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.

Marichyasana: A Wise Way to Tonify
May—a time for spring cleaning. Whether it’s attic clutter or closet chaos that’s weighing us down, many of us develop the itch to clear our living space after the long, closed-in, cold season. Spring is also a great time to cleanse our bodies, from the inside out.
According to Chinese medicine, spring supports detoxifying and tonifying the liver and gall bladder, our internal storage sheds for wintertime refuse. Spring is associated with the element of wood, and green is the color of the season—think trees and their burgeoning foliage.
In the Chinese medical model, the liver controls the muscles and tendons of the body, so the squeezing and stretching actions of many yoga poses can help tonify the liver. But for direct action on the liver, nothing beats twists and backbends. Twists and backbends squeeze the liver, releasing toxins into your bloodstream.
This month’s pose is chosen from among many yogic twists because of its name. The Roman epic poet Ovid named May for “maiores,” the Latin word for elders. Elders are often associated with wisdom (especially by those of us who are approaching or fully entrenched in eldership). This month’s pose, Marichyasana, is named for the sage Marichi, who Yoga Journal calls “the great-grandfather of Manu (‘man, thinking, intelligent’), the Vedic Adam, and the ‘father’ of humanity.” Elder, indeed.
Marichyasana has many variations; some involve spinal twisting and others do not. This month’s pose is a variation of Marichyasana III. Begin by sitting on the floor with your legs extended straight out in front of you. Place a few fingers on your lumbar spine. If you feel the spinous process poking out like knobs in your lower back, place a folded blanket under your hips so that your hips are higher than your legs. Again feel your spine. Keep elevating your hips until your low back no longer feels knobby. (When the spinous processes are poking out, your lumbar is in flexion. This is not a healthy position from which to twist your spine.)
Let the weight of your torso release into your sit bones. Ground the back of your right leg and bend your left knee, drawing the foot back toward your left sit bone. Place the sole of your left foot on the floor so that the inside of your foot is about four inches from the inside of your right thigh. Scoot your right sit bone forward and your left sit bone back a bit, so that your sit bones are on a diagonal. (Some yoga methods will tell you to keep the sit bones aligned, but I’ve found that this can, over time, create instability in the sacroiliac joint. Take it from a yoga elder with an unstable sacroiliac joint!)
Ground both sit bones and rotate your torso toward your left knee, sliding your right leg forward even more as you turn. Either hook your right arm around your left knee, or place your right elbow on the outside of the thigh. Place your left hand on the floor behind your left hip. Press the left hand into the floor to help lengthen your spine upward. Relax your shoulders. Make sure you are not using your right arm to force yourself into the twist.
Don’t go to your maximum twist. Breathe deeply, and as you inhale feel how your torso wants to rotate slightly out of the twist. As you exhale, feel how your torso moves back into the twist. Relax into these oscillations. When you suppress these movements, you suppress your breath—not the best way to detoxify your liver and restore your energy. Because the liver is associated with anger and aggression, balancing your liver requires that you approach asana practice with gentleness.
Take five to ten deep, nourishing breaths, letting your torso unwind into the rotation. Feel your abdominal organs, especially your liver, stomach and spleen, and allow them to settle into the twist along with your rib cage, spine and core muscles. After five or ten breaths, rotate back to center and stretch your left leg out onto the floor. Sit for a few breaths and be present with what you feel in your body. Relax. Repeat on the second side.
It is common to feel thirsty after practicing twists (and backbends) because of their liver-squeezing actions. Be sure to drink lots of water after practicing them. Twist wisely, without force or aggression, with the patience of the elders. Let Marichyasana renew your liver and your life.

Charlotte Bell is a yoga teacher, writer and musician who has taught yoga since 1986. She is the author of the book, Mindful Yoga, Mindful Life, published by Rodmell Press.

by Charlotte Bell

I wrote this story in 2004, following a visit to my mother. This year was my second Mother’s Day since her passing in March of 2009. May we all celebrate all our mothers have given us.

A half-gallon of curdled milk, a partially eaten veggie wrap, a petrified orange, a plastic bag filled with dark green cucumber slime. These are the relics of a previous life I cleared out of my mother’s refrigerator last Memorial Day weekend. Under normal circumstances, my practical and frugal Depression-era mother would never leave edible food to fester in her fridge. In mid-March everything changed. On a fragrant, Alabama spring day while watering her beloved pansies, she lost balance, fell and fractured her pelvis. She has not yet returned to her home.

A consistent walker for most of her life, my mother can no longer negotiate the fifteen precipitous steps leading to her front door. Four stacks of unopened mail—minus important bills which my sister has culled from the piles-—cover her dining room table. A pencil sketch rests on her easel, awaiting her watercolor brush to bring it to life. A grocery list sits on her kitchen counter. In a single instant a daily routine honed through years of living vanished.

In the wake of her accident, my mother is gradually defining a new model for her day-to-day life. Recasting a life that shifted so abruptly is not easy for an 85-year-old person. In my mother I now see a stubborn resistance to the change her circumstances have wrought. During my visit I heard wistful, wry reminiscences of her former vitality. I heard frustrated speeches against aging. An unspoken uncertainty colored our conversations. She did not speak about what her life might look like in a month or a year, but I knew she was wondering.

When we experience a loss, whether it be the loss of a friend or family member, a loss of a job, a change in our health, or the end of a way of life, it is natural to mourn. It is nearly impossible not to wonder how much easier or better our lives might be had our circumstances continued as usual. But the reality of living is that our lives change constantly. Without loss it would be impossible to grow. It is letting go of the old, that which is no longer needed, that makes room in our lives for whatever is to come.

Since the 1920s my mother has let go of a lot. A lifelong artist, my mother began her career before entering grade school, copying renderings of caricatures she found in books. During grade school she drew paper dolls for herself and her friends. In high school and college she gave up paper dolls for figure drawing. Later on, this art form would evolve into a career as a fashion artist for an upscale Cincinnati department store. Still later, she would give up her career in commercial art to return to drawing paper dolls for her three daughters, and to design and paint sets and costumes for school plays. Finally, as she released us into the world, her art would blossom, evolving from tightly representational oil paintings to fluidly rendered, award-winning watercolor studies of shadow and light. She can no more easily return to copying caricatures than she can return to her childhood body.

Our very lives are a continuum of receiving, releasing, receiving and releasing. Thousands of times each day our bodies naturally draw in and release the breath. When we inhale we receive the vital oxygen that enlivens all the cells of our bodies. When we exhale we expel toxic waste in the form of carbon dioxide. What would happen to our bodies if we only inhaled? What if we chose only to accumulate and never to let go?

When Chogyal Rinpoche, author of The Tibetan Book of Living and Dying, spoke in Salt Lake several years ago, he made a statement that has stayed with me. He said, “Freedom does not come from acquisition. It comes from letting go.” In the same way the long since perished vegetables in our refrigerator occupy space that could be filled with fresh, vital foods, the habits we grasp onto for security stultify us. We can not move forward in our lives when we cling to the past. When we set our habits, our beliefs and our ways of living in concrete, we become trapped by them. Letting go of what is no longer appropriate in our lives releases us to all possibilities.

No matter how affectionately we might recall our youth, would we really want to go back? Early in my yoga study, I practiced intensely and attained the strength, flexibility and technique required to accomplish many of the most advanced yogasanas. Twenty years later, even though I might fondly remember those times of physical accomplishment, would I really want to return? What I have let go in terms of extreme practice has made room for a more mature, more satisfying awareness of the subtle energies that govern my body’s essential vitality. As a result my practice has gained integrity, and my body has become stronger and more balanced.

As we live and grow, our understanding becomes more refined. Out of the process of continual drawing in and letting go, compassion and wisdom grow. Compassion grows as we experience the sadness that often accompanies letting go. As we come to peace with the reality and rhythm of constant change, wisdom grows. Each forward step on our life ’s path requires us to let go of what is past. The process of living rests in the delicate balance between letting go and starting anew.

Recently as I looked at an ancient black-and-white photo of my mother at age five, I saw that while she is still the same person, she is also different. The same body that animated her spirit as a child carries that spirit today. But in many ways it is not the same body. In the past 80 years that five-year-old frame has grown to adulthood and borne three daughters. Her black hair has turned white, her skin has loosened, her gait has slowed. But I have seen the wise and determined visage of the child in that photograph a thousand times, throughout my mother’s life. The spirit that lives in that completely remodeled body remains intact.

When the young prince, Siddhartha, first ventured out of his gilded palace as a youth, he was faced with what are called the Four Heavenly Messengers. These messengers-—old age, sickness, death and a wandering monk seeking awakening-—called the future Buddha to his destiny as an enlightened teacher. In him the question arose, if our bodies are all subject to old age, sickness and death, where is happiness to be found? In his six years of searching, the Buddha found that happiness was available to everyone, when we let go of searching for it in those things that are not permanent, which is everything in our conditioned experience. When we rely on our bodies, our careers, our friends and family to make us happy, we set ourselves up to suffer. Ultimately all must be released.

In 1993, during a period of my life when I had let go of what seemed like the very foundations of my being, I asked my teacher, Pujari, “If there is nothing for me to hang on to, if everything I love will one day leave, what reason is there to stick around?” He answered: “To live your life fully and completely. To follow your path with loving care and mindful awareness, to learn the freedom of letting go. To develop wisdom and compassion in the process.”

This we can do no matter what the condition of our bodies. The same wise spirit that peered out of my mother’s five-year-old body dwells in her at 85. This spirit, her innate awareness, can guide her and help her to find the joy in this current phase of her life. There is no one that does not have the ability to live in joyful awareness. It resides within and without. It becomes available to us when we choose to live our lives mindfully, when we pay careful attention to our lives as they unfold, rather than dwelling in thoughts of how much better our lives used to be, or how much better our lives would be if only we were richer, more attractive, had a better job or relationship, a nicer car or house. The list of ways we find to put off living joyfully right now is infinite.

My hope for my mother, and for all of us playing out our lives in this time, is that we can learn to dance harmoniously with the rhythm of life, the rhythm of drawing in and letting go. It is helpful to reflect on your own life, recalling the things you once enjoyed that have disappeared from your life. When you released worn-out habits or beliefs, what became available to you? How did you grow from your many experiences of letting go? These reflections can help you to meet the multitude of let-go experiences still to come with wisdom and perhaps even a sense of joy and adventure.

Happiness comes from enjoying your life right now. Pay attention. When we live mindfully, even the most mundane tasks of our daily routine can be joyful. When we give our complete attention to the present realities of our lives there is no residue left to cling to when it is time to let go and move on. Being fully present with our daily process of receiving and releasing brings the equanimity that allows us to flow with the cycles of constant change.