At the Rubin Museum (which graciously does not forbid photos). I regard that as a desire to have visitors expand the invitation. It is one of my favorite places to go in N), especially when I only have a few hours before heading back home.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
When I was coming downstairs in my building today, I overheard someone say to her colleague, “she said it wasn’t yoga; it was a core workout.”
I didn’t hear anything else. I wonder whether it was the teacher, a student, or an observer who was the “she” being quoted. I wonder what the person I heard speaking and what the person she quoted meant by yoga.
As for the “core workout,”I’m pretty sure, based on the location of the conversation–stairwell in a Federal office building–that by “core workout” it meant a class in the gym focused on toning and strengthening abdominal muscles.
In contemplating this snippet of conversation, I decided that yoga is the best core workout I know, if by core we mean center or essential–the very heart of being. What is yoga other than practicing and applying certain techniques to try and better live and act from the core of our being? Toned abs, if we get them, are just a bonus.
The more I know that
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
Last night when I arrived to teach, I found that the room where I teach had been booked with something else (mistakes happen) and the alternative offered by the space just was not viable. I was peeved, but just canceling class did not feel right for the space (which has treated me well), my students, or myself.
Instead, I waited until class time, gathering the students together and giving the options. Fortunately, class was small because it is summer. Two students agreed to drive us to my house, which is usually a walk, but one already had her car with her on her way home from work; and the other had hers just a couple of blocks away at her house. All the students, including two brand new students who came along for the adventure, arrived at my house less than 10 minutes after the usual class start time. To honor everyone for being so flexible, I turned the class into a donation class, with the proceeds going towards July’s cause: the ACLU.
This turn of events seemed to me to fit well with the message of the Shiva archetype Nilakantha, which just happened to be the name of Shiva that I have been contemplating this week as I have been preparing my classes.
Shiva drank the poison that was stirred up when others were searching for the nectar of immortality. In the quest for the unrealistic, these beings brought to the surface a poison that would have killed all humans. Shiva drank this poison and trapped it in his throat, which turned it blue. This gave him the name blue-throated, or nila-kantha.
The challenge I encountered yesterday was certainly one of the well-off middle class. If it were not for our lifestyle, the abrupt change of plans and disruption could not have even felt poisonous, but we are creatures of our place and time. We took the potential chaos from having been stirred up and instead of letting it ruin our evening, we made it into a celebration and an offering.
And I am working with the space not to have it happen again. Many thanks to the students who came and were so gracious.
During one of the sessions at the workshop last weekend in New Jersey, John Friend made a passing reference to the difference between receiving and taking. He did not go into any detail because it was not central to the theme of the class, but it led me to contemplate on my own about the difference between taking and giving in the context of yoga practice. In so doing, I thought about the concept of prasad — which is food that has been blessed and is offered to those who have participated in worship (puja).
When offered prasad, one does not take it. Instead, the cupped palm is turned up to receive the prasad. The recipient does not get to pick through the basket and choose which sweet looks the biggest or the tastiest, but simply receives with gratitude the sweet or fruit that is infused with the intention of spirit. The active part is the showing up with openness and receptivity to the offering, the blessing, the nourishment being offered.
Coming to yoga class or doing our own practice (asana or meditation) should be, I think, like preparing to receive prasad. What is primary in the practice of Anusara yoga is being open to grace, but we can no more force openings or enlightenment (grace and insight always elude grasping), than forcing any particular physical posture or goal really yoga practice. The point of effort in yoga to improve and expand alignment and knowledge is to enable the practitioner to receive more fully all the potential gifts and grace of practice, and then in turn make fuller and more complete offerings to others.
Below: offerings at the Chelsea Farmers’ Market
After over a decade of using “rose garden yoga,” I have designed and had printed (on 100% recycled card stock of course) cards for my yoga offering.
By the way, the position of the fingers might look like a peace sign (and it is), but with the fingers pointed down, into the earth, the fingers are in bhu mudra–signifying both the earth element and the earth it/her/theyself.
