Leave the Dishes and Practice From Your Heart

Advice to Myself by Louise Erdrick

Leave the dishes.

Let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator

and an earthen scum harden on the kitchen floor.

Leave the black crumbs in the bottom of the toaster.

Throw the cracked bowl out and don’t patch the cup.

Don’t patch anything. Don’t mend. Buy safety pins.

Don’t even sew on a button.

Let the wind have its way, then the earth

that invades as dust and then the dead

foaming up in gray rolls underneath the couch.

Talk to them. Tell them they are welcome.

Don’t keep all the pieces of the puzzles

or the doll’s tiny shoes in pairs, don’t worry

who uses whose toothbrush or if anything

matches, at all.

Except one word to another. Or a thought.

Pursue the authentic-decide first

what is authentic,

then go after it with all your heart.

Your heart, that place

you don’t even think of cleaning out.

That closet stuffed with savage mementos.

Don’t sort the paper clips from screws from saved baby teeth

or worry if we’re all eating cereal for dinner

again. Don’t answer the telephone, ever,

or weep over anything at all that breaks.

Pink molds will grow within those sealed cartons

in the refrigerator. Accept new forms of life

and talk to the dead

who drift in though the screened windows, who collect

patiently on the tops of food jars and books.

Recycle the mail, don’t read it, don’t read anything

except what destroys

the insulation between yourself and your experience

or what pulls down or what strikes at or what shatters

this ruse you call necessity.

I felt a connection to this poem after reading the first line. Personal observances in yoga practice, such as ahimsa, saucha, and tapas, often need context and an approach that allows us to chew on the idea for a while before completely digesting and assimilating the concept into our bodies and minds, on and off the mat. Poetry provides a fair amount of mental and emotional roughage.

Tapas translates as heat or discipline. It's a necessary component to life. But connecting it to your yoga practice is another matter. So how does this poem relate to tapas? Good question.

The third chakra, associated with the heat and discipline of tapas. is experienced at your solar plexus, the nerve complex between your navel and sternum. Above is your heart center and below is the creative mojo of the second chakra. Chakras aren't physical things you can find in your body. They serve as a guide to your body's innate intelligence and reflect a neurological map of humanity's shared emotions and experiences.

Louise Erdrick speaks of the heart as "that place you don't even think of cleaning out." She urges us to 'pursue the authentic" by deciding what that actually means to you and "then go after it with all your heart."

That is the essence of tapas as I see it. The third chakra operating alone is a recipe for burnout. To complicate things, the mind dampens our inner fire by adding qualifiers: I'll practice after I've done the dishes or when my house is finally clean or after I sort my socks.

The flames of discipline are fanned through our passionate hearts and the creative force of the second chakra. Ultimately, we all have to decide for ourselves what is authentic. This is the work of your heart. And we can only grasp what is real, chew it, digest it, and make it our own after we "leave the dishes", and "let the celery rot in the bottom drawer of the refrigerator." and allow the wind to have its way.

My advice to myself - leave the dishes and practice from your heart. The transformative heat of tapas is there, waiting.

Sending love and gratitude from the black crumbs at the bottom of my toaster to yours.

Namaste,

Kathryn

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