Sometimes it's Art

Life is not a recipe

2011-06-03T10:05:00.006-04:00

"Life is not a recipe. Recipes are just descriptions of one person's take on one moment in time. They're not rules. People think they are. They look as if they are. The say, 'Do this, not this. Add this, not that.' But, really, recipes are just suggestions that got written down." ~ Mario Batali

I haven't written in awhile. I've had some things to say, but they just haven't made their way here. A series of quotes have inspired me recently. Mario's is one of them.

I love to cook. I took a cooking class from Edward Espe Brown a couple of years ago. One of the big realizations I took home from that class was that I wasn't tasting my food while I cooked. I followed the recipe. That generally came out fine. But flavors get built along the way and tasting is a form of mindfulness practice that keeps your cooking alive and asks for your full participation. Recipes are fine places to begin. But every ingredient has the potential to vary. No tomato tastes exactly the same.

Funny...I'd learned that in my yoga practice. When I first began to practice and much later to teach, I followed the recipes of my teachers. Most of the time that came out okay. But I began to meet teachers who weren't offering recipes but were teaching me to cook. Try this, taste it. That's when my yoga practice really grew and my teaching felt authentic.

Here's a mudra to try...vajrapradama mudra...a gesture of unshakeable trust.

Interlace your fingers lightly, your thumbs are free. Place your hands across your chest. The feeling of your hands on your own heart will have an immediate effect but rest with it awhile. Taste it. You could look up more information on the internet. You could find a recipe for this mudra. But perhaps just see how it feels to you. How long do you want to sit with it? Do you rest your hands on your chest or away from your body? How is your breathing affected? Taste it. Trust yourself.

Shade

2010-10-03T23:39:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking about attention. Shining the light of my awareness strongly helps me discern the "what's going on here?" in my practice. But somewhere recently I heard someone use the word diffused in describing the attention in a yoga posture. I was intrigued. The image in my head was of light diffused through green leaves...dappled, cool, soft. I've been using this diffused attention more often. I like the feeling of shifting between the two. I travel the body bit by bit, making little adjustments here and there. I feel my way into my body as it wants to respond to this shape today. And then I allow my attention to diffuse through the whole body all at once. It brings ease to the shape but also to my mind.

Rapt

2010-08-29T14:38:00.000-04:00

I recently stumbled across "Rapt - Attention and the Focused Life" by Winifred Gallagher. She writes of a universe of ways that paying attention (or not) create the life we live. The book contains plenty of neuroscience for the geeks among us, but it's an easy read for the less geeky. Here is how the book ends...

Attending to pleasure is a reward in itself, but savoring also boosts your quotient of positive emotion, which in turn expands your focus and may confer health benefits, such as improved resilience and immune function. During an illness, says Bryant (Fred Bryant, psychologist at Loyola University in Chicago), 'you should savor not just for the sheer joy of it, but also to help yourself recover.' Then too, he says, 'just because something bad is happening doesn't mean lots of good things aren't also. They're two very different phenomena. The joy and meaning you find in life and the current stressor -- an illness, a troubled relative, a career setback -- are separate concerns, and you can experience both.'

The best strategy for savoring is learning to pay rapt attention to carefully chosen top-down targets. To practice this skill, Bryant suggests taking a 'daily vacation': spending twenty to thirty minutes focusing on something you enjoy or suspect you might but have never done. Then, at the end of the day, you revisit and relish that pleasurable interlude and plan the next sojourn. After seven days, he says, 'most people say, "What a great week! I wish I could do that all of the time!" Well why not?'

The Art of Choosing

2010-08-01T23:14:00.001-04:00

I'm at the gym, peddling my way to nowhere on the stationary bike, listening to a TED talk by Sheena Iyengar (not THAT Iyengar) on the art of choosing. I've included it below. It gave me this whole new perspective on how people choose which yoga class to take. I think perhaps we sometimes only find the right class for us by sheer luck.

For instance, she mentions that in one study she put out seven different kinds of soda for the participants to choose. She was surprised when one person said, that's not a choice, it's all one thing...soda. So I realize, to someone completely new to yoga, a list different yoga classes with different names is one choice...yoga. It becomes really important to be clear then what a person new to practice wants (even though that may change over time) and needs from yoga at present.

There were also cultural differences related to how one approaches choosing. Dropping the cultural significance and simplifying, I will say that there are the people who want to figure it out for themselves and people who are more comfortable with choice assisted by a respected source. I started thinking about how some yoga systems have structure and lots of adjustments. (A friend once said he would try yoga if he could go to a class where they would teach him to do it right.) Other styles of teaching that encourage an exploration that only begins with form but is ultimately INformed by form. The yoga posture feels right.

It seems to me that not only do we need to help people understand the styles of yoga available but also the styles of teaching available. Do you want tough love? Nurturing? Drill sergeant or goddess of mercy? We need to offer up the explanation of choices in a way that gives clarity rather than judgement...and perhaps a little finesse.

Give the talk a listen. Even if you don't find yourself relating it to choosing a yoga practice, it's a really interesting look at how we choose. Sometimes it's art!

Savasana

2010-07-27T11:41:00.001-04:00

Today, in savasana, my mind was whirling away about a variety of things. Not worrying, not fretting, just thinking. I was thinking about yoga and how it really takes discipline and patience. That's the tough love bit I haven't been sharing much lately. There's the nice relaxing "I-sleep-better-on-the-days-I-do-yoga" experience of yoga. There's a lot to be said for that kind of experience. But I suspect there's a little bit of cotton candy quality to it. It seems substantial but melts into nothing fairly quickly.

I was thinking about how there's "change" and then there's "transformation". Change happens no matter what. There's no stopping it. Transformation takes discipline, mindfulness, and patience.

The first of the yoga sutras of Patanjali is sometimes translated as "And now the teaching of yoga begins", as if that occurrence happens once and then we are on the path. I've come to realize that that moment where the teaching of yoga begins happens now...and now...and now. And so do the opportunities to miss the moment. Fortunately the moment comes around again. It's never too late.

While this was all swirling around in my head, I woke up to the fact that my body had found a place of profound relaxation. So profound it sent a ripple of pleasure through me to notice it finally. Mostly that doesn't happen. When the mind is busy the body sort of picks up on it as well. But today my body took me where I needed to go and then waited for me to notice.

And now the teaching of yoga begins.

Lu was always really good at Savasana

A work in progress

2010-07-24T23:33:00.003-04:00

This week I've been having some lively conversations in person, on Facebook and in emails about yoga. I got my knickers in a twist, as they say, after reading a couple of articles in the paper that I'm going to say were a bit shallow and...well okay...I got annoyed. I got defensive. Yoga really doesn't need to be defended. My practice is what it is. It's a living event, a work in progress...and so am I. (Sometimes it's art!)

Usually I say yoga and meditation...as if they are two different things. But for me, they are one and the same thing. Sometimes I'm moving and sometimes I'm not. So when I practice yoga, everything is grist for the mill. Even getting grumpy over someone else's comments about yoga is folded into practice. This week, perhaps I'll practice renunciation. I'm going to renounce worrying about what people in the popular press say about yoga. Or maybe I'll just see my annoyance and defensiveness as some kind of love instead of a character flaw. Who knows what I'll find. That's why I love to practice yoga. The living event unfolds in unexpected and sometimes delightful ways.

Here's a piece from Paths to God, Living the Bhagavad Gita by Ram Dass. He talks about playing with renouncing desires, but renouncing pet peeves seems like it will be just as fruitful.

"If you want to play a little bit with a renunciation practice, pick some desire that you encounter every day. You decide which one: the desire to eat something or other, the desire for a cigarette, whatever it is you want to play with. Pick something that you usually give in to every day — like, let's say, a cup of coffee in the morning — and for one day, don't do it. Then the next day, do it much more than you usually would — have two cups of coffee. Start to study your reactions. Notice the difference in your feelings toward the desire on the first day and on the second day.

"Maybe another time you'll want to take two desires to work with: one day don't satisfy one and doubly satisfy the other, and then flip them around. Try to be very attentive to what's going through your mind about it. If you're keeping a journal, write about it in your journal. Start to relate to your desires as something you can scrutinize rather than as things that totally suck you in all the time, things that consume you. Get into a friendly relationship with your desires. Play with them, instead of being driven by them all the time. Desires get to be fun, really, once we're observing them instead of mechanically reacting to them.
"The whole game of renunciation and purification is an experiment — an experiment in how quickly we can extricate ourselves from being attached to our desire systems. Notice that it isn't a question of getting rid of desires — that's a misunderstanding. Trust me, the desires will stay around! We're just loosening their hold on us, getting clear enough of them so we can see them in some sort of context.”

And ps...check out this blog post from the Dalai Grandma on the Basis of Practice.

Practicing

2010-07-10T17:49:00.000-04:00

"As Sri Pattabhi Jois, founder of Ashtanga yoga, said: 'Yoga is 99% practice and 1% theory.'

Doctors should really be prescribing practice to patients: practice healthy eating habits, practice exercise, practice good relationships, practice discipline, practice creativity, practice confidence, practice learning, practice working hard. Because everything takes practice. Health, contentment, love, good relationships, success...these don't come easily to anyone."

This is from the blog Prescribing Yoga by Christina Palmer. It was chosen for recognition by one of my new favorite online magazines...The Magazine of Yoga...this morning. It's so nice to be reminded that everyone needs to practice. Whatever appears easy and effortless is always the result of practice. We're all in this life together, practicing.

Falling in love

2010-06-17T01:15:00.001-04:00

"Yoga is the Cultivation of Conscious Presence.
Conscious presence begins as a wrestling match with the mind and ends as a love affair with the present moment."
- Bhagavad Gita 2.50

Joseph LaPage (Integrative Yoga Therapy) wrote this recently in a commentary on
the Bhagavad Gita. The entire piece is longer and lovely but these lines have stayed with me.

It isn't that the wrestling match with the mind is required of us or necessary but we do it anyway. Maybe it's just what we do before we fall in love.

Eat your greens!

2010-03-27T16:31:00.001-04:00

Spring time is the perfect time to eat more greens. Here's a really delicious and easy to make salad using Lacinato (aka Dino) Kale. I learned this technique from Ed Brown during his visit to Columbus last year.

Finely chop the kale (stems and all) and put in a bowl (you'll need room to manuever so make it a big big bowl). You'll be tasting as you go. Toss in some salt (not too much...you can add more as you taste) and start squeezing the kale with your hands. The salt will help the bring out the moisture from the leaves as they soften and turn a lovely emerald green. Taste. From here anything goes. Just add and squeeze and taste until it's just right for you.

Things you could add:
Lemon
honey
ginger
dried pepper or a little cayenne

A friend of Ed's calls this squeezing technique "hand frying". Once you're done with that part and the taste is to your satisfaction you can stir in other stuff like:

sunflower seeds
nuts
dried fruit
fresh fruit
radishes
avocado

I love this salad so much I'll squeeze up a bunch for lunch!

ps: you can use regular kale too but you'll have to remove the stems before finely chopping the leaves.

Under the weather

2010-03-22T11:41:00.001-04:00

I woke up this morning feeling under the weather. Grey skies, rain...it felt heavy. I was feeling frustration, and something else, sadness maybe? I felt a kind of bewilderment leftover from yesterday. Nothing stays the same. Impermanence.

But then what to do on my yoga mat this morning? I just stepped into my practice. Nothing I've been doing felt appealing or appropriate. I've been feeling my way into lovely backbending, upper body opening postures. Today...I didn't even want to stand up. All I wanted was to fold forward and to have something catch me. So I dragged my meditation cushion over so my forhead could rest against its softness. It's not one of those sort of firm cushions. It's filled with buckwheat hulls that get more mushy and pliable over time. I did forward bends, soft, easy forward bends.
I soothed and supported. It was short. It was not effortful in anyway. I was not fixing. I just gave in to what was arising in my attention. Sometimes I say in class, that doing a mild supported backbend can be nice if you're feeling blue. True. But sometimes it's nice to just cradle and care for yourself, not wallowing, just being with things. Letting them clarify if they want to...or not.

Then I just sat a few minutes with some pranayama and meditation with the sound of the rain...and Samputa mudra said to remind us of the treasures we have within. And for today...that was enough.

Small things

2010-03-02T12:21:00.002-05:00

I was reading Verlyn Klinkenborg's piece "Sometimes the Smallest Things" in the New York Times this morning. I've been reminded several times lately how important it is to keep looking, keep seeing, keep being curious, keep questioning. A little quote I was sent recently illustrated this by pointing out that it was only about 100 years ago that someone thought up having left and right shoes. What a relief that must have been to a lot of people.

Yoga refers to samskara, a Sanskrit word meaning impression left by a previous thought or action; latent tendency. These impressions, repeated become so deep that they become habit, which means we no longer see these actions as choices. If we don't see that there is choice, there is no choice.

So dance with life fully....mindfully. Maybe we'll discover we don't have two left feet!

Theorists and experimentalists

2010-03-02T11:56:00.001-05:00

More than 20 years ago, I worked as an administrative assistant at the Institute of Theoretical Physics at UC Santa Barbara. I loved working there. It was the first job in my working life where I was actually excited to go to work each day (for accuracy, I should inject "most of the time"). I loved being around people who were curious and intelligent and coming up with new ideas about the way things are in the world. I didn't come into contact much with the experimentalists. They were the ones who took the theory and brought it into application.

With that background I realize all these years later that, as a yoga teacher, I am more of the experimentalist variety. I still love those theorists, now yogis instead of physicists. But my practice, my art, is to pick up those innovations and play with them, study them, and let them evolve until they apply to my life, my practice, my teaching. What a wonderful and exhilarating partnership.

Pain relief

2010-03-01T13:42:00.001-05:00

I'm reading "Yoga for Pain Relief" by Kelly McGonigal, Ph.D. Kelly teaches yoga, meditation and psychology at Stanford University. I first came in contact with her through Erich Schiffmann's discussion board years ago. She's written an informative and helpful book for people dealing with chronic pain. She begins with a chapter on the science behind chronic pain, which I found to be enlightening. Then she introduces the reader to yoga and how it can help to "calm your mind and heal your chronic pain".

Kelly writes, "While neuroscience, psychology, and medicine are getting better at explaining why and how pain persists, they do not yet have satisfying solutions. Pain medications fail over the long term more often than not. Pain management programs often focus on coping with pain rather than transforming the pain experience."

"That is where yoga comes in. The yoga tradition has evolved as a system to end unnecessary suffering. This promise was described as far back as two thousand years ago in the Yoga Sutras, one of the first guides to the purpose and practice of yoga."

"Yoga philosophy offers hope for freedom from suffering, and its practices provide the tools for healing."

The book includes breath awareness practices, gentle yoga, meditation, all geared to those who suffer chronic pain. I've already recommended it to several students who live with pain on a daily basis. It's a gem.

Lost in the details?

2010-02-01T14:08:00.003-05:00

I'm currently reading (among other things) Buddha's Brain - the practical neuroscience of happiness, love and wisdom by Rick Hanson PhD. with Richard Mendius, M.D. It's geeky enough about the neuroscience without being sleep inducing. Just my speed. It has a lot of meditation practices to try out in the process of understanding the points being made about the brain. One piece really caught me and I've been using it in my own practice and also exploring it as a teaching tool in my yoga classes.

From the book:
"The methods here focus on stilling the clamor of verbal thought - that endlessly nattering voice in the back of the head.
Be Aware of the Body as a Whole
Some parts of the brain are linked by reciprocal inhibition: when one part activates, it suppresses another one. To some extent, the left and right hemispheres have this relationship; thus, when you stimulate the right hemisphere by engaging the activities it specializes in, the verbal centers of the left hemisphere are effectively shushed.
The right visual-spatial hemisphere has the greater responsibility for representing the state of your body, so awareness of the body can help supress left-brain verbal chatter. Right hemisphere activation increases further when you sense the body as a whole, which draws upon the the global, gestalt processing of that hemisphere.
To practice awareness of the whole body, start with the breath as a whole; rather than allow attention to move as it normally does, from sensation to sensation, try to experience your breath as a single, unified gestalt of sensations in your belly, chest, throat, and nose. It's normal for this unified gestalt sensing to crumble after a second or two; when it does, just try to recreate it. Then expand awareness to include the body as a whole, sensed as a single perception, as one whole thing. This sense of the body as a whole will also tend to crumble quickly, especially in the beginning; when it does, simply restore it again, if only for a few seconds....
Besides its benefits for quieting the verbal mind, whole body awareness supports singleness of mind. This is a meditative state in which all aspectes of experience come together as a whole and attention is very steady."

What I've been practicing with is finding this whole body awareness, not only as a 'formal' meditation technique, but adding it to asana work. The anatomical details for a yoga posture are important to be sure. And there's a certain quality of attention and concentration involved. But to take some time in the posture to go global allows in a different understanding of the physical practice of yoga and yokes it to the meditative side. It is very easy to get lost in the details, endlessly fussing and fixing. So I do the details and then let them go for a bit and rest in the whole. As Dr. Hanson says, the attention crumbles, but you can rebuild it and rebuild it. The experience of the whole of the posture contains, I think, the essence of the practice...not the details. I think the details are there to find a safe structure on which to hang our awareness. That's my theory. I'm testing it out.

The photo reference, if you didn't catch it, is are you seeing the forest or the trees? (No value judgment implied).

Like right now

2010-01-18T12:42:00.006-05:00

I've read this poem before but it showed up the other day in an email from Ed Brown. I read it in class this morning and a couple of people asked for it...

Yes
By William Stafford, The Way it Is: Selected Poems, 1998.

It could happen any time, tornado,

earthquake, Armageddon. It could happen.

Or sunshine, love, salvation.

It could, you know. That's why we wake

and look out -- no guarantees

in this life.

But some bonuses, like morning,

like right now, like noon,

like evening.

****

Here's a link to Charity Navigator for info on what a variety of charities are doing in Haiti.

Reading

2010-01-04T10:29:00.002-05:00

In case you're interested, I've added a few books to my random reading list on my website.

If you've got any to share back...please do!

A State of Union

2010-01-03T18:27:00.004-05:00

"Yoga is a state of being in which all apparent opposites, distinctions, and states are reconciled. Yoga means "union," not only union of the parts with each other, but also union with the whole. From this state of union we live without fragmentation or inner conflict. We are able to embrace our whole being from the surface to the depths, encompassing both our transient limitations and our perennial limitlessness. We express through our individuality the wholeness of which we are a fleeting expression. We honor and live from, by, and within our true nature. This is the key to a life of peace and contentment.

Hatha yoga affects the mind as much as the body. It improves concentration, increases alertness, precipitates perceptual and rational clarity, cultivates calmness, develops equanimity, instills confidence, and nourishes contentment. These benefits all depend on the presence of mind during practice.

But hatha yoga does deeper than the mind, penetrating to the core of our being. It is a soul-food of unparalleled value. If approached openly, without ambition and pride, specific objectives, predetermined ideals, or wishful thinking, it will foster profound self-knowledge. It will also inspire deep self-acceptance, and provide continuous self-validation and self-empowerment. In short: self-love -- a love that spills out into a genuine compassion for and interest in all beings. This compassion expresses itself in a natural and spontaneous generosity, and an easy, sympathetic humor.

More fertile soil for the flowering of happiness could hardly be found." -- Godfrey Devereux.

photo of Erich Schiffmann by Barbra Brady

Quietly, Heart to Heart

2009-12-31T09:56:00.007-05:00

There is a lovely practice in the Buddhist tradition called Metta. It is a meditation practice of a lifetime. Whole retreats are built around it. Basically, one offers best wishes in the form of a few phrases to oneself, to someone you love, to someone you feel neutral towards, to a difficult person, and to everyone everywhere. The phrases vary but could be something like...

May you be filled with compassion

May you be well

Maybe you be peaceful and at ease

Maybe you be happy in this life just as it is.

I'd like to offer a "take anywhere" version of this practice. I sometimes this use this practice after I turn out the light and get ready for sleep, or at the end of my meditation practice, before I move into the rest of my day.

I take an in-breath and who ever appears in my mind's eye (no editing) gets a wish for well being on the exhale. I usually shorten the phrase to "May you be at peace" but you can choose whatever you like. Next inhale, next person that arises. The same person may come up multiple times, you may come up yourself. Inhale, let the person arise, exhale, offer your wishes.

Try it for a minute, for 5 minutes, whatever time you have. The practice is ultimately an offering to your own true heart. As the old year rolls over into the new...may we cultivate compassion together, may we be well, may we be peaceful and at ease, and may we recognize the seeds of happiness in this life just as it is.

I'm just looking

2009-12-11T08:59:00.006-05:00

Years ago I used to work for the National Audubon Society. I was out one day near Lake Erie birdwatching with some experienced "birders". This very patient gentleman was trying to point out a warbler (of some sort...they sort of all looked the same to me) in the bushes. I'm not that great with binoculars and the bird seemed to be the same color as all the leaves around it but I was really trying to see this bird . It seemed pretty hopeless and I felt like maybe it was time to just move on...so I lied. I told him I saw it. I didn't see that bird that day...but I did see many others and it beat being in the office. By the end of the long day I just wanted to go home and I thought I'd jump out of my skin if we had to stop one more time on the way home to search out yet another bird species.

I love birds. I've learned to look for them in my own way. I don't travel far and wide to search them out. I can only name a couple of birds by their call. But they add to my life immensely. I can't tell you how lovely it is to hear the call of the first Red-winged Blackbird...the herald of spring for me. Or to see the bright red feathers of a male Cardinal against the intense white of the snow in winter.

As a teacher and lover of yoga, I think it must be like this for the people who come to my class sometimes. Me...trying to point out some seemingly obscure but, I think, beautiful thing about the practice. You...trying valiently to see, hear, feel, what I'm saying...but wishing I'd move on. I know that everyone finds something in their practice each time they come to the mat. It might not be what I'm pointing to...and really...that's okay. I'm just hoping to infuse you with some of the love I have for the practice. Learning to see, hear, and feel, you find that the practice meets you where you are. You may find something lovely about a favorite yoga posture or the coziness of a few minutes of meditation...and you may also have those fleeting views of something rare and beautiful.

When it comes right down to it...We're all here trying to see through the leaves. It's all worth seeing...the birds, the leaves, the frustration, the joy, the people you are with, the feel of the day...all of it. Heading off to my yoga mat now to see what I can see.

An affirmation...

2009-12-08T10:53:00.002-05:00

"I have a healthy appetite for the small and large adventures of life. I digest the challenges with great pleasure and joy."

I came across this affirmation this morning. I'm usually not an "affirmation" kind of person. Maybe it's because of a misunderstanding on my part. Affirmations have seemed to me to be sort of wishful thinking. If I just say this enough, it will be true. But a dictionary definition of "affirmation" I looked up said "something that is affirmed: a statement or propostion that is declared to be true".

"I have a healthy appetite for the small and large adventures of life. I digest the challenges with great pleasure and joy".

Today, in this moment, I declare this to be true. And in this moment, that is enough...to be filled with great pleasure and joy...in this moment...and to taste it fully...just this moment...in all its "enoughness".

Delicious.

Mudra for Digestion

2009-12-01T12:30:00.004-05:00

We've been using "Pushan Mudra" or the mudra for digestion in class lately. Pushan Mudra supports the organs of digestion. It’s also a gesture that symbolizes receiving, transforming and letting go which is the process of digesting whatever it is we take in…food, ideas, images, emotions.

In this mudra the left hand is thumb touching the middle and ring fingers (other fingers gently extended) and the right hand is thumb touching index and middle fingers. According to Gertrud Hirschi, author of Mudras: Yoga in Your Hands, this mudra influences energy currents responsible for absorbing and utilizing food and has a relaxing effect on the solar plexus. It also energizes the breath in the solar plexus. You may find your breathing is stronger when using this mudra.

Use this mudra after a big meal if you are feeling too full...one of the reasons I offer it in class around the holidays known for their big meals...Thanksgiving and Christmas! It can be used for a digestive upset as it arises. But if you have chronic digestive issues, along with whatever other things you may be doing...try using this mudra for 5 minutes before meals. If nothing else, it will send you to your meal feeling more relaxed and mindful. That's not a bad way to begin.

Enjoy!

Mudra of Contentment

2009-11-23T14:09:00.005-05:00

I'm in "mudra" mode again. I've always loved using mudras in meditation. But I tend to move between intentional use of traditional mudras and just following the natural tendency of my hands to be at rest.

One description of the word mudra is "a gesture or position, usually of the hands, that locks and guides energy flow and reflexes to the brain. By curling, crossing, stretching and touching the fingers and hands, we can talk to the body and mind as each area of the hand reflexes to a certain part of the mind or body." This is from Guru Rattana in Transitions to a Heart Centered World. Simple and to the point. I like it.

We're always speaking with our hands in some way, intentional or not. So we might add that the use of mudra is an intentional or mindful use of the hands to speak to the body and mind.

I've been making friends with The Mudra for Contentment recently. It's so lovely and friendly. Try it. Bring together the middle finger and thumb of your right hand and the little finger and thumb of your left hand.

The fingernails don't touch. Soften your shoulders. Bend your elbows a bit and let this mudra rest in front of the solar plexus. In some mudras, the fingers not touching each other stretch out. In this one, let the other fingers be relaxed. Close your eyes or let them be just a tiny bit open gazing toward your hands. Sit and follow the easy movement of your breath. Allow the body to soften. Try 3 to 5 minutes. It's said that a few minutes will calm the nervous system and leave you feeling comfy and cozy. When you are ready to end your meditaiton, make soft fists with your hands and then slowly release them. Pause. Move on with your day when you are ready.

So here's the part you might play with and listen to what your inner voice says. Some sources say, use the configuration above if you are female and reverse it if you are male. Straight forward huh? Well yeah, except that other resources suggest the exact opposite. Sigh.

I've tried it both ways...the one above feels the coziest to me. See how it feels for you. Let me know what you find out.

Resting, Working

2009-11-17T09:19:00.002-05:00

(This) story is about when Suzuki Roshi was moving lots of large rocks and boulders around Tassajara, Zen Mountain Center, to build walls and to create a rock garden. Suzuki Roshi was in his 50’s and is just over five-feet tall. He was working with a group of healthy, young, men mostly in their 20’s. Someone approached them and noticed that the young men were panting and sweaty, while Suzuki Roshi, who apparently had done as much or more work than the others, was breathing normally, and barely sweating at all. When asked about this contrast, Suzuki Roshi replied, “Even while I’m working, I’m always resting.”

From Accomplishing More by Doing Less blog by Marc Lesser

The Charter for Compassion

2009-11-13T08:15:00.007-05:00

The principle of compassion lies at the heart of all religious, ethical and spiritual traditions, calling us always to treat all others as we wish to be treated ourselves. Compassion impels us to work tirelessly to alleviate the suffering of our fellow creatures, to dethrone ourselves from the centre of our world and put another there, and to honour the inviolable sanctity of every single human being, treating everybody, without exception, with absolute justice, equity and respect.

It is also necessary in both public and private life to refrain consistently and empathically from inflicting pain. To act or speak violently out of spite, chauvinism, or self-interest, to impoverish, exploit or deny basic rights to anybody, and to incite hatred by denigrating others—even our enemies—is a denial of our common humanity. We acknowledge that we have failed to live compassionately and that some have even increased the sum of human misery in the name of religion.

We therefore call upon all men and women ~ to restore compassion to the centre of morality and religion ~ to return to the ancient principle that any interpretation of scripture that breeds violence, hatred or disdain is illegitimate ~ to ensure that youth are given accurate and respectful information about other traditions, religions and cultures ~ to encourage a positive appreciation of cultural and religious diversity ~ to cultivate an informed empathy with the suffering of all human beings—even those regarded as enemies.

We urgently need to make compassion a clear, luminous and dynamic force in our polarized world. Rooted in a principled determination to transcend selfishness, compassion can break down political, dogmatic, ideological and religious boundaries. Born of our deep interdependence, compassion is essential to human relationships and to a fulfilled humanity. It is the path to enlightenment, and indispensible to the creation of a just economy and a peaceful global community.

Click here for more information on the Charter for Compassion.

My own eyes...

2009-10-28T10:05:00.002-04:00

I took this photograph while I was in Santa Barbara last week. I wasn't sure it would come out...the shimmer of the sun on the sea. I thought it might be too bright....but look it's there!
I'm using this as my desktop photo. There's something wonderful about seeing this photo each morning when I log on....not a photo of a place I wish I'd seen or remember being, taken by someone else...but a moment I saw with my own eyes in a particular moment in time. I don't take a lot of photos usually. I used to. But sometimes I feel like it takes me out of the moment and puts me at a distance from the current event. For this photo though, I was there, inhaling this scene with all of my senses...morning by the sea, the smell of the ocean, the cool breeze, the gentleness of the sun at this time of day, sand under my feet, water swirling around my ankles, the hiss of the thinning end of a wave on the shore, the crash of the breaking waves further out, shore birds calling....memories of a long life calling...and home calling....home where there is no ocean but my heart rests.

Choices

2009-10-06T12:22:00.006-04:00

I'm reading a mystery novel called "Still Life" by Louise Penny. Yesterday I came across this dialogue between a senior police officer and a new recruit.

"I watch. I'm very good at observing. Noticing things. And listening. Actively listening to what people are saying, their choice of words, their tone. What they aren't saying. And this, Agent Nichols, is the key. It's choice"

"Choice?"

"We choose our thoughts. We choose our perceptions. We choose our attitudes. We may not think so. We may not believe it, but we do. I absolutely know that we do. I've seen enough evidence, time after time, tragedy after tragedy. Triumph after triumph. It's about choice."

... Life is choice. All day, everyday. Who we talk to, where we sit, what we say, how we say it. And our lives become defined by our choices. It's as simple and complex as that. And as powerful."

My teacher Erich Schiffmann often says when opening a workshop..."remember, you have options and choices". Do you think he only means what you do with your body? How are you defining your yoga practice? I'm contemplating that myself.

The Perfect Room

2009-10-05T14:39:00.004-04:00

I've been thinking about the space or spaces where we practice our yoga. I have a nice little room at home. When we bought our house years ago, the first thing we did was have a hardwood floor put in one of the small bedrooms. We never finished the floor...its unsealed. At first we meant to get around to finishing it but I've grown to like it just this way. I've painted the space several different colors over the years. Only one of them turned out to be a mistake...a too cold-feeling lilac. Right now its kind of a warm asparagus green. We've got our yoga props and books. Our mats are always out ready for practice on a moments notice. Cats are allowed to wander in and out. Meditation pillows, candles...its a comfortable space for us and we love it.

But in our previous house, we practiced in a loft open to the sounds of the rest of the house, it was a bit dusty too. We once decided we needed to practice in the kitchen because it was the only place without carpeting! That didn't last long.

Over the years I've taught yoga in a wide variety of spaces. One church gymnasium my students were particularly fond of even though it got reeeaaallly hot in there in the summer. But there were great accoustics for "ommming" and lots of room to spread out. There were spaces that were quiet and spaces with street noise. There were spaces in buildings with no other activities but our yoga class and spaces with lots of other classes....including a pottery studio downstairs, private music lessons across the hall. We could sometimes hear the thump of the clay being thrown. We could always hear the music. Have you meditated to ragtime piano? It's an interesting challenge. Then there was the time a year ago where the walls of the classroom were painted a deep red. People were upset. How are we going to do yoga in a RED room?! (We've managed nicely thank you). There was a space on the top floor of an old building with floors so dusty and dirty that you needed to stay on your mat or your feet got filthy.

Recently one of the studios where I teach has relocated with a new owner. It's only been a short time but change is hard and people are struggling to make it feel like home. I've struggled a bit too. But I've come to realize that as we sit in meditation, as we do our yoga practice, bit by bit we will discover the space where we practice is within. Much as we would prefer not to have external challenges to that practice, they can be part of the deepening of our practice. The deepening of our attention can grow in just such challenging places.

As Jon Kabat-Zinn says...no matter where you go, there you are.

Listening

2009-08-25T13:13:00.007-04:00

I've just finished "Listening Below the Noise - A meditation on the practice of silence" by Anne D. LeClaire. This isn't a book about how to meditate. It's an exploration of silence in daily life. The author began, on a whim, to spend one day a month in silence. She later made it the first and third Monday of each month. In her book she explores her many and varied experiences with this practice, both her own, and the responses of others to her practice. At the end of her book she offers up some small ways to find more silence in your life.

The only time I almost put the book down was when she mentioned Masaru Emoto, the guy who says that speaking nicely to water changes its structure. Sorry, but I think that's pseudoscience. It added a momentary cringe factor for me. There are enough amazing things in nature without making stuff up. But I kept reading and that turned out to be the only place where I felt uncomfortable with her writing.

From the book...

"I once read that the Inuit and Igloolik have more than two hundred words for snow, and I envy them a language that can encompass the many subtleties of a single idea. I've read, too, that in the Buddhist tradition of Southeast Asia there are twenty-one different words for silence. In my dictionary, few synonyms are listed. Muteness. Stillness. A thesaurus doesn't offer many more. Quiescence, Peace. Wordless-ness. Quietude. Quiet.

But just as there are countless varieties of lilies, there are different kinds of silence, as many as there are intentions and reasons behind it. It can be gentle and peaceful. Risky and brave. Angry and punishing. Thoughtful and wise. Intimate. Loving. Restorative. Reflective. Sacred or profane. It can be used to honor or to shame. To diminish or empower.

How many words would it require to reveal all its multitudinous nuances and intents?

Fifty?

Two hundred?

More?"

Silence

2009-08-11T12:53:00.004-04:00

"But if one says: I cannot come because it is my hour to be alone, one is considered rude, egosticial or strange. What a commentary on our civilization, when being alone is considered suspect; when one has to apologize for it, make excuses, hide the fact that one practices it -- like a secret vice". - Anne Morrow Lindberg - quoted in "Listening Below the Noise - A Meditation on the Practice of Silence" by Anne D. LeClaire

I loved coming across this quote. Being alone is my secret vice, although I'd never quite thought of it that way until now. I think that makes it feel even more delicious!

I think I won't put a photo with this piece. When I looked up images for "alone" most of the pictures were of people alone and sad or alone and frightened or with other people holding their hands saying "you are not alone".

Even now I find myself tempted to make excuses...to explain myself. But I think I won't.

Shouting

2009-08-11T12:32:00.003-04:00

Its hard to avoid reading or hearing about the craziness that passes for debate over healthcare reform of late. I was reminded of this prayer for teacher and student from the Upanishads. Its very old. I don't know for sure how it was used. But legend has it that it was chanted prior to teaching by both student and teacher. I would so love if this attitude could be cultivated today as we work through difficult and complicated topics that affect us all.

May we be protected together.

May we be nourished together.

May we work together, uniting our strength for the good of humanity.

May our learning be enlightening and purposeful.

May we never hate each other.

Om shanti, shanti, shanti...Peace.

Cooking,carrots, and our own true heart

2009-07-24T09:50:00.005-04:00

"One concept in cooking is 'How do I make it taste the way its supposed to?' "

"This doesn’t have to do with tasting anything. Its making something be the way its supposed to. And its also possible you know to ask the carrot how it likes to be or what its like to be a carrot. And what would help the carrot express its carrot-ness more fully today. This is different than making the carrot taste the way its supposed to. Do you understand? A friend of mine went to the Culinary Institute of America, the other CIA, in Hyde Park, New York, And he said he had a teacher who would walk around and say, 'Chef, what are you doing?' And you might say, 'I’m making carrot soup'. And then the teacher would say, ' And what should carrot soup taste like?' And then you were supposed to answer 'Carrots'. I don’t know about you but I’ve definitely had carrot soup that I can’t tell... is it carrot, is it yam, is it winter squash? Because it has carrots and it has orange juice and it has chilies and it has green chilies and it has ginger and it has apples and it has basil, maybe some coriander. Tastes magnificent but you don’t know what it is.

So most of us are busy projecting our selves in this way. Aren’t I magnificent? You don’t know who I am do you? (laughs) And then we wonder 'why do I have so much trouble connecting?' (laughs)......

Is it all right for you to be you? Can you study how to bring out the best in who you are? Can you help yourself realize who you are, just as you could help a carrot express itself? This is to say, you know, how do you help your heart express your heart? It takes a certain amount of courage and, initially, a certain amount of awkwardness. We’re not used to expressing our heart and we’re busy presenting ourselves as a perfected being.

So this basic activity of tasting a carrot, to actually taste a carrot, and then you can taste a carrot when you cook it in a little water, in oil, in butter, if you roast it in the oven and you can taste what happens to carrot just in the different ways its cooked. And carrot with oil and without oil, and with you know there's only just five flavors, there's salt and there's soy sauce, there's vinegar and lemon juice, there's sugar and honey, there's pungent elements, there's garlic and ginger and you could study what helps carrot be carrot and manifest the carrot-ness of carrots.

And you can study what helps you manifest the heart of you. What encourages you to do that? How will you manage that? This is a different practice than studying how to be successful or good or grown up or calm and quiet and still."

-- transcribed from a recorded talk at a day long sitting with Edward Espe Brown on August 9, 2008 at Green Gulch

any errors in transcription are mine.

Nurturing

2009-07-13T12:46:00.010-04:00

Mother-of-us-all prays to free us
from our image of perfection
to which so much suffering clings.

When in the shadowy mind
we imagine ourselves imperfectly,
praying to be freed from gravity
by enlightenment, she refines our prayers.

Putting her arms around us
she bids us rest our head on her shoulder
whispering, Don’t you know
with all your fear and anger
all you are fit for is love.

- Stephen Levine from Breaking the Drought - Visions of Grace

WOO HOO!

2009-07-09T13:32:00.006-04:00

I came across this on another blog.
If you Google it, it comes in many variations...
here's one.

"Life should NOT be a journey to the grave
with the intention of arriving safely
in an attractive and well preserved body
but rather to skid in sideways,
chocolate in one hand,
body thoroughly used up
totally worn out
and screaming
WOO HOO what a ride!"
-annonymous

The variations seem to be in what one is holding in one's hand or hands as one skids in. Chocolate works for me. The poet Mary Oliver says poems are meant to be read aloud. So read this one to yourself or someone else and when you get to "WOO HOO"...give it all you've got!

Re-visiting

2009-06-23T10:48:00.004-04:00

I've been re-visiting B.K.S. Iyengar's Light on Yoga sequences lately. It's got me working a couple of standing poses differently. Love when this happens. You just start looking at a familiar pattern of energy in a different way and all of a sudden a new door to the pose opens.

I've been using his sequence of standing poses, in the order he suggests...just to feel why he did them in that order. I have to say my hips are feeling really good (the sequence I've been playing with was for relieving sciatica which I don't suffer from but figured it would provide some nice hip work).

Even though these are Iyengar sequences, I find my way into the poses using Erich Schiffmann's work on finding lines of energy.

I am having so much fun on the mat!

Nourished

2009-06-07T08:27:00.002-04:00

When I get home from teaching a yoga class, my husband often asks me how it went. "Did it flow?", he asks. Sometimes it really does...like an excellent meal...all the flavors blend just right.
Other days my plans go awry. The real people in front of me need something different than what I'd wanted to offer. Then it's sort of like looking in the frig and picking out a little of this, a little of that, making a meal of seemingly un-related items. Classes like that can turn out to be just right too...pulling together the fragments into a delicious meal for the body, mind and soul.

Smoothly flowing or a little rough around the edges, there seems to be plenty of opportunity for us to be nourished by whatever arises on our yoga mat.

A little secret

2009-05-24T01:01:00.002-04:00

Any Morning

Just lying on the couch and being happy.
Only humming a little, the quiet sound in the head.
Trouble is busy elsewhere at the moment, it has
so much to do in the world.

People who might judge are mostly asleep; they can't
monitor you all the time, and sometimes they forget.
When dawn flows over the hedge you can
get up and act busy.

Little corners like this, pieces of Heaven
left lying around, can be picked up and saved.
People wont even see that you have them,
they are so light and easy to hide.

Later in the day you can act like the others.
You can shake your head. You can frown.

~ William Stafford ~

Seeking

2009-05-24T00:45:00.003-04:00

As a bee seeks nectar
from all kinds of flowers,

seek teachings everywhere.

Like a deer that finds a quiet place to graze,

seek seclusion to digest all you have gathered.

Like a mad one, beyond all limits,

go wherever you please and live like a lion

completely free of all fear.

-- Dzogchen tantra

Two books

2009-05-18T13:40:00.002-04:00

I'll post more later on these books, but I mentioned them in class this morning and said I'd post the titles...

The Mindful Way through Depression: Freeing yourself from chronic unhappiness
by Mark Williams, John Teasdale, Zindel Segal, and Jon Kabat-Zinn

In Praise of Slowness: How a worldwide movement is challenging the cult of speed
by Carl Honore

Bones

2009-04-28T10:54:00.005-04:00

From a fascinating article in the NY Times this morning "... although bone may seem like stone, it is tirelessly, ambitiously alive. In many ways, bone is more animate than the muscles and fat draped over it or the quivering visceral organs it protectively encages. It certainly can be more attuned to its surroundings. "

"Bone is built of two basic components: flexible fibers of collagen and brittle chains of the calcium-rich mineral hydroxyapatite. But those relatively simple ingredients, the springy and the salty, are woven together into such a complex cat’s cradle of interdigitating layers that the result is an engineering masterpiece of tensile, compressive and elastic strength."

If this sounds interesting...read the whole article here.

Paul Grilley, who first turned me on to the amazing diversity of bone structures in the human body, has a photo gallery on his website that illustrates one of the reasons why we each do our yoga postures (and everything else) in ways that are unique to our bodies.

2009-04-25T15:49:00.004-04:00

I picked up Mary Oliver's new book of poems, Red Bird, yesterday.
I found this.

"Instructions for living a life.
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Talk about it."

I was sharing this with my friend Daron and as I wrote it down in my email, I realized that he does this. My friend Jeanne does this. My teacher, Erich Schiffmann does this. Writers I like do this, poets, painters, friends, my husband...this is what makes them so interesting and challenging and keeps me doing the same.

The future we expect

2009-04-12T09:21:00.006-04:00

According to neuroscience, even before events happen the brain has already made a prediction about what is most likely to happen, and sets in motion the perception, behaviors, emotions, physiologic responses and interpersonal ways of relating that best fit with what is predicted. In a sense, we learn from the past what to predict for the future and then live the future we expect.

--Regina Pally, The Predicting Brain

This is a chapter heading quote from the book "Less - Accomplishing More by Doing Less" by Marc Lesser (and yes, that is his real name). He goes on in this chapter to illustrate how assumptions get in our way with this amusing story.

"...many years ago, when I was a young Zen student at Green Gulch Farm in California, a problem arose among the residents: a sliding wooden door at the entrance of the student living area was regularly being left open. As a result, cold Pacific Ocean winds would sweep in and chill our shared living space. Announcements were made at least a half dozen times at community work meetings reminding people to keep this door shut. But it was continually found open, and over time this became a surprisingly divisive issue. People grew emotional, blaming and pointing fingers. How could Zen students not remember to close a door? How could they exhibit such thoughtlessness for their fellow students? In the midst of one of these tense meetings, Sierra, the farm's pet golden retriever, opened the door from the outside, enterered the living space, and joined the group. Of course, Sierra had the dexteriety to open a sliding wooden door. The group's false assumptions had nearly led to an all-out battle."

When you read this, does it bring up moments for you, like it did for me, when you either put your foot in it, or, by some grace, managed to not act on your false assumptions?

In his blog, Mr. Lesser says "These predictions and assumptions reside within our bodies; often it seems as though literally within the cells of our bodies. When I hear people say “people don’t change”; I understand why this seems to be the case – changing both the what and the way we predict is difficult. I think of this as one of the great strengths of mindfulness and meditation practice – by slowing down our worlds, we can begin to get a glimpse of our predictions and assumptions."

I feel relaxed when I am able to notice the arrival of assumption and set it aside to arrive in the next moment with some clarity and peace. No perfection expected here, I am simply continuing to be interested in the play of a life lived. Sometimes it's Art.

Just start to do it...

2009-04-07T09:34:00.006-04:00

I'm procrastinating...again. My big plan for the day is to work on my Ayurvedic course homework. And I really enjoy it...once I've started it. But I've already decided that first I need to do my yoga practice (gold star for that one), make the bed, start some laundry, vacuum and wash the kitchen floor (What? this is better than studying?!!)

I went to day one of my friend Daron's meditation workshop on Sunday afternoon. We were asked to write down some mildly unpleasant activities, mildly pleasant, and activities we felt a mixture of both pleasant and unpleasant sensations when doing (or contemplating doing).

It's funny the things that come up. I like washing my hair, but I don't like drying it. I like folding laundry, but resist putting it away. (Just ask my husband who's always wondering where all his clean clothes are...well they are sitting in a nice neat pile on the floor in the family room...that's where).

I enjoy making and drinking tea. I was making a pot of darjeeling this morning. I put two teaspoons of tea in the pot and then I put an extra pinch in...somewhere in my distant past I remember the phrase "and one for the pot". You put in a teaspoon for each cup and a little extra. All alone in the kitchen I say outloud "and one for the pot". So satisfying.

And then there's my homework. When I get to it...and I will...I will become thoroughly engrossed. But it's that starting moment. But here's what I know. In that moment...that precise moment that I actually open the file on the computer that holds my work and pick up my workbook, there will be, I can feel it even now, a tingle of pleasure in the belly, that comes with having begun.

Okay...no more blogging young lady until you've finished your homework!

No matter where you go, there you are....

2009-04-06T14:11:00.004-04:00

Awhile ago I fessed up to having joined a gym. I said that it allowed me to compartmentalize "exercise" and "yoga". Turns out...I had no idea what I was talking about. Yoga is so much a part of my life...inner and outer...that I can't compartmentalize it. It's everywhere.

When I'm lifting weights or doing other sorts of strength building work, I'm listening to my body (yoga-speak for feeling what's really happening rather than what I wish was happening, or simply ignoring what's happening), I'm following my breath, I'm noticing my mind and how it participates. So why is this not yoga?

I like having an indoor space to do cardio work. I will confess, I'm delicate. I don't like walking outside when it's too hot or too humid. (I spent the first 35 years of my life in temperate Southern California...what can I say.) So now I can be nice to my heart and lungs without collapsing in an irritable puddle of sweat afterwards. In fact I prefer to leave sweaty workouts to those flowers that thrive in the hot house climate. Dewy is about as far as I want to go.

After my workout, I put some peaceful music on my iPod and take a leisurely stroll around the indoor track. There's this one song that has the lyric..."breath connects us all". I meditate on that while I walk and breathe with everyone else in the gym.

Yeah...so I just added a different sort of yoga practice to my life. It's all good.

Equanimity

2009-04-06T13:30:00.008-04:00

People come to my yoga classes. Along the way you find out things here and there about their lives. I recently discovered I've had a Columbus Dispatch writer in one of my classes. Jane Hawes asked me if I and my fellow yoga instructors had noticed an increase in attendence that might be due to the stress of the current economy. Her article was published in the Dispatch recently. I don't know how long the link to the article will be available so check it out soon if you want to read it.

It appears that people are seeking out ways to deal with stress in larger numbers of late. And that's a good thing. But it's not like our current melt-down arose out of a lifetime of stress-free living. Anytime is a good time to begin develop strategies for cultivating equanimity.

Like now.

The poet Kabir said...
...enter into your own body;
there you have a solid place for your feet.

A traveling message

2009-03-28T21:07:00.004-04:00

On the highway today, I was behind a guy in a pick up truck.
On his bumper were these words...

Love wins.

Falling in love

2009-03-14T22:49:00.005-04:00

I was listening to an NPR interview with Sarah Powers the other day. There was a lot to love in the discussion. There was one bit that really struck me. She described how we approach yoga in three stages. First we hear about it…we read a book, someone tells us about it. Then we contemplate it. I think that is when we begin to practice. We are “doing” yoga. The last step, she says, is when we pick it up as a tool and use it. What a brilliant description! I was “doing” yoga for years before I realized it was a tool for me to use. No one I ran into ever described it that way (or maybe I just couldn't hear it yet.) You practiced yoga in whatever way the person at the front of the room said was the way to practice. You contemplated their take on things. One teacher I said that he’d healed his back with yoga after an injury. Still there was no explanation. I wondered, “How did he do that?” I ran into teachers who said the most amazing things about the practice. I wondered, “How do they know that?”

Eventually, I had the good fortune to run into teachers who let me in on what seemed to be a secret until then. You pick up the tool of yoga by stepping on to your yoga mat and listening deeply, by letting yourself be guided your own innate wisdom in addition to the wisdom of your teachers and the sages of the past. You learn to trust yourself.

That’s when I really learned to love yoga deeply. That’s when I knew this was a relationship that would last forever.

Don't go back to sleep

2009-02-17T23:53:00.007-05:00

Sudden awakening,

Gradual cultivation.

-- Chinul

I heard this on a podcast I was listening to on the way home from class today. It's a description of a particular school of Buddhist thought I believe. I didn't really research it anymore than it took to attribute it to the correct teacher. But as soon as I heard the words, I just kept repeating them over and over in my mind. I was driving on the freeway with no way to make a note. I wanted to remember them.

This is how it has always been for me. There are moments where you feel like you really "get" something. It's so easy to feel like that's all it takes...a sudden jolt of the intellect...and that's enough. But it never is, is it? We find ourselves slogging through the poppy fields like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz, getting drowsy. It would be so easy to just go back to sleep.

Freedom

2009-02-06T08:18:00.000-05:00

"Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery, none but ourselves can free our minds." - Bob Marley

A meditation on hope

2009-02-03T09:16:00.003-05:00

When I was listening to this in my car yesterday, I didn't realize that it was a TED Talk from 2003. It seemed to be speaking to our current state of affairs. I find myself listening to the news of members of the House and Senate still bickering away as usual and wish that they could each give a little talk about what it is that they are doing to bring hope to a struggling nation.

Unleashing Creativity

2009-01-30T09:22:00.004-05:00

It seems that everyone is feeling an urge toward creativity that is not only about "Art". This is from another wonderful teacher, Edward Espe Brown. He is describing an upcoming retreat. It's another one of those bits that I didn't want to get lost. I'm not going to the retreat so I'd normally just delete the email but there was something about the language that made me want to bring it here.

UNLEASHING CREATIVITY

From Beyond Creation A Guest Appears

A moment arises—not previously

revealed! never before happened!—

Still we aim to get it right,

so we look good.

Or...

could something appear

from beyond creation?

(Wind high in the pines)

Creativity weaves through the fabric

of consciousness—the gateway opens

and closes—we'll look at some of the

pivotal elements which inhabit or invite

the guest to appear.

Doing the same old same old,

Doing what we already know,

Or...

choosing to welcome the

inconceivable, to move past

the familiar to finding out how.

(whose hands are these)

Can we make things behave

the way they should? Come

out the way we want?

Or...

is there picking up what

comes to hand? And

using it? imaginatively...

(soft light through the curtain)

We'll study what awakens our

creative vitality.

(with sitting, talk, walking...)

The weekend retreat is at Green Gulch Farm in California. If you want to be spontaneous, drop everything and go...here's a link.

The next step

2009-01-28T12:19:00.004-05:00

Sometimes I put things here so I won't lose them in the clutter of information that flows through everyday. This is from an email newsletter from Saul David Raye. Saul teaches yoga, meditation and thai massage (probably among other things). I wanted to remember this and sit with it awhile. I thought maybe others would like to as well.

Saul said, "I recently read somehwere a wonderful quote that really touched me. I have tried to relocate the source but have not been able to as of yet. It was something like this "sometimes the only next possible step is a leap of faith !" In my own life this seems to be all that is happening; whatever I know, whatever I have believed to be true is no longer working. When I make choices from my heart, from the inner wisdom and creativity that is in each of us at every moment, the results are amazing. The energy we set in motion when we are resonating at the frequency of our hearts is truly miraculous. Blessings along the path you walk...and to the leap of faith that you are being asked to make in your life right now !"

Yoga for the dictionary addict

2009-01-22T15:26:00.002-05:00

As you know, if you've been in my class, I often ask you to "stretch like you just got out of bed in the morning". Well...who knew? There's a word for that. A friend just sent me this "word for the day" definition.

pandiculation \pan-dik-yuh-LEY-shuhn\, noun:
an instinctive stretching, as on awakening or while yawning

I love it!

The Greater Tradition of Yoga

2009-01-21T14:52:00.003-05:00

"Yoga encourages you to 'take the path that most directly leads you to experience the inner truth of your own nature'. Yoga is a universal teaching, conveying that the entire universe dwells within us. The entire universe -- all time, space and existence -- dwells in the small space within our hearts. Becoming that is Yoga."

David Frawley - "Yoga - The Greater Tradition"

How to practice Yoga

2009-01-21T09:33:00.004-05:00

KURT ANDERSON: When you wake up in the morning and you sit down to practice, as I assume you do, what do you first play?
YO-YO MA: I do something like [plays long, random notes that sound like tuning]. I become friends with the instrument. I try not to tax it too much. It's really like warming up a car or warming up your body. You stretch it. You don't go into a fast run. You don't take it to sixty in three seconds. Because what's funny about an instrument made out of wood, every day the humidity is different. Every day the temperature is different. And wood, as well as our bodies, are slightly different. I think it's actually making that relationship happen.
KURT: And once you do get it warmed up, what are you inclined to play?
YO-YO: I might play some Bach, which is something I started learning as soon as I started playing. And it's also something that's written for cello alone. This is music that is somewhat meditative...I think of the flow of water. The afternoon light playing on leaves. If you see something that is familiar and yet it's different every day. What's amazing is that with a great friend, you could see them thousands of times and you don't look at them and say, Well today I'm really bored with you. ...Bach was a pictorial composer. One of the things that he coded was infinite variety. Instead of materiality, of saying, this is the same thing, I need a new product, it's something new every time.

From Studio 360 (Oct. 19, 2007)
I snagged this from my friend Daron's blog. He always has his feelers out for the most amazing things to share. This made me say YES! This is how I like to practice yoga! So I wanted to share it here too.

Why chant Om?

2009-01-14T09:43:00.005-05:00

My idea for this post at first was to get the "official" take on why one might chant Om in a yoga class. Fairly quickly I realized that it wasn't so important to explore "why" from that perspective. Instead I wanted to explore why I do it.

Over the years a ritual of sorts developed to surround my classes. The opening and the ending stay fairly steady, supporting the possibility of creativity and surprise to arise during the asana practice. I like to sit for 5 minutes in the beginning. My intention is to allow time for settling into a deeper awareness of what we've come to class with. What does the body feel like today? What is the flavor of the mind? We pause before stepping into movement.

At the end of class, after Savasana, we sit again for a few minutes.

And then the sound of Om.

Most of the time we chant Om three times. I tell people that "Om" is the sound that resonates in all things. I sometimes ask people to pause and listen for that sound in all that surrounds us in the particular moment...natural sounds, mechanical sounds, inner sounds, outer sounds, nearby sounds, distant sounds. And then we allow the sound to arise, we join in.

Why chant "Om"? It feels to me like an offering of whatever benefits we've accrued from our practice out into the world at large. It brings a recognition that we're all in this together. It re-energizes us before we get up and leave...returning home, or to work, or whatever comes next. Sometimes in the evening, if the energy of the class seems particularly peaceful and it seems like it would be nice not to disturb the quiet too much, we'll whisper our Oms.

Over the years I've noticed who is in the room and what we've been doing during the posture portion of the practice has an effect on the sound in the room. Sometimes the sound is hesitant, sometimes full-throated. Sometimes each Om seems to go on forever, sometimes there is less space for that expansion, we are unsure about our voice.

The sound also feels like a last opportunity to offer up some energy to the body and mind. If we can really relax into the sound, it seems to resonate into every nook and cranny of the body. The image that comes to mind is the sound of the strings being played on a cello being colored by the shape and depth of the body of the instrument.

Last but not least, it feels like an honoring of the event that has just occured. What can I say? Yoga is an amazing practice. People are transformed in large and small ways. Isn't it wonderful to honor a body that feels a little more at ease and a mind that sees even a little more clearly? Even if it's your very first yoga class, isn't it worth recognizing that you've been at home in your body, just as it is, for the first time in what may have been a long time? And who knows what will come of that!

Maybe yoga scholars can give you other reasons for chanting Om that are steeped in ancient tradition. This is why I do it.

Namaste Yogis!

Close the language door

2009-01-10T23:17:00.005-05:00

There is some kiss we want with
our whole lives, the touch of
spirit on the body. Seawater
begs the pearl to break its shell.
And the lily, how passionately
it needs some wild darling! At
night, I open the window and ask
the moon to come and press its
face against mine. Breathe into
me. Close the language-door and
open the love window. The moon
won't use the door, only the window.

--Rumi translated by Coleman Barks

Have you been working out?

2009-01-07T16:27:00.008-05:00

My husband and I joined a gym recently. I don't know why that feels like a guilty secret. I guess it isn't now, is it? I'm really enjoying it. I like doing a little cardio with some fun music on my iPod. I'm playing around a bit with some resistance stuff too, mostly machines. I don't know enough about free weights to use them although my husband has shown me a few things.

So here's what I'm kind of happy about...from now on, when I decide to go for a walk in the woods or (when the weather gets better) ride my bike it doesn't have to have anything to do with exercise. If I ride or walk for 5 minutes or an hour, it will be driven only by the joy of being outside. My yoga practice is about mindfulness and energy flow and finding balance and harmony within the whole of my life. The gym allows me to compartmentalize "exercise" in my life. And I like that.

Your story

2009-01-02T22:56:00.003-05:00

"Your story, it's not boring and ordinary, by the way. We just get the one life you know. Just one. You can't live someone else's or think it's more important just because it's more dramatic. What happens matters, maybe only to us, but it matters."

- a bit of dialogue from the film "Ghost Town".

In memorium

2009-01-01T21:09:00.003-05:00

A few years ago, we were going for a walk one day at the nature center near our house. This small black and white cat with no tail popped out of the woods and before my husband could get the words "Don't pick her up" out of his mouth, she was in my arms. At some point in time and for reasons we'll never know, she had ended up out in the woods all on her own. This is not good for any cat but for a cat without her front claws, it can be even worse. We brought her home, named her Suki (which evolved over time into "Lu"). We've been best of friends ever since. Lu was a delicate girl. She was always smallish. And she was a bit grumpy. She never liked any of the other cats. I think she thought of them as riff-raff. She might have prefered being an only cat but its hard feeling superior all by yourself. After her time in the woods, she always prefered being inside or at most an adventure out on the front porch to soak up the summer sun. Lu wasn't one for being picked up or for sitting on laps. But she developed a great fondness for what we called "squeezles" which involved just being enveloped by your arms and getting her ears rubbed, while remaining in contact with the floor or the table or wherever she was currently ensconced. She learned the word "squeezle" and would get ready or let you know she wasn't interested, whatever the case might be.

Lu eventually developed heart trouble and lately had not been doing well. Today we had to make the difficult decision to ease her suffering. We are heartbroken.

Am I too comfortable?

2008-12-27T21:51:00.001-05:00

"People wish to be settled; only as far as they are unsettled is there any hope for them. "
- Ralph Waldo Emerson

Sooth your tummy

2008-12-20T07:18:00.003-05:00

Try this digestive tea recipe. I take a powdered blend of these herbs with water after meals. But this sounds like a lovely way to ingest them as well. I received this recipe in a newsletter I get from Banyan Botanicals. When taking ayurvedic herbs for the digestion, the taste of the herbs is important. It's part of the healing action.

"A digestive tea following a meal can mprove digestion and help to soothe the entire gastrointestinal tract. The ritual of making and drinking tea can provide a relaxing time, giving yourself a chance to show some devotion to agni, digestive fire. Here is a simple recipe from Amadea Morningstar's The Ayurvedic Cookbook."

Digestive Tea
2 cups water, 1 teaspoon coriander seeds, 1 teaspoon fennel seeds, 1 teaspoon cumin seeds.
Bring water to a boil. Put all the seeds in a blender. Pour in boiling water. Grind the seeds with the water. Strain. Drink after any meal.

Practice

2008-12-19T23:48:00.006-05:00

It's been hard to get on my yoga mat the past few days. Seems like it's been one thing after another...meet the furnace repair guy...take the cat to the vet....hang around while furnace get's replaced...take the cat to the vet (again). So this evening, much later than I usually practice, I was finally able to do a little yoga. The house was warm again and quiet. I just stepped onto my mat and let it happen.

Leaning my hips against the wall for an easy forward fold.

Playing with the wall in half moon pose (ardhachandrasana).

Draping into the wall for bowing warrior (parsvotonasana)

Then on the floor for pigeon to half forward fold to a twist to a side bend on each side.

Then I settled into a mindfulness meditation.

I watched my mind reach back into the busyness of the week and then come back into the stillness and the quiet. Mind moving back and forth, watching.

Trying to hard?

2008-12-19T14:38:00.001-05:00

I'm contemplating this quote...

"Meaning is something that's given to us. Although we make a great effort to find meaning, we always receive it as a gift."

— David Steindl-Rast quoted in Tying Rocks to Clouds by William Elliott

If you have any thoughts on this, let me know.

Fashion

2008-12-19T14:10:00.005-05:00

The New York Times has a fashion blog called The Moment.
A recent piece featured a high-end men's fashion store that offered, among other things, a cape. The blogger posted " Ever a fan of a good cape, I’d opt for Yohji Yamamoto’s inky wool version ($3,840)".

I loved this reader's comment....

“$3,840 for a cape? Why? Does it make you fly?”

speaking

2008-12-13T13:53:00.003-05:00

"Drawing on my fine command of the language,

I said nothing."

--Robert Benchley

Relatedness

2008-12-10T13:18:00.003-05:00

There were so many bits of wisdom in Sharon Salzberg's book The Kindness Handbook - a practical companion. My previous post on "neutral" was inspired in part by this book. Before I take it back to the library I wanted to post one more quote.

"When we send a neutral person lovingkindness, we are consciously changing a pattern of overlooking them, or talking around them, to one of paying attention to them. The experiment in attention we are making through these benevolent wishes asks of us whether we can practice 'loving thy neighbor as thyself' when we don't know the facts about someone's dependent, elderly parent, or at risk teenager, and so our heartstrings have not been tugged.

When we think of our neutral person, we haven't learned the story of their suspicious mole or empty evenings. We have no knowledge of their inspiring triumphs or their admirable philanthropy, and so we are not in awe of them. We aren't seeing their tension after a disappointing job interview, or their sadness after their lover leaves. We practice wishing them well anyway, not knowing any of this, but simply because they exist, and because we do know the beauty, the sorrow, the poignancy, and the sheer unalterable insecurity of existence that we all share.

Paying attention this way, we learn that even when we don't especially know or like someone, we are nonetheless in relationship to them. We come to realize that the relatedness is in itself like a vibrant, changing, living entity. We discover the gift of caring, of tending to this force of life that exists between us, and we are immeasurably enriched by that."

Greatness

2008-12-05T08:55:00.002-05:00

A woman awake — a woman with a fierce and awesome commitment — is a fearsome confrontation to our mediocrity and casualness. Most of us, myself included, would rather defend ourselves against our own potential greatness, because we know the sacrifices that living such greatness would require.
— Regina Sara Ryan in The Woman Awake

To Practice This Thought: Identify the sacrifices you would have to make if you stepped into your own greatness.

I came across this quote the other day. It really struck me deeply. I don't think it has to be just about women, of course. I think the word that stands out most for me is "casualness". It says to me that we can be offhand about our gifts. We might even recognize them as gifts but can't quite bother to expend the energy to cultivate them or offer them up to a world in need of gifting.

Charter for Compassion

2008-12-03T09:27:00.000-05:00

Fire

2008-12-02T11:20:00.009-05:00

I grew up with the threat of fire blossoming in the night, rather than tornadoes or hurricanes.

I never lived up close enough to the dry chapparal of the foothills to be threatened but fire still filled my childhood dreams from time to time.

Recently the Tea Fire destroyed the homes of many in Santa Barbara including the home of my teacher Erich Schiffmann's brother Karl. Karl has written movingly about his experience.

Wildfires have always felt alive to me, like an animal stalking the hills. They are given names. Not the human names that hurricanes are given but names that tell of their birthplace. The fires slither and climb through the canyons and mountain tops in stark contrast to the dark night sky and the blackness of the mountains. You are at once amazed by the beauty of the flames and fearful of the danger and destructiveness. There is always wind, that blows hot and dry from the high desert to push the fires down toward the sea.

Here's something I wrote years ago when another fire, the Sycamore Canyon fire of 1977, scorched the hills that surrounded my home town.

through an ashen haze
the moon has risen
full and flushed
and cannot cool the scene.

a crimson corona traces the ridge
etching the canyons
with ribbons of orange
flaring and sighing
in this wind.

my back against the seawall
i seek relief
from this fevered heat.

salt smelling shore breezes
have fled
in the face of this
fire-baiting wind
that sucks the air dry
and curls the waves
back on themselves
before they can cool me.

i watch the flames
consume the blackness.

daylight will expose
the fired foothills,
chapparal
resin-boiled and seed burst.

but now

in the darkness
i face the night beast
of my child dreams
come to visit once again
and steal my sleep
with fear of being devoured
by its subtle rage.

More on neutral...

2008-11-26T09:29:00.001-05:00

From my friend Daron's blog...

From Mary Gordon’s prayers for the un-prayed for: "For those whose work is invisible; for those who paint the undersides of boats; makers of ornamental drains on roofs too high to be seen; for cobblers who labor over inner soles; for seamstresses who stitch the wrong sides of lining; for scholars whose research leads to no obvious discovery. Grant them perseverance for the sake of your love, which is humble, invisible, and heedless of reward."

Neutral

2008-11-25T08:12:00.004-05:00

I’ve been attracted to neutral lately…not so much neutral colors….I just painted a wall in my kitchen a warm spicy pumpkin color and my yoga room a rich green called “asparagus”….but neutral impressions. I’ve tried to…what is it…slow down? Pay closer attention?

What first got me thinking about neutral was a discussion on Erich Schiffmann’s online community board about introversion. The discussion tried to take a turn toward value judgment on introversion vs. extroversion but that was never the point. The pondering was really about do we introverts need to work against type to be offering up something to society? I’ll leave you to ponder that on your own.

Next I came across Sharon Salzburg’s book “The Kindness Handbook…A Practical Companion”. In it she deconstructs the Metta (LovingKindness) Meditation practice. The gist of it is that you develop your capacity for good will by offering it to yourself, to a loved one, to someone neutral, to a difficult person, to the world at large. This is an over-simplification, but it allows me to get to the point. She had some interesting things to say about the “neutral” people in our lives. These are people we come across daily. We may know nothing or very little about them. Sharon points out that they haven’t had the opportunity to tug at our heartstrings. Yet, they deserve our good will.

I began to ponder our attraction to the pleasing and aversion to the not so pleasing or uncomfortable. “Good” or “bad” they both attract our attention. I wondered if neutral is really neutral or is it just that some people, places, things, sensations just speak so quietly that its easy to miss them in the cacophony created by YES! and NO!

For me, the laboratory where I begin to focus my experiments is my yoga mat. I need to pay attention to the big physical sensations at first to make sure my body is safe from injury, to refine alignment…but once that’s taken care of…can I reside in the quiet places of the yoga posture? Just like the person with the big voice at a party draws our attention, the big sensations draw me in, but I choose to look around, to be in the midst of the “party” but to draw near to what is quiet. I’m not sure what I’ll find here in this place. It's human nature, perhaps, to turn toward the flashy stuff…the loud, the bright, the horrible, the exciting. I’m wondering if there really is neutral. Maybe it will come down to the difference between ATTRACTION and AVERSION and attraction and aversion.

Erich's talk

2008-11-14T08:57:00.002-05:00

If you had trouble viewing the video of Erich's Ojai talk, he's posted a transcript of the talk here.

Erich's Big Picture Talk

2008-11-08T08:17:00.008-05:00

Couldn't make it to the Ojai Yoga Crib this year?

Not to worry. Here's an opportunity to see and hear Erich Schiffmann's Friday evening talk.

This photo is of the room before people began to arrive.

Imagine yourself entering the room.

Then watch the video...poof! You're there!

Enjoy!

The Power of Yoga

2008-10-30T16:57:00.003-04:00

A member of Erich Schiffmann's discussion board "Moving Into Stillness" says in her bio info...

"I am not a power yoga person, but I do feel that my yoga practice is powerful."

-- Robyn Gibson

Back from "The Crib"

2008-10-30T14:22:00.007-04:00

For the past four years I've been making an annual pilgrimage to the Ojai Yoga Crib. I've just returned from this year's "Crib" and it was excellent. If you follow the link you can check out the teachers who were participating this year. You get to pick 5 teachers to work with. This year my classes were with Jason Crandell, Diego del Sol, Kira Ryder, Cheri Clamplett and Arturo Peal, and, of course, Erich Schiffman.

The Crib began for me with Jason Crandell's class. If you read Yoga Journal you may have come across Jason's writing. iTunes also has a series of podcast classes which are really nice. Most of them are about half an hour long so nice to use for a home practice. Jason's main teacher was Rodney Yee. He's a great at getting into the mechanics of the poses. We really did a full range of postures in his class (each class is 2 1/2 hours long so there's lots of time to get to a lot of different things...or to talk a bit). It was such a nice class, so well paced, that I was surprised at the end when Jason said that he would not be hanging around to talk to people after class because he was fighting a flu bug and needed to leave to take a nap before his next class. What a hero! He did this great sequence near the end that culminated in an arm balance called Ashtavakrasana. I've never been able to quit get there and it's a challenging posture for sure. But he put it together step by step so that everyone in the room could do at least a piece of it. And he gave some nice instructions toward the very end that allowed me to actually taste the full pose for the first time. It was really fun. And I don't use the word "fun" in the neighborhood of arm balances very often!

Diego del Sol was next. All I will say here is it was a hot day, a hot room, a hot practice, and I was having hot flashes...and for those of you who know Ayurveda...I have a Pitta constitution. It wasn't pretty. The fire danger in the area was high...I'm surprised I didn't spontaneously combust and set the whole town on fire!

Saturday morning began with Kira Ryder. Kira owns Lulubandha's in Ojai and is the organizer of this event. All that and she teaches at the Crib too. Her classes are full of experiment and innovation. She uses movement, breath, sound, personal stories...whatever is in her toolbox to get you to explore. She is such a loving presence. You can check out the sequence she did on one of the blogs she uses to post class sequences. She doesn't use the 'traditional' names of postures so you may not always know quite what is being done but you'll get an idea. And if you decide to try one of her sequences, email me and I can usually explain what she's talking about...for instance...would you know what to do with "wise guy" pose?...or swamp monster? It's one of the many things that make her classes so much fun.

Saturday afternoon was spent in the compassionate embrace of Cheri Clampett and Arturo Peal in Restorative Yoga. Cheri is a yoga therapist and Arturo is a doctor of Chinese Medicine as well as a gifted yogi. Not only were we treated to the healing practice itself but they both moved through the room offering some hands on healing as well. I've work with Cheri whenever the opportunity arises. My first experience with her was in a regular hatha yoga class. Her voice and presence were so soothing that you wanted to melt simply because she asked you to!

The last class on Sunday morning was with my main teacher Erich Schiffman . Kira was there taking class too. She said about this class in her blog...."I cried. I always cry in Erich's class on the last day of the Crib. It's total medicine. I consider him my teacher but sometimes I wonder if I have heard a word he says." I know what she means. Erich has been my teacher for about 10 years. And everytime I'm with him I understand something I haven't gotten before...even if I've heard it many times. He talked a little, we meditated awhile and then did a posture practice. He said "Now, the practice we're going to do is not going to be difficult. Be on the lookout for why it's advanced. You're trusting your deepest impulses....First follow other people's words...it's advanced when it starts feeling like *yours.*A real fundamental shift happens where it feels like you're doing YOUR yoga....You'll find yourself inventing new poses, like the original yogis did. The poses didn't just arrive in some book." The last 10 minutes or so was freeform. Erich put on a live recording of Donna de Lory's He Ma Durga and we just did whatever yoga we felt like doing. The music was haunting and I know a few people got weepy at this point. The music, the place, the people, the yoga...whew...good medicine for sure.

And it wasn't all yoga all the time. There was shopping and eating and visiting. I'm still working on re-creating a salad that I loved so much I had it two days in a row at Azu. It was an arugula salad with dried figs, toasted almonds feta and crispy serrano ham. I couldn't find serrano ham so I used proscuitto, toasted until slightly crispy instead. Its always the dressing that's a challenge. I tried grapeseed oil, lemon juice, and a little salt and pepper. But its not quite right. I'm almost wondering if a tiny bit of apple juice might do the trick. I guess I could email the restaurant and see if they'd give up the recipe.

On the road again...

2008-10-22T14:42:00.007-04:00

I arrived in Santa Barbara yesterday afternoon. Beautiful...flying in over the blue, blue ocean just feeds my soul. It was a lovely sunny day. You can see the scared hillsides where the Gap Fire raged this past July.

They've laid down hydromulch to help mitigate the potential mudslides that usually follow a fire like that. The Chaparral landscape is prone to fires though. So just like midwesterners have tornado season, Californians have fire season.

I used my Mindfulness practice to sail through the flight out. Breathing deeply. Sending loving kindness out when those around me were getting caught up in the challenges of airline travel (screaming babies, crowded flights, you know the drill) enabling my own ease in the moment at the very least. All flights were early...so that's a good thing!

Yoga starts on Friday...for now...visiting friends and family and having a wonderful time.

(Missing my husband and cats though).

Seeing

2008-10-07T09:11:00.004-04:00

"A physicist is just an atom's way of looking at itself." - Niels Bohr

Today is Jimmy Carter's Birthday

2008-10-01T09:18:00.004-04:00

From the Writer's Almanac today, a quote from Jimmy Carter

"A strong nation, like a strong person, can afford to be gentle, firm, thoughtful, and restrained. It can afford to extend a helping hand to others. It is a weak nation, like a weak person, that must behave with bluster and boasting and rashness and other signs of insecurity."

Myths of Meditation

2008-09-26T08:55:00.001-04:00

Check out this blog post by my friend Daron.

It all counts

2008-09-18T14:42:00.006-04:00

Kira Ryder, a really exciting yoga teacher I know from California, had her recent group of yoga teacher trainees start a blog as one of their assignments. It was meant to both help them learn to communicate more clearly about yoga and to develop community.

So that leads me to the topic of this post. Kira is doing an Ayurvedic cleansing diet. So she has a blog where she posts her food intake each day...not so much for us to read, as for her to actually see what it is she is ingesting each day. It helps her stay on track.

One of Kira's yoga teacher trainees decided that she would do the same for any moment during the day that she did some yoga. So instead of spending her time beating herself up for not having this big 90 minute yoga practice every day...she decided that everything would count. I thought that was a lovely and supportive way to view things. Check out what she has to say...and whether or not you decide to write it all down on a piece of paper or in a blog...remember...it all counts.

Meditations for Happiness

2008-09-12T08:57:00.003-04:00

I recently received the WiseBrain email newsletter from Rick Hanson, PhD. He has put together an offering through Sounds True called

Meditations for Happiness: Guided Meditations to Cultivate Lasting Contentment and Peace.

He says about the audio project...

"It's a downloadable audio program with over three hours of fascinating and practical information about how your brain makes you happy or unhappy, and how to use that understanding to promote the happiness of yourself and others. (There are) 14 guided meditations that directly train your brain into happier states of mind! It's solid, straightforward, accessible to anyone - and really inexpensive. It's an excellent introduction to the emerging science of happiness for someone new to the field, while also being deeply grounded in the profound wisdom of the contemplative traditions. Both for yourself, and for anyone whose happiness you want to support, I can honestly say that this program is full of interesting, fun, and tremendously useful material. It makes you happy just listening to it! "

I haven't heard these guided meditations yet But Dr. Hanson and his partner at Wise Brain, Dr. Rick Mendius, M.D. are doing some really interesting work exploring the "fertile common ground of psychology, neurology, and contemplative practice". So check it out.

Yoga on Public Radio

2008-09-12T08:44:00.009-04:00

Public radio program "Speaking of Faith" has an interview with Yoga teacher Sean Corne called Yoga: Meditation in Action.

Host Krista Tippet has started her own yoga journey at the urging of a staff member.

Here's what Krista had to say about yoga...

"I believe that the spiritual aspect and essence of yoga — the relationship of the spiritual to the physical experience, the vocabulary by which we understand and process that relationship — will vary substantially from person to person. Like meditation, this ancient spiritual technology lends itself to interpretation and incorporation with many spiritual sensibilities and religious traditions — just as its range of practices are adaptable to any type of body at any stage of vitality or disability. I also see this yoga phenomenon as part of a larger move that we've variously explored towards rooting — or rather, reintegrating — the body into spiritual and religious traditions, from Judaism to Pentecostal Christianity. There is some wonderful, fundamental insight here that many of us are reclaiming from wildly different directions. And as Matthew Sanford still so memorably put it to me, the more completely we inhabit our own bodies with both their strengths and their flaws, the more compassionate we become towards all of life. That's the kind of earthy, reality-based mystery I love."

Namaste Yogis!

2008-09-09T15:06:00.006-04:00

I've just returned from a weekend workshop with one of my favorite yogis, Erich Schiffmann. I think this is his 7th workshop in Yellow Springs, Ohio. I've been to all of them except one. For several reasons, it felt like the best one ever. I think it was Sunday morning when, after speaking for awhile, he said that he hoped this stuff was interesting and that we'd do some yoga in a minute or two. Someone in the room said told him that we could open a book and do a yoga practice anytime, but that we were here to hear him speak. The whole room burst into applause. So thanks to that yogini who said outloud what, dare I say, most of us were thinking.

Here's a photo of the room mostly without yogis...

Here's a photo of the room WITH yogis...doing some freeform yoga on Sunday just before the end of the workshop. Imagine some cool music happening and everyone just doing what they are drawn to do.

And here's a place where love is coming through!

Meditation on and off the cushion...

2008-08-26T08:54:00.005-04:00

I was doing my seated meditation practice yesterday morning and heard a sound like a hammer on wood. Normally, I'd just notice and continue to sit. But there was something about this sound that drew me off the cushion. As soon as I left the room I could tell the sound was outside and not in the house. I moved toward the window in the bedroom that looks into the woods behind our house. And I saw FOUR Pileated Woodpeckers. (Think... Woody, the Woodpecker!) I hear them from time to time but rarely see them, let alone 4 of them. I watched the two males nearest to the house work hard on the two tree limbs they were perched on. They were there for a long time. It was so exciting to watch them since usually any sightings are fleeting. This opportunity became a part of my meditation practice as I felt joy and wonder as physical sensation. Noticed joy as breath. Noticed the difference in the energy of my seated posture as I later returned to my meditation cushion. What a great morning!

This moment is like this

2008-07-27T15:12:00.004-04:00

Dancing with Life
by Phillip Moffitt

I've got such a HUGE pile of books next to my bed just now. This one I may take awhile to read because I came across this phrase that just resonated with me so much, I've stopped to play with it awhile. The author quotes buddhist monk Ajahn Sumedho as saying (frequently) "This moment is like this". It really helps me to "understand the difference between skillfully observing a difficult experience from within and unskillfully getting lost in the content of that experience". It actually works really well for any kind of experience. We're not always that great at really diving into the joyful experiences either. We can get caught up in wanting them to last instead of experiencing them "like this".

Freestylin' it...

2008-07-27T14:45:00.003-04:00

Check out "Your Very Own Yoga", an article by yoga teacher Anne Jablonski in the August 2008 Fit Yoga Magazine. She eloquently describes the ways in which my teacher, Erich Schiffmann encourages exploration of yoga from within in order to establish a yoga and meditation practice that is truly yours. For those of you who haven't met Erich (yet), perhaps you'll understand why I have so much love and respect for him.

Space

2008-07-05T17:22:00.004-04:00

There are so many ways to meditate. Sitting, walking, breathing, chanting, contemplating, noting, abiding. Lately it feels to me like simply making space. I have a meditation timer on my iPod that goes for 30 minutes. There are three tones from a Tibetan bell to start and two to end. In between is just space. No guidance, no reminders that you're half way through (which some timers have and, personally, I just don't want to know).

The mind isn't just space for all that time. It's helpfully trying to fill the time with planning, with creative projects, with lists, with complaining, with memories. I don't mind. I play with how quickly I notice. Sometimes I'll be well down an inner conversational path before I come back to just space. Sometimes I don't even get a whole word out before...ahhh space.

This space allows me to make space in my whole life. Its not just about clearing out the clutter for 30 minutes (or 5 minutes or 15 or whatever) but about remembering to make the space to love my husband, to recognize that there's a person checking my groceries not just some faceless piece of a process, to be creative with the things I have and not always feel the need to buy something new. Where could you use some space?

I was just talking about this idea of meditation as spaciousness this morning and came across this article about making space this afternoon. I notice these things. When something seems to pop up for me from several sources (inner and outer)...I think, hmmm, this must be important.

Why Bother?

2008-06-20T09:31:00.005-04:00

From Michael Pollen's piece "Why Bother?" in the NY Times...

"For us to wait for legislation or technology to solve the problem of how we’re living our lives suggests we’re not really serious about changing — something our politicians cannot fail to notice. They will not move until we do. Indeed, to look to leaders and experts, to laws and money and grand schemes, to save us from our predicament represents precisely the sort of thinking — passive, delegated, dependent for solutions on specialists — that helped get us into this mess in the first place. It’s hard to believe that the same sort of thinking could now get us out of it. "

"Thirty years ago, Wendell Berry, the Kentucky farmer and writer, put forward a blunt analysis of precisely this mentality. He argued that the environmental crisis of the 1970s — an era innocent of climate change; what we would give to have back that environmental crisis! — was at its heart a crisis of character and would have to be addressed first at that level: at home, as it were. He was impatient with people who wrote checks to environmental organizations while thoughtlessly squandering fossil fuel in their everyday lives — the 1970s equivalent of people buying carbon offsets to atone for their Tahoes and Durangos. Nothing was likely to change until we healed the 'split between what we think and what we do.' For Berry, the 'why bother' question came down to a moral imperative: 'Once our personal connection to what is wrong becomes clear, then we have to choose: we can go on as before, recognizing our dishonesty and living with it the best we can, or we can begin the effort to change the way we think and live.'"

There is this idea that many of us have in our heads that everything is connected. We nod knowingly...me too. I've been trying to get it out of my head as an idea and into my life as something that's actually true. I've been trying to do some stuff...changing out light bulbs for energy efficiency, putting together errands so I don't have to drive as much (living in a rural area is not very "green", ironically), carrying my own shopping bags (not just to Whole Foods or Trader Joe's...but everywhere, etc.

But here's another way to think about doing your part for the environment...all of it...everything is connected...

"Stillness within one individual can effect society beyond measure" - Bede Griffiths

My meditation practice feels more and more like it is part of this overall effort to "bother" about the world we live in together. It's not about creating this fake smiling, everything is wonderful, persona...but about delving deeply into these connections...everything, everywhere...and letting that inform what I choose to do in this world we all share.

Photo shoot

2008-06-10T16:20:00.002-04:00

I was asked a few weeks ago if I wanted to provide some photos of some of the people in my yoga classes as part of an art exhibit...maybe some of the people who have been around for awhile and have shown the most progress, they said.

I never know quite how to respond to things like that. For me, "progress" in yoga is, for the most part, invisible. There truly are some yoga postures that could be considered "advanced" on some level of measurement. But I bet there are some really bendy people who could walk right into their first yoga class and get right into the most pretzel like posture with a little instruction. And then there will be those of us who could come to the mat every day for years and never approach that kind of physical pliability or strength.

So how do I capture equanimity in a photo?

Instant Enlightenment

2008-05-24T18:32:00.005-04:00

"Change that looks too good to be true most likely is. Just as there is no free lunch, there is no free transformation. I favor incremental change. My model for this is Dr. Suzuki, who developed a method for teaching children to play classical music. He discovered that if steps are small enough anyone could move forward into mastery. People rarely try to take giant steps, and if they do they often fall down. The trick is finding the step size that propels people forward but allows them to succeed with each move."

-- Letters to a Young Therapist by Mary Pipher

I received an email recently with the title "Experience instant enlightenment". I've come across this offer many times over the years. I have to say, it never appeals to me. I prefer to take a leisurely stroll toward enlightenment...or wherever it is I'm heading. It's been an amazing journey so far.

Nothing in the universe is hidden

2008-05-16T12:25:00.001-04:00

I came across this phrase will watching the excellent documentary featuring Zen priest Edward Espe Brown, "How to Cook Your Life".
I've been letting it roll around in my mind for weeks now. I'm also immersed in the study of Ayurveda. According to the Ayurvedic view of things, there is no "sixth sense" but simply a deeper understanding, a more subtle awareness, that can be developed in the five senses that might seem to be extra senory if the capacity for attention is not cultivated.

I've always been a curious person. This suggestion that nothing in the universe is hidden feels so exciting to me. By mentioning a sixth sense, I don't mean to suggest that I'm trying to develop some special powers of observation. It's exactly the opposite, really. Nothing special, just enjoying the daily practice of being more present with my life, just as it is.

Here's an expansion of the idea behind the phrase from Tenryu Paul Rosenblum Roshi. I came across it by googling "Nothing in the Universe is Hidden". (Gotta love the internet.)

"When Dogen was a young monk, he traveled to China and, upon his arrival, met the head cook from Mount Ayuwang Monastery. At that time, Dogen thought that to practice meant to concentrate on zazen and to study the words of the ancients. He was stunned when this old monk told him, “You who have traveled from a far land do not know the meaning of Buddhist practice.” When Dogen met the same cook later at Tiantong Monastery, he asked, “What is
wholehearted practice.” The cook replied, “Nothing in the entire universe is hidden.”

What we are searching for, who we truly are, can be found in connectedness everywhere. No one thing can be depended upon, yet everything is available. With graceful, willing, and open mind, we may begin to notice that each thing, the chair we sit on, our home and garden, our village, the surrounding countryside and the
vast night sky may support us knowing ourselves, others and things in this way. Each arising, each meeting can provide precisely what is needed. We may become aware, as Dogen did, that “… everything excluding nothing is the confirmation of our practice and all space without exception is the field of our awakening.”

If you're interested you can read his entire article here.

The Ed Brown documentary puts the phrase in play this way...a zen master says to his students...

See with your eyes, smell with your nose, taste with your tongue. Nothing in the universe is hidden. What more do you want me to say?

Are your feet happy?

2008-04-23T21:49:00.006-04:00

You Walk Wrong -

It took 4 million years of evolution to perfect the human foot. But we’re wrecking it with every step we take. -- by Adam Sternbergh

I came across this article from the New Yorker serendipitously and I love it! The premise of the article is that shoes are really bad for your feet. As the author admits, most people are not going to give up shoes but suggests we go barefoot whenever we can. As a long time yoga practitioner, I know my feet have grown much more responsive with all the work that feet are asked to do, especially in the standing poses. I've definitely maintained my ability to balance which is so important as we age. So take your shoes off, wriggle those toes, and read!

Peace of Mind

2008-04-21T12:50:00.005-04:00

In class I've been mentioning talks from the Mind & Life Institute XVI meeting at the Mayo Clinic - Rochester. On April 16th the full day of talks was available live as a webcast.

The Mind Life Institute has made some of those talks available on their website until May 16th. The Dalai Lama was one of the participants.

One thing I've been mentioning in class was that His Holiness said that while he had much worry and anxiety these days, he had a deep inner calm that allowed him to sleep. In trying to find a link to these talks, I came across several newspaper articles on the meeting. In the articles I read, this statement was mentioned. But they left out the part where he said that his ability to rest in the face of many worries came from this abiding inner peace. In doing so, I think the authors of the articles missed the point of his statement.

Practice

2008-04-15T15:32:00.004-04:00

Pico Iyer is one of my favorite writers. He has a new book out on the Dalai Lama whom he has known for 30 years. It was a fascinating read, covering the public, private, political and monastic sides of a this man who is revered by some of his followers as a god but who refers to himself as a simple monk. This excerpt is at the very end of the book...

'He (the Dalai Lama) told me that sometimes he felt that he could never do enough, and that nothing he did could ever really affect things....He told me that it was "up to us poor humans to make the effort," one step at a time, and again, as if invoking the final words of the Buddha, he spoke of "constant effort, tireless effort, purusing clear goals with sincere effort.".

Then as we were walking out of the room, he went back and turned off the light. It's such a small thing, he said, it hardly makes a difference at all. And yet nothing is lost in the doing of it, and maybe a little good can come of it, if more and more people remember this small gesture in more and more rooms.

Six thousand days or so after that morning, when he came back to Japan, I though about that simple gesture of turning off the light. Every one of those six thousand days, it seemed to me, I had had some revelation, encountered some wisdom, scribbled down sentences I'd read or come up with myself about the meaning of the universe, the way to lead a better life, the essence of the soul, the unreality of the soul. I had had more lightning flashes and moments of illumination than I could count in the next six thousand years. And yet now, on this bright autumn morning, I could remember not a one of them, except the simple, practical task of turning off the light. Not enlightenment, not universal charity, not the Golden Rule or the wisdom of the ages: just something I could do several times a day.

I went home after hearing the Dalai Lama on the sunlit island, and then went out for a walk. I closed the door behind me and was about to turn the key in the lock when I remembered the long-ago day. I opened the door again, and turned off the light.'

The Open Road - The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama by Pico Iyer

Love...Yoga

2008-04-07T13:41:00.001-04:00

"Yoga is so easily practiced and is a natural healing activity that is available to anyone who has breath. It is for everyOne everyWhere including individuals who do not have normal physical movement.
My friend Ram Das was showing me with great joy how he had adapted his Yoga to his needs. One side of his body is paralyzed. He holds one arm with his good arm and moves the whole body as breath. It makes him feel well and joyful. It brings health into his system. He wanted to know why he had not been taught this earlier in his Life when it is clearly devotion. It is Bhakti yoga to which his Life has been devoted. It is the direct intimacy with our Nurturing Source. In a poignant moment he tearfully apologized for Hatha Yoga being so poorly represented in the West. He said he never had a chance to do it because all his Hatha yoga teachers were show offs. They would teach him extreme exaggerated, heroic things to do in the dualistic psychology of trying to get somewhere idealistic, imaginary enlightenment. Not the direct intimacy where each person participates in the wonder of Life already Given, in us as us. So he was crying.. so sweet. "I have it now" he said. I love this man. "

From an email newsletter from yoga teacher Mark Whitwell

Morning

2008-04-07T13:29:00.001-04:00

"Waking up this morning, I smile. Twenty-four brand new hours are before me. I vow to live fully in each moment and to look at all beings with eyes of compassion." - Thich Nhat Hanh

A Morning Offering

I bless the night that nourished my heart

To set the ghosts of longing free

Into the flow and figure of dream

That went to harvest from the dark

Bread for the hunger no one sees.

All that is eternal in me

Welcomes the wonder of this day,

The field of brightness it creates

Offering time for each thing

To arise and illuminate.

I place on the altar of dawn:

The quiet loyalty of breath,

The tent of thought where I shelter,

Waves of desire I am shore to

And all beauty drawn to the eye.

May my mind come alive today

To the invisible geography

That invites me to new frontiers,

To break the dead shell of yesterdays,

To risk being disturbed and changed.

May I have the courage today

To live the life that I would love,

To postpone my dream no longer

But do at least what I came here for

And waste my heart on fear no more.

-- John O'Donohue from To Bless the Space Between Us

Emile Zola said...

2008-04-02T12:07:00.000-04:00

"If you ask me what I came into this life to do, I will tell you: I came to live out loud."

Freeform Yoga

2008-04-02T09:59:00.001-04:00

Once a month, Erich Schiffmann hosts Freeform Yoga at a studio in Los Angeles. Here's a video, shot by one of his long time students, that includes his description of freeform yoga and some footage of what takes place.

Listen to the description. He's really telling you how to develop your own practice.

Mind

2008-03-23T07:09:00.001-04:00

Neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor had an opportunity few brain scientists would wish for: One morning, she realized she was having a massive stroke. As it happened -- as she felt her brain functions slip away one by one, speech, movement, understanding -- she studied and remembered every moment. This is a powerful story about how our brains define us and connect us to the world and to one another.

Supple as a newborn child

2008-03-13T14:12:00.001-04:00

Last fall, at the Ojai Yoga Crib, I had the great good fortune to listen to the author, Stephen Mitchell speak and read from several of his books. Afterwards, while browsing a table set up by a local bookseller, I realized I owned most of them already except the Tao te Ching which is one of my favorites. I came across this lovely piece in the notes on the text.

"Can you let your body become

supple as a newborn child's?"

Stephen say it literally means "can you concentrate your chi (prana, vital energy) until..."

He adds this from Emilie Conrad-Da'oud...

"There is no self-consciousness in the newborn child. Later on, the mind wanders into self-images, starts to think Should I do this? Is the movement right? and loses the immediacy of the moment. As self-consciousness develops, the muscles become less supple, less like the world. But the young child is pure fluidity. It isn't aware of any separation, so all its movements are spontaneous and alive and whole and perfect.

If an adult body becomes truly supple, though, there's a quality to its movement that the child's doesn't have, a texture of experience, a fourth dimension of time. When we watch a seventy-year-old hand move, we feel, 'Yes, that hand has lived.' All the bodies it has touched, all the weights it has lifted, all the heads it has cradled are present in the movement. It is resonant with experience, the fingers curve with a sense of having been there. Whereas in a child's hand there's a sense of just arriving. The child's movement is pristine and innocent and delightful, but a truly supple adult movement is awesome because all life is included in it."