July 2010
22 posts
“Gratitude reminds us that there is no other side. This is it right now. The grass is greener where you water it. So water this moment with your love and appreciation. You will be amazed at the results. You will grow a whole garden of inner peace.”
—Soulseeds » Blog Archive » Gratitude- The Grass is Green Where you Water it
“When you feel dis-ease (anger, jealousy, annoyance, etc.), stop and acknowledge the feeling without writing a script about it. Then keep your attention on the constriction and breathe into it. Just being with the feeling until it dissipates with your breath creates space to choose differently.”
—Eight Tips for Finding Your Syncrodestiny | Crazy Sexy Life
“Highlighting what’s working helps you make that happen more often. Perfect is overrated. Perfect doesn’t scale, either.”
—Seth’s Blog: Is everything perfect?
Silent day
At the ashram where I got my yoga teacher certificate, one could elect to be in silence the whole day. Since my roommates and my partner are out of town today, here is my chance! To do this, I’ve decided that typing and emailing doesn’t count, since both are still inner experiences—I’m not interacting with anyone, just writing my thoughts down for myself and other people.
Minimalist Yoga: How to Learn the Basics and Do Yoga Independently for Free « Far Beyond The Stars | Live a Minimalist Lifestyle and Work from Anywhere →
farbeyondthestars.com
Everett Bogue tells you to just do a few basic poses for your home yoga practice. This is a great sequence for when you want to do something minimalist. Come to my classes when you want something creative and kickass:
Click each of these poses for pop-up images showing you the pose.
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Child’s pose. This is one of the most basic poses. Return to this pose if you ever feel overwhelmed and just breathe. It’s done by sitting on your heels with your forehead on the mat. Put your arms either in front of you or by your feet. Start your practice in child’s pose, and just notice your breathing for 15 minutes.
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Flow. This is the fundamental sequence in Vinyasa yoga. I’m cheating a little, as this is a series of poses that you can use to ‘reset’ yourself after every harder pose. The sequence goes like this: start in plank pose, lower to ground by bending your arms, cobra, downward dog. Do a flow between any other pose that you attempt, this will reset your body between difficult poses.
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Mountain pose. This one is easy, you do it a lot. Stand up straight, with your legs about two-fists distance apart. Reach your arms overhead with your palms facing together. Try to relax your shoulders. Now glance at the ceiling, bend forward to touch your toes and then step back into plank and ‘flow’. Repeat this 3 times or so to get your blood flowing.
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Chair pose. This is like sitting in a chair. You can enter this pose from either a toe-touching position or from mountain pose. With your arms over your head, lower your butt so that you’re sitting in an imaginary chair. Your weight should be in your heels, your butt is tucked. This pose is kind of hard, so only stay in it for 30 seconds or so. Relax and touch your toes. Flow. Repeat 3 times or until you feel like you’re going to fall over.
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Warrior 1 + warrior 2. From a downward dog, take your right leg and put it between your hands with your foot facing forward. You will be in a lung with your left foot pointing towards the side of your mat. Reach your arms over your head. This is warrior 1. Stay here for a bit, and then reach your right arm forward and your left arm back. This is warrior 2. Stay here for a bit, then put your arms on the ground, put your right leg back. Flow. Repeat on the other side.
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Shoulder stand and plow. Lying on your back, roll your feet over your head, position your arms under your lower back and reach your feet towards the sky. Ideally you should stay in this for 15 minutes, but do it as long as you feel comfortable. Then move into a plow — relax your feet over your head, take your hands and claps them behind your back if possible. Don’t flow after this baby, just skip to the next pose.
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Corpse pose. This is the last pose you do in any yoga sequence. It is done by simply lying on your back, with your legs slightly apart and your arms a few inches from your body with palms facing up. Close your eyes and rest for 15 minutes or so. The point of this pose is to completely relax your body after a strenuous workout. It is the hardest pose of all, because you must learn to relax completely.
“Unlike everyone else living at the Home for the Aged in Massachusetts, Mr. Cohen was spry and totally alert for his 87 years. As a third- year medical student with much living (and learning) ahead of me, I couldn’t understand why he was staying in this place, which, well appointed as it was, still remained a last holding unit for people who were waiting to die. I asked Mr. Cohen why he lived at the home when he was clearly doing so well. He looked at me with a patient, knowing look and explained: “Two floors below us is my wife, Emma. Three years ago, she developed Alzheimer’s disease and then had a stroke on top of that. On the very best of days, which don’t occur that often, I think she might recognize me. At all other times, she’s lost.” He went on to tell me to me that Emma and he had fled the Russian revolution together, and that more than a few occasions she had saved his life. The couple made their way to America, started a tailoring business and raised a wonderful family. “I tell my family not to visit as much as they’d like,” he said, “because I want them to make sure they enjoy their families now and because their mom and I are doing fine.” Each day, he would wake up, go downstairs to his wife’s room, bathe her, replace the diaper she now needed, put her into a sun dress, braid her hair, have breakfast with her and then read his newspapers and books as he sat beside her. I didn’t get it. Why was he doing this with a woman who couldn’t even recognize him? “This poor man must be eaten up with guilt,” I thought. I suggested, presumptuously, that Mr. Cohen’s guilt would not help his wife. The old man looked at me with an amused sparkle in his eyes and shook his head at my stupidity. “You really don’t understand, do you? This is where I want to be. Maybe someday you will understand.” It’s been 35 years since my visit with Mr. Cohen and I think I do finally understand. Instead of guilt, he felt joy in the presence of someone he had loved and been loved by for 60 years. It is difficult to change from a human doing to a human being, but as I observed first hand from people who died having it all, but who felt as if they had nothing and others who had very little, but felt they had it all, it’s probably something worth the effort. One of the best ways to bring out the human being in you is to “Just Listen.”
—Mark Goulston, M.D.: Why Many High Achievers Feel Unfulfilled: The Syndrome of Disavowed Yearning
Relaxed people 'heal twice as quickly' - Telegraph →
telegraph.co.uk
More reason to do more yoga: “Laid-back people can heal up to twice as rapidly as those who are very stressed, research indicates.”
“In my village school, we children used the English word “love” rather casually, making statements like “I love this book!” Our teacher, who was particular about grammar and usage, would always correct us: “People are to be loved. Things are to be used.” Tragically, we have got it backwards today.”
—Untying Our Wings | The Way of Non-Attachment
“When I take the certain routes to awakeness, through the portals of breathing, laughter, stillness, spontaneity; when I exercise the courage to not fill up space with empty conversation, with the tube, with busyness, it’s not my pain that I most often meet in such presence — it’s my power. When I override my senses, refuse to bend, when I check my email just one more time before I make time for me, when I eat even though I’m full, when I hold myself back from a bursting expression of “I LOVE YOU SO MUCH!” because I don’t want to be too much, it’s not my pain that I’m avoiding — it’s my very life force.”
—escaping? from what? your pain? or your power? | White Hot Truth: because self-realization rocks.
Experimenting with challenging asanas
This is how I approach challenging asanas—as an experiment to see what is hard and what is easy for me in them, just as Marianne Elliott experiments with overwhelm:
This morning I decided that making this ‘fullness’ into an experiment is brilliant. It means that I don’t feel bad if I fall over. If I get overwhelmed, I can just raise one eyebrow and say:
“Hmmm. Interesting, so if I try to all of this and I don’t do that for a few days, I fall over. But if I have a bath and a good sleep I find myself quite restored. Hmmm. Very Interesting Indeed.”
There is no expectation to fulfill the challenge, just see where it fits with me right now.
