Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Community and Family | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Photos
Yoga?
I wish you all a day in which you recognize and celebrate inner and outer abundance. Show your body how grateful you are for taking you around in this life-time with a few minutes of self massage (and share with your friends and family).
First, take care of your feet–those of you who are regulars know the routine (sorry no pictures). Then, with reverence and gratitude for the practices, the earth for supporting you, and what and who brought you to the mat, come into balasana (child’s pose).
In balasana — you can also do this sitting in a chair at a desk or table; just put your head down the way you did in elementary school — leaving your elbows and forehead resting on the floor or table, bend your elbows so that you can massage your upper back, neck, and head without having to use the muscles you are massaging to massage them.
Try squeezing the back of your neck.
Or finding some spots that would benefit from giving gentle pressure and motion.
Massaging the scalp usually feels good.
When you are done with the self-massage in child’s pose, come up to vertical to sit on your heels. Then dig your fingers into your hair or the scalp and squeeze. This will help get energy flowing and brighten your day. (Be careful: doing this too frequently might give you big hair.)
What more is there to a full existence?
One of the things I am enjoying about studying in depth with Paul Muller-Ortega is permission to invest in new books for my library. I already had on my book shelves a number of the suggested books for supplementing our practices and studies, but there are a number of new ones I am excited to read.
I was taught by my philosophy professors to read at least three translations of a philosophy text side by side unless you can read the text in the original language. Alas, I cannot read Sanskrit, so I have, therefore, multiple translations of the seminal yoga texts, including the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali. The translation of the Yoga Sutras on which I have relied the most, is BKS Iyengar’s Light on the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, in part because his approach is clear, and I can tell why he translated certain words the way he did.
At Paul Muller-Ortega’s suggestion, I just started reading Edwin Bryant’s translation, which includes translations of the key commentaries, which is a fantastic resource and opportunity for new contemplation. I can tell that it is going to be an important part of my library.
