most of us might ask, who have the health, education, material well-being, and computer access and skills to be able to read this. “Not luck, but grace,” Paul Muller-Ortega advises that Swami Chidvilasananda would say. For this grace, practice gratitude.
When we fully recognize that what we have are gifts, then it should lead us naturally to want to use our gifts to serve and share our well-being.
This spring I decided to for the second time growing a fig in a container. It has about five figs, all of which I intend to eat before the squirrels can get them (I’ve beaten them and the birds to the three blue berries that have ripened so far; I have high hopes for the figs). I don’t think my fig in its container is suitable for sharing as “Neighborhood Fruit.” Do you have a fruit tree that has too much fruit for you? Let people know.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
Dear Friends,
A cool breeze is blowing through my window as I write, giving a foretaste of glorious fall weather to come.
Although already fully immersed in the throes of work after last week’s study trip to Oregon with John Friend, I am brimming from the teachings and comraderie. Such a trip reminds me of how crucial it is to study and connect to help bring the benefits of yoga off the mat and into my daily life.
This week is free class week at Willow Street Yoga. It is a great way to try out new classes or teachers or to bring friend who is been shy about starting or returning to yoga. I’ll be teaching both my 8:30am Level II and my noon Gentle and Therapeutics classes this Saturday, September 12th. Bring a friend and come check it out.
Looking for an extra class or one great to bring a drop in friend? Come join us for the Tuesday night class at William Penn House. All levels of practitioners welcome. Special prices for public interest workers, students, and seniors.
Wednesday night advanced/intermediate group practice proceeds are still 100% for charity. This month’s cause is “Yoga Salutes Non-violence” a yoga sun-salute practice that raises money for local domestic violence shelters. For more information, check out my friend Cheryl’s website at: http://www.heartofgraceyoga.com/YSNV.php
Upcoming Workshops: Next Saturday, September 19th is the next Serenity Saturday at Capitol Hill Yoga. Get ready for the shift into Fall with a sweet afternoon of deep relaxation and nurture. Can’t make it this month? Put October 17th and November 21st into your calendar for a great way to ease through Fall. To register, please go to: www.capitolhillyoga.com
Looking Ahead: Already trying to make your Thanksgiving plans? If you will be in town, plan to share your gratitude at the 7th Annual Thanksgiving Day fundraiser for Oxfam, which I will be leading at the Willow Street Yoga Center’s Takoma Park studio.
For more information on classes and workshops or to enjoy the blog, visit: www.rosegardenyoga.com or join me on facebook.
Peace and light,
Elizabeth
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.
This morning I went to my community garden plot around the corner before I got ready to head into Georgetown to volunteer at The Lantern Bookshop.
I ws delghted to find enough snowpeas for a good-sized stir-fry and several zucchini almost ready to be picked (I only get zucchini at the very beginning of the season before the squash borers invade, but if I start early enough, I can get a few pounts of squash and a couple of meals worth of blossoms before I surrender and plant something else).
The tomatoes were flourishing (no sign of blight. If you have your own plants, keep an eye close for blight; it’s aleady been seen in Maryland. Cherry tomatoes are more resistant, so I’ve concentrated on those).
I should have the first cucumbers big enough to pick next week, and I have plenty of lettuce.
The radishes, though, had exploded. “Should I have a radish-themed dinner party?” I thought. “What am I going to do with all of them?” I am not especially fond of radishes. I plant them because they mature very early, they thrive on benign neglect, I have friends who like them, and they give the same crunch I’d prefer from a cucumber weeks earlier.
I’ve also discovered I like them cooked. Just as you can prepare turnips and their greens together, it also works well with radishes.
As I was walking home with a bunch of radishes that I could hardly get my hands around, I bumped into a neighbor. I don’t know her well, just recognize her face. “Do you want some radishes?” I asked, hoping I did not sound like I was begging. She hesitated, but then seemed to realize that she would be doing me a great service by accepting them. “You can cook the greens,” I said as I handed her a nice-sized bunch, “and also the radishes themselves if they are too strong.”
“I’ve never done that,” she said.
Here’s the recipe I gave her on the street (with a little more detail here):
Wash radishes and their greens well. Cut radishes into thick coins (this works best with oblong radishes sich as French Breakfast). Cut off the white part of stem nearest radish. Then cut the bunch horizontally so that you have half inch wide shreds. Mince some garlic, onion, and ginger. Stir-fry aromatics in peanut, safflower, or canola oil until translucent. Add the radish coins and stir until well-coated with oil. Add greens, stirring continuously until all the greens are wilted. Add some rice wine vinegegar and cook until absorbed and the grrens are just tender. Take off heat and sprinkle with soy sauce or Bragg’s Amino Liquid and toasted sesame oil to taste.
“What a nice morning,” my neighbor said, “fresh radishes from the garden and a recipe.
