Gardening, Cleaning, Cooking (and Vinyasa Krama and Kali)
Vinyasa krama is the art of sequencing. How a yoga practice or flow is sequenced can determine whether it is uplifting or inward going, exhilarating or calming. When we are trained and attentive, we start to know the most optimal order to open our bodies and our focus to align with the time of day, the season, the weather, our mood, and our health. This incredible art helps us be positioned and aligned in a way that we feel free in time and space, rather than being constrained by time and space.
This morning while I was out in the garden, I was thinking a lot about vinyasa krama and the goddess Kali — goddess of, among other things, time and change, and thus, of sequencing. I woke very early, brought to consciousness by the long light of the solstice even through closed curtains. As I went about my morning, rinsing the sprouts while heating the water for my morning coffee; cutting back the greens and herbs before starting breakfast; doing the major pruning and clean-up before doing more decorative garden work; finishing cooking before taking out the recycling; applying a facial mask before starting to vacuum; never walking up or down the stairs empty-handed; waiting to gather the bills until after I was clean and waiting for friends to arrive, etc., I realized how important sequencing is to the richness of my days. By knowing the best way to order tasks for my needs, my day is simultaneously productive, unhurried, and enjoyable.
By the time my friends arrived around noon, I had meditated, taken care of the garden, gathered food for my own breakfast and to share with friends, talked to neighbors, cleaned the house and myself, done a little asana, written in my journal, and sorted the mail. Had I not known from long experience and conscious attention how to sequence all the different elements, knowing which ones went together, which took longest, which ones if done earlier or later would create double clean up, etc, I would have been tired and the tasks unfinished. Instead, after brunch, I came home to a tended garden, a freshly made bed, and time to enjoy a quiet evening.
These sequencing principles also apply for me on major projects at work. If ordered one way, the work is exponentially harder, the deadline a fearsome thing; if ordered another way, everything comes together mostly as it should when it should. When I order my work with attention (this assumes others cooperate with this endeavor), I have time to do a good, careful job and still take breaks, eat well, and leave the office in time to take or teach yoga class.
Whether you are doing your home yoga practice or cooking or working, choose to sequence the elements of your practice, your activities, or your day, with attentiveness, reverence, love, and respect, and Kali will support you and not show you her most fearsome face.
A number of years ago, when he was moving from Capitol Hill to Denver, my friend and former neighbor Robert gave me this dendrobium orchid, which bloomed this year for me for the first time. The dendrobium was just an extra. If you know orchids, you can see that it is planted with a vanda. These orchids came from Robert’s mother’s garden in Florida. When she had to give up her place in Florida, Robert brought home some of the orchids, including the vanda. If I know Robert, he just saw a baby dendrobium in the garden and stuck it in with the vanda when he carried it back north to Capitol Hill. When Robert moved to Colorado, he left the vanda with me because he did not expect it to tolerate the Colorado climate. Even here, the vanda is not likely to bloom. Not enough heat, light, or humidity in DC (really!!!). But after five or six years of steady care, the dendrobium flourished and finally bloomed. Robert inspired my affection for orchids; he had a greenhouse and knew each one of his tropical plants intimately. We would go to an orchid show or nursery, and he would look with love on each and every plant, cherishing their individual traits, no matter how small or large. At the botanical gardens, he had different plants he visited and enjoyed. Now his yard has cactii and peppers. He has a few of his most faithful orchids, which are flourishing and which were delightful to visit, and I have this lovely reminder of a time when Robert was one of my local gardening buddies. This, I think is one of the extra joys of gardening, especially with houseplants that come from cuttings. They have a history with our family and friends that is passed on, cherished, and shared. I also have a night-blooming cereus that was a baby from a plant that started as a baby of one in his mother’s garden. The night mine first bloomed (just a single night in the year), the parent plant with Robert in Denver also bloomed.