My friend Reya, who is an extraordinary healer and massage therapist, one of my teachers, and, like me, is one who enjoys walking around the neighborhood observing, thinking, and taking photos, has just started a new blog with her thoughts on healing. It is sure to be mind-expanding.
Dear Friends,
I hope this email finds you as well as possible under your personal circumstances. Here, up front, are the details for the Thanksgiving Day fundraiser. A longer story follows, if you want to scroll down and read it. I hope many of you who will be in town can make it, and I wish all the healthiest, most joyous, delicious, and abundant holiday you can have:
Thanksgiving Day, Thursday, November 28, 2013. 11th Annual Thanksgiving Day Fundraiser for Oxfam.
Location: William Penn House, 515 East Capitol Street, SE, Washington, DC 20003.
Time: 10:00 a.m.-11:15 a.m.
Yoga Details:
Benefit for Oxfam: Suggested donation $20. As in most of the previous years I have offered this class, I will collect checks made out directly to Oxfam, America (preferred over cash); even better, you could make an on-line donation before the class. I will then forward 100 percent of the proceeds to Oxfam, America. I also will match any individual donations over $20 up to $200. As always, the amount is suggested; what is within your means is a sufficient amount.
No Advance Registration. Just show up at the door. Though I enjoy the spontaneity of teaching whoever appears, the more the advance knowledge of who and how many plan to attend, the better I can design the class to suit more of your needs and desires, so I welcome your letting me know by replying to this email, sending me a private message, or by liking and then commenting on the Rose Garden Yoga page on Facebook.
This is the 11th year for this yoga practice. The first time I offered this practice, I was mostly through the year-long teacher training then at Willow Street Yoga and teaching at a studio on the Hill that has long since moved and reconfigured itself. My initial intention was to remind myself (and anyone else who wanted to share and listen) that one of the most effective ways to kindle appreciate for the abundance in one’s own life is to commit an act of generosity (even if one that is relatively modest and also provides benefits to the giver).
These are, for so many I know and for countless more I only read about in the news, challenging and unrestful or even unimaginably painful times. I am thankful that my resources are sufficiently abundant that I can draw on the practices and work and community and creative pursuits of various sorts (including here cooking and gardening, though perhaps those would go under practices, too) to find my soul, to reconnect with my inner strength, and remember how much good I have in my life.
Being able to share the yoga with friends old and new with a shared intention to be generous to ourselves and others and make our thanks giving that much more nurturing and powerful a holy day certainly is on my gratitude list for this holiday season. Come join us at William Penn House on Thanksgiving morning or for the regular Tuesday night practice (100% of student donations go to benefit the work camp program run by William Penn House). If the current limits of time, space, or circumstance make not possible sharing the yoga face to face, do please still be in touch.
Peace and light,
Elizabeth
I’m thinking that for karma to work well with “no matter what,” there better be some flexibility in “doing it right,” though not necessarily in doing it rightly.
I went down to the White House and joined a prayer vigil for ceasefire and disarmament in the Middle East led by the Franciscan Action Network. Another group was beginning a march on front of the World Bank, pointing out the conflation of oil and gas dependence, continued bombing, and ecocide. Such action is bhakti (spiritual devotion), not empty prayers combined with a niceness that passively allows the status quo.
How are you living your faith?
This article about manners and eating with ones hands gave me a big smile. One of my friends who went on the second India pilgrimage wrote on Facebook right after she returned home that she missed wearing a sari and eating thali meals already. How wonderful the variety of experience on these journeys. Personally, I found the sari cumbersome and binding and not worth the prettiness of the fabric and the compliments (more thoughts on sari-wearing perhaps to come). I was thrilled to get back into my regular clothes (though I was happy enough in salwar kameez). Dal , kitcheree (spiced lentils and rice porridge), and vegetarian/vegan curries have long been a staple part of my diet, so I am already getting the rice and lentils, and the south Indian thali meal is almost completely devoid of vegetables. I was happy enough to get back to my own diet, including Indian-style food of my own preparation.
I am missing, though, being able to be in company and eat with my hands (or hand singular would be more accurate as it is horribly rude in India to eat with your left hand) and getting the chance to walk barefoot outside every day. Though you might not be able to do it everywhere, I highly recommend eating some of your food with your hands and walking without your shoes for some time every day to enhance your sense of touch and your motility.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
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Thank you for the link!