Reader, I’ve dispensed with the self-flagellation of not writing enough. If you want to whip me with a wet noodle, go for it. I’m letting myself off the hook today. xo
I’m currently working as a chaplain resident—someday I will rail about the racket that is chaplaincy training here and now, but not today—in a hospital in the American South. It takes great pride in the complexity of care it’s able to provide, and its legacy of patient diversity. When most people hear chaplain, they think a shifty, shady preacher who is coming to tell them how to believe, who will pray with them, and then split. I’d wager that most of the patients and staff that I spend time with don’t really get what my colleagues and I do. I spend my days walking the halls of the hospital, visiting with staff, with patients, with family, listening & talking with people who are not having the greatest time of their life, by and large, and being with them wherever they are. Some days we pray together. Some days I facilitate a ritual with them that makes them feel closer to the Divine, a closeness they can never be apart from, an outward symbol of an inward state of being. Some days I let them yell at me (mercifully few, because I feel ambivalent about this as quality care). Some days I let them tell me what they believe and how they’re making sense of what’s happening to them. Many days I sit with the dead and the dying, and their loved ones, listening, grieving, accompanying. Most days, I try to get folx to tell me that they are not fine, and what’s really on their heart, what are they going through.
You know what I don’t do? I don’t teach asana. I haven’t set foot in a studio as a teacher since I left Chicago in 2019. I rarely facilitate pranayama. The nature of my teaching has changed, or rather, the context has changed. I might teach nadi shodana to a pregnant person who has been in the hospital for weeks trying to stay pregnant, who is feeling overwhelmed by anxiety. I might breathe consciously while I am hugging someone (masked, of course) to allow their own breath to slow down and feel more present to them. I feel confused by this new context, and how I bring some of my pillars of practice and teaching into it.
This work is very different from my work as a yoga teacher, though the skills come in handy. It’s also really different from the work I recently did in div school, though there are also many lines that connect straight from one to the other. My current position has an expiration date, and I find myself asking a ton of questions, chief among them, how do I craft a career that explores these intersections that are so vital and meaningful to me?
One recent night, I was in the trauma room when a young man was brought in for care. My role in a situation like this is to stay out of the way of docs & techs & nurses, to provide a stable and grounding presence for everyone there, and when the time is right, to connect with a client/patient and offer to contact a community member who can show up for them. That is sometimes not possible, and was not possible on this night. He was not the worst-off client I’d ever seen, but his condition had a visceral effect on me. This morning, I was rereading some Simone Weil and I found,
“Those who are unhappy have no need for anything in this world but people capable of giving them their attention. The capacity to give one’s attention to a sufferer is a very rare and difficult thing; it is almost a miracle; it is a miracle. Nearly all those who think they have this capacity do not possess it. ”
I instantly realized I had not had this capacity for this young man. I felt this when he was in the room, too. I reminded myself that grounding and stability cannot come from fear, that he was afraid, that the care providers, for all of their skill and knowledge, were amped up as well, and that he needed someone, someone, who could offer an energy that was stable and present. From across the room where I was standing, I planted my feet, softened my belly, lengthened my spine, and I took three deep breaths. I did not look away. I let him know that I was here, and that he wasn’t alone. He never looked at me. I did not get a chance to speak to him. So the outcome questions that you have, I have too. But I was there. When it was time for me to go, I made sure that my teammate had all the necessary info, and could show up as fully as I’d been able to.
Our world is full of folks who do not want to feel what we are going through, who don’t understand what feelings are and how to be with them, and so we turn to behaviors and choices that allow us not to feel them, whether those are visited on our own body, or on the bodies of others. These outcomes are often harmful, which is putting it mildly. My hope, and my desire, is that if we learn how to ask ourselves, what am I going through? and not to run from the tender, honest answer to that question, that practice will teach us the skills to be present with others and to ask them the same question. May those practices that allow us presence and stability show up for us in all the places and all the ways. May we find the place where the teachings and the paths converge, and allow it to lead us where we must go.
