Garden Street Journal

YES

2012-01-26T13:54:00.000-08:00

Today is overly full - bursting at the seams with so many things I've said "yes" to. Tonight I start teaching a 6 week meditation course. Tomorrow and this weekend Rainey and I co-teach on shoulders. And of course there's all the other stuff of life going on simultaneously. Consequently, I didn't think I could sit down to write. But here I am.

I have been engaged in an ongoing contemplation on what it takes to invite and sustain Inner Body Radiance. That contemplation has taken on a life of its own and demanded I say "yes" and write at least a short bit.

A true "YES" - it seems to me - is an inner gesture that is both intense and effortless. Getting to Yes may be full of effort. But YES itself is a expansive thing. When YES is in place (and the breakwater of ambivalence and "maybe" is breached) radiance flows in naturally because Shakti is very interested in YES. - organizes and responds in sequences of unfolding around YES – and is not so interested in MAYBE

The main relationships and work of my life evoke a complete "yes" in me. Of course there is resistance along the way - but at the end of the resistance it always ends up at "YES". I like to keep an eye on this dynamic - "yes" leading to radiance - with the aim of applying it to all my doings. If there is something in my life that is requiring significant time, attention, money or energy and towards which I have an attitude of ambivalence, I know that "something" is diminishing Radiance. I will need to either realign my attitude so I can say "Yes" to it, or I will have to disconnect from it.

The things and circumstances which evoke YES for me are not simply "easy" to say yes to. In fact - all of them require a great deal of work and energy. More to the point, saying YES - is not about "following your bliss" or some such thing. For me, its about observing myself, from the inside out, and seeing what brings expansion and greater light - over time - and what contracts and dims - over time. and then doing the necessary re-alignment. The expansion and the radiance of each life - feeds the expansion and radiance of the whole. It matters that we do not dim out.

"Yes" is what is at the essence of the exclamation of "Jai Guru"......Jai means. essentially, "yes" or "victory". The phrase as a whole is like saying "YES" to Radiance. I say Jai to That!

Thanks for Reading!

“Might we not hear…..a call, like ours, needing to be answered…..and call back across the darkness of the valley of not knowing the only word tongues shape without intercession: “ YES”…”YES….” ~~~Galway Kinnell

True freedom lies not in the power to say “yes” or “no”, but in the power to say “YES” only. ~~~Saint Anselm

Doing the 108

2012-01-12T11:14:00.000-08:00

Just before the holidays I cleaned my house. (This was itself a cause for great holiday celebration :). When I finished, I drew a card from an inspiration deck to aim my focus for the holiday time ahead. I got "prayer". (I joked to myself, "Woo Hoo.....wild times!)

I didn't resonate with the focus of "prayer" at the time I drew the card but as the month and its circumstances unfolded, the reason I had drawn "prayer" became clear. Situations unfolded - in the lives of ones dear to me - about which there was nothing I could DO. No fixing. No real influence. No big opinion or brilliant ideas to offer. These were situations that were not mine to do anything about and they yet sat painfully on my heart, as if they were my own. And in a certain way, they were my own, as my heart and karma connection to those involved is strong.

That's when I resolved to chant 108 repetitions of the Maha Mrytyunjaya mantra daily. This particular mantra is, in essence, asking for the grace of liberation. It acknowledges the need for, and asks for a loosening from, the narrowness, limitation, contraction and smallness that can rule our perspective and our life. All that smallness, when added up, becomes suffering and bondage, like the small ties that bound Gulliver. (In case you didn't do your high school reading assignment, the image that works here is of Gulliver visiting the Lilliputians. They tie him - a giant - down with 10,000 small bonds of petty concern). Just so, the "Big Perspective", the giant wonder and infinite upsurge of spirit in life can be forgotten entirely, leaving us tied down in a clench of smallness (the anava mala). Lee called it the "cramp" - a word which, for me, evokes a practical, physical understanding. A cramp in my calf quickly narrows and contracts my perspective - as it shuts off the flow of blood and life to the area in question and brings a definite suffering. The anava mala, or cramp, is the root contraction which has us living in a certainty sure (that is not True) that we are outside of grace and left behind.

The Maha Mrytyunjaya mantra is said to bring an energetic blessing and dissolving of cramps of various sorts - for ourselves and for those to whom we are connected by bonds of great love or by bonds of blood. This blessing serves as a wind in our sails - releasing us from the doldrums of forgetting, freeing us from at least some of the infinite small bonds of karma, simply and gently. In the mantra there is an image of a cucumber loosening from the stalk. Naturally, spontaneously and at the right moment the cucumber and the stalk mutually release one another. The stalk retreats away from the fruit when it is ripe. Our contractions of various sorts - which served us at one time - can loosen and recede - when the time is ripe....when we are ready. But we do need help. The loosening and release is a big deal. If it were easy to loosen - we would find the dying process to be easy. It is not. It's big work. We need help. (One of the circumstances that got me serious about "doing the 108" is my mother's situation - so close to death......and her hard work - and lots of help - loosening from life).

When I chant I typically do not think about all of the above, about the meaning of the words, about the teachings regarding the chant. I just chant. The chanting reveals the energy of the chant. Revelation from Participation.

So - I have been diligently "doing the 108".

Once, while chanting 108 Mrytyunjayas, I felt as if I were walking a baby at night.....easing it over the threshold to peaceful sleep. That was a powerful and direct experience of what I had been taught about the chant. The direct experience allowed me to understand at a deeper level the teaching which says that this chant is one to do for a loved one who is transitioning - whether that transition is a more ordinary one like a child from waking to sleep - or a bigger one like a loved one passing over.

Another direct experience I had "doing the 108" was of it's powerful housecleaning (samskara burning) action in me. I was ostensibly chanting / praying for others. And yet I felt a steady and strong loosening, melting and untangling of something in me. This powerful and direct experience of the energy of the chant allowed me to appreciate the teaching that this chant is to be done for those with whom you have blood ties or to whom you are bound by great love. In the circumstances for which I was chanting / praying, there were bonds of both karma and great love....and so it is no surprise that chanting like this would set me up for an interior housecleaning. Once again, the participation in the practice revealed the power of the practice.

Chanting and the other forms of sadhana I practice have linked study. Asana involves knowing the body, alignment, anatomy and poses. Similarly, pranayama, meditation, chanting, puja, formal contemplation (bhavana) all involve study, discernment, translation. And all these forms of sadhana have beautiful, inspiring and poetic descriptions of their practice, written by someone who has participated in - and directly experienced - the beauty of their practice from the inside out..

From an "outside in" perspective, sadhana can look very odd - even superstitious. Without participation, even the picturesque shapes of asana can seem a bit pointless and not the most optimal means to - for example - create cardiovascular health or flexible and toned muscles. Chanting, meditation etc definitely can look oddly pointless from the "outside in".

From the inside out, however, the practice is anything but odd or pointless. Participation is the ends and the means.

Participate. Life wants me to participate. God wants me to participate. In the participation is the revelation. "Understanding" according to Lee, "is the booby prize".

As usual, all of this reminds me of some of my favorite poetry. Copied below. Enjoy.

Thanks for Reading!

From Rilke
God speaks to each of us as he makes us,
then walks with us silently out of the night.
These are the words we dimly hear:
You, sent out beyond your recall,
go to the limits of your longing
Embody me.
Flare up like flame
and make big shadows I can move in.
Let everything happen to you: beauty and terror.
Just keep going.
No feeling is final.
Don't let yourself lose me.
Nearby is the country they call life.
You will know it by its seriousness.
Give me your hand.

from Mary Oliver

Have you ever tried to enter the long black branches of other lives --
tried to imagine what the crisp fringes, full of honey, hanging
from the branches of the young locust trees, in early morning, feel like?

Do you think this world was only an entertainment for you?

Never to enter the sea and notice how the water divides
with perfect courtesy, to let you in!
Never to lie down on the grass, as though you were the grass!
Never to leap to the air as you open your wings over the dark acorn of your heart!

No wonder we hear, in your mournful voice, the complaint
that something is missing from your life!

Who can open the door who does not reach for the latch?
.............................

Listen, are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life?

While the soul, after all, is only a window,

and the opening of the window no more difficult
than the wakening from a little sleep.

.............................

For how long will you continue to listen to those dark shouters,
caution and prudence?
Fall in! Fall in!

Almost a Rant

2012-01-06T21:01:00.000-08:00

I have been thinking about the recent New York Times article on Yoga. So.......I will write what I think (and try to avoid a long rant).

I partly agree with this article. Going to extremes in service to ego or ignorance is stupid. And the extremes that are mentioned are ridiculous. For example, why did a young man sit in vajrasana for "hours a day" and think that he would NOT be injured??!!

The article just talks about "Yoga" but does not define what Yoga is It leaves the reader thinking Yoga and Asana are synonymous. That's a huge omission. That's such limited knowledge that it falls over the fence into ignorance.

Good teachers teach what IS good alignment, and what is NOT. They teach you how to listen to your body. All of us who teach should know anatomy and alignment well. It's our responsibility. If you know basic anatomy and are knowledgeable about alignment and if trust what you know - you will not teach shoulder stand with the chin smashed into the chest because that just does not make sense for the cervical spine.

In part - this article is another "Yoga Hit Job" of which the New York Times has done a few recently. After stating that 20 million people are doing Yoga, it sites 3 or 4 cases of injury. You don't have to be a genius in quantitative research to know that the argument in this article is seriously weak. And yet the tone of the article is such that one might think it is "SCIENTIFIC" and so must be TRUE. Of course the article makes no mention the overwhelming percentage of practitioners for whom Yoga has changed their lives and bodies irrefutably for the better.

Another thing that the article is biased towards is this: it implies that injuries and deterioration will NOT happen if you are not doing Yoga. But you know……people injure themselves hiking, People have strokes having sex. People create repetitive strain injury from swimming, biking, walking, dancing. etc. I have not seen any major articles telling us to stop doing those things.

Part of the problem here is the puere syndrome - the eternally youthful male - or Peter Pan syndrome - which is an attitude we tend to have about our bodies in America. We somehow think that if we are doing everything right we will not age or wear out. People involved in fitness and healthcare often feel morally negligent and embarrassed if they get sick or injured. This is simply nuts. Bodies wear out. People get sick. Hips wear out. We all die at the end of our story.

I've heard Yoga practitioners and "others" - look at older Yoga teachers, whose backs are worn out or whose hips have arthritis and say YOGA DID THAT! When it's a Yoga person making the indictment they will say "bad Yoga did that" (implying that their yoga is more evolved and smart and therefore "good" and will keep their bodies from aging or getting injured) But wait! SO many older people who have never stepped foot inside of a Yoga studio have the same injuries pointed to by the critics of Yoga. LIFE wears bodies out. Your genetics or your Jyotish (astrology) chart may determine how fast or slow that happens.....but happen it will. That's the way it is. bodies wear out just like cars wear out. But when our old car begins to wear out, we don't go into red alert and conclude that we should not have been driving that car. It's just life as it is. Hopefully we have some kind of steady connection to the Mystery which gives rise to cars and bodies and newspaper articles and blog posts.

The real question is - what are you wearing out FOR? I want the alchemy of life to wear me out in the process of making Gold of my spirit. I am quite willing (although I might not enjoy it so much) to sacrifice my back, my teeth .....and eventually everything to that great Work.

This "almost rant" deserves to end with a Bukowski poem.

air and light and time and space

"–you know, I’ve either had a family, a job,

something has always been in the

way

but now

I’ve sold my house, I’ve found this

place, a large studio, you should see the space and

the light.

for the first time in my life I’m going to have

a place and the time to

create."

no baby, if you’re going to create

you’re going to create whether you work

16 hours a day in a coal mine

you’re going to create in a small room with 3 children

while you’re on

welfare,

you’re going to create with part of your mind and your body blown

away,

you’re going to create blind

crippled

demented,

you’re going to create with a cat crawling up your

back while

the whole city trembles in earthquake, bombardment,

flood and fire.

baby, air and light and time and space

have nothing to do with it

and don’t create anything

except maybe a longer life to find

new excuses

for.

The Generosity of the Sun

2011-12-23T12:10:00.000-08:00

To honor Solstice I focused studio classes on the theme of "The Generosity of the Sun" which moves in us – as us. I used the following thoughts to fund the theme and sequence of the classes. (Some of this is inspired by Brian Swimme's work. See quotes and info at end of post).

The Sun pulls billions of tons of hydrogen to it’s center every second. (Think Muscular Energy)
This hydrogen is transformed into helium - (Think Yoga as the Alchemy of Transformation).
Helium is released from the center of the sun as light (think Organic Energy)
Each second, 4 million tons of the sun is transferred into light. OCEANS of matter are transformed every day- (Think radical generosity - Think God)

Photosynthesis transforms this light into plants. Animals eat the sun through plants. Humans feast on the energy of the sun through plants and animals…..Humans ARE the generosity of the sun, stepped down to muscle and bone.

We feast on the generosity of the sun not only through the food we eat but also through common everyday blessings, like:

Waking up in a warm bed
The kitchen light
That nice cup of hot tea or coffee
The warm bath or hot shower
The heat moving through the house in winter

Maybe early in the day we do a Yoga practice. We feast on the light of the sun when we light a candle for puja, pranayama or meditation. And as we practice, the Light of Consciousness grows gradually but inevitably brighter. When we do the work of asana or exercise, we feast on the generosity of the sun as our muscles engage and warm. The fire of the sun is at work in every part of us from atom to organ - from ATP in our cells to our body temperature.

After practice its time for breakfast.

The metabolic fire of digestion makes us hungry as well as able to digest and assimilate.

It is the light of the sun, come down to the kitchen, that cooks the food and serves it up as a hot meal.

The work-day starts and the light of the sun steps down to the office as we do our mental work - the light of the computer - the fire of synapses firing. Hopefully we love our work and draw from the fire within that makes us passionate about our work.

Most days we connect with friends, co-workers, teachers, students, loved ones. Our friendships and relations are full of the warmth of the sun which might be reflected in the warm glow that happens when you think of a friend. It rises up like a sunrise, lifts the corners of your mouth in a smile and brightens a light in your eyes. Even our less than happy relations are fueled by the sun - our angers and irritations have a definite heat to them.

We simply and naturally give the generosity of the Sun back out from ourselves. How can we not? We ARE the generosity of the sun. Even the most twisted of us gives light back out - perhaps with great stinginess or as if by accident - but gives out light nonetheless. Just look at an infrared photograph. We are blazing suns, each of us.

Extending light generously can infuse simple daily gestures:

We feed the birds with seeds that are quite literally the compacted light of the sun.
We prepare food. Often a simple warmth of kindness goes into a meal that we prepare for others and also - hopefully - that same kindness goes into the food we prepare for ourselves.
We leave a light on for the loved one coming home late. (I have heard that in Germany on one day of the year all the mothers put a candle in the window for their sons who died in war – so those young men can find their way home).

With every breath we replenish our energy all over again….and this is possible – our human energy is possible - because at the center of the solar system, stellar generosity pours forth energy all the time. As Brian Swimme says: “If we burn brightly today it is only because some energy was burning brightly as the sun a month ago.”

Yoga is designed to line us up to That - a great generosity that burns at the center of everything.

We practice in a way that encourages us to open to and align with That. We even praise That through mantras like the Gayatri. The longer we practice, the more we fine tune our alignment with the Great Light……the nature of which is unstinting, radical generosity. That is a GOOD thing to line up with and the moment we re-member ourselves to it, we become less obstructed – more transparent. Generosity, as a natural, innocent and unstoppable impulse flows outward from us like daylight.

Thanks for reading!

Brian Swimme, Ph.D. a mathematician and cosmologist, brings the context of story to our understanding of the 13.7 billion year trajectory of the universe. Story, he feels, will assist in the emergence of a flourishing Earth community. Several years ago I came across his thinking and teaching on the nature of the universe when I watched his video - "The Hidden Heart of the Cosmos". It changed my life.

Some quotes from Brian Swimme:

The earth was once molten rock and now sings operas.

Each person discovers a field of allurements, the totality of which bears the unique stamp of that person's personality. Destiny unfolds in the pursuit of individual fascinations and interests ... By pursuing your allurements, you help bind the universe together. The unity of the world rests on the pursuit of passion.

The primary challenge of this cosmological transformation of consciousness is the awareness that each being in the universe is an origin of the universe. “The center of the cosmos” refers to that place where the great birth of the universe happened at the beginning of time, but it also refers to the upwelling of the universe as river, as star, as raven, as you, the universe surging into existence anew. The consciousness that learns it is at the origin point of the universe is itself an origin of the universe. The awareness that bubbles up each moment that we identify as ourselves is rooted in the originating activity of the universe. We are all of us arising together at the center of the cosmos.

The break-through moments are unimaginable until they happen.

I have a sense that something amazing is at work… I think our planet is actually moving into a time of profound harmony and fecundity and peace but whether that’s going to take 600 years or 6 days I don’t know. I mean, I think that as humans begin to take seriously… the planetary dimension of conscious self-awareness, then we will become homonized versions of natural selection — so that we will begin to make decision with the large scale dynamic of the planet in mind. So I see that we’re actually entering into a transformation of the human species out of the modern period into this new era… It may take centuries… but like the past and it’s catastrophes I think that’s… what’s taking place in the midst of so many hardships. -

There’s a great phrase from Eric Jantsch… and he says, “these self-organizing dynamics are in every place in the universe, waiting at their marks”. I love that phrase because you get that… the power for making water exists everywhere in the universe but the conditions have to be right. But if the conditions are right, then these self-organizing dynamics leap to it. So I think it’s something like that, that the possibility for sentience has always been there but has been waiting for a chance to really display.

The more I learn about light the more I realize, man, we don’t know anything about light… It’s just bizarre… a particle has it’s own proper time which slows down as you speed up. But at the speed of light… there’s no time. That’s bizarre… that we can, right now, as you know, see — interact with the light that has come from the birth of the universe. So… from our point of view, that light traveled for 14 billion years but from the point of view of the light it’s the moment of creation.

Sanctuary

2011-12-16T14:23:00.000-08:00

Last week in my Hohm Sahaj Mandir study group (Lee's teachings) we talked about the idea and reality of Sanctuary. And so I decided to teach on the theme of sanctuary and in that way connect the dots of my life. (To which the dots replied: "Good luck! We will connect ourselves just fine and then make you laugh with surprise at our genius and synchronicity!)

Anyway! "I" decided to connect two of the dots of my life and make my class theme for the week be sanctuary, working with the image of a cathedral. It works so well in the body - like this:

Practice to cultivate your capacity to be like a cathedral - grounded, spacious, in service to the Sacred, a sanctuary for your own bright spirit and - as you grow in capacity - a sanctuary for others to remember their own bright spirit. This includes practicing with impeccable alignment - just as both practical and sacred architecture employ specific and impeccable alignment in the building of a temple or cathedral in order to make a physical space in which a brightness of spirit can abide.
Practice to make possible in heart and mind a vibrating silence and an abiding deep Presence - as within a cathedral.
Fill the space of your body, mind and heart with beautiful sound.......refined speech, music, chanting. Find sanctuary inside the sound of Ujjayi breath and the remembrance that God....."is the breath inside the breath". ~~Kabir.
Practice to be so deeply grounded that a great space can open in you (root to rise / organic energy), reminding you that "Inside you are so sweet......Beyond telling. The cathedral there so deeply tall." ~~ Rumi
Practice to tend the light of consciousness within. In the sanctuary at the heart of a cathedral, as in your own center, is a flame that must be tended and kept eternally burning.

After launching the class theme, I was surprised and happy to find myself in a cathedral. I had not planned that, but as usual life offers way more connected dots than I can plan or even notice. Leo invited us to his choir concert which was held at Saint Aloysius Cathedral, a place deeply tall, with lighted candles everywhere and at the center a sanctuary within a great spaciousness. All of it just begged me to be inspired, lift my heart and deepen my breath within the round vaulted dome of my ribcage, heart and mind.

The choir concert was brilliant. I didn't know I would love it so much. Religion has not been my sanctuary over the years and religious hymns make me nervous. But you know - it is just like my meditation teacher Paul M-O teaches: authentic sadhana (introversive practice) will gradually but inevitably make it possible that extroversive rituals and religion - which may have seemed to be deadly dogmatic - can begin to melt open to you, and you will find that ahhhhh! there's bliss in there - radiance and sweetness - the Sacred moving inside those religious rituals.

So that's what happened. I sat and listened to the choir concert and cried with joy. It seemed that both me and the choir were "suspended from a fishing line hooked at the breastbone, being hauled up toward the heavenly gates". ~ Galway Kinnell

Roots

2011-12-07T16:21:00.000-08:00

My time at the ashram with Leo was over the top Good.......a strengthening of my roots and remembrance of what is Real. And then came Thanksgiving.....also over the top Good with both Eli and Leo home as well as Chris' mother. As usual, drawing into home and family set my roots more deeply into gratitude for the good fortune of my life.

It seems like this entire Autumn I have been contemplating roots in my life and in my Yoga practices.

The Yoga tradition offers ways to strengthen both our inward roots into our sadhana (spiritual practice) as well as our outward roots into embodied life. Retreat is one of those ways. Being on retreat strengthens a fundamental root in me, one that brings essential nourishment into my practice and life and provides me with a sort of food I can't do without. Likewise my home practice of daily meditation, pranayama, puja, abiding in the "home field" of Blessing Force, etc. - all of these strengthen this inward root.

Inner roots are akin to the antar anga or the inward limbs of Yoga mentioned in Yoga Sutra 2.29. They provide me with sanctuary, remembrance and deep nourishment.

And then there's the outward roots of my life as a Yogin: my work, family, parents, studio business; Garden Street and the bright community of teachers and students there; my gradually increasing ability to stand steady in life and live from what I know; my aim to be ethically aligned in personal and business practices; my aspiration to consistently show up for work and for people who rely on me with my heart available .........these are some of the ways I understand the outer roots of my Yoga life.

There are also involvements and relationships that are inner roots at times and outer roots at other times. For example, my marriage, writing, study, teaching, chanting, etc. - these seem to hold the place in the middle - available as a doorway to inner practice or to outer life.

And then there's Asana!

In my view, Asana is an obvious and very available root practice for anyone who has a body and is on the Yoga path. It provides the fundamental physical work of getting strong in legs and pelvic core.....developing stamina and patience and an ability to stay in place in inner and outer life.. Being strong in my physical legs supports my ability to stand steady and live from what I know - to set a strong root into the earth and into my embodied life.

Tantra teaches that the world tells us about the Divine. The way of nature and of the body teaches me the most intelligent sequence of things. Based on this, it is clear that I must cultivate strength in embodied life FIRST, learn how to stand on my own 2 feet, make a living, show up for work, stay in relationship, and be strong in my legs so I can do the heavy lifting of spiritual practice. Sadhana is - literally - physically demanding Work. Love and the alchemy of transformation is not for weaklings.

I know that there are many, many physically impaired people who are masters of Love. But my particular karma has given me a body that is unimpaired. With that good fortune - as with any good fortune - comes incredible responsibility. Part of that responsibility - as I see it - is that I be steady on my feet, cultivate dignity and self-support, stand strong in my life and in my dharma. Only then do I have a reliable platform on which to sit in meditation, broaden my sadhana, deepen my roots into the Absolute and traverse the great path of remembrance and return.

ALL of the above takes practice....abhyasa....regular practice over a long period of time with devotion. Daily. As Paul Muller Ortega puts it - "random practice, random results".
Random results just don't cut it. Relying on the results of random practice is like trying to do a long hold of a strong standing pose on weak or poorly aligned legs. Those same legs might be adequate roots if you're just in line at the super market - but not if you want to "stay in place" in ways that matter and not if you want to move forward in a way that means anything.

This contemplation of roots has been reflected in my zealous - "can't-quite-get-done-with-it - enthusiasm for strengthening the legs, hips and lower abdominal core in asana. I mean - I worry that I have almost been torturing people with strength work in the classes lately.

The way I understand it, Tantra insists that both the inward roots and outward roots of our sadhana - our practice - be strengthened and expanded. We ARE the connection between heaven and earth. Why be only a vague and timid connection with a thin and tenuous root to heaven and a wobbly, weak-legged presence on earth? Yoga – our participation and true home in that great lineage – presents us with both the invitation (and eventually the demand!) as well as brilliant means, to step up to the enlivening task of being strongly rooted to heaven and to earth.

As usual, Rilke says it brilliantly - telling us to reach our roots deeper and more strongly to both Heaven and Earth:

“It is not enough to be carried along. Time to take your well-disciplined strengths and stretch them between two opposing poses because inside human beings is where God learns.” ~~Rilke

Thanks for reading!

11.11.11

2011-11-10T13:35:00.000-08:00

I'm speeding right along. Happy. Energized. So grateful for my work!

The week long, part I Immersion finished on Sunday night. An amazing group - and I mean it. A deep and ongoing contemplation arose in me - from being with that group and their process. I know I'll write about it. But not now. Too busy.

Yesterday I finally finished the main phase of a rather stretched out Ayurvedic cleanse I've been doing with the guidance of Patricia Berger. It stretched out so long because there was just so much going on - and the main phase (yesterday) was just not something I could pull off unless I had a whole day clear. (I'll spared you the details). Anyway, I got'r'done and am looking forward to regular food. The process was excellent. a strong but reasonable cleanse that I could accomplish during a very busy work schedule It didn't leave me depleted or with a lot of weight loss (I've done a lot of cleanses and also guided a lot of people through Chinese Medicine based cleanses. I know one can use cleanses to lose weight- but that kind of weight often does not stay off - in my experience - so it's probably best not to have that as a goal).

This Friday we have Friday Night Live - Led Advanced Practice. Then 11.11.11 Enchantmant - which involves chanting until 11:11 pm. Jenni Fallein, who first taught me the Gayatri 30 years, ago is leading the Gayatri. Patricia Berger, my good friend and Ayurvedic practitioner here in Coeur d'Alene is leading Shiva Shambo - and I'm leading the Maha Mrtyunjaya. It is going to be SO good...... a High that is legal and non-toxic.

Saturday is the extra long Saturday Morning class.....90 minutes Asana and 30 minutes Restorative. Then at 12:30 we have Cami Cote's practicum. Go Cami.

Saturday night Chris and I are going dancing. No, really!

Sunday morning is Joy Ride - which is 4 hours for Immersion Graduates and - if I may say so myself - is aptly named. We truly deepen into sadhana together - as a community of practitioners who are seasoned.

Sunday afternoon - it's Mom and Dad.....I can't wait. I didn't get to see them last week. Going to visit with them has truly become a sort of darshan (seeing and being seen by the Sacred). This Sunday I want to read aloud to them a wonderful, satirical essay written by Lee Lozowick - The Divine Path of Growing Old. It's funny and full of Truth.

On Monday I have a full day of being secretary to the business.

Tuesday morning early Leo and I leave for the ashram.

I.......am....so...happy.........This may be what Paul M-O call the condition or "unreasonable happiness". So - I'm that - but also I'm too busy to write the more substantial stuff right now - for example about that Immersion group and what can happen in an intelligent circle of aligned students and practitioners. It was pretty remarkable. Stand by.

Thanks for Reading.

Praying for Alignment

2011-11-03T09:50:00.000-07:00

Praying for Alignment

People who know that Lee Lozowick is my guru, and who also know that Darren and Christina (my friends in Anusara and fellow students of Lee) resigned from Anusara Yoga have understandably been asking me "what's going on?" and "are you resigning?"

The news, when Christina told me, initiated a sort of sandpaper- applied-to-tenderness process of self-inquiry. (not for the first time - not by a long shot). The path and the practice have continually worked on me - dredging out the calcified, thickened residue that tends to accumulate in every human heart - and definitely in mine.

Not for the first time, I've been scrutinizing my alignment to teachers, Teachers, sanghas, kulas and lineages. And I've been praying hard - to be honest with myself, to see clearly and to move into stronger and steadier alignment with that which is most Sacred and out of that alignment to work and to love.

Lee is my guru. His influence informs me deeply and infuses everything I do and teach, including my teaching of Anusara Yoga. Not long ago, Lee said he could sum up his teaching as follows: "Seek beauty, Avoid suffering." That works for me as a teacher of Anusara Yoga - for where I live - and for how I teach Anusura Yoga. Of course there is a vast amount more to Lee's teaching - so much depth and breadth. And so I run an ongoing study group for those who want to dive deeper into Lee's teachings. There are several of our local community of Yoga practitioners who are both sangha and kula.

Where I live, and given the context in which I work and the teachers and students with whom I connect day in and week out, there is no conflict. No problem. There is a difference between Lee's teachings, Paul Muller Ortega's teachings and Shiva/Shakti tantra but these are not differences that makes a difference for me and my work. Everything changes. I know this could change too. But it is true here and for now.

Lee also taught me a lot about cultivating attention.....not getting distracted - consolidating attention through practice and then paying attention (which is my soul force) carefully so as to be "food" only for God. In keeping with that teaching, rather than feed my attention into the swirling distraction and speculation that has

been going on, I would like, instead, to consolidate my Attention to the middle, anchor it into my embodied life and then pay my Attention (which is my soul force, which is Love) to the remarkable students who are here for Immersion this week. And to the ongoing students that come to Garden Street. And to the teachers there.....(who are called the garden street goddesses for a good reason). I can extend my Attention far afield to my good friends in more than one school - as long as I know where it is rooted - as long as I don't uproot it or disperse its strength through distraction and fascination with the 10,000 things designed to distract!

If I could make one strong recommendation to anyone who wants it I would recommend that people read Wendell Berry.....Jayber Crow would be a good novel to start with. I would recommend - like I believe Wendell Berry does - that we remember where we live - in our bodies, breath and bones - and start living there. You might say: Let's Occupy ourselves right here! Lee asked his students to stop being seduced by what's going on somewhere else, to stop living virtually. He taught the path of the body - - Kaya Sadhana. Step away from the computer. (Lee hated the action of the virtual because of its power to eat attention - to distract practitioners from what is Real).

In another week Leo and I are going to the ashram for a week. It will be good to be with sangha. Leo is so excited. So am I. Eli and Emmanuelle just got back from there. Both Eli and Leo love Anusara classes and Immersion studies, and they love being students of Lee. There is no problem. I feel fortunate to live in the context here - glad I live where I live.

Paying Attention and Being Aligned

2011-10-26T10:20:00.000-07:00

As usual, so much happens every week - and the last week or so has been no exception. The way I move through each week feels to me as if on Monday I set myself into a sling shot and then let fly. And land somewhere on Sunday.

Ross Rayburn was here to teach for 3 days. He did a great job, He is passionate, clear, intelligent, funny, humble. He totally honored our local community. Which is good. We deserve to be honored as we have evolved into a very well educated group of dedicated practitioners......of asana and also of pranayama, meditation and study. Ross saw that and spoke to it many times over the course of the 3 days. He elevated and honored the steady dedicated work that has been going on over over a long period of time here.

I appreciate that! I also appreciate it that Ross is very "out" and telling the truth about his love of God and that he still considers himself Christian - loves Jesus - even though that is sometimes just not "hip" amongst some Yoga communities. There are a lot of closet Christian Yogis....people who love Yoga and love Jesus and have had to struggle with that. Ross made it very clear that he has been / is in the same place and has learned to take the position of "be an adult and translate". Basically, he and I share a passionate mission of "no Yogi left behind" - or in this case I would say ""no Christian left behind (unless they want to be).

On the subject of telling the truth.......I recently received an e-mail from a truly amazing teacher and friend. I asked her if I could post it - and keep her identity obscure. She said "yes" and I copied it below. Here's what she wrote to me. The italics are excerpts from my blog and also an excerpt from Claire Dederer. The un-italicized is my friend's writing. At the end I chime in again with a couple of comments. I hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading!

Popular culture of Yoga:

From your blog:

I lost some perspective this summer following a couple of experiences and a handful of conversations / interactions I'd had. I was more aware of - and more discouraged than usual by - the popular culture of Yoga: the media hype with increasing focus on sexy athleticism, over-the-top marketing, super-star teachers, and so on................all the ways that popular culture has once again vampired something Real.

As soon as the Autumn schedule at the studio went into gear, I was able to let all that go. It drifted away away from my awareness like smoke, thanks to this lovely, local, REAL and strong Yoga community, the teachers and students, the dedicated space, good company, good work. I thought "Oh my gosh....what was I thinking?! I really would not be happy working at 7-11.

At a local level I am overwhelmed/discouraged/amazed by the vast popularity and total saturation – even here – of the yoga that falls into the general realm of Hot Power Flow Yoga - but that is what seems to appeal to the General Public. This apparently is also the case [many places]. I don’t know if this is happening in Coeur d’Alene and Spokane as well – I suppose one could be happy that they are doing yoga at all – but there also could be so much more for them.

Our local Anusara Kula is relatively small, although a lovely group. And I know that good community takes a while to build. But sometimes this whole situation is a little disheartening. I still can’t quite get my head around the fact that it might be necessary to do some “marketing” – I just can’t relate to “yoga” and “marketing” in the same breath. I am envious of your Yoga community there and love visiting it!

I am also overwhelmed with all of the online courses for this that and the other thing related to yoga and to Anusara Yoga in particular – some of which I am sure are wonderful learning experiences – but good heavens – so much. And I won’t even start in on super-star teachers, irritating over-marketing, tasteless videos, etc. ….

On the other hand I am totally encouraged teaching Chair Yoga to Seniors at a local Retirement Home. The students at this facility are so positive and grateful. They aren’t searching for the latest popular yoga class that is going to make them sweatier and have what they perceive as a “better workout”. I am totally thinking that this was something I would really like to do more of.

On a bit of a lighter note, I just finished reading a book called Poser by a lady from Seattle name Claire Dederer and it was a fun/interesting read. Here is a bit from her book:

Pg. 301 Later that week I went to class at a yoga studio that I didn’t normally frequent. It was a kind of yoga mill, a chain that had outlets in half a dozen states. It was a strange dynamic: You literally felt like a cog in a yoga machine when you went to class there. University of Colorado sorority girls jammed the place, with its big, ultraclean, characterless yoga rooms, masses of corporate branding, and annoying expensive towel policy…But this was the only yoga class I could make it to. The yoga mill offered about twenty classes a day. It was like the Honey Nut Cheerios of the yoga world; always there for you, in lieu of a real meal. Its class offerings were hilariously off-brand. Hot Yoga…was simply unlicensed Bikram. …Power Yoga was Ashtanga done very carelessly….

Evolving Practice:

From your blog:

Since then - and especially in the last 3 years - it took me some time and contemplation to let my practice evolve the way it has wanted to evolve - (and not to worry that I am becoming "soft" or being "left behind" as the Yoga Culture at Large gets ever more extravagantly athletic.). Now I am more likely to spend a good amount of time in inversions, do more pranayama - often woven in with asana - and practice a full range of basic asana with to keep my body awake and to stay clear of "sensory motor amnesia" (thank you Katie and somatics for that term!)

The Bhairava Tantra verse 65 says, "All this world and indeed your very own body, is made of bliss". I'm am interested in bliss. I love asana and how it can release enfolded bliss. And although I practice my way to bliss differently now, I have many students who are ready, willing and able to, as John Friend used to say, "take it to the next level". I know how to help them get there. In my teaching I facilitate openings into the big poses - (Kapinjalasana last practice and Scorpion this practice) even though these poses don't sing out to me the way they used to. Until lately, I wasn't sure it was possible to teach with enthusiasm those things that I am not currently practicing with enthusiasm. It is possible. I love the Light that opens in students when they take it to the next level. I love to help people into Kapinjalasana - because of what I see open in them when they get there. Bliss. That is worth everything.

This blog really rang a note with me as well. I can so totally relate – and I haven’t found a lot to read about on the topic of this development in my yoga life nor have I come across another yoga instructor who is experiencing a similar change in direction. It’s like the stage where one has children – you can’t possibly imagine what it’s like until you have experienced it. And that is why it was so nice to read your thoughts on this. I am also trying to determine what direction I want my personal practice to be going. And I am pondering how/what I want to teach. Torn.

But here’s another thing – it is almost like a disturbing dream – I don’t know how I would quit teaching yoga if that is what I had to do – for example if I found it necessary to find a “real” job. Once one gets on the bus, can one ever get off? I devote a large proportion of my time to yoga related matters. And I mean like 90 percent of my time. Oh dear, maybe I have a problem?!!! I need balance AND direction.

(Me again - Karen)
I know that a LOT of Yoga teachers feel the way my friend feels because we talk about it. It is not exactly something one likes to be "out" about - for fear of getting kicked out of the herd - or losing income - or being left behind. But even more important, the popular culture take on Yoga is not something I like to pay my Attention to. Attention is my life force, I grow that to which I pay my attention. If I pay my life force towards that with which I am not aligned, then I am growing that and meanwhile diminishing the things with which I am aligned. (Attention grows things. Non-attention starves things.)

I am deeply and happily aligned with my local community of Real, dedicated, authentic, practitioners. I am deeply and happily aligned with my important teachers and with the Yoga tradition teachings. I am deeply and happily aligned with my sadhana (practices). I am deeply and happily aligned with my husband and sons. I LOVE paying my Attention to all these alignments. If my life were such that I had to live immersed in the popular culture yoga craze - so much so that I could not avert my attention or keep it aimed towards that which I am truly and deeply aligned - then I would have to make some serious decisions and get myself into different context, one with which I was aligned.

On the Other Side of the Wormhole

2011-10-12T18:12:00.000-07:00

I am in the thick of things with my work life. Last weekend I taught Immersion on Saturday and Joy Ride - aka Advanced Immersion - on Sunday. (Amazingly great groups. I am humbled and VERY grateful).

After Joy Ride I drove into Spokane to visit Mom and Dad. Driving home afterwards, I was SO tired I thought I would have to pull over. But once again I proved to myself that chanting really can bring me a strong energetic lift. As I drove and chanted my energy slowly rose - like water in a decidedly dried up well. I came home to have a nice dinner (thanks to Chris who cooked it) with Eli, Leo and Emmanuelle (Eli's sweetheart). The good dinner and good company also did a lot towards filling the well.

Nevertheless, I wasn't too happy - but also was not surprised - to spend Monday and Tuesday feeling deadly low. I was too tired and I don't like being tired. In fact I hate it. Monday and Tuesday were "the Wormhole".

Today is Wednesday, I have come out the other side of the wormhole and life is good in this part of the galaxy. My energy is back, which is a good thing because our 3 day workshop with Ross Rayburn starts this Friday. A workshop - as always - is a lot to pull together - a lot of work and a lot of details. But it is worth it. It strengthens our community. It seems to me that the local Yoga community gets cross-pollinated, strengthened and brightened by visiting teachers and visiting students (we have many ongoing friendships with fellow students from the surrounding states and Canada who come for some of the Garden Street workshops). We get to be all together is a good space, with good company and good teaching. Usually there's chocolate on the premises. And we spend the weekend playing (and working) in our bodies. There are not many better ways to spend time - in my biased opinion.

For me personally - once a workshop starts - the bulk of my managerial and secretarial work is done. I have crossed the 10,000 things off my list and I come out the other side of the wormhole. I get to be a student, spend the weekend in good company, deepen in practice and widen my happiness. Life is good in this part of the galaxy. And in fact I get stronger in my capacity to go through the inevitable next wormhole without completely losing perspective that "its just a wormhole".

[On a side note: I wish there were some good new SciFi around - like Battlestar Galactica. I need to refresh my vocabulary and imagery of wormholes and such.]

Thanks for reading. See you on the other side.

Svatantria II

2011-10-04T09:54:00.000-07:00

Apparently I did not turn off my contemplation motor as the Svatantria contemplation that I began yesterday, continued to run. (Sometimes I envision contemplation as a motor in a well - bringing up awareness and understanding). That contemplation started as a trickle yesterday. Today it is the size of a creek. Sometimes it can become like the Columbia River - or a firehose! - if I stick with it long enough.

"The world tells us about the divine" ~ Carlos Pomeda

I woke up thinking about water. Springs and rivers and lakes and oceans and salmon. All of it is water - basically. Salmon - nicely contained packets of water - are born at source - move with the current downstream, swim the huge fluid freedom of the ocean. And then comes the mysterious call of return and they engage great discipline to swim against the current - upstream - returning to source, where they die and dissolve the boundary of separation (fish - water) and become unbounded water.

Why go to all that trouble? Why not stay at source - skip the whole journey to the ocean and therefore avoid the consequent arduous path of return? Or better yet - why not just remain "Unbounded Water". Why be a fish at all?

Evolution. Ongoing and expanding Life.

OK - so the world tells me about the Sacred. Why am I living in a contracted state of separate self - usually unable to relate to the teaching that I am unbounded consciousness....svatantria. Why has my awareness enfolded to create Karen Sprute-Francovich? Why not stay at Source - skip the whole dual part - and the consequent arduous discipline of the path of return?

Evolution. Ongoing Life. The Universe is expanding. God is growing. ( Take your well-disciplined strengths and stretch them between two opposing poles. Because inside human beings is where God learns - Rilke)

Or maybe - as Krishna says to Arjuna - "If I were to stop acting - all these worlds would perish"

Inside humans beings is where God learns. Do I know what this means? No. But it sings true in me. The alarm rings - it's time to return, to step on the path of authentic practice (which is arduous). The difference between me and the salmon (beside all the obvious lack of scales and gills, etc) is that I can decide to cooperate or resist. I can hit the snooze button all morning, losing precious swimming time. But, according to the Yoga tradition, in the end the resistance is futile. The great path of return WILL entrain you to its current. And you will be in service to the Work - to the Great Process of Divine Evolution - engaged in skillful discipline and on your way home to remembrance - a long journey to unbounded freedom.

JUST AS THE WINGED ENERGY OF DELIGHT

Just as the winged energy of delight
carried you over many chasms early on,
now raise the daringly imagined arch
holding up the astonishing bridges.

Miracle doesn't lie only in the amazing
living through and defeat of danger;
miracles become miracles in the clear
achievement that is earned.

To work with things is not hubris
when building the association beyond words;
denser and denser the pattern becomes
being carried along is not enough.

Take your well-disciplined strengths
and stretch them between two opposing poles.
Because inside human beings
is where God learns.

— Rainer Marie Rilke (1924)
translated by Robert Bly

Svatantria

2011-10-03T20:10:00.000-07:00

My friend left me a voice mail last night. She and I have had some great times talking about Yoga teaching and especially about the philosophy that underpins Anusara Yoga. She wanted to teach her classes this week with a theme of svatantria - (unbounded freedom - one of the main aspect of the Sacred) - and she was stuck. She was having trouble teaching meaningfully about unbounded freedom. I have the same problem with the concept of svatantria......it is one of those concepts that can stay just that - a concept - because Absolute Freedom is ever so slightly impossible for me to relate to except in an imaginary, 2 dimensional, fairytale, sci-fi way. But, because my freind asked, I started my contemplation motor and let in idle all night, deciding that I would watch and wait to see what would arise.

The first thing that arose is that I did not want to arise out of bed. I felt an approaching anxiety - dressed up as the 10,000 work tasks I needed to accomplish today and this week. I felt exactly the opposite of unbounded freedom. And I felt the heavy-handed demand that I spend a day of total discipline - no freedom.
I watched a certification video – (a brilliant teacher). Her theme, albeit by the simpler name of freedom, was svatantria. She talked about how she had to limit herself – had to forgo doing the things she generally loves to do like reading, biking, watch films with her sweetie, etc. in order to complete a big project. But in the completion of that project she felt a massive expansiveness and lightness… She experienced in a real and embodied way – the essence of svatantria.
I talked to my dad who is 86 now. He told me that yesterday at church the cantor - a man from Africa - had sung so beautifully that Dad just stood there with his eyes closed after the singing stopped.....He said he was completely lost in the beauty. And then he opened his eyes and felt flustered and embarrassed to see he was the only one still standing. Out of a context of a lifetime of discipline (as a householder, father, husband and devout Catholic) he naturally, spontaneously and innocently begun to have direct experiences of absorption into aspects of the Sacred (in this case svatantria and shri).
I was very disciplined today. I kept my butt on my office chair except once to practice asana and twice for chanting, pranayama and meditation. I wouldn't like to live every day this way - but honestly, as the day is coming to a close now - I feel an expanding spaciousness and freedom that woudl simply not be there if I had not accepted the yoke of discipline.

It seems to me now, after 24 hours of watching and waiting to see would arise to meet my contemplation, that svatantria can only be experienced as the second half of the spanda (pulsation) of discipline. That IS a paradox.
We get svatantria in shafts of light, beams of sun. Otherwise I suppose we would be staring straight at the sun and go blind – like Arjuna almost did when Krishna unveiled his super radiance. So we squint our eyes, wear sunglasses, limit the light in various ways and through limitations and disciplines so we can experience the freedom of unbounded light without incinerating.

Garudasana

2011-09-21T20:46:00.000-07:00

Here's an article I wrote for the current issue of Equal Standing. Thanks for reading!

The Tantric philosophy that underpins Anusara Yoga teaches that the Invisible makes itself visible by slowing, contracting, enfolding and encoding itself to become embodied life. It steps down through a vibratory spectrum, from pure energy to root and bone, to become our manifest world, to become you and me. This philosophy tells us that we are unbounded light with a gravity laden root.

When a high frequency sound is slowed to a lower frequency, we can hear it and enjoy it as music, language, poetry and so on. Just so, when the Sacred mystery - the Invisible - slows its vibration, it allows the sky to touch the earth, it lets the earth hear the sky. These two, like lovers, continually and perennially meet at the “place in the middle,” (the hridayam - said to be located at the heart center of each of us). “The soul reveals itself to itself through gesture of hand, foot, spine, face and body. The invisible loves the visible.” (Radiance Sutras)

This process of enfolding into the manifest physical form takes tremendous vitality. It is no casual thing to fold the sky into a root. It is no small feat to genetically code pure energy into conception and new life. The vitality and vast energy of the sky that is coiled within us is always and simultaneously yearning to return to the freedom of unbounded light - svatantria. Both the yearning of unbounded light to become gravity laden root and the longing of gravity laden root to become unbounded light, are Love.

The asana named Garudasana, when performed with alignment, energy and understanding, can bring a deep and embodied remembrance and expression of this great love affair between the invisible and the visible.

In Hindu mythology, Garuda is the eagle-god who is Vishnu’s mount. In the great epic Mahabharata, Garuda first bursts forth from his egg and appears as a huge cosmic energy, so vast it frightens even the gods who beg him for mercy. Garuda, hearing their plea and as an act of love (for God so loved the world…..) reduces himself in size and energy, steps down to a manageable dimension.

To perform the pose Garudasana, first stand in Tadasana and invite an opening, a remembrance of unbounded light. Even if you don’t get a great blast of remembrance, the invitation is enough. As Krishna tells Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita – (another part of the Mahabharata) “No effort is ever wasted”. After opening, release heavily earthward from the core of your pelvis through your legs to the four-cornered foundation of your feet to give the sky of consciousness a gravity-laden root.

Next engage muscular energy as you move into the shape of the pose. Bend both knees and recruit a vigorous and springy strength in your legs by hugging muscle to bone. Cross your right leg over your left, hug both legs to the midline and draw muscular strength up through your legs and into your core. Bend your elbows 90 degrees and fold your left arm over your right. Just as you did with your legs, hug in through your arms, draw skin to muscle to bone, draw arms and shoulders to midline and draw in from periphery (wing feathers) to core (wing-bones).

Now enfold the sky deeper by slowly drawing into a squat. Inner spiral your thighs and sit-bones back, root down through tailbone and bring elbows to knees. Pause here to notice the coiled energy of this pose, the encoded light that is your very essence and the spring-loaded yearning of this gravity laden root to return to its prior state of unbounded light. Then, with your body, answer that longing. Root down through strong legs, rise up, straighten and unfold your legs, unfold your wings and reach up into urdhva hasta tadasana (upward reaching mountain pose). Repeat the entire sequence on the second side. To enjoy an even fuller expression of unfolding from root to sky, you can rise up into Virabhadrasana III –(Warrior III or Flying Warrior).

Usually we live and breathe in a very narrow band of the vibratory spectrum. We are somewhat free, and fairly stable. The Invisible is always inviting us towards more – towards Infinite Stability and Infinite Freedom. Asana practice can be a powerful method to consistently and repeatedly push out the edges of what we think we are. Gradually but inevitably, with steady practice, we come to rest in our true foundation – a ground of being which is immense with unbounded light. In this way we are relieved of our own suffering and sense of being “left behind” and we become a lighthouse of remembrance for others.

Diving in to the Middle

2011-09-12T14:23:00.000-07:00

It's been so long since I posted that it has begun to feel like writing a post should be a BIG deal......a BIG beginning for which I had better have something BIG to say. Since that is not the case, I'll follow Rilke's lead and jump into the middle:

“It is a tremendous act of violence to begin anything. I am not able to begin. I simply skip what should be the beginning.” Rilke

Yesterday was a complex tapestry of a day. At 8 am I launched "Joy Ride" which is essentially Advanced Immersion studies (open to Immersion graduates). We focused on deepening study, contemplation and practice. We did not focus on teaching - as sometimes happens when a lot of teachers are in a context together. I love teacher training......but I am excited for Joy Ride to be a context of support for deepening into practice. In the end that will serve to deepen teaching too but teaching is supposed to be secondary to, and flow out of, the rich depth of one's own practice. I'm down with that.

So....Joy Ride was a Joy. That seems to have been a consensus opinion. We chanted, did asana, looked into the Vijnnana Bhaivrava Tantra and did a study and practice of pranayama. There was so much experience and openness in the room that we went places in understanding and practice that I certainly hadn't planned on going....kind of like a joy ride.

I didn't get as deeply into where I had planned to go with the Vijnnana Bhaivrava Tantra. But we did begin. And will continue. I am seriously grateful to Paul Muller Ortega for any and all understanding and insight I have into that amazing text.

At noon we ended. I went home and introverted for a bit, and then Leo and I went to visit my mom and dad. Nothing new there. It has been almost 6 years since Mom had her stroke. The whole family has been sure - several times - that she was about to die. But she is still here. Very fragile - but also very alive and relatively clear in her mind. The nursing home is a good one. The care they give Mom is inspirational. But nevertheless the whole setting is so depressing. My sister and I agree that we get strangely overwhelmed with fatigue when we go there. Dad is there every day - all day - rain or shine.

After the nursing home, Leo and I went to his apartment (which he shares with Eli ) and they made me dinner. Sort of. Actually, I brought most of the dinner. Not because they wouldn't have made a good one - but because I have not yet quit acting on my compulsion to care for them in a very body and bone sort of way.....make sure there's food, see if they have shoes. It's sort of ridiculous but at least I am honest about it and laugh at myself. I mean - I can't imagine HOW they survived their travels in India - without me looking after their food and shoes :)

We had a good meal, a good visit. I got to preview Eli's lesson plan -- he teaches his first Yoga class at Gonzaga tonight. He's going to be great. (Biased? Yes. Accurate? Yes.)

After dinner and visiting, I drove home to a very quiet house (Chris is in Reno visiting his mom and dad) and a very lonely cat. It still seems weird to me that Eli and Leo call a different place "home"......not depressing......just weird.

Recently I launched a study group focused on the teachings of Lee Lozowick . I am very happy about this. It is a project and process that is close to my heart and overdue, but I had to wait until I had enough bandwidth to initiate it and see it all the way through (and since there's no official end date, I've had to be calendar-cautious).

I am grateful to be diving into the Autumn teaching schedule of Studio classes, Immersions, Joy Ride, etc. It puts everything into its right perspective for me. I lost some perspective this summer following a couple of experiences and a handful of conversations / interactions I'd had. I was more aware of - and more discouraged than usual by - the popular culture of Yoga: the media hype with increasing focus on sexy athleticism, over-the-top marketing, super-star teachers, and so on................all the ways that popular culture has once again vampired something Real.

As soon as the Autumn schedule at the studio went into gear, I was able to let all that go. It drifted away away from my awareness like smoke, thanks to this lovely, local, REAL and strong Yoga community, the teachers and students, the dedicated space, good company, good work. I thought "Oh my gosh....what was I thinking?! I really would not be happy working at 7-11.

On Wednesday I leave for a week of meditation and study with Paul Muller Ortega.....wrapping up what has been a 3 year process of study that I started just a month or so before going to India. I can't quite believe that 3 years........which in addition to 2 months in India included 8 retreats with Paul, many retreats to the Ashram to be with Lee and Sangha, Mom and Dad's situation, Eli & Leo traveling, moving & starting university, and lots and lots of work. As I write it, and it tallies up in my mind, I feel nervous in retrospect.....like ...."whoa.....that's way too much". But here I am. For now I still tend to run my life on the more "intense" end of the continuum. Everything is OK.

Thanks for reading.

Casting About

2011-07-18T19:46:00.000-07:00

Like every other week, last week I had to come up with a theme and sequence. As usual - it was not a tidy, organized process. As usual, I had to listen and wait. It is a bit like I imagine fishing to be: cast a line of an idea - nothing. Cast again - nothing. Just keep casting until something bites. I knew that the class plan would focus on shoulders, as that is the general focus for summer session at the studio. But other than that it was wide open.

The first bite came when I was talking to my son Leo. (Leo is 19 - recently returned from India - recently completed an Anusara Immersion – is amazing beyond belief - Yes, I am bragging, and I make no apologies for it). He told me that he had been talking to his friend about some of the ideas from the Yoga Immersion and also about Lee's teachings on vulnerability and transparency. His friend was not interested at first..........but got excited later when he found a poem that expressed exactly what Leo had been talking about. The poem is by Charles Bukowski (one of the poets that Lee recommends highly -- (synchronicity or what?!)

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I'm not going
to let anybody see
you.
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he's
in there.

there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?
there's a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I'm too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody's asleep.
I say, I know that you're there,
so don't be
sad.
then I put him back,
but he's singing a little
in there, I haven't quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it's nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don't
weep, do
you?

OK - first bite. I had a poem that hit deep in my heart. Back to fishing but now with a question: "what happened with that heart-hit?" And then....ah-hah.....another bite: My heart melted - a bit - and "melt your heart" is a teaching in Anusara Yoga.

OK - back to fishing. How do I teach "melt your heart" in a way that is clear, easy to relate to and can be physically applied to alignment in the asana? Third bite: I would teach the principle Organic Energy applied to the heart focal point.

I often avoid teaching this principle - "melt your heart" - because honestly, I have struggled with it. Most of the circumstances in which I have been a student and seen it taught, it was taught very vigorously - often demonstrated by an enthusiastic male teacher pushing strongly on the spot between a student's shoulder blades - (heart focal point) while coaching the student to keep strong arms, armpits lifted, etc, and MELT YOUR HEART!! I don't know, maybe its a gender thing, but I always had trouble relating to that type of demo as illustrative of "melting the heart" Even though it is an accurate application of active Organic energy to the heart focal point, it is so fiery and muscular that I did not often end up with a sense of a melted heart.

I fished some more – to clarify for myself how I would focus on the passive application of organic energy to "Melt your Heart" and got some more bites – some phrases and images. For example: "from the bottom of your heart (or base of your sternum, or heart focal point) - release heavily earthward. And from that same place, rise up - lift your heart. In other words, apply Organic energy to root from the focal point to the earth and to rise from the focal point up and out in all directions.

Now the fishing trip was really starting to bring inspiration more quickly. It happens like that. At first - I have to surrender to fishing....surrender to service. And often I resist it. Like this: "I don't wanna fish! I wanna do something else that doesn’t demand my full attention! I wanna be distracted!! Wahhh!!!.....You’re not the boss of me!" Part of this resistance is that I KNOW from 10,000 themes and sequences of experience - that the focus of my teaching will be activated and animated in me. It's work. And it is not always pretty. Sometimes it is like rotten fish being cleaned out of the bottom of the basket of my heart.

But - at some point - I grow up, sit down, wait, fish, wait some more. I am infinitely grateful that my professional job is to grow up, sit down, and do this work. Otherwise I wonder if my attention would be strong enough to stay the course and do the work of digging deep within my self in order to serve.

And it is indubitably within myself that I am fishing, within my mind, my heart, my experience. I have to pull it from the soil of my own experience. ((The man digging radishes points the way with a radish. Issa) If I look outward to books or other people’s ideas - or google searches - I short circuit the fishing trip. Those resources can be great - as long as they come after and complement my own inward inquiry. I am always learning from other people - it's just that if I default to using another person's pre-packaged creative work, excellent sequence, etc., and try to side-step my own creative work, the result is usually as flat and dry as cardboard even though it might look good on the surface.

So I fish. I might not get a bite for hours. Or I might get a bite - reel it in - and have to throw it back. Like a few weeks ago when I thought, for about a minute, that I could teach a theme based on a Lady Gaga song. (Yes - I do admire her - but No - that theme would have been a train wreck).

Once the universe knows I'm serious - I'm ready to serve - the inspiration picks up speed, comes in faster and faster. Then my job is to keep up with it all.

It's amazing and demanding work. I am awed by how many Anusura teachers are doing this same strong and wholehearted work around the country and world, every day, all in service to reanimating the "body electric" with bright intelligence.

(By the way, the fishing continued and yielded up the following sequence. It worked pretty well- definitely worked with the theme of melt your heart and shoulder work. But there were too many poses - I had to consistently cut and edit. Which was fine....easy to do and still have good timing.....I just had to stay present to the clock.

SHOULDERS

THEME: MELT your HEART

HEART QUALITIES: Gravity & Alert expansiveness ….as if you are listening for faint bird song

PRANAYAMA – Listen to your breath as if you are listening for birdsong

· Ujjayi & Nadi Shodhana

childs pose
down dog
uttanasana

SURYA NAMASKAR

Lots of attention to the heart focal point
WEAVE some of the following poses into Pseudo-Surya

vira 1 to anjaneyasana to quad stretch
puppy playing piano
hanuman kneeling
baby natarajasana- vira 3-vira 1 – (2X)
ardha bhekasana
shalabasana 3X
danurasana 2X
parsva dhanurasana 3X
Rest deeply in prone position – melt heart earthward
shalabasana to danurasana to deep cobra 3X
urdhva danurasana- 3X
down dog
uttanasana
parsva uttanasana
down dog
childs pose
baddha konasana
seated twist
supta padangusthasana
succirandrasana
savasana

Shoulders - or "Please Don't Squeeze the Rhomboids"

2011-07-08T16:03:00.000-07:00

This session at the studio my teaching is focused on shoulders and I am enjoying it tremendously. It's the first time in nearly 2 years that I haven't been in the middle of, or on the verge of, teaching an Immersion or a Teacher Training and I am happy to find that my enthusiasm for "just studio classes" has not waned. I am enjoying having more time to fund my enthusiasm.

My teaching on shoulders has been pretty technical - zeroing in on anatomy, alignment and therapeutics. Shoulders are so complex that when I turn my attention to them, my teaching gets more detailed. The hips are complex in their own way but really - they are pretty straight ahead in their main function as ambulators. The shoulders - on the other hand - are articulators and are extremely adept at adaptation. Like any good articulator - they can find a wide variety of ways to say what they want to say. While the hips are ambulating forward - holding down the base note - the shoulders and arms can loop and arc and push and pull like a crazy improv jazz performance. The scapulae can raise, lower, move to the mid-line or way out to the sides (winging) and they can tilt in all three anatomical dimensions. They do all this complex combination of articulation, movement and holding in place - thanks to quite a number of muscles, each of which flexes and contracts independently. What's more is that these muscles span a distance from the jaw to the pelvis (where the lattisimus dorsi attaches). That's a lot of distance and there are a lot of muscles involved. Its no wonder that the scapulae have such a great ability to adapt. For example, if there is a loss of range of motion due to injury or arthritis - the shoulders recruit different muscles and actions - and tilt farther forward or back, shift up or down, angle right or left, as if to say "OK - can't go under it - gotta go over it....can't go over it, gotta go around it" . Sooner or later, though, it's time to pay the piper. The easy adaptation is over – and range of motion seriously decreases in a "use it or lose it" downward spiral.

What's my point? - Well - it takes tremendous mapping of our awareness onto our back body (just the place where mindfulness does not easily go) to learn to stabilize the shoulders onto the back. In my opinion and experience, it an oversimplification to teach students to "engage your rhomboids and make them work harder". The rhomboids are one part of a much more complex and interwoven set of actions. When you focus on the rhomboids as the "big fix" for shoulders - contraction and hardening happen....every time. What is possible instead, from skillful shoulder work including both strength and range of motion (or stability and freedom if you will) is so much nicer than contraction..... it's the pleasure that comes in the wake of spaciousness and expansion. If I am willing to stay the course and learn the theory and intricacies of my shoulders and apply that knowledge in practice (via the UPA's which are - as usual - spot-on) I can sustain - or regain - pleasure of freedom of movement.

I think it's a lot about pleasure. An integrated action in the shoulders leads to an opening - a physical expansion and easing of shoulders as well as a deep energetic expansion. And that is truly pleasurable.

Jaya Ganesha. Jaya Jesus. Jai Guru.

2011-06-29T20:51:00.000-07:00

We have a new Deity in town. Recently a beautiful metal sculpture of Ganesha (artist Rick Lewis) was installed on the corner of 6th and Sherman - just a couple blocks away from Garden Street Yoga. It is an amazing piece of art representing a powerful aspect of the Sacred. Ganesha is the Hindu, elephant-headed god that is That aspect of the Divine that generously and fiercely governs sequences of unfolding. Sometimes the governance takes the form of obstacles - and sometimes opportunities. Ganesh is also the Guru Principle - the Heavy.

The sculpture has drawn much delight and gratitude as it is seen as quite auspicious that Coeur d'Alene has been graced by this sculpture and all it represents. There has also been a smattering of protest. A few fundamentalist Christians are unhappy that a Hindu Deity is occupying a prominent corner in downtown Coeur d'Alene. I get that.....I mean, I can sort of slide my own mind into that mindset and realize that if I were "there" I would believe that Ganesh is a representation of Satan and might bring Satan's power into my lovely town. That would scare me.

[By the way - Ganesh looms large at Garden Street Yoga, via our logo, the stone sculpture of Ganesh - that I got from my guru - and which came from a 12th century temple in India, the artwork on the wall, our t-shirts, and so on.]

In tandem with this "New Deity in Town" drama, is the ongoing drama over at the Kroc center - our local - and truly wonderful - athletic facility, brought here by the Salvation Army and funded by the McDonald's Hamburger Empire (Ray and Joan Kroc). I love that place. I am grateful that a Christian foundation has created a pool that is low chlorine (and high saline). It's where I swim and where some of the other Garden Street teachers work out. I love it that I can go there after teaching my evening class, get in the pool. I love it that sometimes I see Jen (Garden Street Teacher) there, sitting with excellent posture- while her husband Ron swims - and reading books like Job's Body (an Anatomy book that is deep, subtle and practical). Her studentship is just one example of the level of dedication and studentship common to the Garden Street Yoga teachers - and to Yoga Teachers in general. It blows my heart open on a regular basis.

The Kroc center is where one of our Garden Street teachers, teaches. She can't call what she teaches "Yoga" as Yoga is considered to be in the same general category as Satan. This is a double-difficulty to her because she is a Yoga teacher and a Christian. She loves Jesus. And she loves Yoga. And she is an amazing representative for both. But she has to keep one of her loves hidden - or she might lose her job. Luckily, her classes at Garden Street are growing quickly (she is an outstanding teacher - soon to be Inspired, I predict) and she could not possibly lose her job there for loving Jesus. I'd mention her name but maybe that would get her in trouble at the Kroc center. Sheesh. (Her name starts with A).

OK - from here I could go on into a rant. But I won't. I learned a lot about containment from Lee. I also I learned - from Joseph Chilton Pearce's book The Biology of Transcendence - to not spend attention and energy opposing things like all of the above. He makes a great argument for "not feeding" the field of ignorance, hatred, war, fear, etc. Everything needs to eat. Ignorance, hatred and fear are no exception. Like everything else, they are fed by attention.......by my attention. I am continuiong to learn to be careful and to feed my attention to what I want to grow (beauty, intelligence, kindness, etc) Ultimately I aim to have my attention only be food for God. (that comes from Lee - it's his teaching).

I also learned about this from my meditation teacher, Paul Muller Ortega. Once I saw him respond in a way that transmitted to me something that no words could have done on their own. A fellow student was asking about something similar to the ignorance cited above. I remember Paul saying with utmost intelligence and compassion (not a hint of dismissal - not a trace of minimization) "It's just Apasmara." (Apasmara is the "demon" - like satan - of ignorance that exists in all of us - no exceptions - and has all of us scared, limited and contracted into an "us versus them" cramp of misery). Paul didn't give the presented scenario of ignorance his Attention. Instead he gave the questioner his Attention - and woven into that Attention was a deep and clear compassion for the subject of the story - the one who was under the heavy influence of ignorance.

I can predict the obvious objections - becaseu they have sometimes come from my very own self. So I'll beat you to the punch line and sat "No - we don't always just stand by and say "It's just ignorance." And, "Yes - of course - there is a time to act". I almost want to add "duh".....oh, there I did it.

But discernment is critical. If I rant and fight back - is it useful? Or did I just fatten up the already bloated field of ignorance? I want to be clear and discerning and contained enough to avoid indulging in a rant that might temporarily make me feel better but ultimately does not serve the Highest.

In most of India's towns and cities, every hundred yards or so, there is a temple or a shrine. Those shrines might be to Ganesh, or Jesus, or any number of faces of the Sacred. The Indian culture is not spiritually idyllic, but there is a wide and wise understanding that the Unfathomable - the Sacred - has assumed many faces in order to be knowable to humans. There tends to be a great inclusiveness, spiritually. In general, there is no contradiction inherent in loving Jesus and loving Shiva. No problem. And I have to say - that is exactly what Jesus taught. Love is intrinsically inclusive. And Jesus taught Love. So there. I don't care if one is an anti-Christian Yogi or an anti-Yoga-Christian....get over it. Do your Work & LOVE. Just do it.

Morning Practice

2011-06-27T10:52:00.000-07:00

For the past 3 weeks we had "Summer Mornings". Each day we met from 7:30 - 9 am for practice. It was the same group for the full 3 weeks - no "drop-ins" - and as always happens when there's an established and committed kula we were able to go deep. Here's a short re-cap.

My intention was to encourage people to begin, or go deeper in, their daily (home) practice. Studio classes are important as they allow us to deepen and broaden and do more than we would on our own. And the "two or more" dynamic that comes with a class is powerful. Practicing together creates an energy that just is not available solo. Finally - in class you get some good teaching and feedback, and you become part of a community of practice. There really is no good substitute for regular classes with a good teacher.

But the daily (home) practice is also important - and is something that is valuable to do every day - whether you have a studio class planned for that day or not.

I suggested some "basic elements" for a daily practice:

Arati (candle lighting - perhaps to a picture of your Guru or teacher or to an image of the "True Teacher" that is meaningful to you - Jesus - Buddha - etc.)
Pranayama
Chanting
Asana
Meditation
Inspirational Reading / Poetry
Journal / Intention (Samkalpah)

I talked about the accordion principle - (thanks to Paul M.-O. for this image). On any given day - depending on your schedule, you might expand or contract - accordion style - each of the elements. A crazy-busy day might be: light a candle, say "om namah shivaya"; take 3 deep Ujjayi breaths; continue in deep Ujjayi breath as you do adho mukha svanasana (down dog) for 3 minutes; sit quietly for a few moments; write one sentence of intention, or even just one word, like "kindness".

Through the course of the 21 days we moved through a balanced variety of poses. The first week I had fun dusting off my Iyengar approach to sequencing the days of the week. I followed that approach for years - practicing from the back of Light on Yoga - before I began to practice and teach the Anusara method. I owe much of what i know about asana to having followed that discipline.

The theme for the 3 weeks was Light - and "Inner body Bright". I brought in a lot of poetry to inspire and encourage a deeper interest in, and commitment to, practicing in a way that binds you to the Light. My aim was to encourage a deeper experience of practice as a reliable way to tether yourself to the Light - so that when the distracting siren call of the 10,0000 things of your daily life comes up- as it always will - you will have restrained the periphery, bound yourself to the core of Light at the middle of yourselves (slender as a spider's thread, brilliant as a million moons) and be able to act and respond fully and generously from that place.

Below are a few of the poems I used. Hope you enjoy. Thanks for reading!

.....what you can plan

is too small for you to live

what you can live

wholeheartedly

will makes plans enough

for the vitality hidden in your [practice*]

David Whyte

(*original is sleep)

the breeze at dawn has secrets to tell you.

don’t go back to sleep.

you must ask for what you really want.

don’t go back to sleep.

people are going back and forth between the

door sill where the two worlds touch.

the door is round and open.

don’t go back to sleep.

-rumi

Days full of wanting. Let them go by without worrying that they do. Stay where you are inside such a clear, hollow note.

Rumi

Inside you are so sweet. Beyond telling. The cathedral there so deeply tall.

Rumi

Human Beings are not born once and for all on the day their mother gave birth to them. Life requires them over and over again to give birth to themselves.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Again, the work starts as soon as you open your eyes in the morning.

Hopefully you got some good rest last night. Why go into the city or the fields without first kissing the Friend who always stands at your door? It takes only a second.

Habits are human nature. Why not create some that will mint gold?

Hafiz

dharma and svadharma

2011-06-15T20:20:00.000-07:00

We finished up the Immersion cycle at Garden Street this past week. Once again - the Immersion turned into an amazing process with a remarkable group of people and rich, deep discussions. One of those discussions revolved around the consideration of dharma - (which is, basically, one's true Work) as part of our overview of the Bhagavad Gita. We talked about "big" dharma -- opening to Big Context - (opening to the possibility of knowing that everything is Light - everything is God) and then letting that Big Context infuse one's particular expression of that Light - one's work or svadharma.

Sadhana (practice) is - for me - something that I "do" at the liminal space - the boundary - between svadharma and dharma. What I mean is this: practice opens me to Big Context; tethers me to That; locates my awareness and identity closer to the source point, the place in the middle, where I connect to clear streams of Light. With that connection made, the Big Context can infuse the small individual context that is my work, my indiviaul expression of Light - my svadharama. For example, in my practice of contemplation and journaling, I turn my compass inward, so that when I write this blog I am more truly aligned to the clear Light (sattva) and greater brightness can move outward through the vehicle of words, and what I write can be more useful. (Hey Angela - I think I got it wrong when I said I didn't think journaling was a formal sadhana. I thought and thought about that......Now I'm changing my story. I think journaling can be formal Sadhana. It all depends on context.)

The discussion got really interesting - and struck a resonant chord with several people in the Immersion group - when I mentioned that I get into trouble if I read other blogs before I write my own. It is better if I sit down to write and keep my mind and words relatively well lined up to a clear spring of inspiration that flow within me - as me. When I read other blogs first - - I generally contaminate my own clear springs. Before I know it I feel I have nothing to say that has not already been said - and said better. And so I just end up surfing the internet or returning some more e-mails. In more classical terms - I think this is what Krishna was teaching Arjuna in the Gita when he said "it is better to do your own dharma poorly that to do another's dharma well."

What I do now is I make a space in time between my writing and my reading of my friends' blogs. This way I can write from a "clear springs" place AND delight in my friends' and other's writings.

Another good thing that happened in the Immersion this time through the Bhagavad Gita is that I realized I am familiar with and well read in a great resource - hiding in plain sight - Steven Pressfield's War of Art. He is a student of the Gita and wrote basically a "get'r'done" manual on doing your dharma when he wrote the War of Art. It brings out the Gita's powerful teaching on dharma with a contemporary voice. Do the Work. Here's a few of his quotes:

"Creative work is not a selfish act or a bid for attention on the part of the actor. It's a gift to the world and every being in it. Don't cheat us of your contribution. Give us what you've got."

"The song we’re composing already exists in potential. Our work is to find it."

“We can’t become anything we want to be. We come into this world with a specific, personal destiny. We have a job to do, a calling to enact, a self to become. We are who are from the cradle, and we’re stuck with it. Our job in this lifetime is not to shape ourselves into some ideal we imagine we ought to be, but to find out who we already are and become it. If we are born to paint, it’s our job to become a painter. If we are born to raise and nurture children, it’s our job to become a mother. If we were born to overthrow the order of ignorance and injustice in the world, it’s our job to realize it and get down to business”.

Life is Right in Any Case

2011-05-29T22:30:00.000-07:00

"Knowing Love, I will allow all things to come and go, to be as subtle as the wind and take everything that comes with great courage. As my teacher would say to me: 'Life is right in any case'.
My heart is as open as the sky"

~~~A quote from the final scene of the movie Kamasutra: A Tale of Love directed by Mira Nair.

This morning we had the Led Advanced Practice at Garden Street, using a sequence that I got from John Friend at his Advanced Intensives that I attended 3 years ago. I love leading the advanced practices even though it is no longer my way of practicing at home. The advanced practice is similar to how I learned from John in all those early years studying with him at Inner Harmony. That period of time was huge for me - transformative on all levels. We would sweat our way through all the level II and III poses (not to say that I personally managed them all!). Since then - and especially in the last 3 years - it took me some time and contemplation to let my practice evolve the way it has wanted to evolve - (and not to worry that I am becoming "soft" or being "left behind" as the Yoga Culture at Large gets ever more extravagantly athletic.). Now I am more likely to spend a good amount of time in inversions, do more pranayama - often woven in with asana - and practice a full range of basic asana with to keep my body awake and to stay clear of "sensory motor amnesia" (thank you Katie and somatics for that term!)

The Bhairava Tantra verse 65 says, "All this world and indeed your very own body, is made of bliss". I'm am interested in bliss. I love asana and how it can release enfolded bliss. And although I practice my way to bliss differently now, I have many students who are ready, willing and able to, as John Friend used to say, "take it to the next level". I know how to help them get there. In my teaching I facilitate openings into the big poses - (kapinjilasana last practice and scorpion this practice) even though these poses don't sing out to me the way they used to. Until lately, I wasn't sure it was possible to teach with enthusiasm those things that I am not currently practicing with enthusiasm. It is possible. I love the Light that opens in students when they take it to the next level. I love to help people into kapinjilasana - becasue of what I see open in them when they get there. Bliss. That is worth everything.

On a loosely related note:
The house is empty for the first time in a couple of months. I used to scheme ways to be in the house alone. But now - with a probability of many years alone or semi-alone in the house looming before me - I miss my people.

Chris is on an intensive retreat for 10 days. Eli and Emmanuelle are spending a farewell evening together in Spokane at a nice hotel (Chris and I booked them at the Lusso) Leo is camping with his good friends Charlie & Rory and 3 "pals" who happen to be female soccer players from Charlie's college soccer team. Interesting!

After the house emptied out, I spent a long time cleaning the kitchen, clearing out the fridge, composting all the stuff that was going "off" (pickled fig, red cabbage, canned peaches, bleu cheese - yes, bleu cheese really can get too blue -- apple butter, and several other overly-long-retained odds and ends). I spent almost 3 hours on this as well on laundry. Then I took a bath -- following through on the major cleaning theme. Afterward I sat to meditate. In meditation, what rose up was a deep and tender sadness about how fast things are going. I often feel like I am missing the mark - not keeping up with the speed of Love these days. And, as sometimes happens in my meditation, the reservoir of my heart broke open and poured outward through my eyes (tears). Another cleaning out. And then I touched that which abides - that which does not mold and decay -- Bliss.

Afterward I got up - opened one of my poetry books randomly - and this is what I found.

SPRING
by Mary Oliver

This morning
two birds
fell down the side of the maple tree
like a tuft of fire
a wheel of fire
a love knot
out of control as they plunged through the air
pressed against each other
and I thought
how I meant to live a quiet life
how I meant to live a life of mildness and meditation
tapping the careful words against each other
and I thought—
as though I were suddenly spinning like a bar of silver
as though I had shaken my arms and lo! they were wings—
of the Buddha
when he rose from the green garden
when he rose in his powerful ivory body
when it turned to the long dusty road without end
when he covered his hairs with ribbons and the petals of flowers
when he opened his hands to the world

Clear Light

2011-05-27T21:32:00.000-07:00

Life has been fast and full. Each week it has been as if I set myself in a sling shot and let fly and before I know it I'm at the end of the week. There's been the regular classes and 2 Immersions in tandem - and a retreat which was so great - and which the whole family attended. (Eli, Leo and Emmanuelle are all here at home - back from India). And last Sunday we had the 10 year Garden Street Anniversary party. And so on.

So I have been overwhelmed and staggering under the weight of the cornucopia of the good fortune and abundance that is my work and home life. I let go of everything I could possibly let go of so as to keep my head above the water. The blog entries fell by the way. I hate that becasue writing is an important practice for me. And my sadhana suffered for awhile. I kept up on meditation, I sort of kept up on Asana, but I did not keep up with study or mantra / chanting. And here is what I learned: the great teachers are right and the world really is a reflection of my state of being and my state of practice. "Thought is verily the world and therefore should be purified with care. As one's thought is, one becomes. This is the eternal mystery." ~~Maitri Upanishad

Practice clarifies and purifies my consciousness and this purifies the world. With less consistent or incomplete practice I am more easily whipped along at the periphery of the whirlpool of the external world. When I am steadier in practice I see the world in a hopeful light - I see how much innovation and energy and heart is going into the work and the Work that is being done. With less steadiness and depth of practice - I really do start to see the world as through a glass darkly. I see only climate change, radiation, poverty, war, etc. I am more easily overwhelmed by knowledge of the world at large. "Heart shadows" happen faster and stay longer. I more easily start to feel like Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita - sunk down in a hopeless lump on the chariot floor (where it's probably kind of damp and dirty, cluttered with Skittles wrappers and Taco John containers) and feeling it's too much -- hopeless. As Arjuna says, "I will not fight". (I will not recycle, I will not teach with presence and heart. I will not be transparent and vulnerable. What's the use. Like that.)

Everything is connected to everything and so it is no surprise that I am teaching the Bhagavad Gita in the Immersion cycles right now. And maybe my spotty practice was a good thing in the end - becasue in retrospect I can see SO CLEARLY how less practice remade my perception of the world into a darker, less hopeful place.

For the past few days I'm back on board with the level of practice that the Work has come to expect of me. That's how I see it. The Work (the great process of divine evolution) gets used to me showing up for a certain level of purification and clarification of self and world and is not amused when I let the whirlpool of life whip me around without a tether to what is Real. The whipping around is OK - is not a problem - as long as I am tethered by a strong cord to what lives in the middle. Like the Love and teachings I have been given by Lee - my spiritual teacher; like the Blessing Force of the lineage of Yoga; like the Clear Light that abides and grows brighter with each successive practice.

HIgh Winds

2011-04-27T13:11:00.000-07:00

Yesterday late afternoon I got back from a week of study and practice with Paul Muller-Ortega. I keep being startled by how much he continues to offer out.......like a wellspring that continues to deepen and expand exponentially. It's wild. More on that in a moment - or maybe next post - that "wild expansion" thing, I mean.

....... I met up with Rainey and Denise - my "sit-sisters" - and we took the same flight out of Seattle, rented a car and drove to the retreat center. We have done this together 7 times now. A nice habit that we'll have to break pretty soon as there is only one retreat left in this 3 year course.

The retreat - as usual - was composed of a couple of hours a day with Paul teaching and several more hours of meditation practice. We do our own asana (no group classes). The food is good, the company is great, and Paul's teaching continues to amaze me with the way it clarifies and expands my understanding, stabilizes me in meditation practice more and more deeply, animates my asana practice and breathes open the enfolded places in my heart.

I always love getting home and this time was no exception. I arrived in time to teach the TUESDAY NIGHT CLASS. I have to capitalize that since many of them have been together for almost 10 years now. We do get a steady flow of new people (there's no undercurrent attitude of "members only" club, thank heaven). It is a great example of a group of practitioners who are joined together over time in a way that is flexibly permeable to change and growth.

While I was on retreat Eli arrived on the continent. (I haven't seen him yet as he is spending 2 weeks in Arizona before he and Emmanuelle arrive in Coeur d'Alene). It is a funny repetition - me being on retreat when my son comes home from India. (I was on retreat in Arizona when Leo came home). Really - it's just been a retreat-dense spring. I have spent 3 full weeks meditating in high winds in the high desert. I now feel completely confident that I can meditate in a hurricane. Seriously - the winds were very strong through both retreats. And the desert was as high as usual. In the yurt in Arizona, before I would go to sleep, I would take note of where my clothes were so that in case the yurt blew away I could grab my clothes and avoid having to run around in my underwear.

I like what gets strengthened in me when my preferences are not met and I practice anyway. Left to my own devices, I would organize things in such a way as to accommodate my preferences. This would include several things like lodging, schedule and food details. And absolutely I would avoid high wind meditation circumstances. But instead of pandering to my preferences, I have been supported in the practice of opening to life "as it is - just this - nothing more - here and now" (Lee). Something strengthens in me when I do this. I become more stabilized in my ability to stay steady in practice (sadhana) regardless of external circumstances.

Yes - OK. I would actually LOVE nothing better than to spend the rest of the day writing. But that "wild expansion" topic, will have to wait for next post. Because my desk is a state of wild expansion right now. Thanks for reading.

Inner Body Bright

2011-04-14T09:13:00.000-07:00

The Immersion - Part II - was wonderful, composed of a group of bright, mature, dedicated, kind and light-heartedly serious students. They earned their name: "the hallelujah kula".

One of the questions that came up in this group - and which has been a contemplation for me for quite a while - is "what exactly IS Inner Body Bright?" There is not a "right" answer because it's not a small, narrow sort of question. But I do know that Inner Body Bright is the consort of a lifted heart and spirit.

When I was a child of 3 or so, my inner body (blueprint, matrix and context) was flexibly permeable. It was made up of ancestry and genetics and of my own soul force. It was not yet solidified and a Big Context could infuse "me" and swell the riverbanks of energy in me, overflowing with Inner Body Bright.

I grew up and consolidated my riverbanks (although at several points I also flooded them or swamped them out). I became established in being Karen Sprute-Francovich through identity, education, work, relationship, acquired conditioning, etc. My inner body blueprint became much less flexibly permeable.

Which has been, and is, O.K. I've had, and have, work to do and need a stable self with which to do that work. But there's a trade-off. The Big Context doesn't so easily infuse and overflow the riverbanks. Inner body is not always making an invitation to Big Context. Lot of days I just hope to catch up on business.

But I am fortunate beyond telling and I know it. I have been taught authentic practices (sadhana) and have a life that allows me to stay steady in those practices. I have good work and great Work, I have True teachers and excellent teachers. I have amazing relations - at home and in the wide world - with family and friends who are fellow practitioners and who are passionate about being awake, and cultivating a Work body that is Bright and capable of Love.

Thanks to all this blessing my matrix has not grown irreversibly inflexible or impermeable. In fact, more and more now - there are signs of spring and melting. I have a lot of work to do. I am very much Karen Sprute-Francovich and grateful for this life. And yet. I catch glimpses more often now, imagining and remembering how it is to invite Big Context. To open to something Much Bigger than "me" so that Blessing Force can swell to overflowing. It's the fruit of Yoga. It's a free gift of Grace - just like Spring comes every year whether I've been "good" or not.

Saying "yes" to Inner Body Bright - inviting Big Context into my individual matrix of self - is what I came here for. Inner Body Bright is what the Immersion Groups come together for. They form a group that is a Kula - a body of Work and practice - and an invitation is made for Big Context to infuse the matrix of the Work body of the Kula. Light infuses. The kula grows greater in it's capacity for Love and Work, as does each member. It happens every single Immersion. It's why names like "hallelujah kula" arise so naturally.

Watch Inner Body Bright in action..... one small individual embodying one Huge Context......in this 4 Minute You-Tube.

Gotta Want It

2011-04-05T20:21:00.000-07:00

I got home from retreat at midnight last night. I spent yesterday and Sunday at the ashram --- actually came out of silent retreat on Sunday at noon.

It was such a good two weeks. I have about a hundred blog posts I could do. Actually - when I first got there and for the next few days I found myself writing blog posts in my mind - as well as teaching or prepping to teach, in my head. That began to drive me crazy - which is a good thing since it made me stop. It took me almost a week to let go of my agenda - and to relax into the sometimes difficult, sometimes delightful and always perfect circumstances. I finally stepped into things "as they are, here and now, nothing else". (Arnaud Desjardins - and Lee)

The daily details didn't vary much. I was surprised to find that I easily fell into a rhythm and structure of practice that was very much like what an organized retreat might have been. I've done many meditation retreats and Yoga retreats - and always there's a teacher or preceptor, a definite schedule, bells to help you keep that definite schedule, and other practitioners around to keep you on track (vanity can be helpful) if you don't feel like staying on track any more.

This was different - and the same. I felt as if the space of retreat was strongly held and the guidance of the Teacher was abundantly present. It was just invisible. It was relatively effortless to keep to fairly much the same schedule of practices each day. The consistency and effortlessness of sadhana stayed steady through the ups and downs of my interior world - as I did move through some zones of myself that needed to be cracked open for air and light. And that cracking open is not what I would call effortless.

Each day I woke up when my eyes woke me up, which always turned out to be at 5:30 or so. Pranayama and meditation first. Then hot tea and fruit. Then reading (mainly I read Lee's teaching and the Shiva Sutras) Then journaling. I filled up a big fat journal while I was there. Then Yoga for most of the rest of the morning. Meditation before lunch. Lunch. Afternoons were what varied a bit. Sometimes I would go for walks and do chanting. Other days more yoga. Other days more meditation. Always meditation before dinner. Dinner at 6. Study and journaling until dark. Meditation. Bed. Didn't use the clock much but sleep always seemed to "come over me" at about 8:30.`

All of that is just the details. (Like "what did you do on your summer vacation?"......."Well, I got up at 5:30,,,,ate this, did that".....Might be kind of interesting if you're planning your own retreat - but mostly boring). The Real thing I did on retreat - is get myself aligned to a much bigger context.

Lee taught a lot about context. He was adamant that "it's all about context". Here's an example of that teaching - applied to "going on retreat":

Teeny contest: I go on retreat because I'm bored with my life or to "get away" from it all - to sort of "check out".
Bigger context: I go on retreat to rest, regroup, etc.
Big Context: I go on retreat with a longing to remember what's important - to remember in my breath and bones that "All there is is Loving God. Nothing else." (Lee)

The smaller contexts are fine. They are simply small contexts relative to the Big Context. And in fact - on a retreat you can line up the small contexts with the Big Context - like a telescope - and all the smaller contexts will open to the Light of the Big Context. Content always follows Context.

Here's another metaphor. If I take my bucket to a well that is small and running dry (small context) I get a little bit of not so good water. If I take my bucket to Lake Coeur d'Alene, (Bigger Context) I get so much water that "my bucket floweth over". Like that.

And you've got to want it. It's not like a casual invitation ("Hey - you can come over to my party later if you want. Or not.") It seems to me you've almost got to beg for the Big Context. (Pleeeeze come to my party?!?! Pleeeeze!!!!????) It will never barge in on you uninvited. (unfortunately....I guess).

We have brilliant, elegant practices and principles, like asana, pranayama, chanting, meditation - that are skillful means to welcome in the Light and Love - but they will only work in that way for us if there's been an invitation. And that invitation is born of longing and a yearning for remembrance of Love.

Wow - OK - I actually meant to write a light and not too philosophical post - just to jump start the posting. But that was what poured out. I really could go on and on - but you wouldn't read on and on anyway (but thanks for reading - by the way). And I have to go to bed. Before computer light completely undoes all the diurnal good stuff that happened being on natural light for 2 weeks.

Leo home late tonight. Oh boy!!!
Immersion II starts tomorrow. Oh girl!!!!
I miss Eli. (I'm just on the verge of getting some relief from missing Leo) Oh Mom!!!

Super Moon

2011-03-19T21:35:00.000-07:00

It's Saturday night and its equinox and there's a "super moon" in the sky. We are near the end of an Anatomy and Therapeutics workshop with Martin Kirk. It has been excellent. Martin is a great teacher....funny, smart and kind. Thanks to him and to the good company around me this weekend, and to the luxury of being "just" a student, I have fallen in love all over again with Anatomy and with Anusara. It's like I have been spending an entire weekend with my best friends, looking into my favorite subjects......(And I call this my job!!)

The workshop was completely full - and redefined what "full house" means - I now know that Garden Street studio can accommodate 40 people on mats. It was so fun. And inspiring. Martin's teaching is stellar....really excellent.

Right now I am waiting for the boys to Skype from India.

This short post is a sort of adios since my mom has stabilized and I am therefore off to the desert for my 2 week solo retreat. My bags are packed - and the desk is cleared (miracle). The auto-reply on the e-mail is "on". All I have to do now is wait for my beautiful sons to call. But Ma India is very unpredictable - likes to do things like cut the power just when we were going to Skype. So all I really have to do now is expand with gratitude for my life and be a radiant connection to and reflection of the "super moon" up in the sky tonight.

Wildflower garden complexity of love

2011-03-14T14:33:00.000-07:00

This is a complex week. Leo - my son - has this quote at the top of his blog: "challenge yourself with complexity". I am doing that. Leo would be proud.

Today I pack for my retreat. I'll be out in the dessert in Arizona in a yurt for 12 days and then at the ashram for 2 days. (I don't leave until next Sunday but today is the only time I'll have to pack). I am taking Yoga mat, meditation cushion, hiking shoes, reading light, journals to write in. and a few books of Lee's teachings. Other than that its mostly toothpaste, jammies and basic stretchy sturdy clothes.

Woven in with packing is anxiety. Going on a retreat like this is certain to be intense. I have gone on a lot of meditation retreats of various sorts. They are always intense - they always "kick my ass" in a helpful sort of way. The difference with this retreat is that it's 12 days with only me disciplining myself into practice. No teacher. Not dharma talks. No fellow practitioners. No externally enforced schedule. The only external structure will be the retreat manager bringing food twice a day. No talk. No lights. Off the grid. Lee always - in the past - recommended to his students what to bring to read and it was always very minimal. He also told people how much to meditate each day. I will stay respectful to the general pattern of his recommendations - but really I don't even know exactly what he told people. And he is gone so I am my own true teacher on this ass-kicking endeavor. The anxiety I'm feeling is very familiar - it has preceded every retreat I've ever done. My psyche/mind is very smart to be anxious - it's going to get worked over and it knows it. And the work always starts well ahead of my arrival at the retreat. So today I am playing the part of "the anxious packer".

Tomorrow I will be "the calm and collected Yoga teacher". Wednesday I will be "secretary to the business". Thursday I am back to being "the calm and collected Yoga teacher" - while Chris picks up the incoming teacher - Martin Kirk. And then the Anatomy workshop goes into full swing through Sunday noon. Martin and I both fly to Arizona afterwards - but on different flights.....too bad - I could have gotten in some good talking with my old friend before it's time to shut up.

And all of this could change in a heartbeat. My mom has been in a critical / precarious condition. So - we'll see. Thank heaven for practice and the steadiness it can bring. Thank heaven for all the love in my life: husband, sons, sisters, brothers, friends, students, teachers -- I am held in a wildflower garden complexity of love.

Just Stay

2011-03-09T12:13:00.000-08:00

(I wrote this article for the current issue of Equal Standing).

Tadasana (Mountain Pose) is also known as Samasthitti (Equal Standing!). To practice this pose is to practice a steadiness and containment that gradually but inevitably builds reserves of prana (life energy). Holding this pose for five or more minutes always deepens my awareness of what a powerful thing it is to "just stay".

To “just stay” sounds easy until you put it into practice; for example, staying in an asana for a long hold, sustaining steady awareness of your breath, sitting for meditation, or standing in Tadasana for more than a few breaths. The longer you stay put in any authentic yoga practice the greater will be the expansion of prana. This expansion is attended by a building of pressure, an increase of the heat of purification (tapas) and a consequent urge to release rather than consolidate prana. There are many ways to release prana,for example: fidgeting, fiddling, stretching, only doing vinyasa (avoiding held poses), leaving the practice mat to clip toenails or check e-mail. You get the picture. It really is not so easy to “just stay”.

So what to do? Practice of course. Tadasana is an excellent asana for the purposeful practice of “just staying”.

Most of us have heard that Tadasana is one of the hardest poses there is. And most of us have nodded studiously but secretly doubted it. “Yeah – right! Just standing is hard? Just standing with dignity and steadfastness is advanced? Just sustaining an impeccable and subtle balance of alertness and ease is challenging?

Yes.

To cultivate steadiness in Tadasana for longer holds (2 – 20 minutes) requires alignment and preparation. Details of alignment are widely available in every book on Hatha Yoga or an easy Google search, and are similar from method to method. Preparation can include a general warming up with vinyasa, as well as specific lengthening of the quads with thigh stretches like Ardha Bhekasana (Half Frog). It is also very important to open the calves and soles of the feet for which Adho Mukha Svanasana (Down Dog) is good.

Standing in Studentship

I approach Tadasana with an attitude or spirit of deep studentship to prana. I open to the True Teacher – which streams through the rivers, channels, and pulsations of my body and mind as a blessing force and holy spirit, and condenses to a shining central axis of unimaginable Intelligence called the Sushumna – described in the Upanishads as being, “Slender as a spider’s thread, brilliant as a million moons."

Once I’ve opened to this river of radiance and grace, I draw into it with muscular energy – an action of steadfast studentship-- firming in from skin to muscle to bone, from lateral to medial, and from periphery to core through all parts of my body and including the engagement of the bandhas. This studentship is, ultimately, a drawing in with tremendous self-honoring as it cultivates a remembrance, a re-cognition, that the Sacred – the True Teacher, lives within me, as me.

Having drawn in with muscular energy and remembrance, I then equally expand out with an expression and reflection of the Light into which I’ve just drawn. Sustaining the firmness of the muscular energy, I release earthward from pelvic core through the four-cornered foundation of my feet, expand outward to the edges of my muscular engagement by widening and extending from middle to every part of periphery, like a light shining out, or like a lake touching every shore.

And I do all of the above again and again, with each cycle of breath – staying steady. I hold the pose. I do not betray myself. I do not cut myself off from That which will never cut me off.

This practice of studentship to prana - is invaluable on and off the mat. There are so many ways we don’t stay in studentship to prana. Yoga in general and Tadasana / Samasthitti in particular, offer us skilful means to learn to “just stay” so prana and attention can grow and be available to fund our offering of outward service, creativity, work, and love.

Work and work

2011-02-22T19:34:00.000-08:00

"The man pulling radishes pointed the way with a radish." Issa

Chris and I spent the last several days in L.A. visiting his mother. It was really good to spend time with this wonderful woman we both love so much. While I was there I got to take long hikes up into Griffith Park - soaking up sunlight and breathing in buckets of sea-level oxygen. And then there was the food - we ate the most delicious food - every meal.

One of those meals we shared with our friend who is a successful musician. He has always been brilliant and gifted - a musical wonder. In the past few years he has guided his band into true success and fame. He knows how to do his art and he also knows how to do business. He's really able to - as Paul Muller Ortega puts it - "pull powerfully up from the ocean to create a life wave that is capable of holding the whole ocean".

So I was surprised to hear him say - at breakfast - that the frame or scope of his work and music is too small and that he feels he is being pushed by his own creative genius to expand his vision and his aim radically. I guess i thought he might pause a moment and enjoy his success. But of course not. He is too deep into the Work. I'm not involved in the world of music or fame but I do know the world of Work. "Work" with an upper case indicates participation - a body-mind-heart participation - with the great creative process of Divine Evolution. I've come to understand this concept through the teachings of Lee Lozowick, Gurdjieff and others.

I also know the world of work with a lower case "w". I love to work. I really do. I always have. I can thank my ancestral background for this strange love. Since my mid-20's I've also been increasingly enmeshed in "Work". I don't think it would be fair to say I love the Work. I do and I don't. Often I feel like a fish on a hook. I still get anxious when I prepare to teach. Same with writing projects. Whenever I've tried to kick back and relax, I've been pulled up hard and pushed to surrender to the truth that I can not be casual about either teaching or writing. They both scare me. They both demand that I stay in a vital conversation with creativity. I am never sure I'll be able to pull it off. I always feel a bit on the edge. The edge is a scary place and it's also a very alive place. The edgy, anxiety thing - I've come to recognize as a sign I'm doing Work....... a sign that something new and fresh is demanding to be pulled out of the ground of my being and it's demanding the necessary work, digging and offering of something vital of myself. I can't ever just pull up some old material (to teach or to write) and hope to pass it off as fresh. The Work demands something new - every time.

(I have friends who are creative and who do not experience the scary edge thing. In other words, I am writing about my experience at the Work edge. On the other hand, several seasoned teachers have told me they are relieved to find out that someone else experiences anxiety before teaching).

Work is not romantic. It's really not. But it is steady and Real and compelling.

Rilke talks about Work and work in an excerpt from one of my favorite poems:

.................

So many live on and want nothing
and are raised to the rank of prince
by the slippery ease of their light judgments.

But what you love to see are faces
that do work and feel thirst....

You have not grown old, and it is not too late
to dive into your increasing depths
where life calmly gives out its own secret.

~ Rainer Maria Rilke ~

Awake Kula

2011-02-18T12:09:00.000-08:00

I have been thinking about the concept of Kula. I originally heard about "kula" from Douglas Brookes about 10 years ago. He was co-teaching with John at an Anusara certified teacher gathering. It was profound for me then and has only become more so over the years.

A kula is a family. It is also a group of practitioners who share the same practice. I have heard different teachers (Paul M.O., Carlos Pomeda, Douglas Brookes and John Friend) all define "kula" it in slightly different ways but in common there seems to be an understanding that a kula is a body that works together (albeit not always efficiently or gracefully). That "body" could be a human body or a family or a tribe or a galaxy. It could be a community of spiritual practice or a rotary club.

A kula can be awake or asleep. An asleep kula is very much like a body that is full of contracted or weak muscles, with poorly-tuned neuromuscular communication. Consequently there is not a great capacity for quick, subtle or intricate response. That body just sort of lumbers along and reacts in a large muscle gross sort of way - (think bull in a china shop or couch potato or the worst extended family you ever heard of).

An awake kula is very much like a finely tuned body that is able to respond with flexible permeability to a wide variety of circumstance, having cultivated a capacity for quickness, intricacy and subtlty (think elite athlete or dedicated yoga practitioner or the best extended family you ever heard of). That body can articulate an intelligent and kind response to a wide variety of circumstance and can do so without a lot of interference from various cramps. As I said - this capacity is cultivated - very rarely inborn. It is a result of steady practice over a long period of time with dedication. Practice could be asana, meditation, dialogue, music, etc. So you see that in spite of the body analogy, I'm not talking about athleticism here.

I thought about all of this a lot during the past few days following a tragedy. Dana Weigel who lives in Southern Idaho, is an Anusura student and teacher. She has taken classes at Garden Street occasionally but lives so far away that we hadn't seen her for awhile. A few days ago she lost her home, Yoga studio and husband all in one horrible, tragic, painfully dark day.

The Anusura community both locally and nationally was easy to rouse. It has not been at all like a couch potato. It sprang into action like an elite athlete - like the awake kula that it is. The effort to help began quickly and proceeded efficiently and with very little interference from weak muscles of compassion or cramped muscles of self-concern or suspicion (as evidenced by the fact that people who have never even met Dana are contributing).

Several communities in Idaho, Montana Arizona and etc. are rallying their local kula show of love and support for Dana. For you who are associated with Garden Street, thanks for your love and support which has already started coming in.

Here's the details:

Call for support .........

Many of you have already heard the news.....Dana Weigel a fellow Anusara student and teacher from Southern Idaho suffered a great tragedy recently. She lost her house, yoga studio and husband all in the same tragic event.

Garden street as well as several other communities is gathering items to send in loving support to get her through this tremendous loss. Dana is okay but has lost everything. She will need love, support, and material items. What is needed is below. It seems to me that as the support rolls in and we’re not sure who has donated what – the gift card idea will become more and more of a good idea. But all support is welcomed gratefully
You can bring items to Garden Street studio over the next 2 or 3 weeks – Also feel free bring them with when you come to the Anatomy workshop that is coming right up. Spread the word.

Wardrobe: Dana is a size medium yoga pant and small to medium top. She could use all kinds of clothing as well- it's Idaho, so think spring: sunshine to snow. Any gently used items are appreciated. Also gift cards to yoga clothing co's: Athleta, Prana, Lululemon, or other clothing co's (Gap, Target, REI, etc).

Books: Dana is an avid student and teacher of yoga. She needs to rebuild her library for study. If you have any yoga books to offer, she could use them, (she already is getting a "Light on Yoga," and "Yoga Sutras.") Or if you are lost for what to send, gift cards to Barnes and Noble, Amazon, etc. would be wonderful. (I understand Borders is about to go out of business)

Puja: Any murtis, or tokens of light and love.

The Tirtha Greyhound Station

2011-02-14T15:29:00.000-08:00

Yesterday - Sunday- Chris and I woke up to blue sky and sunshine and went for a hike before driving to Spokane to see my mom and dad. Mom says she is mostly "between things" now. It is like she is waiting at a cosmic Greyhound station for her bus to come. In Sanskrit there's a term - tirtha - which means a crossing over place. Nursing homes are tirthas. Hospitals, airports, cremation grounds, delivery rooms - all of them are tirthas or, if you prefer - Greyhound stations of the soul.

Dad spends most of his day, each day, at the Tirtha Greyhound Station keeping Mom company while she waits for her bus. Mom says she isn't going without him. That doesn't look likely at this point......Dad is looking good - very much here. Mom, on the other hand, is not concerned with or even very aware of time of the day or day of the week. Dad is still keeping all the time, date and schedule together for both of them - even as he spends so much of his time waiting for the bus by Mom's side.

Today is Monday - an office day for me. Sometimes on my office days I get overwhelmed by the multiplicity of things demanding my attention and find myself in a different sort of tirtha. I get to a spot that is betwixt and between. I can't get traction and start feeling "tortured by time" as my friend Denise puts it. The most successful technique I've found as a remedy for this situation is to use time - the very thing I feel tortured by - as a gift and a tool to lend bones and gravity to my day.

It works like this.

I set my timer for - say - 30 minutes. In that 30 minutes I give my entire attention to my e-mail in-box.
The timer rings, I pause, take a breath, find center - and then set the timer again for maybe 10 minutes. In that 10 minutes I clean up clutter around the office, put books back on the shelf, organize papers, etc.
The timer rings again. I pause - center - decide - and then based on the decision - set the timer for - say - 40 minutes and during that 40 minutes I plan out the details of the Spring retreat.

And so on.........
The thing is - a tirtha, whether it's a minor one like can happen in my office - or a major one like the one my mom is at - is not well connected to time and space. It's a place where there's a loosening from the form, structure, rhythm and meter of life. It's a place I visit in my meditation practice but it is not the place i want to be when I have a lot to accomplish in my office. I have to be firm and even vigorous in calling my self to come out of the greyhound station of betwixt and between,

OK -- I must add in some more of what I love - Tantric-Yoga Philosophy. Here it is. When I need to jimmy myself out of the time-torture-tirtha, I use the tools of Kali - the Great Maha Kundalini Shakti - the Venerable Sequencing Goddess of Unimaginable Intelligence - the tools of time, rhythm and meter. It really works well for me. Of course I imagine a time when I'm just no longer interested in doing anything other than waiting for the greyhound bus. Maybe I'll be so lucky as to have a companion to keep me company - or maybe I'll be so lucky as to be keeping my beloved company. We'll see.

Dear Bloggoddess.....

2011-02-11T10:46:00.000-08:00

Today is Immersion Prep day - and I should be prepping and only prepping all day. But the Blog-Goddess reached out and said - POST A BLOG -- JUST DO IT.

So.......OK.........just a short post.........and then back to prepping.......

I am teaching two Anusara Immersions in tandem this year - a first for me. One is the week long variety. We had the first of the 3 weeks last week. The other Immersion is the Saturdays variety. And we will have our 9th Saturday together tomorrow. There are advantages to both formats. I love both groups. I am grateful beyond telling for my work. I love my work.

I am scheduled to go to Arizona for a 2 week solitary retreat. I'll be "going in" on March 20. Lee's ashram has a retreat center far out in the middle of the desert....off the grid entirely. This is my own personal "big deal" for now. And it really does feel like a big deal. I know it will be intense but I like intense. I'll be writing more about that "big explore in the inner woods" I am sure.

Leo comes home on March 28......(Eli is staying a while longer in India - hasn't set a return date yet but thinks late April). I'll still be "off the grid" and on retreat so Chris will get the first and freshest post-India hit from our wonderful Leo. But then I get to have him sort of to myself for a week because the day after I get home from retreat we start the second week-long Immersion in which Leo is enrolled.

Dear Bloggoddess.....I PROMISE I will write more on Monday.

Open to Weird Grace

2011-01-14T16:51:00.000-08:00

Once upon a time, my sister and I took our kids on a spring break trip. At the time Leo was 9, Eli was 12 and Elise (my sister's youngest) was 13. We decided we would go to Montana and not have a plan. We were going "open to grace" and let serendipity and synchronicity lead the way. We did have vague notions of perhaps finding a hot-spring. The whole shebang felt like an up-and-coming big adventure.

The first night we stayed in a mining town in a room that was saturated with tobacco smoke. The sounds of heavy drinking were coming through the walls and ceiling. (Yes - heavy drinking sounds do come through thin walls....use your imagination here). At 2 am in the morning a marching band (!?) started going up and down the street outside the motel. Hysterical. We laughed so hard the next day. But even weirder things were coming.

Next day, mid-afternoon, we pulled into a commercial hot-spring and motel. It looked "interesting". We thought we might stay there but then we saw the hot-spring which looked like a livestock watering set-up. It was stuffed with about 30 people who were sitting upright - shoulder to shoulder - in a ring, facing outward, with their backs resting up against a cement slab that formed the center of this round, fountain-like structure. The whole thing was in the middle of the asphalt parking lot. The only room that was available in the motel had a bathtub next to the bed. I secretly kind of liked that, but our 9, 11 and 13 year old kids were not exactly keen on public bathing. So we drove on - and once again we laughed and laughed at weird and hysterical far-side situation #2.

But even weirder things were coming.

We drove North. We weren't studying any maps and neither of us knew exactly what was "in" Montana. We told the kids we didn't know where we were going to stay - that we were on an an adventure and "open to grace". As it was getting dark and Elise was getting nervous, she asked us to clarify exactly what this "grace" thing was. I think it was about then that we decided to put "grace" on pause, and look for a "normal" hotel. When we pulled into a Hampton Inn, I remember Elise saying "thank you mommy! thank you mommy! thank you mommy!" I guess the mining town motel and livestock-watering-hot-spring had been a bit traumatizing.

That night at the Hampton Inn was very normal - not "interesting" - and in fact I can't remember anything about it. I am sure we did not laugh until we cried as we pulled away the morning.

We had one more night to spend on our big adventure before we had to go back. We were back to following the "open to grace" itinerary and decided on the spur of the moment to pull into a place that advertised hot-spring pools and a lodge. We arrived mid-afternoon and it looked great. The lodge was new - and clean - and very quiet. In fact, we were the only people staying there. That should have been our clue that we were about to have another "interesting" time.

We settled in and made ourselves a late lunch from our cooler and then just at sunset we went over to the hot-spring area. It was commercial but looked nice.....a large swimming pool filled with what I imagined to be magical healing waters. And a small pool off to the side with even hotter magical healing waters. There were also lots of small huts where you could go inside and enjoy your magical healing waters in private with your special friend.

All of us spent the next couple of hours enjoying the big pool. Then the bar life started heating up. (Yes - I forgot to mention - there was a bar that opened out to the pool). That was OK - not a big deal really - until a very drunk woman in her mid-30's started hitting on Eli. Remember that Eli was at that point 12 years old. In our family we have watched Eli be hit on by girls ever since he was about 6....but this was a first.....a woman 20 years older than him.

Eli didn't understand what was going on but Mary and I were in hysterics of laughter, watching the scene. We didn't let the cougar get her teeth into the boy - we gathered our troops and went back to the lodge for a good night's sleep.

The next morning Mary and I woke before dawn. The kids were asleep and we were ready for our BIG open to grace moment: soaking in the magical healing waters as the sun rose over the mountaintop. We went to the pools and settled into the smaller, hotter pool to steep in bliss. Shortly after we got there an elderly gentleman came and joined us in the pool. He seemed a little cranky but that was OK. Our bliss was unshakable. Then he started scraping at his feet and lower legs with some sort of exfoliation tool. That was getting less OK but we hung in there because the sun was just cresting the ridge. And then the light of dawn filled our eyes and illuminated the magical healing waters......showing us that the water was thick with flecks of skin and mucous. And Grace happened! We levitated! Really - just like Jesus and the saints - we ascended towards heaven.

Mary is so kind....I am sure she smiled and made our excuses as we shot skyward out of the pool, ran to the lodge and stayed in the shower for a very, very long time that involved a lot of soap and non-magical hot water.

We have had so many good laughs, over the years, about that weird trip. Grace was in charge and had a weird sense of humor - just the kind of humor that Mary and I share with one another. After all, it's a preference.....Or maybe its a choice: 10 years of story and laughter following weird events? Or the amnesia which inevitably attends "normal" events?

Making Ghee

2011-01-02T18:17:00.000-08:00

"We have to practice, because suffering must blossom into bliss,
and limitation must explode into unboundedness
and we must drink of the Ecstatic Serenity." ~~ Paul Muller-Ortega

“Happiness consists in finding out precisely what the 'one thing necessary' may be, in our lives, and in gladly relinquishing all the rest. For then, by a divine paradox, we find that everything else is given us together with the one thing we needed.” ~~Thomas Merton

For me, the one thing necessary is attention. Attention is love. The way I clarify and consolidate my attention is through sadhana / practice. Steady practice over a long period of time, with devotion (abhyasa). I must practice. Practice is Attention is Love.

Yesterday, as I contemplated “the one thing necessary” (prepping to teach the New Year Morning practice) I was also making ghee. Ghee is highly a clarified butter used in Ayurveda and East Indian cooking. What it takes to make ghee is alchemy.

First there’s sunlight and water and earth – then grass – and then a cow to chew the grass. There’s a lot of chewing and re-chewing of the cud. And then there’s milk. There’s a lot of churning of the milk and then the cream to reach the stage where the grass becomes butter. It seems crazy to say that grass is ghee. It doesn't nourish me if I eat it. If I put it in a ghee lamp it doesn't give light - and in fact puts out the light and makes smoke. But ghee IS grass. It's just that there's been a lot of working of that grass to make it into ghee.

About sadhana – It’s a process and there’s a sequence to it. It’s not random. You don’t clip a little grass and then try to make it into butter. You must stay with a coherent sadhana - take things in sequence. It’s important to have a Teacher to teach the steps and the sequence. And you must stay steady through much chewing and re-chewing and churning and heating and filtering.. Sadhana is a way of purification and transformation – and it’s not casual or quick.

It seems inflated to say that our nature is unbounded light. The daily round is not usually full of radiance and bliss. Mostly we don't experience ourselves as a source of eternal light and often feel we are slogging through a dullness and a flatness that dims the light and generates smoke. But we ARE light. It's just that there's a lot of sadhana necessary to turn dross into gold.

The butter goes into a very sturdy cooking pot –and is subjected to a long slow cooking. I cook the butter on a low heat for 12 hours. There is no hurrying. Then comes a time-intensive, patience-demanding filtering process. I have to stay with the process. I can’t just wander away or lose interest. I have to stay with it.

About sadhana: Practice involves heat – tapas. The heat requires a good chamber - a strong vessel of body and mind which can withstand the rigors of sadhana. Sadhana is rigorous. You have to stand steady in the fire of your own transformation. You have to patiently endure the filtering of all aspects of your self.

About ghee: It’s like preparing a meal. If I stop in the middle I have neither a wonderful meal nor do I have the fresh ingredients. I just have a mess in the kitchen. If I stop in the middle of making ghee I have neither the fresh butter nicely packaged nor do I have the liquid gold of ghee stored in beautiful jars. I just have a bubbling mess in the pot.

About Sadhana: The path is long. Hurrying is not skillful. To be fervent is skillful but to be in a hurry is not. Steady practice over a long period of time – with devotion – is skillful. And you have to stay with the process - not wander away – otherwise you have neither what you started with – (innocence and the freshness of beginner's luck) - nor what you hoped to achieve - (true transformation into enduring gold). Instead you have an indigestible mess in the alchemical chamber - the kitchen of your Work-body.

Finally there is ghee. Ghee keeps for a very long time without refrigeration, lends a wonderful flavor to foods, builds ojas (strength and renewal). When warm it pours like liquid gold and can be used to fuel the ghee lamps that are often used in sacred spaces. It burns clean and long and bright.

Through practice, we are transformed to ghee, just as "suffering blossoms into bliss". Ghee is like pure attention, clarified love, distilled desire. The heat of tapas together with patience and steadiness have already burned off the distractions and confusion that can cloak the clear light of the heart. Instead the light of consciousness burns clean and long and bright. The clarified gold that is our own true nature can now be poured into the sacred fire of offering, into our heart's work, creativity, service and ultimately into the Great Heart that lives in each of us - as us.

For me, the one thing necessary is Attention. Attention is Love. The way I distill and clarify my Attention, my Love, is through sadhana: steady practice over a long period of time, with devotion. I must practice. Practice is Attention is Love.

Christmas Day

2010-12-25T16:26:00.000-08:00

We had a great practice at the studio this morning. I've never taught on Christmas Day before and wasn't sure what the turnout might be but it was really well attended. Even people with young children came to practice - I had assumed they would be too involved in Santa Claus magic to show up at Yoga. This was an eye-opener for me and really brought home to me how much people love to connect and be together in ways that are real and meaningful and playful. We all spend time working - and most of us work in community with others, but it seems to me that not so many people also have a community of practice that includes an element of play. Without that - things get too dry, too serious. Anusara Yoga - as a practice - is not "dry". As a whole it encourages serious, dedicated practice, strong community and a mood of lightheartedness and play.

We had fun and steamed up the windows and raised $180 in donation to the scholarship fund. Just as we were moving into savasana, for a long winter's nap, the church bells started ringing out Christmas carols. Magical.

It was the first Christmas in 22 years that we've spent without our sons. Eli and Leo spent Christmas eve and the wee hours of Christmas morning in the Casablanca airport where they stayed overnight. Then they spent Christmas flying over the Middle East towards India. Is it still Christmas when you are flying across time zones high above the middle east where Christmas is not exactly an event of importance? Their plane touched down in Chennai (Madras) at 4 am (one hour ago our time). They'll have connected with Emmanuelle by now and I'm sure that is pretty wonderful - since she is wonderful.

This is such a different Christmas for us. As if to highlight the difference, just as Chris and I were about to head into Spokane to see Mom and Dad - our wood stove chimney burst into flames. If we had left just a little earlier our house would have burned down. We got it under control without calling 911 but it gave us a scare!

After the chimney fire - we went out to the worst dinner we can remember. It was so bad that it was hilarious.....and that humor made it worth it. We even took a picture of the cremated green beans embedded in a paste that was a mortician-shade of gray.

Here's what I came up with - as my theme, my "meaning making" - to go with our Christmas Day:

Life is short - the house is on fire. Pay Attention! (Get your attention together so you can "pay' it to what is important).
If you go out to dinner on Christmas - make sure you either avoid the restaurant we went to - or have a very good sense of humor and just pretend to eat the food.

Darshan

2010-12-21T10:41:00.000-08:00

This year Winter Solstice - the dark of the year - is accompanied by the eclipse of the moon - and the phrase "double dark" seems appropriate. Here in the northern latitudes, wiith it's heavy cloud cover, I might have to up the ante to "triple dark".

This morning as I was preparing to teach - looking for a Winter Solstice theme and sequence - I was gliding over a couple of likely options. I could design a class that would meet the triple dark with triple heat, in which case we would do a lot of sun salutations and other vinyasa to generate Light from the inside out. I also considered "going into the dark" and sequencing a deep quiet practice of hip openers, forward bends, restoratives.

I was not getting too interested in either of those approaches. And then my mind - which had been flitting and swooping around in search of a theme and sequence - landed on a good sturdy branch. And I got straight to work. I'm going to teach on the concept of darshan.

Darśana (Darshan) means "sight" (from the Sanskrit root dṛś "to see"). It is commonly used for "visions of the sacred," or "to see with reverence and devotion." The formal ritual of Darshan occurs between student and guru, or between devotee and a sacred image, which focuses and calls out the consciousness of the devotee. In either event, a heightening awareness of the Light of the Heart - is the intended effect since Darshan is ultimately an event in consciousness—an interaction between practitioner and the beauty of her own Great Heart, which is always waiting for her.

Each of my true teachers has granted me darshan - a glimpse of my own Great Heart. Mostly it has not been in any traditional ritual or Darshan Hall. For example John Friend "granted me darshan" in mostly sweaty yoga studios and - as his following grew - great big rooms full of mostly sweaty Yoga practitioners. John and so many teachers put up with being a placeholder - mirroring back to students our own Radiance - until we finally "get it" that we are That.

I was hugely fortunate to participate in formal darshan for several years with Lee Lozowick. That is what really brought home to me what exactly it is that darshan is aimed to bring forth in the student. At first - like with all my teachers - I attributed all the happiness and light of the darshan to Lee. Gradually I began to see that Lee was in complete surrender to the Sacred. At times it seemed to me that he was in a sort of slavery to that great Light - willingly binding himself to it - sitting still to be a great mirror for us - so we could finally look at him and see our own Light reflected back. Which is exactly what he wanted - begged for - for each of us.

All of this brings me to a recent teaching from Paul Muller Ortega. He was talking about the practice of Bhavana (formal practice of contemplation) and it really ended up sounding to me like the essence of the practice of darshan. He said that articulation and expression is essential. We must translate the Sacred into our own vocabulary and creative expression, referencing our lived experience, our body and bone and breath - to stabilize, anchor and illuminate the teachings, to bring them from obscure to real and immediate. Only when the inspiration is brought forth as word and Work and expression is the process of Bhavana brought to fruition. Expression is essential. The creation of forms of beauty - (for example through our asana practice) - is essential. The time comes when it is vital and "mandatory" to move from listening to expressing. It is only then, when we hear our own words, when we express through our own bodies - that we have a true darshan. We permit the great Light of the Heart to speak though us, move through us - as us.

Fear happens. It seems impossible - too hard. This is the recoil of the anava mala (the "cramp" in Lee's words - which tells us that we are incapable, unworthy and outside of Love). What to do? Continue to practice, to steep mind and mala in the Light of Consciousness. And be willing to express, to close the circuit and have true darshan.

Time to stop writing and fine-tune the sequence......another way of closing the circuit.

I bow with great gratitude to Paul and John and most especially to Lee. I bow to the long line of True Teachers who have bound themselves to the Light to teach me the essence of darshan.....to teach me to not curse the darkness but instead, as Maharshi said, "Bring the Light"

sanskrit and gossip and refinement

2010-12-13T16:23:00.000-08:00

There's a saying that when you learn a new language you gain a new soul. When I used to be semi-fluent in French, I did feel the soul and beauty of that language move in me. Recently I have been amazed and delighted to be learning a new language - Sanskrit - which is said to be the "big mother" or the maha-matrix of language and of creation. I guess I'm setting my aim pretty high.

Paul Muller Ortega has been focusing strongly on Sanskrit – especially lately -- emphasizing that Sanskrit and mantra are ways of fundamentally understanding and accessing the deeper layers of our being. My understanding (which is incomplete to say the least) of this big adventure into Big-Mama-Sanskrit goes something like this: At the most subtle level everything is a vibration of consciousness - a pulsation of love and light and intelligence. Stepping down from that level into a slower vibration yields denser forms of Light - which become matter - and the Word becomes flesh. The vibratory spectrum - from the most subtle aspects of my mind to the densest part of my femur bone - is all one vibrating Intelligence.

A powerful way to traverse this vibratory spectrum -- this great path of remembrance -- is through mantra and the practice of Sanskrit. I think a lot of Yoga people must know this intuitively - if not academically. And so I was not surprised to see such a big turn-out for the Sanskrit workshop last month. Zoe Mai - a fellow student of Paul Muller Ortega - came here to teach. She is a great teacher and now I am even more happily committed to continuing with Sanskrit as a strong practice of purification, strengthening and refinement.

In tandem with Sanskrit study I have been more and more keenly aware of my speech. I mean just plain English. I've been alert to speaking more concisely and clearly. I've also been more attentive to speaking of others in ways that includes them in the circle of my attention and love - rather than excluding them. I don't think gossip is categorically wrong. It just depends on whether the gossip creates inclusion and understanding or is instead a form of character assassination - a hit job that will make my position feel more secure (for about a minute).

Always - I am told - advancement on the path of authentic practice (sadhana) will be marked by an increase of subtlety, refinement and beauty, and that this subtlety, refinement and beauty will infuse into and shine out from our movement, breath, creative expressions, emotions, intellectual understandings - and our speech.

Just Stay

2010-11-29T13:00:00.000-08:00

There's a teaching in the Yoga world about "holding steady" and not blowing off one's energy but choosing instead to contain and consolidate so that one's attention and energy it can be an offering - like the ghee that is poured into the sacred fire. The Sanskrit word is mouna. My understanding of this teaching is that there are circumstances in which the most grace-full thing to do is to "just stay".

I've been hard up against this teaching for the last 2 weeks. I decided to "just stay" here - and not go to the ashram - following the passing of my Teacher. I have been so "worked"by this decision. It's not like I got to make it once and be done. Instead, it has been like this:

I hear the news and get poised to go to Arizona to be with sangha - but then there's a wounded moose outside my meditation space. And I pause, and I take myself into deep asking - and I get it - clear as a bell: "just stay".

I feel very calm and certain about this for about a minute. And then my samskaras start to rise up - I feel worried that maybe I got it wrong - that I'm going to be outside of grace and left behind. But then I go inward again - and surface again - with the same clear command to "just stay".

Fast Forward a couple of days. I talk to a sangha friend who is at the ashram and I hear about all the goings on at the ashram. I can't quite believe I am not there - and I get poised to go. And my husband, who knows me well and is always and only my ally, tells me again that he thinks maybe I should stay and let the Influence flow into my life as it is - here. And again I take it into deep asking and get the same "clear as a bell" knowing that mouna - containment - is what is being asked of me.

I feel very calm and certain about this for about a day. And then my samskaras start to rise up again - I feel worried that I'm being lazy - or just introverted. (The ashram is an intense place with no particular way to meet personal comfort preferences. For example, last spring I shared a bathroom with 20 women and a small bedroom with 6 women. It was great. It always is. But that doesn't mean that the self-concerned part of me can't recoil into resistance and a demand for personal comfort.)
But / And again - from a deeper place of connection, I know I must stay put.

I talk to more sangha - in India and Europe - other "outliers" like myself. I know they would give their eye-teeth to be at the ashram with sangha. Hearing this in their voices - once again I am poised to go. And then I teach a class after which I get feedback from no less than 9 people - expressing deep and real gratitude for my steadiness, for my willingness to stay here and teach and in that way share the Teachings.

So that's how it has been - with a few more repetitions and variations on the theme of "Just Stay" (vs) "Oh No! Got to go!"

According to the Yoga tradition, each of us has our karma - our particular pattern of personality and spirit - and it is with that pattern that Grace - or the Guru principle - interfaces. Blessing Force meets you where you are. For me - that has been Here. It has not been so easy to "Stay Put" - to say the least - but I see clearly (except when I forget and flap around and get "poised to go") that such a lot of Work and refinement has happened in the process of my reluctant obedience to the principle of mouna over the last 2 weeks. The biggest samskara is known in the Yoga tradition as the anava mala - (what Lee calls the "cramp"). My understanding of the anava mala is that it is a lived sense of constantly being in danger of being outside of Love, of being "left behind". These past 2 weeks this samskara has undergone a big burn in me - hopefully a major burn-off. (I'm keeping my fingers crosssed here- which makes it hard to type). I can't imagine what greater Blessing I could have received from my Teacher.

2010-11-17T11:06:00.000-08:00

Guru
According to a teaching I heard from Robert Svoboda, the largest phenomenon or thing of its kind can be considered to be the embodiment of the Guru principle. Guru means "the weighty one".

Recently a guru came and took up residence in my back yard in the form of a Mama-Moose and her calf, a handsome young boy-moose. She is injured. Actually, she's dying. Her back leg is broken, mangled, irreparable. She was probably hit by a car. She can't move around to forage and she's getting very skinny. So she lays outside my window, literally 5 feet from where I meditate and do my practices of asana, pranayama, chanting and puja. Sometimes she struggles to her feet and looks in the window at me. She is HUGE.

We called Fish and Game. They know about my wounded Mama-Moose and they want to put her down to save her the suffering that is coming as there is no way she'll make it through the winter.
And there she sits, just a breath away from where I sit.....the Guru showing me an aspect of Life "as it is"......for Real.

Yesterday morning, I was sitting in meditation in the pre-dawn dark with our Mama-Moose sitting so nearby. My heart felt so tender and heavy and I was weeping as I was sitting. Although I do feel tremendous concern for our Mama-Moose, this heart-tenderness wasn't about her. I speculated that I might be feeling the hearts of Eli and Leo who were - even as I sat there - finishing up a 4 hour tour of Auschwitz. I thought I might have been seeing with my heart what they were seeing with their eyes: Auschwitz, for Real, a part of life that when seen "as it is" can not but break your heart open.
After I finished sitting and started into my morning doings, the phone rang, I picked up and a sangha mate told me the news that our Guru, Lee Lozowick, had left his body at 5 am that morning, right when I had been sitting in meditation. Lee had a big smile on his face as he left his body.

Mister Lee -- a blasting BLAZE of Blessing Force, of fierceness and love. Outrageous.

I have not talked so much about having a Guru although it's been a HUGE part of my practice and my life (as a Guru would be - being a Moose-sized phenomenon). For one thing - I'm just kind of quiet and introverted by nature. For another thing, it's not "nice" to have a Guru.....It makes people anxious. I get that and don't see the point of making people anxious unless they are actually and authentically inquiring into the Teaching. For another thing, I practice "containment". Lee taught a lot about "containment" - about not spilling your self out all over the place.....about learning to manage your speech, your physical body, your energetic body......consolidating your Attention so that you can coherently "pay" your Attention to what is most important........so you can learn to be "food" only for God.

Well.....anyway.....these two days have been a ride. Sometimes my heart feels as heavy as our Mama-Moose. Other times I feel unshakable joy. It was good to be able to talk to Eli and Leo - and to Emmanuelle in India.....and of course to Chris.......All of us have been powerfully influenced by the immense Blessing Force of Mister Lee.

I think "my own back yard" is such a mysterious place - metaphorically and actually! Two years ago 3 peacocks appeared. I had never even SEEN a peacock before. They stayed awhile as I was preparing to go India. And then they left when I left and I never saw them again. And now here's my Mama-Moose - such a weighty one - such a Guru right in my own back yard, as close to me as my own breath. One of the most powerful dreams I ever had of Lee included that he came into my practice space from my back yard! The guru principle is.....right next to me.....like a Moose in my back yard. There's nowhere I have to go to be connected to that great and weighty force of Love. Just......open.....to......Grace.

Are you looking for me? I am in the next seat.
My shoulder is against yours.
you will not find me in the stupas, not in Indian shrine
rooms, nor in synagogues, nor in cathedrals:
not in masses, nor kirtans, not in legs winding
around your own neck, nor in eating nothing but
vegetables.
When you really look for me, you will see me
instantly --
you will find me in the tiniest house of time.
Kabir says: Student, tell me, what is God?
He is the breath inside the breath.
Kabir

Virabhadrasana I

2010-10-29T17:09:00.001-07:00

Here's an article I recently wrote for a small local Yoga publication called Equal Standing...............thanks to Karen Faunce for helping me edit out 100 words in time for the deadline!

Virabhadrasana I

“YES” First

The yoga pose Virabhadrasana I, like the mythological warrior for which it is named, embodies “yes.” With warrior-like steadfastness, the back leg stabilizes the pose, while the front leg squares strongly forward into a “yes” that is unequivocal. The arms extend skyward while the heart moves forward and lifts beyond the boundaries of “no” or “maybe.” To say “yes” is not casual. Rather, it is to stand closer to the fire of transformation. When a practitioner says “yes” to the fire of Yoga, she’s also saying “yes” to eradication of those structures and attitudes in life that are dead, or no longer life-affirming. This is one of the deeper meanings of the myth of Virabhadra.

The Myth
Shiva was married to his beloved Sati. Sati's father Daksha had never approved of his daughter's marriage. To Daksha, Shiva was unorthodox and wild with his long dreadlocks, and his ecstatic singing and dancing. Daksha, the upholder of civilization, form and regulation, had become rigid, calcified and entrenched and judged Shiva, his antithesis, as not worthy of his daughter.

Daksha organized a great party, a yagna or ritual sacrifice. He invited all the members of the universe -- all, that is, except Shiva and Sati.

Sati was grieved and incensed at the humiliation heaped upon her and her beloved Shiva by her father. Calling upon her Yogini powers, she became as dark as a smoke-filled sky. Her internal fires blazed, her body burst and her spirit flew upward leaving her corpse behind. When news of Sati's death reached Shiva, he was shocked and full of rage. He tore out his hair in his grief, and fashioned from it the fiercest of warriors – Virabhadra.

In his book, The Greatness of Saturn, skip to main | skip to sidebar Dr. Robert Svoboda says:

[Virabhadra] was a fiery being of unlimited valor who, after blazing his way through the earth and through all the underworlds, burnt the seven seas. Virabhadra looked like a flaming fire, having many heads and many eyes, and tens of thousands of arms and legs. The embodiment of concentrated might, Virabhadra stood before [Shiva] with folded hands, saying, 'Command me!'"

Shiva commanded Virabhadra to go to the yagna with sword in hand and ravage unrestrained. Virabhadra obeyed and after this vengeful action, Shiva absorbed Virabhadra back into his own form.

The Practice

I’ve been practicing Yoga for 36 years and know there is a danger of the practice devolving into habitual form. To keep asana alive in me, to continue to open its wisdom to me, I have to say “yes” first. Opening my body, heart and mind to an asana, I stand like Virabhadrasana before Shiva, submitting my strong will and knowing to the living intelligence and Blessing Force that is crystallized into every asana and saying ”command me”.

The Benefits

Saying “yes” to the power of Virabhadrasana I is transformative on many levels.

The musculoskeletal benefits include:

Strengthens and opens feet, ankles, legs
Tones hips and abdominals
Lengthens psoas and illiacus
Opens chest and shoulders
Strengthens shoulders & back

The energetic benefits include:

Opens and strengthens all pranic channels of the legs
Strengthens digestion by aiding descent of prana – (apana vayu)
Enhances deep energetic reserves (ojas)
Opens lungs and chest for a more vital flow of breath and energy (prana vayu)
Enhances metabolism (samana vayu) – the ‘digestive fire’ seated in the navel which corresponds to Uddiyana bandha.

The Meaning
Shiva can be seen as the force of grace, intelligence, consciousness and love that moves in us – as us. Grace rises, fiercely or gently, to save us if we let it. Virabhadra represents fierce grace – rising up with a roar to dash to pieces the blind spot in us - that which is small, contracted, and in deep forgetfulness - that which says “no” and “maybe later.” Virabhadra represents the surge of Blessing Force that would break apart patterns of dullness, superficiality and habitual form to make way for life, growth and transformation. Practice of this powerful asana cultivates a deeper relationship to transformation and a greater capacity to say “yes” to the sometimes gentle, sometimes fierce power of Grace.

VHMG

2010-10-10T14:29:00.000-07:00

Leo left early this morning. He will be meeting up with Eli (who is currently in France) and they will commence "The Big Adventure" together.

Leo was amazing in his leaving. He thoughtfully said his various goodbyes. He carefully and even with an attitude of sacredness put his room right. He spent a long time playing the piano - as if letting it know that he would be away. He stayed incredibly mindful and present with the whole process of "leaving home." When Eli left he did so in a similar mindful and great-hearted way. I don't know if it would be harder or easier to say goodbye if they were less amazing young men.

After I saw Leo off at the airport, I sat for my morning meditation. In spite of being on the verge of a downpour of tears, the moment I closed my eyes I felt awareness begin to move purposefully. It is if - in meditation - my awareness becomes a housecleaning goddess. She (the venerable-housecleaning- meditation-goddess - or the VHMG) gets straight to work. She searches in every nook and cranny of my being for heavy, thickened gunk.

This morning after Leo left She didn't have much trouble doing her cleaning up in my mind. My thoughts about the boys leaving are steady and easy. They are off to travel and learn, not off to war.

The VHMG also did not have much trouble cleaning up around my heart. I was surprised! As I meditated I felt my heart grow lighter without much resistance.

What really put the VHMG to task was my body. The simple-wise animal of my body - muscle and bone and mother - was heavy with the missing of, and all the anticipated missing of, my boys. My body was / is having a hard time digesting the stubborn fact of separation from the flesh and bone of my flesh and bone. Still, the VHMG was quite effective in the way she moved through the storage closet of my body, rearranging, dusting, clearing out, making room for light.

My practice is my life raft. Every time I come to my mat or take my seat to meditate awareness begins to move through the layers of my body, mind and heart, opening pathways of Light, reminding me I have not been and never will be "left behind" - outside of love. I don't always remember that in the moments of my day. But I virtually always remember it as I practice.

Residue-or-"Nostalgia is Death"

2010-09-24T19:30:00.001-07:00

Our good friend Jimmy Smith, who is 60 + and wise, recently said that as he has gotten older he is finding that his movements through the world leave less and less residue. He doesn't "matter" as much - he's becoming less matter and more space.

That really made me think. At first it sounded sad to me - and then i decided it was O.K. - a humble expression of a natural progression.

Residue. That's what is left when the water drains out of the tub.

My household life has been like a tub of warm, soapy, bubbly, swirling, rubber-duck-and-boy-filled water for the last couple of decades. That has suddenly changed. (OK - it's been changing all the time, but just recently the change seems sudden and big).

Eli left at the beginning of the week for his many months in Europe and Asia. Leo will join him in 2 weeks. I am feeling all the heartache so many mothers have felt for ever and ever. At times my heart feels like how I imagine quicksand to be (having watched all those horrifying images of quicksand pulling people under when I was a kid). At times my heart is deep with the grief of being separate from these 2 humans that are my heart - and it's at those times I experience the quicksand effect.

As the quicksand effect has been periodically moving through my inner landscape, I've been surprised to find that I've been avoiding meditation. I really didn't get that! Why would I want to avoid a source of peace, lightness and happiness - like I enjoy the heartbreaking quicksand or something?!

And then I was talking to my friend Denise who was describing that her meditation practice is steadier than ever. She rarely misses a day and if she does she feels it is as if she missed brushing her teeth or showering. As she was telling me this I got it! I understood why I'd been avoiding formal practice. Meditation, asana, etc, really do serve to wash away the residue - the film - over my heart and mind. I think I had been unconsciously holding onto the residue left in the tub of my happy household life - clinging to what was left after the water drained out.

The minute I saw that clearly I immediately regained my motivation to practice. I know the quicksand effect is not done with me and I don't know if that ever stops. My dad still feels it and it has been decades since the last kid left home. But who needs residue? Or - as Bob Dylan said - "Nostalgia is Death".

Great Beginnings

2010-09-10T14:55:00.000-07:00

This past Tuesday we had a great beginning of the Autumn session of classes at Garden Street. Tomorrow - Saturday - will be another great beginning - the new Immersion group. I think this is the 9th Immersion I've taught. The first one was 108 hours and we called it "Beauty School". That was before Anusara Immersions existed - (or maybe I just unconsciously caught the early first wave). Anyway - THAT first Immersion was another truly great beginning. Beauty School was a perfect name for what transpired during that year long Immersion into Yoga.

I always try to honor - pay careful attention to - the beginning of any big endeavor in Yoga. For some people, beginning the Autumn session of classes is a big endeavor. For others, beginning the Immersion is their current big endeavor. It inspires me to see people who are already so open and bright, longing to go deeper and wider in their practice and understanding. I am grateful beyond telling that these amazing students keep giving me the tremendous gift of allowing me to be their guide. I have the best job in the universe.

This session the theme for my classes and for Part I of the Immersion is LIGHT. Turning on Lights. Turning up the Light. Expanding from the inside out with Light. Like that. I started it out this week by working with the first principle (good place to start). I used the image of an electrical plug correlated to foundation work: if you want to turn on a light, make sure it is plugged in. A firm and impeccable plugging in (of the four corners of the feet in a standing pose, for example) will energize the expansion of Light and prana from the inside out - and you are able to open more fully to grace.

Every time I take a step deeper into Yoga - via asana, pranayama, meditation, principles of alignment, deeper understanding of philosophy, and so on - I am taking a step towards greater Light. And I love it that it is so visible, so tangible. With practice we really do become Brighter. Lights go on, physically and mentally. The Light of the Heart shines brighter. The Light of Consciousness expands and begins to illuminate even seemingly mundane details such as how to align the outside edge of the foot! That's why I love the details as much as I love the "big picture", I love impeccable alignment as much as I love the poetic and the mystical. I have the best job in the universe. I am grateful beyond telling.

There is one more great beginning. My younger son, Leo - 18 - is starting the Immersion tomorrow. His brother Eli - 21 - just finished Anusara Teacher Training at Garden Street. Both Eli and Leo love Yoga and love Garden street. How lucky am I?!!

Effortlessness and "Kicking Ass"

2010-09-05T14:56:00.000-07:00

I am 3.5 weeks in to a 4 + week process of Panca Karma. Patricia Berger - Ayurvedic practitioner extraordinaire - has been my tour guide and practitioner on this great adventure which is a deep rejuvenation as well as a cleanse. I don't really even want to tell you about Patricia because it's kind of like telling people about a really great little restaurant and then everybody goes there and then you can't get in. So - never mind - Patricia is just so-so - no big deal.

Panca Karma has been a deep rejuvenation as well as a cleanse. This has not been a harsh process but rather a very nourishing one. I feel clearer - like several veils have lifted. This is a parallel to what I experience in regular meditation - and more strongly in meditation retreats - when there is a steady loosening and melting of that which is congealed, thickened, frozen, stagnant - whether it be physical, mental or emotional.

In the past I've been involved in - and counseled people through - many cleanses. They were generally on the rough side - and had a sort of "kick-ass" mentality. Also in the past - over the years of my meditation practice - I've been involved in meditation styles that had the flavor of "gut it out" and had their own sort of "kick-ass" mentality (in my experience of them).

I liked all that "kicking ass" and learned a lot from it. I think that it may have prepared me for subtler work - in meditation, asana and in my approach to the cleansing and rejuvenation of my body. Panca Karma has been, for me, a subtler, more refined and deeper experience of a "cleanse" than any I've experienced in the past. My meditation practice is, similarly, subtler, more refined and deeper than forms I've practiced in the past.

Recently a friend asked me if the meditation I practice is really an" effortless technique" (which is one of the ways it is described). I had to think about that. I was a little embarrassed to say that I practice something that is "effortless". Like - "What a sissy!" And "Who are you kidding!" But really, the "effort" side of the equation is softer and the ease side of the equation has expanded - so that now - rather than effortless, I'd have to say that the quality of ease has increased tremendously.

When this quality of ease first began to flow gradually into my practices, I mistrusted it. I had been so used to the "maximum effort" of the kick ass approach. I had used "maximum external sensation" as an indicator that I was working hard enough, deeply enough in my practices. I was suspicious that anything less "strong" was an open doorway to sloth, torpor, delusion and inertia.

Slowly I am trusting ease.

In my studies with Paul Muller Ortega, I've been fortunate to study the theory that illuminates the concept of ease – or effortlessness – as an approach to meditation practice. It's a bit much for a blog post - especially since I'm condensing it to nutshell size. But here's the teaching - constrained into a nutshell:

The Light of Consciousness causes itself to appear contracted. Reality "constrains itself into existence" as the Word is made flesh. If this sounds hopelessly esoteric, consider that everyday life teaches us about the Absolute. Think about the everyday life fact that a baby is "constrained into existence” during its passage through birth canal. This "constraining into existence" takes effort. It takes effort to constrain the vastness of pure potential into an atom - into the "atomic" or limited, contracted, transmigratory self (anu).
Each of us, at some moment, mysteriously, and sooner or later, is touched by grace and will begin the great path of return - of remembrance.

So - see - it's like this: If it takes effort to be constrained into existence - well then - it takes ease and a certain melting - to traverse the great path of return. Like that.

Genius

2010-08-31T19:20:00.001-07:00

I've been spending my mornings at Patricia's - being the recipient of her skillful Ayurvedic rejuvenatory treatments - panca karma. I am feeling clearer, more grounded and stronger. She is a genius. Which brings me to the title of the post - genius. In my last post I said Christina was a genius at certain skills and I was a genius at others. And then I got embarrassed for calling myself a genius and edited it out. The whole process of slapping myself on the hands (that typed genius) and then contemplating that reaction made me decide to look into the word "genius". I found plenty of definitions - thanks to Google - but here's the one I'm going with: "In ancient Roman religion, the genius was the individual instance of a general divine nature that is present in every individual person, place or thing". Yeah - like that. I'm a genius. You too.

Almost September

2010-08-29T15:16:00.000-07:00

It has been nearly a month since I wrote. But I can explain my absence, officer / Mom.

During the first half of August I spent a lot of time getting things set up for the Teacher Training, as well as getting things lined up for the coming year, taking care of general business, finishing out the studio session and generally being a full-time secretary to my business. Also I did manage to get in a good amount of study and practice. It was a lot and I feel happy that I was able to stay on top of it. I do feel a little wistful that I didn't spend much time playing outside. I'm also wistful that I didn't write more. I don't mean just blog posts. Writing in general has been taking a back seat. This is a pattern. I'm looking into that.

Starting on the 16th I began the preparatory stages of what is going to be a month long Ayurvedic process - Panca Karma - working with Ayurvedic practitioner Patricia Berger. It's very nourishing - not harsh - no big weight loss (so if any of my family members are reading - don't worry - I'm not going to get too skinny). I'm two weeks into the process now. I feel clearer in my mind and lighter in my body - but not depleted. Most cleanses are depleting. I've done several over the years and the general tone of those cleanses has been "body-negative" - as in "the body is dirty - clean it out from the inside out" And the subtext - "if you're looking for dirt there will always be more to find". This process I'm doing is much more "body-positive" and is aimed a building and restoring deep reserves (ojas) while at the same time clearing anything that stands in the way of that aim. I'm liking it. My energy is good. Tomorrow I start a more intense part of the process.....I'll keep you posted.

On the 25th, Christina Sell and I began our first experience of co-teaching. We are old friends from way back - Inner Harmony days - an ongoing from there. We taught Part III of the Teacher Training (I had taught parts I & II here in June and July). It went really well - remarkably well. We have a lot more co-teaching scheduled and I am guessing that we will look back and see that this was the most challenging of our co-teaching for several reasons: we hadn't started the TT off together; we hadn't co-taught before; and we had to do a quick job of getting in step with one another while simultaneously being very respectful of one another and deferring to one another. I held back to see what needed to arise - so did she. It could have been a train wreck but it was just the opposite - a great journey.

Christina and I are very different - she is extroverted and teaches a lot nationally, I am introverted and focus my main efforts locally. She is great with the technical aspects of Asana. I love the poetry of the body and its' energetic pathways. She is so good with articulate language and drills to teach it - to groove it in. I have a lot of experience with hands on adjustments and therapeutics. Although each of us is also good at the other's strength - and we have a lot of shared strengths - we are DIFFERENT - and that is so great. We aren't trying to be the same so the offering is not twice as rich but something like 10 times as rich. Vive' la Difference.

I've heard from several students now that they were amazed and delighted and very well served by the synergy of our diverse approaches to the same method (Anusara) and by how we each were quite able to "hold on to ourselves" and what we knew while at the same time staying flexibly permeable to what the other had to say and offer. I also had great gratitude and recognition of a clear transmission of Blessing Force supporting us and informing our work together.

The group of teachers that attended were attentive, open-hearted, intelligent, full of aspiration and willingness. I expected no less from this brilliant, open hearted and strong community of practice. So many people, over the years, have visited here and taken classes and have told me - in various ways - that they have been amazed by how rooted, friendly, mutually supportive and stable our kula is. It is true. and as a kula we are now strong enough to easily enfold teachers from Canada, all over Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington. Sorry - can't help but brag on us.

p.s.

2010-07-30T20:17:00.000-07:00

This is such a good article on the subject of the NYT Hit Job on Anusara Yoga.

The Commodification of Yoga: The Perfect, the Good and the Spiritual
Huffington Post

The Disembodied Discourse of Popular Culture

2010-07-29T09:00:00.000-07:00

I am fresh back from a week long retreat with Paul Muller Ortega. We did a lot of practice (asana, pranayama, meditation, etc.) as well as a lot of study and discussion. I spent the week practicing and studying with excellent company. And so.......

It was a little disheartening to come back to an e-flurry regarding the article in the New York times about John Friend. Several people have already written excellent response to the article. I'll link some of those responses at the end of this post. Here's the link to the article itself.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/25/magazine/25Yoga-t.html

I knew this article was coming and was cautiously looking forward to it. It's no small thing to be part of a Yoga method that merits a 5 page article in the NYT.

Here's my 2 cents worth.

The article is a fine example of the disembodied discourse of popular culture that focuses on brand and image, that elevates mediums like Face Book, Twitter AND Blogs to the level of Real. And ignores what is really going on at the level of body and bone, community and relationship.

This disembodied discourse sketches in and then projects upon, the surface and virtual elements of a person, practice, community or spiritual path. For example, in this article, the whole language around cult is just ignorant. A cult is a culture. It is easy to comment on a culture that you are not part of in a way that is incomplete and therefore ignorant. Limited knowledge is ignorance. And while I'm on the subject: Cynicism is a cult too – to which people simply don't admit their membership.

The article doesn’t account for experience at the local level. You can’t generalize longing of the Heart. The article does not even mention the mystery of embodied consciousness or the tragedy of suffering and yet these are the essence of what we are looking into and practicing into with Yoga. We are aiming to see more clearly, think less superficially, stay steadier and more open in body and emotion even as we face increasingly paradoxical and challenging circumstances.

It is why it is so easy to disrespect Yoga at the abstract, generalized, pop culture level. Love, Grace, and Bliss – these all sound so flaky when spoken outside of the context of practice, relationship and community.

The closer to body and bone we keep our work and practice the less vulnerable we will be to the disembodied discourse of popular culture - which is truly a sort of virus that feeds on our attention. As one of my meditation teachers put it, we must stay "warm hand to warm hand" in our community of practice.

I asked Chris what he thought about the article. He is both brilliant and possessed of great heart, so I often ask him to "help me think". Here's some of his comments:

Underneath the surface of the generalizations of an article like this lie the problems of culture, paradoxes of discrimination and diversity, gender, the problems of living in the paradox. And these can only be worked out and lived out and practiced out at the local level of community and body and bone.

Looking at JF’s trajectory from the perspective of the present- you can’t see the grace in it. It looks like an ambitious hustle. But you (Karen) saw this whole phenomenon of Anusara Yoga grow from when you were in John Friend's class with 10 other people. You know in a way that a journalist looking backward can't know, that it was never a "business plan".
It's a problem of scale. John Friend is working at a level of scale and is open to that kind of analysis – like it or not."

In the moment to moment experience "grace happens". John Friend caught the wave – and stayed with it – stayed in incredibly hard working service to it - from the get-go.

It is in this moment that grace is actually arising. That's why I'm going stop writing and go practice and prepare to teach the lovely, small, class that will meet at noon -- Real people, who are open and intelligent, and who have found in Anusara Yoga's principles and philosophy a coherent and beautiful method for growth and transformation - a way to become kinder, gentler, more capable of love, more generous of spirit. That's what happens. I've seen it over and over and over, in myself, my family and my students.

So there!

http://christinasell.blogspot.com/2010/07/my-two-cents-on-yoga-mogul-and-his.html
http://amyippoliti.blogspot.com/2010/07/my-immediate-reaction-to-nyt-article-on.html
http://aligningwithgrace.blogspot.com/2010/07/anusara-as-practice-that-says-yes.html

10,000 Hours and the Corridor of Madness

2010-07-19T15:01:00.000-07:00

When I go to visit my parents these days (Mom is in a nursing home and Dad is there all day, every day with her) I walk to Mom's room down a long corridor. There are generally several residents in the corridor.....waiting for nothing. A few are bright and present in spite of age and physical decline. But most of the residents are one of the following:

checked out
ranting (hitting or screaming at the staff; accusing other residents of taking their things)
feeling victimized (crying about being given meds, or whatever)
paranoid (e.g. "He owns it all and He is watching us all the time)
bossy (in a demented sort of way - e.g. - going around and closing other residents' doors; coming into my mom's room and taking her cookies.)

All of the residents seem to be in wheel chairs. Sometimes at mealtime there is a long, slow race down the corridor to the dining hall. I mean really slow. My dad says that road rage happens occasionally when one resident inadvertently starts shuffling her wheel chair backwards and runs into the resident behind.

My mom and dad are clear in their minds and so they find humor in it all - which is a good buffer to the goings-on in the corridor and to the discouraging nature of their situation..

As I observe all of this, I've been wondering if the scripts that are running in the residents are all variations on "the blind spot" - what my spiritual teacher calls the cramp. (I've also heard it called the "petty tyrant") -- which is the core fallacy around which the entire personality is built. I am guessing that if I live long enough to get to dementia with my "cramp" talking louder than my soul, then my cramp will continue to play out it's role loudly - truly a petty tyrant. And I'll be wheeling down the hall, worrying about my work load, having bouts of irritability as I try to get everything done (even though there will be nothing to get done at that point). This would make an excellent contribution to the corridor of madness.

I wonder if, on the other hand, I might reach the 10,000 hour mark in my sadhana - especially my meditation practice - before I reach dementia. (The “10,000 Hour Rule”: in order to maximize any given talent, spend approximately 10,000 hours practicing it). I'm not afraid of dementia - I'm just hoping that if I "get it" - the Light of Consciousness - of my soul - will be stabilized enough to steal the show from the petty tyrant. I've seen some elders like that over the years. They have an amazing light shining from the inside out. I see a few like that at the nursing even. Just not so many.

Related to this idea of 10,000 hours of practice, Shiva Sutra 1.7 keeps coming into my mind and contemplation. It refers to the 3 states of consciousness - waking, dreaming and profound sleep. It seems to me that for some of the residents at the nursing home, these 3 states collapse in on one another and are no longer always distinct. But even more interesting to me is that Sutra 1.7 speaks of the "fourth state" - turya - which is cultivated through sadhana (steady practice, sustained with devotion over a long period of time - say, 10.000 hours). The sutra teaches that this "fourth state" will gradually permeate and saturate each of the 3 states of consciousness - waking, dreaming and deep sleep, such that it's presence will be felt even in these other states.

10,000 hours of practice - or slow motion road rage in the corridor of madness............It would seems like a heavy sort of choice if practice were not so compelling - so intrinsically full of light. It's its own reward, ongoing. Regardless of the end of the story.

End of the Middle

2010-07-12T15:04:00.000-07:00

Last night we finished up the second of our three weeks of summer teacher training. As Tom put it - we reached the end of the middle of the beginning. Getting there was intense - a pressure cooker. Everyone got well-cooked. The suddenly hot weather just added to the heat in the chamber. There were quite a few melt-downs but everyone stayed the course.

Yesterday, when everyone did their final demo teaching for this session, I was so happy and grateful to see and hear these teachers standing much more firmly in themselves than last session. They skilfully taught from a place of remembrance - stayed in their feet and in their hearts. AND - they had such a better handle on the discreet teaching skills that we've been working on. Our next week is in August so people will have plenty of time to process, assimilate and practice . Most of these teachers are quite experienced and are actively teaching - so they will have plenty of opportunity to practice between now and August.

Back to the "suddenly hot weather".....I was more aware than ever that I am not separate from my environment. I mean, the AC did not make a difference. Not really. The heat outside became the heat inside the chamber and inside me......As I felt heat (pitta) rising I kept hearing Patricia's Ayurvedic counsel: "Pacify Pitta. And fennel is your friend". So when I finally got done cleaning up - instead of going home to pick a heat-induced fight with Chris, I decided at the last minute to go jump in the lake. Bliss. Coolness. I can't believe I ever agreed to live anywhere that didn't have lakes everywhere.

Now for a small pitta-esque comment: I am increasingly irritated by the multiple blog comments in Chinese (or is it Korean). I put a filter on to block spam....so apparently these are not spam because they have increased since the filter. So I decided to block comments to this blog for awhile. I get the most thoughtful comments mainly by e-mail anyway. Thanks for those.

Bubble Wrap

2010-06-30T20:35:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday we finished up the Advanced Immersion for the Summer.....(we have 3 more day-long meetings next Autumn to complete our 108 hours together). We made a good finish to a great 6 months of study and practice. On Saturday I turned a lot of focus towards teaching technique, especially the theory and practice of skillful language as a way to animate body, mind and heart of a student. We agreed that there is way too much bubble wrap around much teaching language. For example: "So.....OK.......today we're gonna talk about the engagement of muscular energy....how to really, really really hug muscle to bone, and how that relates to - um - well, you know - the fortitude that we might sometimes - or maybe hardly ever - feel in the rest of our life off the mat. 'Kay? So.....now we're gonna come to all 4's. Great! Now you're gonna want to really hug in. ---- Perrrrrfect!"

Our group of talented teachers (everyone in the advanced immersion is a teacher) did a skit.....modeling "bubblewrap teaching technique". It was hilarious. I laughed 'til I cried. People modeled everything from "airline attendant/auto pilot voice", to random, off the wall comments that teachers sometimes make during class. We were not poking fun at anybody - just highlighting our own tendencies with great good humor. It was the most fun I've had in a while.

As practitioners, and as teachers within the context of the greater practice of Yoga, we just don't get to rest on our laurels. No tenure track here. As long as we're in service to grace - (or in "spiritual slavery" as my spiritual teacher calls it) - we are compelled by that same grace to refine all parts of our life - including our expression - our teaching - our speaking of energy into movement and matter. It's good work even though it's endless and offers no vacation time. (But as far as I'm concerned, vacation is highly overrated).

This weekend it's out to Loon Lake for the Sprute family reunion. That will be fun. And next Wednesday we begin Part II of the 100 hour teacher training - 5 days all day. I'm happy. I love teacher trainings. I am completely intrigued by teaching technique - by considering how to refine and clarify and make teaching more excellent. If someone were to ask me what part of teaching I'm most passionate about - right now I'd have to say "teacher training" (maybe because I'm so immersed in it this summer).

OK - I'm going to sign off.

Through the Knothole

2010-06-21T19:59:00.000-07:00

My hope to post every day of the teacher training was unrealistic. And now it is "the day after". But I don't have a hangover. (What is the opposite of a hangover? A lift-under?) Anyway, it was a very good week. The group was dynamic and the level of studentship surpassed my hopes and expectations. We spent a lot of time honing the techniques and details and methods of teaching. Beth - most amazing teacher - assisted all week. The group dubbed her "big sister". Her presence was a tremendous support for me and everyone present. Now I wonder how I ever taught a teacher training without Beth......

We really dug into the details and fine points of teaching. The adage that the "devil is in the details" is one that I've switched up to be "The goddess is in the details". And, as often happens when there is a focus on technical skill and detail, there were plenty of melt-downs and dark-nights-of-the soul as people visited the domain of deep self doubt. Luckily, I can always share with students my own history of self-doubt and melt-down. For example: crying through an entire week of study - only pausing to dial the phone to Chris - and then sobbing into the phone some more again. At these times, I could not even hide my situation from fellow students as I had to walk around with hugely red, puffy eyes with mascara run-off marks. At the root of it all was an extreme certainty that I was outside of Grace - left behind".

Now I don't go to that place so much (knock on wood). Instead I get to help students make it through their own knothole of self-doubt. And I am happy to do so. I don't know what I could have done to deserve to finally know that I have never been and never will be "left behind". And I can only begin to make pay-back by teaching in this method that firmly and repeatedly insists that we are - at our very core and essence - good.

At the end of the training, a bright and VERY talented student begged me to tell her what one thing she was doing poorly in her teaching. I think that what she really wanted me to tell her was what was wrong with her. As I considered my answer, I remembered myself asking a teacher (way back) to please tell me what was the ONE MAIN THING WRONG with me. And so I told her what that teacher had told me -the main thing to work on is to recognize your intelligence and talent. It's the truest answer. After that, all the details of technique can nest inside the knowing that you are never outside of Grace.

Day 2

2010-06-17T21:02:00.000-07:00

Day 2 has been very good. It did bring more challenge - but that's always the case. Teacher Training is an intense process. The chamber is heated -- more current is moving through the wires - and meltdowns happen. It's good because it's alchemy and transformation. But its not all fun.

The overarching principles for the day were Foundation and Muscular Energy. I spoke a while about a teaching I heard from Robert Svoboda:

"The place where you're going to sit is your asana. …….. the place that you have established that you are going to be sitting on. If you and the earth element have established a good seat for yourself, then you will be firm during the period that you are performing your sadhana, to accumulate the energy that is inherently to be found in the sadhana. If you don't establish a good asana, then there is the possibility as things go on there will be some instability. And that instability will interfere with your achievement of the goal that you are attempting to achieve by establishing the sadhana that you want to perform.

So, establishing a good asana is accomplished by worshiping the earth element. And by something that is definitely not a coincidence; Ganesha sits in the body at the Muladhara chakra, which happens to be the place where the earth element is located. Ganesha also rules the earth element. So, if you make Ganesha happy, then he will go down and he will talk to Mother Earth and instead of you trying to make Mother Earth happy, which could be difficult, especially because humans have performed a lot of very naughty things in the world, if instead of that you bribe Ganesha with a stick of sugar cane and he goes and makes the earth element happy, then that makes things easier for you".

We talked about how, after we have opened to grace, as teachers, it is necessary to to apply discipline – to learn - and keep learning - the skillful craft of teaching. To hone technique, learn to sequence ever more effectively, refine and pare down our language so that it most gracefully and powerfully brings spirit into body, prana into fullness. Etc. All of this we do as an act of devotion - so that what was opened to - Grace - that which has the potential to be the Columbia River – the great Heart of Teaching – has a good channel of word and technique through which to flow. Otherwise it can be easily diverted and diminished by a multitude of rabbit holes and rivulets. We would rather earn to participate with the Columbia as it rolls on in its Great Path of Return.

Day One of Part I

2010-06-16T20:53:00.000-07:00

Day One of Part I of the Summer 2010 Teacher Training was great. The group is comprised of really good students - from Eugene, Oregon, Canada, Montana and Idaho. Today we worked with - of course - Open to Grace. And also worked with foundation.

I used a technique that Chris suggested - called "Cafe Conversation" - to get people really thinking and talking about why they teach. It is a good inquiry. The group took it fairly deep - and they seemed to get it that it's a ongoing question and the inquiry can always go deeper.

One of the things I like to do in Teacher trainings is to really teach to what it means to be able to receive feedback without recoil. Just like teaching to studentship (teaching the attributes of studentship -adhikara) - I find that when I teach to what it means to accept feedback - students really start demonstrating those attributes. Now a cynical view would be that this is just the students trying to do what the teacher is looking for. But I don't think it's that. I'm inclined to believe that, like our method says, people are intrinsically good, intelligent, honest, curious......they really do want to change and transform,. And sometimes have simply never considered that feedback is necessary to transformation. So we talked about things like: sitting with an alert and open posture, giving eye contact, staying in your back body and generally staying tuned in to body sensation. All of this and more as techniques for staying open and undefended when receiving well intended feedback. And in the context of the teacher training at Garden Street Yoga - it is a pretty sure thing that the feedback is well intended. I don't, however, suggest to people that they stay open and vulnerable to feedback they may get while waiting in line at the DMV.

So we spent some time on that - and on an Intro to observation skills. We also spent a good deal of time partner teaching, giving feedback, etc. It was a full and tightly woven day. We're off to a good start.

This time I set the schedule to run 10 - 6 and everybody - myself included - seems very pleased with that. We are able to have a bit of morning - to practice or walk or whatever - have a good breakfast - and arrive ready. The down-side is there's less time for celebration and social fun in the evening.

Tonight after I taught, I went swimming. And now I'm off to meditate and to bed. I'm really looking forward to tomorrow.

Water Spigot

2010-06-15T10:11:00.001-07:00

This morning I'm fully in harness - preparing for the teacher training which begins tomorrow. Part of my work is that I do a lot of "hospitality facilitation" - keeping track of who is staying where and who needs rides etc. The practice of hospitality - as a Practice - is alive and well in our Coeur d'Alene Kula. Thank you Ed and Olive and Patty and Jessica and Beth and Brandi - for hosting students from out of town. "Hospitality is the sign of an outrageously generous heart" ~anon

I was reflecting this morning as I work, that something that has changed for me, over the years of teaching, is that (finally ) I stay a lot more relaxed. And I don't forsake myself. For example, this morning I did my own practice. I made kicharee and beet greens for my meal later. I did abhyanga . And I'm indulging in writing a post right this minute. In prior years I probably would have sat tensely at the computer, working with my notes. I still managed to teach well - the tension didn't choke off the flow of Grace - but it probably diminished it considerably.

The image that came to me this morning is really an "open to Grace" image for teaching. It's the image of a water spigot. Like any experienced teacher, I've gotten really good at turning on the spigot and once I do, Grace flows - currently it's flowing in the form of teacher-training-teaching and inspiration. It took me years to learn how to work the spigot, and more years to increase its capacity, and more years to trust that the spigot will always be there to turn on.

The fashioning of the spigot and the increasing of its capacity has been an important phase of my own development as a teacher and as a practitioner. The teachers that are beginning teacher training tomorrow will be working a lot on that. It's a long process that does not end. I'm still at it although it was much more involved earlier on. Much more involved. Sundari and I were talking about how we sometimes get calls from students who are "shopping" for a teacher training certificate the first question they ask is "how long will it take and how much will it cost?" I generally give a business-like answer but my wicked-wise self sometimes want to say "It will cost you everything and it will take forever". Sundari and I figured that we have spent tens of thousands of dollars on our own teacher training. More than tens of thousands. Everything. But - like I said - I generally give a business-like answer.

I am more aware than ever - that taking care of myself is taking care of the water spigot. And staying relaxed and open is allowing Grace and inspiration and intelligence to flow through me.

So - I'm off to teach Tuesday classes. Julie Rae and Cami - from Montana - are already here so I get to have them weave into Tuesday. Fun.

Sundari and "Ready, Set....."

2010-06-14T14:40:00.000-07:00

Monday Afternoon - I just dropped Sundari to the airport. Wow - what an excellent weekend. On Saturday we co-taught a therapy training. I was so impressed with Sundari's deep and intimate understanding of feet, ankles, shins and knees. Her knowledge is keen and her instructions are really a form of transmission. She knows the terrain of the legs the way nobody else I've ever met know it due to 20 years of bodywork, 30 years of Yoga, a traumatic injury of her lower leg, a great heart and a bright intelligence.

She had a major trauma to her leg 4 years ago - almost lost it in fact. And what did she do with that major trauma? She turned it into a gift and offered it back out to her students. That's truly a sign of being on the "path", in my book.

We co-taught easily and happily and effectively together. It was so much fun and neither of us was drained the way we sometimes can be after a day of "full-on" teaching. We each felt so nourished that we decided to co-teach a retreat together next spring....details forthcoming.

On Sunday, Sundari taught alone and - as on Saturday - we had a fuller-than-full house. A great group of people showed up for her excellent teaching.

Aside from teaching, we ate great food - (Chris was his usual generous self and cooked for us) and took an excellent hike in the first sunshine either of us has seen for awhile. And this morning I got to spend the first half of her birthday with her.

I am feeling renewed and rejuvenated by the experience of co-teaching and by spending time with a very good friend. So I am ready to go - (insert sound of motors revving here) as the Teacher Training begins Wednesday morning. Today and tomorrow are going to focused on "ready, set....."

Assessor form Hell - or - Lucy Lightfield from Athol Idaho

2010-06-07T21:08:00.000-07:00

This morning I got up early and took Eli to Spokane to begin his camp counselor job at YMCA Camp Reed. And then I came back home where it was just just me and Rasa - the cat. Chris was at work until late. Leo is on a "bromance" senior trip with his 3 best friends (details on U-tube).

Wow - a wide open day.

I started by getting on the elliptical trainer and doing some chanting and memorization work (I'm working on memorizing some sanskrit texts as part of my work with Paul M-O). Then I spent a couple of hours doing business - e-mailing the groups that are signed up for the various up-and-coming trainings, scouting out home-stays, answering questions and assuaging anxieties (regarding the Teacher Training)....like that.

Then I spent some time fleshing out the ideas for, and prepping for, the Therapeutic training this weekend. As usual, when I turn my attention to -- or rather have time and space to turn my attention to -- a teaching subject, it's like turning on a fire hose. The issue will not be nervousness (as mentioned in my previous post). It will be to not plan too much - TMI - for Saturday when Sundari and I co-teach. I have about enough creative inspiration coming through the fire hose for a year long program. And I am sure Sundari has enough for a 3 year program.

After that it was time for a righteous - albeit late - lunch. I have a lot of good produce now.
(I trade Yoga for the best organic produce in the universe). For lunch I had steamed greens, steamed asparagus and raw greens, topped with blue cheese, olive oil and balsamic. SO good.

Next I spent time studying some materials that I'm working on with Paul M-O and also did some more e-mail work.....and generally played secretary to my business.

Then it was time for a late-in-the day asana and meditation. And now - here I am. I could hardly wait to finish meditation and start writing. I think I may have been writing while I was meditating. (More of the fire hose effect).

Here's what was surging up and demanding to be put into writing during my meditation:

I have been occupying the seat of the teacher for a long time now and in a lot of contexts. In the Anusara yoga context (yep- here we go - Yoga) I "got certified" in 2001. I was number 47 to get certified. (I know that's true because it's on my certificate).

The more established I've become in the "seat of the teacher" - the harder it has been to get real feedback. Or so it seems to me. I get a lot of feedback about how great my teaching is. I admit - I like that. Honestly - that kind of feedback gives me the necessary courage to keep teaching. But it is not feedback on technical refinement points. I actually go out of my way to ask people to please tell me what needs improvement or clarification. That request really doesn't work. I mean - who wants to take a class with their designated teacher and then have to give them constructive criticism? It is just not realistic. Also there's the power differential, which is real and significant, even in the context of a small studio in a small town in North Idaho. The teacher is in her seat, the student is in her seat. And all that is a good and necessary, an hierarchical dynamic - a power differential - that allows the current of transmission to flow. It's not different than electricity. But it is not a dynamic that lends itself easily to "constructive feedback". It's not what it's designed for. But still - as a teacher - I do want feedback on technical refinement points. I have to work this out for myself and not expect my students to do it for me.

So I do this in various ways. I have a strong practice of meditation and contemplation....this helps me be my own self-observation-ally. I have a spiritual teacher.....this helps me not fool myself in my self observation efforts - helps me keep my compass set to true North. But in terms of the techniques of teaching and getting precise feedback to help me refine my teaching: I recently hired Beth. She is a veteran public school teacher who has won every teaching award known to man. She also teaches Anusara Yoga. I hired her to give me feedback.

In addition to Beth's help, Terri - videographer extraordinaire - filmed me teaching a class. I am going to sit down with Kali (goddess who wears skulls and various body parts as jewelry) and be the "assessor from hell" -- assess my own teaching to see if I am certifiable. I have my doubts. I will keep you posted.

Woven in with all of this, I have had a fantasy of applying for certification under an alias - and then going through the whole process again. (The certification process has gotten considerably harder than when #47 got passed through. In those days John watched every video himself and called every single candidate up to say Yay or Nay) .

Anyway - to continue with my fantasy of "the great certification application ruse"....... when I get to the point where I need to submit a video - I will just change a few things - like I will get a wig. I will name Karen S-F as my teacher. Maybe my assessor will know me and just think I look a lot like Karen S-F. I will see if I can get certified.

I might actually do this. I think it would be good for me and for all my students, especially those who are also teachers who are in one way or another being assessed. In the past week alone, I've had correspondence from three different, and all wonderful, teachers who are in the Inspiration / Certification process - and who wonder if they are capable....wonder if they are not too old, too young, too slow, too stupid, too ignorant, too heavy, too physically incompetent, too 'not shiny', - to be assessed with any kind of positive outcome. I tell them - well - it's a great process and it is hard and it is intense. It is a process of alchemy and transformation. And its evolutionary. I completely believe these things I am telling them. So maybe I should go through that process again.....submit myself to a great process that is intense because it is a process of alchemy and transformation. And if I do - nobody but me will know. I might be Suzanne - or Lucy - Lucy Lightfield from Athol Idaho.

Happy Bullets & WD-40

2010-06-05T15:57:00.000-07:00

It has been a great week. And the sun is out at last. I'll celebrate by using bullets in my post today. Oh Boy!
(If you don't make it all the way through this post - be sure to at least go to the end for a treat).

Jen and Thine achieved their first unassisted urdhva dhanurasana. These two amazing women are so strong and consistent in their practice and in their attitude. They have both practiced urdhva dhanurasana every day, with steady effort and dedication, over a long time. (That equals abhyasa - in case you didn't catch it.) They would attempt urdhva dhanurasana every day, a minimum of 3 times, even though I know it must have felt so frustrating to NEVER get their heads off the floor). And then - finally - the seeds of their consistent practice sprouted - and up they lifted. That was a highlight of my week - and believe me - of theirs too. (By the way - Thine is about 65 - and it never occurred to that a woman her age need not be fiddling around with full back-bend. Go Thine!).
I had a nice long talk with Sundari. I can't wait to see her in person next week. We have been friends since the very early days of Anusara. We first met while studying with John at Inner Harmony Retreat center in - I believe - '98. I love her.
Sundari and I sketched out our plan for co-teaching the therapeutic workshop. I have not co-taught with anyone since I lived in Boise. There I did a ton of co-teaching in our school of Chinese Medicine and Asian Bodywork. But it's been 10 years since I left Boise and that was a different subject matter. True confession: I am nervous. I am slated to co-teach with 3 senior teachers this summer and I keep dipping into doubting that I will have anything useful to offer to the effort. (I'll probably start having "work dreams" like my old restaurant dreams - when I used to wait tables - in which I would, for example, dream that I had left an 8 top waiting for 4 hours while trying to find matching socks). But, anyway, I contained my neurosis and Sundari and I had a great planning session on the phone. I think I'm pretty well untangled from my self-doubt cramp for now. We'll see if it holds. I may need WD-40. Do you know you can untangle even hopelessly tangled necklaces with WD-40?
Both days of the workshop with Sundari are completely full with a waiting list.
The Summer schedule really begins in earnest 2 days after Sundari leaves when we begin the 100 hour teacher training. Week I of that adventure begins June 16. Great people are coming from Canada, Montana, Oregon and locally. I've worked with almost all of them before - with a couple of exceptions. It will be a great reunion and I can't wait to meet the new people.
I have 3 main pots on the stove for the up and coming year.....Slow Cook, Medium Heat and Pressure Cook.
The Pressure Cook actually begins this summer with the 3 separate week-long Teacher trainings, the third of which I'll co-teach with my friend Christina. (I'll keep my WD-40 handy). I am really looking forward to that. Just like Sundari, Christina and I have been friends since the very early days of Anusara and first met while studying with John at Inner harmony Retreat center in '98. And I love her.
In terms of Slow Cook and Medium Heat, I've planned some new things for the Autumn:

Slow Cook: I've decided to offer an Immersion in a weekly or semi-weekly format - a couple hours each time. This will probably be on Tuesday afternoons before the Level III class - because there are several people in that class who have been coming for almost 10 years and who have wanted to take an Immersion but can't really do weekends or week-longs. For the most part they never intend to teach Yoga. This won't be an official Anusara Immersion. Maybe I'll have to go back to calling it what I called my first ever, in-depth study, 108 hour program in 2003: "Beauty School".

More Slow Cook: I will be offering a Teaching Refinement class - - again in a semi-weekly format - a couple hours each time. I am REALLY excited about this. We can take things slow - a bit at a time - slow cook style.....and refine everything about our teaching - things like effective sequencing, excellent phrases, clean cuing, use of voice and language, and all the rest. This will be open by application to teachers who are actively teaching yoga. Stay tuned.......this is going to be so good.
Medium Heat: This category is going to be filled by the Official Anusara Immersion that begins in September. It is already nearly full. I'm excited about it. It runs on Saturdays and the enrollment is such great people.......I'm really sitting here smiling as I think of that group of students. We are going to have a very good year of study together.

OK - one more really great thing about this week. The people in the Advanced Studies program are doing some excellent study of the book Self Observation by Red Hawk, who is a fellow student of my spiritual teacher. It s a great -a really great - book. This book is an invaluable tool for the purpose of strengthening attention. But - like all great tools - its an easy one to marvel at but never pick up and get proficient with. The advanced studies group do have a shared (not open to the public) blog, where they post the results of their study and contemplation. It is excellent - a marvel of depth and understanding. And to take it even deeper I decided to set up study groups. This week they started meeting via conference call. Wow! The response was fantastic. This is a serious group of students who really know how to look into things. I showed up on the calls and just sat in the background to listen and marvel. Lucky me. So - that was something new this week that made me just as happy as Jen and Thine achieving their first unassisted urdhva dhanurasana.

If you read this far - one more big joy of the week was that after being too busy all spring, I finally logged on to Michael Clarke's Blog. Michale (Mic) is an Australian friend, an Anusara Yoga practitioner and he is another fellow student of my spiritual teacher - Lee. So - as I said - I checked out his blog. OMG! (Do they say that In Australia I wonder? My Irish friend used to say JMJ.) Mic's blog is so excellent. I told him I didn't know if I should thank him or not, because now I will have to add the reading of his blog to the list of things I must do. And even worse - I think I may develop blog envy.....and need more WD-40. Thanks a lot Mic! Anyway - I need to add a blog role to this blog of mine - I've been meaning to do that for quite awhile now - but for the moment I will just paste his address here. Enjoy. http://vimalablue.wordpress.com/

You don't know what you don't know

2010-06-02T12:26:00.000-07:00

Everything is Consciousness - Caitanyam Atma - (Shiva Sutra 1.1) Or - like it said in my catechism when I was a kid - "Everything is God and God is Everywhere".

But - in the midst of the Absolute - foaming up out of it - the relative arises. The relative is hierarchical and full of difference. To whit:

Yesterday I had great talks with 2 Yoga teacher friends. Both are senior and certified practitioners and long-time teachers. Both are really rooted in their practice and study.

One of my friends is a devotional type.....a Bhakti for sure, whose core practice is chanting and Puja.This friend is almost 70, has a solid asana practice and does not have any attitude that I've ever heard her express that her path is the best way. It's just her path. Her age is a big factor in this inclusive perspective. She has grown into it.

My other friend is really insistent about asana and has a slightly militaristic tone about it - like we should all be warriors of asana. This friend is 39. It's an over-simplification, but for the sake of this post I'll say that her path is more the path of action or karma yoga.

(I am a pretty even mix of Karma and Bhakti. I love the devotional practices and chanting and so on - and I always have. And I am also a very physical type and always have been....in asana and in my work as a body worker, and in my propensity for movement (hiking, biking, swimming, etc). My weaker link is in the intellectual study - the path of Jnana Yoga. And consequently it is no surprise that I have signed on for such a long haul of study with Paul Muller Ortega. That has been a deep dive into my mind for sure. Just what I need to strengthen where I'm weak).

Anyway - given my orientation as "body-woman" (my family teases me with that title) it kind of surprised me to realize that I had begun to feel annoyed with the fundamentalist tone of my "adamant-about-asana" friend. I've told her so. And I'll tell her again. We have that kind of honesty in our friendship.

Age is part of the point I'm making in this post. This friend of mine who is 39 has a central practice of and passion for Asana. And that is fine. I get that. I respect that. But it seems to me that she has gotten a little fundamentalist - like EVERY Yoga practitioner who is worth their salt (or sweat) should be doing lots of it, with great vigor and fire and frequency, if they are really on the path.

Well......OK. I do think we go to sleep in our bodies. And just working our comfort zone in our asana practice is a way of forgetting. Not having a "map" that we can access for our inner body, or back body, or subtle body (not to mention our musculo-skeletal body) is a form of sleep. An asana practice that takes one to one's edge - out of one's comfort zone - is important and is a way of self-remembrance. I agree. I just think my friend loses sight of the fact that it is not the only way or the best way. It is the best way for her for now and it will change over the years in ways hat she can't really know ahead of time.

I remember Raobert Svoboda saying that the "big" asana poses in hatha Yoga can be a distraction. Can be....that's a key phrase. He didn't say they are a big distraction. It depends....on things like age and so on.

Which leads me to another point. We don't know what we don't know. When I was 40 or so I think I must have sounded a lot like my friend and nobody could tell me different. "Body Woman knows best!" But now I am in my mid-50's and although I do have a strong asana practice, I no longer have the same perspective and orientation to asana. It is different - and it is still a source of animation and awakening.

So - still I know that I don't know what I don't know. It hope for the great good fortune of a long life - because of the simple fact that getting old will teach me a lot of that which I can't know until I get there. (I remember thinking I could & did know. I remember counseling a client in my Chinese Medicine and body work practice to do something that I assured her would only take 10 minutes a day. She looked at me sharply and said, " My dear, you have NO IDEA how many
10- minute things we old people are counseled to do in any given day." )

Everything is Consciousness - All way lead to God - in the end. Judging from my Yogini friend in her late 60's and from wise elders I know or have known, it seems that as life goes along we grow into a more inclusive perspective. On the way to that perspective is a proliferation of difference - the relative world in all it's colors and flavors, full of difference.

I like the following story of difference in the yoga-myth world:

Gorakshanatha – founder of Hatha Yoga – came to Karnataka, a state in India that is home to deep devotional practices of chanting. Gorakshana had attained the Vajra power (or siddhi) of diamond body through his long practice of Hatha and Alchemy. He was adamant about the practice of hatha Yoga and not surpsisingly he had an adamantine body to go with his adamant perspective.
Gorakshanatha challenged the leader of Karnatika – Bhasavanna -(a Bhakta or devotional Yogi) to a contest.
Bhasavanna was given he first "turn". He struck Gorakshana with a sword and nothing happened. Then it was Gorakshana’s turn. Gorakshana’s sword went right through the Bhasavanna – and also nothing happened. Bhasavanna body had been transmuted to pure consciousness– through the power of devotion.

Home

2010-05-26T10:41:00.000-07:00

We have a lot going on here this week. On Sunday night we got back from State track meet in Boise. I spent the day on Monday prepping for the Advanced Immersion on Saturday as well as taking care of household and business. On Tuesday Chris' mother arrived from L.A. Yesterday we spent time with my mom and dad at the nursing home and went from there to an auditorium to celebrate the other end of life as Leo graduated from High School. Today is business and teaching. This afternoon I also have a study call with my AKM group - (Denise, Rainey, Jim and Ruthie) - so I have to get myself organized to have something useful and coherent to contribute to that as it probably would not be appreciated is I just showed up on the call to report that I'm anxious. Tomorrow will be full of more prepping for teaching all day Saturday. Sunday we will host a celebration here at the house for the "family at large" ( my side of the family - aunts, uncles, cousins, etc.)

I'd been feeling a mounting anxiety, partly from some work related drama that came up last week (mostly my own reaction to the drama of course) and and also from everything going on this week. It really is BIG to have my youngest graduating and I was trying to ignore that - not feel it too sharply. And also there's just some "too-busy" anxiety coming up as there's just so dang much going on in one week.

Contemplating all of this, something has started to come together for me - an new understanding about Kidney Loop and Shoulder Loop and what it is that joins the two at the level of the heart focal point, which is also the the level of the diaphragm and the bottom of the Heart chakra.

In the Yoga Asana world you can see a lot of BIG shoulder loop in backbending postures, and not so much kidney loop. (I admit that this has begun to change as the Yoga asana world evolves and gets smarter). In the Pilates world, where I am a happy guest from time to time, there's tremendous integrity in the region of the Kidney loop (transverse abdominus, etc) and not much radiant, heart-opened shoulder loop to be seen. (I don't know if this is changing since I'm not a native of the Pilates world).

There is something that makes these two loops split - go their separate ways. The backbendy types go the way of shoulder loop. The core strength types go the way of kidney loop. I've been prepping to teach these two loops in conjunction with some in-depth study of the breath and pranayama. The deeper I've gotten into the prep, and with everything going on with work and home and family, the more anxiety has come up. At first I thought it was because I was paying too much attention to breath - which is supposed to be largely automatic - and was putting myself into an anxiety pattern. But I'm thinking now that I have been bringing so much attention to the split between the two loops that I've feeling the truth of that split more acutely - and it is a split that by its very nature creates anxiety, on a physical level as it relates to the breath, and on a mental- emotional level as it relates to an inability to find home.

The Heart spirit - in Chinese Medicine - is called shen - and is pictured as a bird. Shen must be able rest in the substance of the body. The rest is meant to happen at at night during sleep but also during any cycle of breath. The exhale is a resting of shen into the nest of the Kidney's essence, and the substance of the back body and kidney loop.

Sometimes - really quite often I'm beginning to see - the Heart - Kidney connection is weakened or broken. This happens for various reasons such as burn-out, etc. But a more intrinsic reason for this split is the root contraction - mala - that Yoga philosophy locates at the level of the heart focal point. It is called the anava mala and is a major forgetting of our intrinsic connection to Love. We begin to feel that we are truly going to be left behind. Shen forgets her way home and begins to rise in a spiral of fear and panic, unable to rest.

What does this look like in a person? Well, for one thing there will most likely be a deficiency of exhale. The diaphragm gets "stuck", the inhale is dominant and accompanied by tension and gripping in the upper shoulders, neck and jaw....as the breath lifts up too much and does not get to nest down with each exhale.

On a mental emotional level there's a tendency to not trust oneself and to look outward - sometimes with obsessive compulsion - to find some sort of nest or "home" of validation and affirmation. The bird of the heart is trying to connect with someone else's nest since she can't find her own.

So - the theme of the week has been "finding home" - really knowing where home is. Locating that - That - at the bottom of the Heart. We've been working with Breath, Pranayama and gentle backbends. And exhaling all the nonsense and anxiety like a bird nesting into what's Real.

Light

2010-05-24T14:29:00.000-07:00

Hey - Long time no write.

I have been deep into things here: teaching; studio; my own studies and practices; steadily focusing on the Advanced Immersion; supporting Leo's stellar (Yep - stellar!) track season and his graduation........you get the picture.

So many people have asked me why I didn't go to the Certified Teacher Gathering this year. Some seemed shocked, like I had missed going to a mandatory church function. Well....it is true - this is the first certified teacher gathering I have ever missed since gatherings began in 2001. So I suppose I owe an explanation.

Part of my explanation is in the first paragraph of this post......the fullness of life at the local level. And believe me - the local level is where it's at for me----it's what is Real. It's what is sacred for me.

I really think that a Light is turning up its heat and intensity, and this is happening all over the place - including in Anusara. Light brings with it heat (tapas), purification and clarification. I see Light blazing through the institution of Anusara at the same time that I see that Anusara is itself a source of Light. The Light that moves through and cleans house is not to be confused with the mess and darkness that is being illuminated and cleared. It's an important thing to keep in mind. Don't throw out the baby with the bath water might be another way of saying this. The Light that is Anusara is going to continue to shine into every dark corner. And that's awkward. But that's what we are all committed to.

So - prior to the gathering - I did a lot of contemplation and looking within - really asking myself what would be in best alignment regarding attending the gathering or not. I came to a completely clear knowing that for me - this year -it would be in better service to Light to stay home.
I am steady in my commitment to the Light that is Anusura . Nothing has changed there. It's a brilliant method and I love practicing and teaching it.

Resistance

2010-05-09T20:20:00.000-07:00

Lately I've been studying the Yoga Sutras.....again.....some more. This has been an unexpected turn of events in my Yogic studies.

The Yoga Sutras are Classical / Sankhya philosophy but for the last decade or so, I've been immersed in the Yogic philosophy of tantra that, while it grew out of classical roots, is not Classical / Sankhya. I guess I had unconsciously concluded that I was more or less done studying the Yoga Sutras. Wrong. Paul Muller Ortega is really pushing us to study this text again - deeper - with a keener application of our minds. He says this academic and intellectual application is necessary preparation for deeper sadhana (practice) as well as deeper study into our "home" philosophy of tantra.

OK......I'm a pretty good student. So - today I went for a bike ride with a recorded teaching from Paul on the Yoga Sutras playing in my ear. But I was having quite a bit of resistance. I did not want to study the Yoga Sutras again. I guess I wanted something new! (Yep - embarrassing to admit). So I was biking on this glorious spring day, full of resistance. Peddling my bike was SO HARD. I kept thinking "Wow, I am either older than I thought or weaker than I thought or really out of shape or all 3".

I struggled through the study call and the bike ride. When I was almost back home I realized that my tires were a fairly flat.......low on air. I had not even thought to check. (Yep - embarrassing to admit). And how perfect is that? I mean what a perfect reflection of my mind - which had gone so flat around this amazing text that I hadn't even really noticed the amazing gift that had been plopped into my lap: having a brilliant teacher re-illuminate the Yoga Sutras, making them really new and far more alive than ever before.

My legs are sore. But/And I'm excited for my next bike ride as well as my next dive into studying the Yoga Sutras. Both will be so much easier and more fun, now that I understand the source and the mechanics of the resistance that was at work.....flat tires, flat mind.

Who was it that said, "Never underestimate the power of resistance". Maybe I said it. Anyway, I agree.

One Month Later

2010-04-20T16:46:00.000-07:00

Hello Again!
Last post was March 24 - almost exactly one month ago. A quick update:

My mother stabilized. My sisters and brother and father all encouraged me to go on my scheduled study and practice retreat. So I did - with a promise from them that they would tell me the truth - so that I could return "on a dime" if things took a sharp turn for the worse.But Mom stayed stable.
Beginning March 25, I spent 5 days with Paul Muller Ortega. We did a ton of in-depth study and practice, which included contemplation, asana, pranayama and meditation. The "study" part of things was us listening to brilliant wisdom pour out of Paul. It was a great 5 days. My Anusara friends - Denise and Rainey - were were there. Double bonus.
Next, I spent 3 days on my own. Wow - no schedule! - I wandered and walked and practiced and wrote.
Eli and Emmanuelle (who had arrived in the States, from India, on March 24) picked me up and we drove south together to see our teacher, Lee Lozowick, and the sangha. I spent 5 more days there. My Anusara friend - Christina - was there. Another bonus. We all did a fair bit of work (seva) and also listened to excellent talks by senior students. It was so good.
I flew home. Eli and Emmanuelle drove home. Once we all got home we proceeded to eat a lot of really good food every night. It was a celebration - having Emmanuelle here. The entire family is in love with her. She flew home on April 13 - Eli drove her to Seattle to catch her flight. Sad for all of us - but obviously saddest for Eli and Emmanuelle. They have 5 months before they see each other again.
And then it was back "not so much feasting" for the rest of us. Which is good - my clothes are too tight.
On April 16 - last Friday - I took the Advanced Immersion Group up to N-Sid-Sen retreat center. We had one of the best retreats ever in the history of the Universe. I am not kidding. Even the weather cooperated. It was magnificent! Every single member of that group is so bright - radiant.....The synergy was over the top.
Sunday - the last day of the retreat - was my birthday. So a little more feasting was in order. When I got home that evening from the retreat, Chris had cooked up a wonderful Indian feast.
OK - Now I mean it! It is back to "not so much feasting."

Up in the Air - Or Not

2010-03-24T12:11:00.000-07:00

Today is Wednesday and I'm getting ready to go out of town - or not. My mom's health is in a critical place - or not. And so my travel plans are up in the air. I may be be up in the air - on a flight to Phoenix tomorrow morning - or not.

I had scheduled to spend Thursday through Monday midday on a yoga study and meditation retreat with Paul Muller Ortega. Then spend Monday through Thursday midday on my own personal writing retreat. After which I would spend Thursday through Monday with my teacher Lee Lozowick - for the April celebration.

But now I am waiting until the last minute to decide if I will go at all. And if I do go I may just go for the first 5 days. So I simultaneously packing for O days (easy)- or 5 days (add Yoga and Meditation "gear")- or 8 days (add Laptop)- or 12 days (add work clothes, celebration-type clothes, sleeping bag and pillow).

Believe me - I get it how unbelievably fortunate I am to even have this dilemma!

What was starting to make me crazy and anxious was the unkonwn-ness of everything. But now I am pretty calm.....just trying to be present with the current situation. I will either be on a plane or not. I am feeling just fine about not going anywhere at all but the thing is, it is really hard to tell which way things are going to go. Mom is definitely not well- she has been in the hospital about 10 days with pneumonia. But the minute we think it's really dire, she rallies. And the minute she rallies, and we think she's out of the woods, she tanks. It's just a more vivid version of the picture that has been Mom and Dad's reality for the last 3 years since Mom's stroke.

So - I'll be "out of office" - or not.

Food & Practice

2010-03-12T11:17:00.000-08:00

Today I've been working on preparing some teaching notes from Robert Svoboda's book Prakritti (all about diet and nutrition and Yogic lifestyle choices). I've also been working with notes I took at Robert Svoboda's workshop in November - pulling together some teaching notes for the meeting of the Advanced immersion next week.

In addition, this week I heard from a couple of students about a sort of re-activation of old eating issues and eating disorders that came about from reading the Prakritti book. I really get that!

So - while I've been preparing the teaching notes I've been contemplating things like the issues that come up around food and eating, the syndrome of being "Yogier than Thou," and the phenomenon of compare and despair.

Here is a quote from Robert Svoboda: "All of us use food to affect our consciousness; most of us though prefer to perpetuate all our old idiosyncrasies and personality traits instead of improving them with a diet balanced according to individual constitution. We live in a fast world in which many of us try to run faster than the world forces us to. Once a person invests so much in his personality he feels he can no longer afford to change it, he will search for crutches to hep maintain his pace......"

All of the above has been percolating at the back of my mind. And up out of that percolating pot of contemplation arose the clear knowing that the best and surest and most reliable guiding light for reading information about Yogic Lifestyle and Ayurveda and "How to Eat" is to continually put the details of "what" and "how" and "how much" and "how often" on the back burner of your good kitchen stove. And on the front burner put the most important thing - practice. Steady practice will guide you into greater subtlety and greater subtlety is where you can make clear lifestyle choices that will support even greater subtlety and steadier practice.

Like Paul Muller Ortega says : More advanced is always more subtle.

But, as Robert Svoboda says: "Subtlety has gone out of fashion". We are kind of addicted to strong sensation - and coffee and spicy food and maximum intensity work-outs. Maybe people should opt instead for daily practice - really - daily asana and meditation. But I get it that until you can actually taste the subtle effect of daily practice - it's just boring - and you search around for something spicier. Once you catch that taste, it's all you want.

It is subtlety that saves us and ultimately informs us as to whether to eat meat or milk or honey or ghee or persimmons or nothing-ever-at-all or the whole-tamale-all-the-time. And the ONLY way to move into greater subtlety is through steady practice over time with devotion (abhayasa).

In high-school and part of college I was a walking eating disorder. This was the case in spite of the fact that I knew everything about diet and exercise. None of it saved me from myself. I found Yoga - or Yoga found me - and it began a sort of contest with the eating craziness. Yoga slowly pulled ahead. Through practice - gradually but inevitability - I was able to more consistently slide all the information about shoulds and shouldn'ts to the back of the stove and move PRACTICE to the front. The information became a servant to the practice - like mind in service to heart.

I continued to learn and study and know more everything than ever before about food and body. But it's like the garnish to the main course now - which is the subtle information I get from practice.

Capacity

2010-03-08T20:01:00.000-08:00

It's Monday night. I worked at home today. I did a nice long practice. And I spent a lot of time on the computer.

It's funny how my tolerance to and capacity for computer time has increased. I don't really notice it anymore. But I remember the first time I spent several hours in front of my computer screen. It was a few years ago. After spending that unprecedented length of time in front of the screen - probably 3 or 4 hours - I had a reaction. My eyes got bloodshot and I developed a bright red ring of inflamed skin around both eyes. I looked like a raccoon from hell. That would have been bad enough but on top of it I had to show up at the Anusura Certified teacher gathering the next day. I arrived at that event feeling acutely self-conscious and kept my eyes averted at all times.....wishing I had a burkah. I am sure I must have had a melt-down at some point during the week of the gathering - which probably did not do much to improve my evil-raccoon eyes..

This past week was intense. A few people near and dear to me had big melt-downs -- for good reasons. And at the end of the week my dad called my sister to report that he'd either had a stroke or pneumonia or both. She wanted to take him to the hospital but he said he was fine to drive since he figured he'd had the stroke for a few days already. No- he is not demented. He is stubborn. Sheesh! But in spite of that stubbornness and exhaustion and the anxiety he always has about my mother, there is something that stays steady and sweet about him. I think that it is the result of a life of practice -(he has always been steady and devoted in his faith and unwavering in his practice of prayer).

It turns out that he has acute bronchitis. I am not sure where the stroke fits in - but he doesn't "have one". One thing he does have is exhaustion. He has been the primary caretaker of my mom (who did have a stroke 3 years ago). And he is TIRED. And he will not complain or ask for help or even accept help. I think his wise old body had to generate something big - like a Pneumonia-Stroke - so that Dad would have to take a half-day off and spend it in the emergency ward.

In spite of Dad's pneumonia-stroke, and the truly hard circumstances of those near and dear ones I mentioned, everything else insisted on moving along as usual. On Saturday our advanced studies program met. We had another excellent day together. We spent time looking into Yoga history and philosophy and the Shiva Sutras. And of course we spent time practicing. Probably not enough. I'll have to get in more anatomy and therapeutics and asana next time.

These 15 students are all strong practitioners and strong students. They really exemplify the ideal of "bright mind, vibrant body and soft heart". They have a lot of capacity.....I mean the kind of capacity that comes from steady practice over a long period of time, with devotion (abhyasa).

My dad is a long-term practitioner (not of Yoga but of Catholicism) and an electrical engineer. From him I learned about capacity - both literally and metaphorically. When a system has greater capacity, more current can travel through the system without causing a short or a meltdown or overheating. More current = more light. (Something like that). Long term practitioners show that greater capacity.

Last week I met another long term practitioner - (again, not of Yoga but of Catholicism). Sister Celeste. She was amazing.......like clear light that does not waver. Chris and I both felt such presence and light coming from her even though the circumstances were very mundane. It was, for me, an inspiration to practice. I imagine that her life of prayer and devotion served to "amp up" her capacity so much that simply being around her is a blessing. Similar to being around my dad.

Way leads onto Way...

2010-03-01T14:02:00.000-08:00

This weekend I got lucky and had two great phone-connections with two of my favorite non-local Anusara friends, women I have known since "Inner Harmony"days when we studied together with John Friend. (Long time ago!)

On Saturday night I had a great conversation with Christina and on Sunday afternoon another good conversation with Sundari.

New ideas began to percolate among and between us - some of them involving offering therapeutic trainings that are a combination of bio-mechanical and energetic anatomy (specifically - Chinese Medicine). Well! I am jazzed. I used to teach Asian Style Body work and all the imagery and information about the energetic meridians and elements and all of that is so dear to my heart. I just didn't know if I would be called on to teach it again this lifetime!

Sundari and I scheduled ourselves to teach a day-long together in June. And I will offer a similar focus - weaving Chinese Medicine and meridian perspectives with therapeutics - when I teach with Noah in July. Christina and I are teaching together in August and several times again next year. All this collaboration is new for me -- I feel lucky and honored and happy.

It is cool for me to watch how this sort of thing comes into being. It's not so much that we get a "Big Idea" - it's more like we are available for an idea to arise. Or maybe (like Robert Frost said) "way leads onto way". Inspiration and "new ideas" arise "like the force that drives green shoots to break the winter ground" (China Galland). Inspiration arises from among us, if we let it.

All You Need to Know is the Next Step

2010-02-25T09:36:00.000-08:00

This week I have been dancing with anxiety. There is so much on the horizon for my spring and summer. Maybe it is because Spring and all it is bringing is not yet here but only looming, that I've gotten anxious about it. Anxiety is always about the future and the way the mind stretches towards it.

Nothing of what is on the horizon is bad stuff. Mostly it's good or "just life". There are some big expenses coming up - things like wisdom teeth and paying tuition for the studies Chris and I have committed to and paying for the Certified Teacher Gathering and paying out for travel support for the boys (We are buying them tickets on the Trans-Siberian Railway from London to China and then connecting lines from there to India!).

And on the other end of the energy flow is the work commitments I've made - (teaching - writing - business)- that i will be making good on. All of that will take lots of time and energy and sustained whole-heartedness.

I understand that my constitution is primarily pitta (the fire constitution in Ayurveda) Pitta types like to manage energy - to move it. And that is what I will be doing this Spring and Summer.....moving a lot of work energy - from me doing the work - turning it into energy as money - to me moving that energy back out in the form of payments. What could make a pitta person happier!

So why the anxiety? It is not my typical pattern. I've always been either naive or brave or both - and just said "Yes" and leaped. But for some reason, this week, I decided to worry.

I understand that as we get older the air element (vata) increases and we are more prone to worry. I definitely see this in my wonderful worry-wart of a dad. The Mind is vata - and no surprise: it's my mind that has been doing the worrying - even if the results get transferred to body and heart.

I do find that I can settle the internal winds (vata) of anxiety and worry by staying in my body, putting my mind into the service of my Heart, and getting to work. And to remind myself, I made a check list:

Keep saying YES
Do your work
All you need to know is the next step

Stay in my body. Stay in my heart. Say Yes. And I especially like that last one......All I need to know is the next step.

This and That and my Mala

2010-02-15T16:29:00.000-08:00

This morning, every sentient being in the household slept late. That would be Chris, me, Eli, Leo, Felix (Leo's friend) and Rasa (the cat). When we finally woke up Chris and Eli and I spent a nice slow time drinking coffee and talking. Leo and Felix had to go to basketball practice and Rasa went back to sleep.

I spent some time practicing Yoga, then Chris and I walked Tubbs Hill. It was so mild and beautiful. We found a quiet spot and sat a while to meditate. That was pretty blissful.

After the walk we stopped at the store to pick up what we need for dinner - which is going to be veggies prima vera and linguine and salad and polenta.

When we got home we both got straight to work - on our computers that is. I got a lot done. I finally scheduled out the Immersion that is starting next September and running on Saturdays. I was able to send the dates out to some really awesome students who have been waiting for that information. Then I wrangled with some other scheduling details. It's hard to schedule in 2011 because I don't have all the info I need - like for example - when will the Certified Teacher's Gathering be? But I did make some headway. Next I have to schedule some "continuing ed" for people who have been requesting that. I know I'll teach a therapy training. I'd like to find a guest teacher to come and teach Sanskrit. That would be so awesome.

As part of my scheduling project, I have been in touch with Noah Maze' as we had some sketchy plans on the calendar. We firmed things up and part of the planning included that we decided to teach together - here - in July. I tried to make that happen in tandem the July segment of the teacher training. I squeezed hard on that calendar - Ugh! But in the end it wouldn't squish and I had to let it go. So we will co-teach a day at Garden Street on Friday July 16, prior to the Weekend Workshop. We'll do some sort of teacher training or therapy or some other specialized focus. It will be great. It is really so much fun for me to think of co-teaching with friends like Noah and Christina who I like and respect so much. It will bring in a whole new freshness for me as well as for everyone who has been listening to me go on and on and on for years and years and years!

Before I started writing this post, I was about to go into the kitchen to start the dinner prep. But then I remembered I had not yet written today. I have this commitment to meditate, practice asana and write, every day. I love doing all 3 and I generally do all three anyway, but it is interesting (and disturbing) how the tyranny of urgency can squeeze love out of a day. My work schedule regularly gets very bossy and threatens to squeeze the "Big 3" out of my day. So a couple of weeks ago I made a commitment to Meditate, do Asana and Write every day for 108 days. It's my mala* commitment.

*A mala is a strand of 108 rudraksha beads, used for prayer or mantra. It's similar to a rosary. In fact, it is the historical origin of the rosary.

Spring Loaded Heart

2010-02-11T15:21:00.000-08:00

Out of the damp darkness of Winter, Spring is arising with muscular vigor, and a "force that drives green shoots to break the winter ground."

In Chinese Medicine, Spring is the season of Green and of the Wood Element. The Wood element is a vigorous and muscular "will to become". Like a healthy tree, the wood energy roots down and rises up and out in all directions.

This bright muscular energy draws in to create a boundary, a chamber, and then in one continuous stream of energetic intelligence, the muscular boundary of the chamber inner spirals to spring-load a bud of pure potential. There's not much form yet and the Universal is poised to spring into manifestation.

In Chinese Medicine, Summer is the season correlated with the color Red, the Fire element and the Heart. The Fire element is an abundant expression of Heart. When summer's Heart and the Fire element arrive, the spring-loaded green bud spirals outward with great generosity and opens into a blossom.

Continuing as a stream of energetic intelligence, the Outer Spiral opens and expands radically as Organic Energy, as blossom and fragrance and fruit and finally a seed that will once again root down and rise up.

This is happening at every - EVERY - level of reality. Universal Energy dances with intelligence and bliss as it draws in muscularly, enfolds into an inner spiral, then spirals out and expands past the bounds of it's former edge.

Universal Unbounded Consciousness is not involved in a zero sum game but is dancing an expanding spiral of Divine Evolution whether in the petals of a flower, a a circling eagle flight, a fetus in the womb, the milky way, or the center of my own heart where the sacred pulses and enfolds and unfolds in me - as me.

Green Wood

2010-02-09T09:37:00.000-08:00

Even though it's February, the energy of Spring is definitely here. In Chinese Medicine the season of Spring is correlated with the Wood element - (think "trees" here) - and with the energetic channels correlated with the Liver and Gall Bladder. The correlated color for the Wood energy is
Green.

Wood energy is so expansive, When not cloaked or obstructed, it is pure generosity. Its bright green energy moves with an expansive force from seed to root to shoot to blossom to fruit. It roots down with vigor and rises up and out in all directions.

In our bodies, the wood energy really gets moving in the spring - like sap rising. I feel this even if I have not been outside or seen a single green bud, even if there's still snow on the ground. I feel it in my body - my own little conscious piece of the planet - sometimes as tight neck or maybe as an unreasonable irritability (because wood, the "will to become" - when obstructed, generates heat and irritability which, ultimately, can be a force which pushes through obstruction. Sometimes though, it just blows off in useless or harmful forms of aggression, for example road rage.

When Wood energy starts rising it often has to push up against accumulation from the winter of hibernation - like extra weight for example. Chinese medicine calls it ama and Ayurveda calls it phlegm. (Sounds nicer in Ayurveda - but it's the same gunk). This obstruction through which Spring energy must push is like the dead debris and compacted earth in your garden in Spring. Bright Green pushes up through Dark Damp. Chinese Medicine says this season is Yang within Yin - bright, warm and vigorous growth pushing up from within dark, cold and damp hibernation.

So it is no surprise that we have urges to Spring clean and to embark on cleansing programs in the spring. It's a perfect expression of alignment with nature - even if on a conscious level you just want to drop some pounds.

Working with Anusara principles - the Spring energy and Spring Cleaning works this way

Make Space - (Open to Grace)
Compress (Muscular Energy)
Twist (Organic Energy)

And then do it again some more!

Also - and this is really cool - Inner Spiral and Outer spiral of the lower body dynamically open and animate the Liver and Gall Bladder Channels. Those 2 spirals follow the meridians and, if you fully engage them you will feel them open not only the external meridians (on the inner and outer legs - but also you will feel an opening up through the hips and trunk, as the action of the spirals open the internal channels also. This is exciting. Trust me.

This week I'll go green........teach detox-asana - lots of twists.

Garden Street Journal

YES

Doing the 108

Almost a Rant

The Generosity of the Sun

Sanctuary

Roots

11.11.11

Praying for Alignment

Paying Attention and Being Aligned

On the Other Side of the Wormhole

Svatantria II

Svatantria

Garudasana

Diving in to the Middle

Casting About

Shoulders - or "Please Don't Squeeze the Rhomboids"

Jaya Ganesha. Jaya Jesus. Jai Guru.

Morning Practice

dharma and svadharma

Life is Right in Any Case

Clear Light

HIgh Winds

Inner Body Bright

Gotta Want It

Super Moon

Wildflower garden complexity of love

Just Stay

Work and work

Awake Kula

The Tirtha Greyhound Station

Dear Bloggoddess.....

Open to Weird Grace

Making Ghee

"We have to practice, because suffering must blossom into bliss,and limitation must explode into unboundednessand we must drink of the Ecstatic Serenity." ~~ Paul Muller-Ortega

Christmas Day

Darshan

sanskrit and gossip and refinement

Just Stay

Virabhadrasana I

VHMG

Residue-or-"Nostalgia is Death"

Great Beginnings

Effortlessness and "Kicking Ass"

Genius

Almost September

p.s.

The Disembodied Discourse of Popular Culture

10,000 Hours and the Corridor of Madness

End of the Middle

Bubble Wrap

Through the Knothole

Day 2

Day One of Part I

Water Spigot

Sundari and "Ready, Set....."

Assessor form Hell - or - Lucy Lightfield from Athol Idaho

Happy Bullets & WD-40

You don't know what you don't know

Home

Light

Resistance

One Month Later

Up in the Air - Or Not

Food & Practice

Capacity

Way leads onto Way...

All You Need to Know is the Next Step

This and That and my Mala

Spring Loaded Heart

Green Wood

"We have to practice, because suffering must blossom into bliss,
and limitation must explode into unboundedness
and we must drink of the Ecstatic Serenity." ~~ Paul Muller-Ortega