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    Cicada Watch

    ByElizabeth

    Here’s some useful, along with some merely anecdotal and highly subjective discussion on the impending arrival of more cicadas than usual.  I don’t remember them being overwhelming in 2004, but vividly remember being astonished by them 17 years earlier than that–more cicadas than I ever dreamed possible.  A Jain would have had much trouble walking down the street for worry about stepping on one (or dozens).

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    Street Closings/Nuclear Summit (and perspective)

    ByElizabeth

    On Friday, we received an email from the Office of Personnel Management that strongly suggested federal workers be given permission to take annual leave (foregoing the opportunity to take vacation on another day during the year) or telework due to the number of street and metro closings for the nuclear summit. I will be walking into work today and am hoping I won’t have any detours.  Although some of the entrances to my building are closed, my usual entrance is supposed to be open.

    What happens when we have one of these events that fills DC with the world’s potentates, is that residents tend to forget the purpose of the event and what power for good or ill the event can have because we get caught up in its interference with our ability to go about our daily work and life.  I am trying to focus on the import of why the streets are being closed — it is hard to think of a world issue that is as important as global nuclear disarmament — and not the inconvenience.

  • How I Injured My Wrist (a Reminder)

    ByElizabeth

    About a month ago, I strained the top of my hand near my wrist as I was moving from uttanasana–standing forward fold to adho mukha svanasana–downward facing dog. I was certain that I had placed my hand properly. I always place fingerpads down first and then ground my metacarpals, with the emphasis on the index finger metacarpal. My fingers were evenly spaced. It felt like perhaps I had jammed the bones or slightly dislocated them–the wrist/hand version of a sacrum “going out.”

    My initial reaction was to work harder, but it was not feeling any better. I resorted to resting for a few days and then concentrating on forearm balance instead of handstand.

    When I was at the weekend workshop in New Jersey last month, one of my friends suggested that I was working too hard. That was definitely on the right track. Once my hand was in place, though, what felt best was to work very strongly. During the first intermediate/advanced workshop, I was fortunate enough to be able to spend a few minutes with John Friend, who gave me an adjustment that rearranged the bones. This cleared most of the pain, but my hand was still extra sensitive.

    I found myself placing leaving my hands soft and placing them with great delicacy. Before going into weight-bearing I added the actions of clawing the fingerpads and drawing the thumb and index finger together, while making sure my metacarpals were firmly rooted. No pain.

    I went through this sequence of events with my Wednesday night group practice students yesterday. I showed them the difference between engaging strongly as the starting point of the hand alignment and sweetly touching, immediately followed by full engagement.

    “What principle of alignment had I been leaving out?” I asked. Without hesitation, they chorused in unison, “opening to grace.” Exactly right. Sometimes practicing the Anusara principle of “opening to grace” is subtle, but it always comes first and, in my experience over the past decade of study and practice, is always essential to have the most life-expanding and holistic of practices.

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

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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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