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How to Let Go of Our Banana? Monkey Meditation - June 1999

Last week, I had a melt-down. To anyone who's tracked my life recently, it comes as no surprise. Between the opening of the Issaquah studio and hosting a huge family reunion in honor of my youngest daughter's Bat Mitzvah, (a Jewish coming of age ceremony), April was full, to say the least. On top of that, my husband was traveling most of the month, leaving me to fend alone with our two teenage daughters in their hormone driven states of perpetual angst.

Feeling righteously overworked, over-wrought and overwhelmed with the particulars of my busy life, I sat back with a bowl of pasta, and did what I hadn't done in weeks, I turned on the evening news. The headlines flashed before me: Refugees from Kosovo, Killer Tornadoes in the Midwest, the devastating aftermath of the Colorado slayings. I realized I had been so consumed in the small dot of my life, that I had completely lost touch with the larger sphere.

I looked at my two beautiful, healthy girls, at our overflowing plates of macaroni, our comfy house on the hill with the homily drizzle of gray dripping down the window panes and said a prayer of gratitude.

It's so easy to forget. It's so easy to get caught in the emotional tumult of our lives and become fenced in by ideas about how horrible or terrific things really are. We hold tight to our perceptions of ourselves, our lives and the people around us, even if our perceptions are steeped in misunderstanding and illusion.

Events change, people change, we change. Yet, we stay attached to an image of how we think everything should be. The more tightly we hold on to our perceptions, the more we suffer.

My teacher was here recently. During one of the classes, he led a meditation that effected many of those who were in attendance. Imagine yourself a monkey, he suggested. Nearby is a cage which holds a banana. Now, the monkey's hand can fit easily through the door of the cage and grasp hold of the banana - the clincher is the banana cannot fit back through the door. As long as the monkey clings to the banana, he is trapped. The reflection: What is your banana?

Some people were disturbed by this meditation, others were amused by it. Almost all were provoked in some way. This is the process of yoga, to shake us up a little, wake us up so we can begin to see our lives with more clarity and thereby live more consciously.

Through our asana and pranayama, we practice moving and breathing in ways which are distinct from the way in which we maneuver through the rest of our lives. We slow the breath, we count it, we retain it. We stretch our bodies like willow trees to the right and left, we curl our backs like a cat, and lift our chests up mightily from the floor, like a cobra opening its hood. We stand on our heads, our hands, and balance on one leg.

All of these actions wake us up. When we move mindfully, we take conscious possession of our thoughts. We drop the banana for the moment and are completely present. This is the freedom the yoga masters call enlightenment.

To be present amidst the tumultuous and often chaotic dissonance of our lives is like the monkey letting go of the banana and choosing to climb a tree instead. Most of the time we're so busy blaming the banana or the cage for our suffering, we lose sight that it is always within our own power to choose to let go and simply walk away.

This is what we call "vairagyam" or detachment, and it is cultivated through dedicated practice over time. That is why as yogis we keep coming back to the mat, contorting the body; controlling the breath, and calming the mind. We're practicing.

Tomorrow we could be the people of Kosovo or the parents of the children slain in Colorado. We cannot know the future, or change the past, but we can choose to live fully alive in the here and now.

Blessings for a wonderful summer to you all!

Namaste,

The Yoga Barn, Inc.
Robin Rothenberg, Certified Yoga Instructor
660 NW Gilman Blvd., Suite C6, Issaquah, WA  98027
Studios located in both Issaquah and Fall City
Phone: 425.427.0038  -  Fax: 425.427.0613
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