This view is always there, we just do not always get to see it from our habitual place on the ground.
Sometimes people ask me how I can sometimes still feel unworthy or get depressed or be edgy with all the committed practice that I do. A friend said recently that an answer to that question might be to suggest what I might have been like if I was not doing the practices.
Dear Friends,
Happy Samhain, All Hallow’s Eve, Halloween. We are slipping into the time of year that is good for dreaming and introspection, while things get wild and windy outside. I can always tell when it is drawing to the midpoint between the Winter Solstice and the Autumn Equinox because the Christmas cactuses (which always bloom at Thanksgiving) start to bud. When I went to bring in the tropical plants because of the pre-Samhain winter storm, I saw that a few of the orchids were spiking. It is almost as much fun to watch the buds emerging and growing and taking on color as it is to see the flowers, which only last so long before the flowers must die so that energy can go back into making the whole plant healthy and ready to flower again. Inside and out, my garden invites me to a deeper appreciation of the dance of dissolution, creation, and maintenance.
It takes only modest intention, commitment, and nurture to have plants blooming through winter. Just as we can cultivate gardens indoors in winter, yoga and meditation help us cultivate inner beauty so that we are at ease with our being regardless of what storms rage and how we are impacted in space and time and material body by the storms. My solution: practice of all kinds, and this November is going to be a wonderful month for yoga..
Just as maintaining a garden in winter calls for props–containers, heat, indoor water source, etc., cultivating the fullness in our bodies, particularly if we are working with a challenge of embodiement, can benefit from the assistance of various props. I am pleased to announce that we now have lots of blocks and straps for everyone (and some tennis balls, though we could use a few more for when the class is big) at the Tuesday night all levels yoga class at William Penn House, making it an even more supportive environment for those new to yoga or with challenges of embodiment. As always, a portion of the fee from every student supports the work of William Penn House.
I will be leading the Friday night free community yoga class at Willow Street Yoga’s Silver Spring studio, which I will be teaching this coming Friday, November 4th. It is an all levels class that will include discussion of therapeutic applications of yoga alignment, and it’s a great way to bring a friend along with you to get introduced to yoga or to Willow Street.
If you are in town for Thanksgiving, please join me to support a great cause. From 10:00am-11:30am, Thanksgiving morning, I will be leading my ninth annual fundraising class to benefit Oxfam at Willow Street Yoga’s Takoma Park studio. 100% of the profits go to Oxfam. I look forward to seeing many of you, both those coming back and those joining us for the first time. Friends and family welcome, including children 12 and over.
Veteran’s Day weekend brings Todd Norian to Willow Street Yoga. On Sunday, November 13th, the focus of the workshop will be therapeutics. Todd is an incredibly loving and knowledgeable teacher, and I am planning to be there to assist. You can sign up on-line or in person at Willow Street.
I am looking forward to the weekend workshops with John Friend in College Park, MD on November 19 & 20. Both Mixed Level and Intermediate/Advanced workshops are offered. This is the first time John Friend has taught in the DC area since 2007. Apply today to join your fellow yogis. There are several of us going from the Capitol Hill neighborhood. Feel free to contact me if you are looking to carpool, and if you can either offer driving or are looking for a ride.
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Looking forward to sharing more of the yoga with you.
Peace and light,
Elizabeth
The Capitoline Venus arrived in DC last week from Rome–the first time this circa 200 CE sculpture has been out of Rome in nearly 200 years. What makes it especially beautiful is the apparent softness of flesh of the cool, carved marble, the seeming etherealness of the ancient solid stone.
Looking at the Venus made me think about how carving in stone can help us understand the concept of sruti. The hindu scriptures generally are classified as either sruti (revealed) or smriti (remembered) and until recent centuries were passed on through oral tradition. Those scriptures that are sruti are said to have been revealed by a divine source to the original listener. They were already there as part of the wholeness of the universe and then manifested to a particular enlightened being in a way that could be witnessed and passed on. The essence of the text was always already present, but not tangible, until it was revealed in the mind of a listener, who then passed it on.
Carving in marble takes both the emergence of idea and form in the mind/imagination of the artist and the revealing of that idea from the original stone by the craft of the artist. The sculptor has studied and practiced art and is always open to the emerging into consciousness of a particular image or idea, just as the great yogis continuously meditated and studied, open to what might be revealed.
As the sculptor may find the block of marble first or have the idea and then go looking for the right stone to express the idea, the yogi pulses between experiencing spirit and enhancing the experience through practice. It is not just an act of imagination that builds and creates something out of nothing. To some extent, the form of the final sculpture is already there in the stone. The work of the artist is to remove that part of the stone that is obscuring the witnessing and expression of the exquisite shape revealed from within by the educated and painstaking act of making art.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
