telluride and smile.

This year I was honored to write about one of my favorite festival regulars, Peter Rowan. I met Peter in 1994. Like me, Peter practices Buddhism, and we’ve had a number of interesting conversations about the nature of life and practice. No matter what he chooses to present at Telluride—and it changes from year to year—his music has a spiritual undertow that resonates profoundly with my own musical sensibilities.

For his 2010 festival appearance, Peter would reunite with four other venerable Telluride regulars—Sam Bush, Jerry Douglas, Viktor Krauss and Larry Atamanuik—to play as Crucial Country. Crucial Country’s last appearance was in 1994, and it’s no exaggeration to say this set of music was transcendent. I was not alone in experiencing this. Planet Bluegrass, the company that produces the festival, made Crucial Country’s 1994 set available on CD. Even Sam Bush, who just celebrated his 36th Telluride, told me he left the stage thinking it was the most fun he’d ever had playing the festival.

From many years of seeing the Grateful Dead, I know that sometimes the magic happens, and sometimes it doesn’t. I know that no truly magical event can ever be reproduced. I’m also clear about the fact that expectation breeds disappointment. So while I wasn’t expecting this year’s Crucial Country experience to be a carbon copy of 1994’s, I can’t honestly say I was not without some glimmer of anticipation.

Whatever anticipation I might have been feeling crashed when I woke up Friday morning, the day of the Crucial Country set (as well as another of my favorites, Hot Rize), with a sour stomach and chills. I felt truly awful, wanting nothing more than to be horizontal, wrapped in blankets to ease the shivers while sipping ginger tea.

The internal conflict was overwhelming. I didn’t want to miss a moment of music—and there was lots to look forward to that day—yet I didn’t see how I could walk to the festival and then sit in the blistering high-altitude sun for hours when I was struggling to sit up in bed. Not wanting to miss the day’s opener, cellist Ben Sollee, I went. I loved his music, but my body was just too weak. I walked back to my room and slept for three hours.

In the hours of fitful rest, each awakening brought the question of whether I’d go back to the festival at all that day. Most of the time the answer was no. When my partner, Phillip, returned to the room for a brief respite, he encouraged me to return just for Crucial Country and Hot Rize. I vacillated endlessly, mainly because I wasn’t sure I had the strength for the walk to the festival grounds. And what if I got there and felt so bad I couldn’t walk back?

We made it to the press pit just in time for the start of Crucial Country. I dearly wished to enjoy the show, but I didn’t have the energy even to tap my foot. My body was freezing, even as most of the 10,000 souls on the field were boiling in the midafternoon sun. About three songs into the show, longing to be supine again, I whispered to Phillip that I needed to leave. “After this song,” I said. Then it occurred to me that I wasn’t sure I could walk back. I was that weak.

Then I gave up. i closed my eyes and let go of any effort to relate the music in any of the ways that were familiar to me. The sound washed through me. I heard with my cells rather than with my ears, and in this let-go state, my body began to heal. I could feel the cell tides turning. I was transparent—just music and nothing else.

By the end of the Crucial Country set, I knew I had the energy to stay for Hot Rize. During the Hot Rize set, I found my feet spontaneously tapping once again.

So again, Crucial Country was a transformative experience for me. Was it the music? Was it the fact that I was willing to let the whole thing go? Or was it coincidence that I began to feel better at precisely the point when I did? I can’t say. But as a musician and lover of sound, I can’t say that the combination of tones coursing through my cells didn’t change things at some fundamental, pranic level.

Saturday and Sunday, my healing continued, slowly but steadily. Even as I write this on Tuesday, I feel the residual effects of whatever bug invaded my intestines on Friday. In yogic terms, I can feel that my annamaya kosha (physical body) is still compromised. But the residue of the beauty of Telluride, the reunions with old friends, and the transcendent power of music have nourished my pranamaya (pranic), manomaya (mental/emotional), vijnanamaya (insight and intellect) and anandamaya (bliss) koshas. I am transformed not in spite of, but because of the multilevel shake-up that illness always brings. And I am grateful for the healing power of mountains and music.

Charlotte Bell began practicing yoga in 1982 and has taught in Utah and the intermountain West since 1986. A lifelong musician, she plays oboe and English horn in the Salt Lake Symphony, Red Rock Rondo and blue haiku. She writes a regular column for Catalyst Magazine and is the author of the book Mindful Yoga, Mindful Life, published by Rodmell Press.

In 1986, I attended my first yoga retreat at the Last Resort Retreat Center in the Cedar Breaks area of Southern Utah. I was a relative yoga novice at the time, having practiced only four years. At this retreat, we not only practiced asana twice a day, but we also sat silently in meditation three times a day, ate meals in silence, and met to talk about different ways to make our daily lives an expression of yoga. In my beginner’s zeal, I left the retreat ready to change pretty much everything about the way I lived my life.
And some things did change: I ramped up my asana practice, I started meditating (a little), and I started experimenting with dairy-free eating. But I still had to fit these things into whatever spaces were left over after working 40 hours a week. I often felt frustrated that things like working for a living and doing chores got in the way of practice. And because of this frustration, commitments dropped away over time—until the next retreat inspired me again.
Years and many long insight meditation retreats later, I began to see practice in a different light. On one 30-day silent meditation retreat, my teacher, Pujari, suggested that we pick one activity at the retreat each day to be really mindful. Since this was, in fact, a mindfulness retreat, in theory every activity had the potential to be a vehicle for mindfulness practice. But as anyone who has ever sat a long meditation retreat knows, this is more easily said than done.
Each morning we awoke at 5:30 and enjoyed a cup of hot tea and a piece of fruit before beginning our day of alternating sitting and walking periods. I chose my morning tea and fruit as the time when I would be truly mindful. Mindful tea drinking became a daily pleasure on the retreat, and I found it was a practice I could carry with me. More than 20 years later, drinking my morning cup of tea now collects and calms my mind. The grooves are laid down—I can’t help but be mindful when I begin my informal morning tea ceremony.
I’ve added other things to my daily mindfulness practice as well: washing dishes (thanks to Thich Nhat Hanh), gardening (seasonally, of course), and even cleaning the litter boxes. As a householder living in the world, I realize now that practice is not separate from my life, and those tasks that once frustrated me are opportunities for practice rather than diversions from it.
So here’s the challenge:
Choose one thing you do every day to be mindful. Do this for a month and then reflect on what has changed for you. Here’s the thing: You have to do your daily chores anyway. Being attentive while you’re doing them doesn’t take any more time.

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Yoga:  The Settling of the Mind

The house where I grew up was at the end of a dead-end street in the rolling hills of southeastern Indiana. Below the house were three acres of unruly woods which ended abruptly at the edge of Hogan Creek, a tributary large enough to accommodate the recreational fancies of houseboat enthusiasts, water skiers and, in the wintertime, ice skaters. My favorite time of day there was evening. I loved sitting alone on the front step of our house watching the blackening sky, listening to cricket song and watching the lazy-flashing lightning bugs punctuating the darkness. Most of all I loved the silence. Inside the house activity ruled—conversation; the tones of flute, clarinet and piano; television. Outside there was only stillness and the deep blue-black sky sprinkled with starlight. Gazing at the sky I felt its vastness. Stillness enveloped me and I became peace.

Silence is what kept me tethered to Utah in my early years here. On my first trip to Arches National Park in April of 1983 I experienced true silence for the first time. In the early 1980s the park was relatively empty in springtime. This particular night there were only three or four other tents in the campground, pitched more than 100 yards from my own. As daylight faded I sat alone on a picnic table. In the desert landscape of southeastern Utah, no leaves rustle, no crickets sing. There was no wind this night. The silence was absolute, deafening. When a raven flew about fifty feet overhead I heard the rhythmic whooshing of its wings. Ecstasy flooded my cells, enlivened me. I knew then that Utah was my home. I did not want to venture too far away from this incomparable resource, the austere, silent beauty of the desert.

When I began practicing yoga asana in 1982 it was the stillness of mind I felt that first captured me. I enjoyed the increased flexibility and freedom from back pain that I noticed soon after beginning practice, but most of all it was sense of pervading peace that drew me to commit to yoga. I was aware that asana practice was embedded in a larger philosophy but I chose not to learn about it until much later. The benefits I felt then were enough.

In the late 1990s yoga asana (the practice of postures) became wildly popular in the West. What we call “yoga” in Western culture is more accurately termed “asana.” Yoga is much larger, encompassing all areas of our lives. Asana is one small part of the practice. Of the 195 yoga sutras, only three are concerned with asana.

The purpose of asana practice is to prepare the body for meditation, which is considered to be the heart of yoga. The physical practices are designed to refine the body, specifically the nervous system. Because asana practice has always been integrated into the schedule at Last Resort meditation retreats, I was able to see firsthand how this works. In the context of consistent mindfulness practice, asana is truly a joy. Careful attention allowed me to drop beneath the level of gross sensation so that I could experience and enjoy the subtle movements and energies in my body. Because asana unwinds musculoskeletal knots and promotes deep breathing, the practice makes sitting meditation much more comfortable. After asana practice the body feels light and clear, the mind calm.

As a companion to meditation practice, I have maintained an interest in the concepts presented in the Abhidhamma, the comprehensive text on Buddhist psychology. I learned what I knew of Buddhist philosophy by reading books by such wise and insightful Buddhist teachers as Joseph Goldstein, Sharon Salzberg, Jack Kornfield and Thich Nhat Hanh, and through hearing hundreds of taped dharma talks by these and other Western teachers. These distillations of the teachings resonated profoundly with my understanding and my life. What I did not realize was how many parallels existed between what I had learned through Buddhist channels and the wisdom crystallized in the yoga sutras. When I decided to embark on a reading of the yoga sutras I found that much of what I already understood through meditation practice was written in the sutras.

Around 300 B.C. a sage named Patanjali codified the ancient, universal wisdom that is yoga. While the ideas presented in the sutras are likely a composite of timeless, universal wisdom that had evolved over the ages, Patanjali brought the concepts together into a definitive text that serves as a succinct almost step-by-step map of the inner journey of awakening. Written in Sanskrit, the aphorisms are short, concise and devoid of any literary coloration. Sanskrit does not accurately translate word-for-word to English, so translators have added their own interpretations to the text. Many Sanskrit words symbolize concepts that do not have direct English correlations. For this reason I’ve found it most helpful to use multiple translations in my own sutra study. Each different translation adds dimension to the meaning of each verse.

The entire volume of sutras is crystallized in the second aphorism. All subsequent sutras aim to define and explain the concept, and introduce all the methods of practice that lead to the state of yoga. Many years before setting my intention to study the sutras a teaching colleague repeated a translation of this single, defining verse. At that time the translation seemed very abstract and somewhat forceful to me and initially turned me away from pursuing yogic philosophy. Of course, this was rather shortsighted, but my interest had not reached the critical mass necessary to inspire me to take a closer look. Who knew there was more than one way of interpreting a sutra?

The definition of yoga, according to the sutras, as I understood it at that time was:  “Yoga is the stopping of the fluctuations in the mind.” From my meditation experience I understood very well what those fluctuations were. I had met and become endlessly annoyed with the “wild monkey,” the traditional Buddhist metaphor for the untrained mind. Somehow the cessation of the monkey’s taunts seemed far, far away, if not impossible. It also seemed tantamount to clamping my consciousness down entirely. Later I would discover that while this was quite close to being an exact literal translation, reading other interpretations would help me understand and appreciate this sutra more fully.

The original Sanskrit for this sutra is  “yogas citta vrtti nirodah.” In his scholarly volume, The Yoga Sutra of Patanjali, Georg Feuerstein translates each word literally from the Sanskrit:  yogas=yoga, citta=consciousness, vrtti=fluctuation, nirodah=restriction. Based on his direct word-for-word translation Feuerstein’s interpretation of the aphorism reads, “Yoga is the restriction of the fluctuations of consciousness.” Feuerstein’s translation, which is remarkably similar to the first translation I heard many years before, became my ground for exploring this sutra. Subtle differences in wording—“restriction” vs. “stopping” and “consciousness” vs. “mind”, even “of” instead of “in”—gave my original understanding greater dimension. Still, I sought a translation that did not imply a closing down of mind.

Barbara Stoler Miller, author of Yoga Discipline of Freedom, offers this translation:  “Yoga is the cessation of the turnings of thought.” The word, “cessation” gives a sense of greater ease to the sutra. In this translation, there is an implication that mental fluctuations can stop naturally without the imposition of force. The venerable T.K.V. Desikachar’s translation from his book, Patanjali’s Yogasutras, fleshes out the concept further. His take on the sutra is, “Yoga is the ability to direct the mind exclusively towards an object and sustain that direction without any distractions.” Each translation adds a new dimension. For this reason I always read multiple translations of each sutra. A single author’s ideas do not always paint a complete picture.

 Alistair Shearer offers the translation of this sutra that best suits my understanding. While not literal, this poetic interpretation distills the meaning of yoga in a way that fits with my personal yogic experience at this point in time. Shearer translates sutra 1.2:  “Yoga is the settling of the mind into silence.” 

I love this translation on many levels. First is its overall positive nature. In this interpretation yoga is achieved not by stopping something, but by a gentle, incremental process of release. I love the word “settling.” To settle implies relaxation into a state that is natural and inherent. Settling is a verb that suggests a process. It implies a gradual, continuous release, rather than the reaching of a static endpoint. Shearer’s translation does not tell us to look outside ourselves to find stillness and peace. That stillness is something we can settle into more deeply with each breath. The stillness is who we are, not something we must attain.

What is this stillness? We can touch stillness by visiting nature. Taking a hike or walk in silence with occasional stops to sit and enjoy whatever is present in our environment—the sights, the sounds, the feel of the earth beneath us, the feel of the atmosphere, wind and sun on our skin—helps to ground the mind in stillness. The desert is the epitome of stillness. A lake, glassy still on a windless day teaches us about silence. But sometimes even the quiet of the desert is disturbed. A silent lake is easily agitated by rain, wind and wildlife. Where is a reliable source of stillness to be found?

Stillness resides in awareness. My favorite metaphor for awareness is the sky—clear and infinite. No matter what disturbances appear in the sky, the sky itself remains unchanged. Clouds may pass through. Thunderstorms create temporary turbulence. Winds may stir up the atmosphere. Air pollution muddies our view. Light pollution obscures the stars. Yet the sky itself is not tarnished by these events. It remains vast, pure, impartial.

Awareness is exactly the same. Awareness is the quality, inherent to all of us, that can experience the careening of the wild monkey mind with all its emotional peaks and valleys, all its agitations and its wonderful illuminations, without relinquishing its essential purity. Awareness is vast and limitless, clear and luminous. Donna Farhi describes awareness in her book, Bringing Yoga to Life, as a screen onto which all our experience is projected. The screen is not the same as what is projected upon it. It simply reflects. This impartial screen is the core stillness that lives within each of us. It envelops and binds us all. The practice of yoga in all its aspects allows us to reconnect with and dwell in awareness, our essential being.

This story is an excerpt from a book by Charlotte Bell titled Mindful Yoga, Mindful Life. Charlotte is a yoga and meditation teacher, writer and musician who lives in Salt Lake City.

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