Santa Fe and Home

ByElizabeth

I just came back from a wonderful week in Santa Fe, studying therapeutics with John Friend.  It was most wonderful to be among friends with a shared passion for nurturing and healing through yoga, all of whom are deeply committed to continuing intense study. It was also delightful to be in a beautiful place, away from the cares of the day to day.

Although I have many friends from around the country I have met on previous study trips, I found that I spent the most time outside of class with fellow teachers from Willow Street.  It was not because I know them best and it was expedient for me as a person who is by nature introverted to stick with people I know better, but rather because when we are home, we all are fully engaged in our daily lives and do not have much time to see each other.  That we need to go away together to be free to see people close to us is a mindset that I am working to shift.  If I have time to go away for a week, then I should be able to make time to see someone for lunch or tea.  How do we make this shift?  Part of it is just a conscious recognition that we need each day to pause and reflect, to make time to connect to our own spirit and to our home community.  Living this way will not diminish the joy of going away, but it will make us more grounded and rested at home, while we are working.  We will work better, be happier on a day to day basis, and be better able to serve.  Yes, this is another aspect of enriching life by simplifying.

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    On Seeing

    ByElizabeth

    When I paused to photograph this marker on a DC sidewalk yesterday, I wondered how many hundreds of people have walked past it–once or hundreds of times–without noticing it at all. I connected this sense of acute awareness with a conversation I had with Douglas Brooks in India, in which he said to me that he guaranteed that at that moment he was seeing more than I was seeing. He had experienced the place before, studied it extensively and intensively, and was still open to seeing. I did not take offense and none was meant. I am one who notices, but it is a given that study and experience, if one retains an openness to new understanding, maximizes the opportunity to witness.

    Paul Muller-Ortega describes the expanding ability to see and understand in terms of the essential interrelationship between jnana and vijnana–book knowledge and experiential knowledge. One without the other does not permit for complete understanding. The two together, with ever-expanding and present openness is what leads to wisdom.

    Thus, though I am one who tends to notice much of what is in my field of vision, I could not, on my first visit, possibly have seen as much in the immediate landscape as one who has devoted much of his life both to studying and experiencing it.

    Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

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    April Greetings–Delving into the Essential (Web Version of E-Newsletter)

    ByElizabeth

    Dear Friends,

    It has been a mind-boggling several weeks.  The magnitude of the upheavals and the impact on all of the world, including human beings, is beyond my ability to grasp.  Closer up than the unfolding devastation in Japan and the escalating war in Libya, which daily adds to the bankrupting of this country and planet by our wars, I found myself supporting committed organizations, signing petitions, and writing emails saying that I preferred to be locked out of my work place with no pay than to have taken away any existing protection of the environment or provision health care for low income women.  As my mind tries to expand enough to stay present and active, I am more grateful every day to have and share the practice of yoga.

    Practicing helps us minimize suffering by changing how we relate to pain and the full range of human emotion.  The goal, I think, is to fully and joyously engage in life with an intention to live as harmoniously as possible with all beings, including our individual selves, and simultaneously appreciate and be wonderstruck at the extraordinary and wild vastness of being that makes the time and space of the known universe seem finite relative to life (lives) on earth.  When we can find both perspectives simultaneously, then we can be engaged, but not attached (vairagya).

    How do we focus this intention to live fully and harmoniously in this way?    In the past six weeks, I have had the unbelievably fortuitous combination of circumstances to be able to study with John Friend for three days; to attend the Mahasivaratri celebration with Douglas Brooks, Krishna Das, John Friend, Amy Ippoliti, and Sianna Sherman; Ross Rayburn for a weekend workshop at Willow Street;; Desiree Rumbaugh at a special three-hour practice the following week at Willow Street; and Paul Muller-Ortega via telephone conference.

    Wow, that was a whole lot of input for my practice and contemplation, while living itself was getting more intense.  But, it turned out not to be too much because of the singularity of the teachings.  The message I heard from all of these teachers in their own unique and inspiring voices was that is is a good time to get down to get back to basics, or to put it another way, to explore more deeply the essential principles of practice (and of life).  By getting back to the basics in the practice, we can start knowing at a deeper level what is essential for us to relate as deeply and joyously and non-harmingly (yes, I know it isn’t a word, but I’d like it if it were) on and off the mat to ourselves and all in our web of relationship.

    In both my practice and my public class offerings, this Spring, I am especially focused on exploring what is essential to experience life at its most joyous while still be conscious and committed to the need for effort to change.  In addition to continuing my regular class offerings, I am pleased to be offering a short course in restorative yoga at Willow Street, “Cultivating Relaxation with Restorative Yoga.”

    Restorative yoga is perfect whether you are looking for a gentler way to get started with yoga, an opportunity to relax, or alternative practices for when you are feeling stiff or in pain, or a way for advanced practitioners to explore the alignment principles at the subtlest levels. We will explore a variety of types of supported postures and prop-assisted stretches to enable you to relax into optimal alignment, discover your own space of deep rest and peacefulness, and open your body. The course will also offer simple techniques to ease into sleep, find mini-relaxation moments when things are hectic, and sweeten your home practice–what could be of better service these days?  Everybody welcome. 6 Thursdays, 4/21-5/26.

    To get news in between the occasional email offerings or to see my latest short thoughts, please “like” my new “Rose Garden Yoga” page on Facebook.

    I look forward to seeing you in person soon.  As always, please feel comfortable being in touch by comment on the blog or by email.
    Peace and light,

    Elizabeth

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    Track Work on the Red Line

    ByElizabeth

    I am writing this post as I sit on the Metro platform at Takoma, waiting for a train back to Union Station. There were already dozens of people waiting when I got here. I have been here for ten minutes or so, and there is no time posted on the board yet for the next train.

    Some people are talking on their phones or socializing with each other. Some are pacing back and forth. Some look resigned. Some are going into tirades about the problems with Metro. Some are reading and have made themselves more or less at home where they are.

    I sit cross-legged, basking in the sun, blogging for now, and if time permits also in my journal. I could be angry or impatient or annoyed, but it would not get me home any sooner. So I just find enjoyment of the waiting time with the materials at hand.

    Although there are circumstances where physical pain or suffering cannot be avoided, yoga can help us find a greater sense of equanimity when we are challenged. As John Friend reminded us this week in a different context, “in a large part, it will be seen that the suffering is optional.”

    I now approach Union Station. Perhaps when I get home I will supplement this post with appropriate citations to Patanjali. Or maybe I will play with the cats and pick some grrens from the garden for dinner.

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    Yoga of Eating Part I (what it is and what it isn’t)

    ByElizabeth

    Yesterday, a former student of mine stopped me in the hallway at Willow Street and asked whether the “Yoga of Eating” workshop I will be leading on June 13th  will cover Ayurveda.  “I will mention it,” I said, “but I will not be teaching it.”  I didn’t have time to explain further because I was about to lead class.  As far as I got was to add that I was not sufficiently trained to teach it.

    Ayurveda is a wonderful science, and I honor and respect my yoga friends and colleagues who study, practice, and teach Ayurvedic principles.  Ayurveda is a much broader discipline than yoga, though, and is really medical practice rather than yoga.  Asana are among the practices that might be recommended by an Ayurvedic practitioner for a client or patient, but eating in accordance with the Ayurvedic principles is not the same as bringing yoga to how we eat.  For me, many of the principles of Ayurveda I have read or been taught are useful, but it has not resonated for me as a governing system, just as I do not believe in applying all of the principles of Western medicine to how I heal and nourish my body.

    Bringing yoga to my eating, like bringing yoga to all of my life off the mat,  is both simpler and harder than being taught a science such as Ayurveda with fairly clear, but quite complex, do’s and don’ts and then following them.  For me, practicing the yoga of eating, is practicing conscious eating.  It is practicing reverance and moderation.  It is balancing nourishment and pleasure.  It is knowing deeply when the will to eat is serving us or getting in our way.  It is both simple and subtle.  It is easy to say, but deeply challenging and sometime complicated to practice — just like practicing the Anusara yoga principles of alignment.

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