36 - Types of Tired

I kind of became a fan of rock star Bret Michaels from his personality on Celebrity Apprentice, not from his music, couldn't name a Poison song nor identify his sound. I was so sad to hear about his sudden major brain hemorrhage and would feel a loss if he doesn't survive. Just today the a press conference on his condition says that miraculously he is walking and talking again, and expected to fully recover. I hope that he continues bringing his positive message to the world. Really seems like such a good person, and a loving father. Maybe he wins Celebrity Apprentice? And maybe I'd like his music too.

Bret comes across as a good guy and a fun guy, who just wants to help. In one particular challenge he gave great unheeded advice to an upcoming country star. Michaels' admonished the guy not to talk about how tired he is, and that's exactly what this dope did in his televised interview with People magazine. The reporter later commented to the execs that he seemed tired, and Bret's words rang true: no one wants to hear how tired you are. That's part of the job, being on the road, up late, working hard, and it is not the message you should choose to send out to the world. Stick with: I love the music, I'm so happy to be doing this, the fans are great, this performance/album/concert/interview is the best thing in the world and I'm just honored and blessed to be here.

The message is clear: assume that tiredness is a fact of life and choose your message carefully. When someone asks “how are you?” you can start with the first thing that comes to mind (“tired”) or the first thing you want them to know. There is a distinction and we get to make that choice.

Judaism is full of choices; we get to choose from seven levels of tzedakah, seven different types of charitable giving. Maimonides (widely known as Rambam) lists them from the least to most honorable, starting with #1 giving begrudgingly. Read up more on this and you'll notice the seven options do not include refraining from giving tzedakah altogether. There is no choice to refuse giving some of our money to others who need it more. Tzedakah is something we do, maybe (but hopefully not) begrudgingly, ideally honorably, often, and with altruistic desire to help.

Tiredness too is not a choice, it is part and parcel of life. We expend energy and become worn down, we take in energy and perk up again. The efficiency of the cycle depends on quantity and quality of this energy exchange. Pour in nutritious food into a healthy body, use the energy for a run by the lake, business meeting and grocery shopping. Drain every ounce of energy while a loved one is sick, there's no magic food or amount of sleep to feel replenished. Along Rambam's lines of seven different variations, I'm conceptualizing seven types of tired.

Everyone is somewhere on the scale of seven types of tired, as everyone is expected to be somewhere on the ladder of tzedakah. In each case, let us learn from glam rock star and amazing survivor Bret Michaels, no one wants to hear about it. “I'm just so tired” comes off as “I wish I weren't here talking to you, I'm not listening so you're just wasting your time.” Like teacher said, “if you have nothing good to say, don't say it.” While going through my father's important papers I found a yellow legal envelope with important looking notes all over it. In large letters it read “KYMS”. When asked my dad told me that he always jots down these letters on the top of a page for important meetings. It's his reminder to keep his cool and stay on message: “KYMS”= “Keep Your Mouth Shut!” Just in case you don't know me well, know that I'm big on talking and processing and that this lesson is not meant to be insensitive, just instructive about choosing our words and our messages.

To understand the types of tired, know that the ecology of energy exchange requires intake and output. Energy operates on four levels: body (physical), brain (mental), emotional, and spiritual. As the levels of output increase we become drained and cannot refuel fast enough.

The Seven Types of Tired, by Heather Altman (Rabbi, RYT, Morah Derekh, certified in Surgical Preparation, mother of 4 including toddler triplets) progresses from Plain Tired To Total Exhaustion:
1.Plain tired – you maybe should have slept an hour longer, you didn't get a long lunch at work, you're eating sugar. You can still function pretty well, make clear choices, take care of yourself and others.
2.Good tired – you stayed up all night dancing or making love, you had a long, strong workout or physical challenge (gardening, extreme adventure). Your body is exhausted but you are invigorated, the adrenaline and cortisol make up for physical fatigue. (Body)
3.Brain tired – you've been working or studying long hours, engaged in intellectual thought, running numbers, thinking through complex equations or processes (Brain/Mental). You are burnt out mentally but your body is as strong as ever.
4.Body drained – you have had days of ongoing physical labor, long hours, maybe double shifts. You do school by day/work by night or work by day/school at night/family all the time. Or you are running around all day after young children, or up at night caring for them. You are at the limits of your endurance and also grappling with grasping all that you need to do and how to organize it in your mind. You need a break, and hopefully can at least get a Shabbat nap. (Body + Brain)
5.Emotionally drained – your heart is strained. You are in a major transition, dealing with personal issues. Emotional drain comes from both bad and good situations. Moving into a bigger home is good, but the change is emotionally draining. Same with planning a wedding or other celebration. Emotional drain inevitably takes its toll on brain functioning. This too shall pass. (Mind/Brain + Emotion)
6.Insomniac – you can't sleep because your body is chemically prepared for flight or fight, mind is running non-stop, heart is heavy with worry about money or job security or relationship issues. You really need resources for help. (Body + Brain + Emotional)
7.Total exhaustion – Everything else and your spiritual reserves are low, trust is broken, faith is tested. You have sick child in the hospital, so you get no sleep plus mental exhaustion and spiritual depletion. You experienced a personal or global trauma and it knocked you out on all levels. Your body chemistry needs a re-set and the exhaustion splits off your soul connection. Be very careful, seek and accept offers of assistance, be gentle with yourself and patient with your soul. (Body + Brain +Emotions + Soul)


On Celebrity Apprentice, Bret Michaels is trying to avoid The Donald's “you're fired” and his winning advice thus far is never say “I'm tired”. With his Type-1 diabetes, recent emergency appendectomy and subsequent massive brain bleed, his body was almost at its end, so today's news about his status is a miracle. I am certain that his way of meeting the world with positivity contributed greatly to his survival. I have a feeling he will have something to say about his soul's desire to live and his approach to greeting and meeting life. Inspired by an 80s rock star, I hold out hope for refu'ah shleima, a complete healing of soul and of body, for Bret Michaels and for you and your type of tired.

Today is the 36th day of the omer, 5 weeks and 1 day.

practice:
What level of tired are you today? what can you do to restore the ecology of your energy exchange? back to basics - focus on your breath, your relaxation response, nurturing your relationships, support system and soul connections.

19 - Free Soul

Let me linger with this great combo of community and combo of comfort - extra life with day 18 and extra soul, neshama yeteirah, that arrives for each Shabbat. Would kind of like to stay and extend the 18=chai=life omer day that coincided with Shabbat today. Enjoyed the best of both worlds: Netivot/Pathways davenning my favorite way, then kiddush lunch with the rest of the community, friends, congregants, and my dad.

First, about favorites. While teaching this morning I noticed that I was repeating the phrase “one of my favorite _______”; noticing the words we repeat is an important reflective tool for teachers. As soon as I spotted the pattern I shared with the Netivot/Pathways participants that this is where I bring all of my favorites. Its true. My favorite chants, my favorite meditation techniques, my favorite spiritual teachings. My favorite movements chosen to stretch and stir body, mind and soul, emotions and energy too. Netivot is designed to be an experience of Shabbat in the truest sense, with the inner reflection and all-level presence to the sacred within and within all. My favorite way to spend Shabbat morning, deep in striving with minyan members all completely at choice with being there.

And about community. The impetus to create Netivot/Pathways: A Jewish Center for Growth and Healing (when I first jotted notes in 2000 and when I first offered a synagogue-based center in 2003 and as I continue to offer a non-center based sessions) was always to acknowledge everyone's unique pathway to soul and wisdom. Constantly moving on our own path, the traditional Jewish prayer service is not the place for everyone, at all times, to connect spiritually. The synagogue should still be a place to connect with community. Netivot/Pathways provides an alternative spiritual home base, often within a synagogue community. More than just another service a community can offer, it does the work of building community and catalyzing healing.

A natural center of community, temples and synagogues must serve lots of needs, and my contention is and always has been that the spiritual is primary. So clearly I remember reviewing the Mission Statement of a synagogue where I worked (there have been three so no need to assume it was one or the other) and looking again and again for any of the following: God, soul, spiritual. They were completely missing and sorely absent; it took about a year for me to provoke a re-write. No matter what the other missions are – Israel, social action, education, youth – aligning soul with service and service with soul is the key to effectiveness. Focusing on anything other without being true to soul is a dangerous shortcut. It may be easier, or quicker, or initially seem more accessible, but make no mistake soul must be at the center.

Netivot/Pathways throughout the years has offered multiple pathways for souls seeking wisdom. Already welcomed by synagogues, seminaries, youth groups, day schools, educator's groups, Hillels and Federations, my vision is that the Jewish community recognizes the need and supports my new model. Among the pathways are: Pathways Shabbatot across the country, Detox Rav Yoga, healing services and workshops, bereavement groups, Rav Yoga, Refu'ah Yoga, Jewish Spiritual Direction, Yoga Eema prenatal yoga, family Tefilla Yoga, Finding Your Soul Mate groups, High Holiday Institute, monthly Shabbat Netivot/Pathways, 12 Step Torah, and Tefila Yoga.

Tefila Yoga fuses the wisdoms of Judaism and yoga, breathing and moving prayerfully with yoga postures that match the kavanah (intent) of the siddur service prayers. Lauded by both experienced davveners (Jews fluent in traditional Jewish prayer) and those with less fluency or affinity for traditional prayer techniques, Tefila Yoga is a meeting place for both. When Orthodox and traditional pray-ers attend Tefila Yoga they go back to their minyan routine with added awareness and dimensions of spiritual experience and often a new appreciation for yoga wisdom. When people attracted to the yoga element attend, an accessible and relevant portal to Jewish prayer wisdom becomes part of their experience on the mat and also opens a point of connection for future davenning experiences of whatever type.

Such a blessing for me, and from me, Netivot/Pathways has been running High Holiday services for the past four years and Shabbat sessions for the past four months (in Chicago at Anshe Emet Synagogue). Returning to my roots of personal practice joined by amazing participants is fabulous. Recent years I was practicing baby asanas (i.e.diaper change asana) and embracing that asana while recovering from the effects of the triplet pregnancy. Far from my professional precedent of the early years of my career (ten years ago!), a conscious choice to open myself personally has deepened my work, attracted lovely followers and freed me to follow my soul in service.

Now I am ready to move into a new day. Today is day 19 of the Omer! That is 2 weeks and 5 days of the Omer.


Inspiration for today:
Learn about Sacred Activism (if you only want a short preview ff to 4:54 and watch that last piece)
More about soul and service with my favorite yoga instructor, the world renowned Seane Corn.


Support Netivot/Pathways: A Jewish Center for Growth and Healing – are you being called to support this work? I'm looking for your support in the forms of professional expertise, promotion, seeking great spaces, seeking invitations, seeking funding so we can take it to the next level and beyond. Contact me so we can talk.

13 - Endings and Beginnings

Today I helped two couples finalize their divorces. And I said mazal tov each time.

Divorce itself is not cause for celebration, clearly it is a loss of hopes and dreams. By the time couples initiate the Jewish legal divorce process their civil divorce is complete. Often they wait years, until one of the two is ready to re-marry, to get the Get – the document that severs the bond of marriage. At that point, the mazal tov acknowledges their readiness to welcome new beginnings. Of course I only select those words when I know the situation. And even then, when years have passed – five, ten even thirty years- the Jewish divorce proceedings draw up some amount of emotional tension and uneasiness. Though each person has “moved on” in life as if they were divorced, they know on a deep level that this tie still binds. No matter that they have no regard for Jewish law, they know that they neglected to finalize a Jewish divorce and at some psychic level feel that mental-spiritual attachment.

Mazal tov actually implies a wish that the stars and constellations will be aligned in a good way. In this sense that is always an appropriate blessing, more specific than a blanket congratulations. With divorce, a hand written document is drawn up specifically for these two people and for the sake of their divorce. It permanently breaks the bond of covenant created under the chuppah, an action that no one ever envisions for themselves. At the wedding, a forever future is dreamed up as two people bind their destinies together. With divorce comes the end of those dreams and a often jarring jump to a new path, new cosmos.

Having been through it myself, I know that it can be the right thing. And even when it is, that it can be the hardest thing a person does. When I facilitate the Get process my intent is to accompany the individuals in their decision to pursue a Jewish divorce. I honor their choice, educate them about the process and encourage them to seek support. Trying to balance ritual meaning with particular and scripted legal requirements, I wonder if there is more I can do to represent Jewish wisdom on loss, and starting over.

Heart pounding when purchasing a book about divorce, scared to share my decision, I remember feeling so lonely and ashamed. Once made, the decision was a revelation of truth yet did nothing to lessen my love. We divided property and pets and began an excruciating period of negotiating acceptable contact.

When a rabbi told me that it takes five years to get over divorce, I optimistically hoped it would be shorter for me since I was certain in my decision and already felt relief. Life moves on and even improved immediately for me, and I know my ex-husband had a quite different experience. I wish neither of us had to go through that pain, the grief, at our own time, in our own world, and my sympathy extends to both of us and to every person that dissolves a marriage. I wasn't so special to get a shortened sentence. And now, I believe that there is always some degree of healing that can happen even five, ten, thirty years later.

Safely on the other side, I know that the stars do shine after the darkness of divorce blows over. The relationship had its lessons, its learnings. The divorce cultivated strength and resolve. Completely certainly and undoubtably severing that bond is essential and that is why I feel strongly about facilitating the process for every divorcing or divorced person.

Mazal tov is good fortune, which is certain to follow, in time. A whole new constellation of life awaits, worlds of blessings, rays of illumination.


Today is the 13th day of the Omer. One week and six days.


For your practice: what needs closure in your life? How can you become ready to end that chapter? In what ways are you still mourning past losses? What are your lessons and learnings from the past? How do you dream your stars will re-align? Create a ritual for yourself to sever a bond that you need to let go of. Consider writing, mikveh, time in nature, art and more.

12 - Multiplication

A full circle moment today when my father tried to teach my eldest how to easily multiply any number by 11, after she tried to -lol- stump him with 9 times 12. That's one trick he taught me when I was a child, and always a good one. Times eleven was definitely not in the context of what day of the Omer it was today; sitting outside enjoying the weather, I was guiding an intergenerational getting-to-know-each-other-better game.

Math quizzes were a daily “oh Dad!” annoyance at my childhood dinner table, also the extent of conversation. My dad wasn't the most skilled at relating to growing daughters, but he certainly has changed a lot since I was young. For one thing, several years ago he started to make an effort. Recent conversations make it clear that he has done his work, thought deeply about himself, and that he loves and feels deeply. I've come to believe people can change, at least behavioral patterns, when they learn more about themselves and their tendencies during good times and bad.

Anger is an issue here, one that I don't deny permeated my childhood. And he wouldn't deny that it is a lingering issue for him, especially in relation to family. Even in my college angst days when I carried a lot of anger for my father, I would acknowledge that he taught me valuable math skills and trained my mind for logical and analytical thinking. Dad showed me how to use an imaginary black board in my head to do math problems, a visualization ability that later came in handy when learning to drive. After one time behind the wheel of our stick-shift red Honda Prelude I went to bed and imagined each step. Next day I was driving like I had lots of experience.

Isn't it so interesting that I can't even finish a paragraph about anger with anger? As my friend Nikki would say, I LOOOVVVVVE IT! There was a lot of anger, past tense, but not anymore. In college I expressed my anger and demanded his apology for past hurts. In young adulthood I accepted the limitations of our relationship, mourned them and tried to accept it.

One of the many gifts of my relationship with my husband is his encouragement to really fulfill the mitzvah of honoring my father. At the start I resented him pushing me to call more, couldn't understand why Jeff wanted to pick Dad up from the airport and drive him around all day, thought he should leave well enough alone, or just leave me alone on this issue. One day I'll write more about it, for now simply stated I'm grateful for his influence. Bit by bit I started seeing my dad differently, understanding his challenges and appreciating his efforts.

During my twenty-four hour trip to Florida to bring my Dad back to Chicago for treatment he needed to know that I wasn't still mad at him. I hugged him and said “I forgive you Dad.” It was true and complete.

Only six years ago when Dad was coming to Chicago for some occasion I set a 3 day boundary on his stay in my home. Now I welcome him into our home. He is living with us indefinitely and it is a gift. As he said, there is a silver lining to his illness, that is spending time getting to know his grandchildren, and also trying to know us, his children. There is only love and affection with us and our children. Seeing our girls run up to their Saba (Grandfather in Hebrew) with open arms is precious and watching him teach them tricks is a treat I will always treasure.

Today was day 11 of the Omer.
Tonight is the 12th day of the Omer, which is one week and five days.


For you: Think of someone you need to forgive, or have already forgiven. What tricks and teachings did they gift you? What positive things were part of the relationship? How can you forgive the rest? If appropriate, can you continue to grow the relationship? If the relationship is over, can you let it go with love, cherishing the gifts and learning from the hurts? How can you just let it go? Decide to forgive, say the words, and let your heart follow.