| | | |

Go Out and Take a Walk, Please

ByElizabeth

Perhaps it is too simple a remedy.  We’ve been convinced by the great advertising machine of capitalism to  want our treatments to cost something, to be something to complain about, to be an instant fix.  Wouldn’t it be better just to take a little time every day for our health and good cheer?  Here’s to taking a walk in whatever the weather (almost).

Similar Posts

  • | |

    Coming Snowstorm (and Heyam Dukham Anagatam)

    ByElizabeth

    As I think about whether I will be able to get up to Willow Street to teach my last classes of the session, how much shoveling I will need to do , whether the next forecast storm (middle of next week) might create challenges for my planned trip to NY, etc, etc, my favorite (well, in the top 10) sutra of Patanjali, sprang to mind:  heyam dukham anagatam, 2.16, which means roughly:  the pain that has yet to come can be avoided.

    I have several translations/commentaries of the Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras in my library.  All have a different spin on what this means in practice.  What I know is that it is at least partly about being in the present and taking things as they come.  One should still practice and plan.  By practicing and planning, we are better prepared for inevitable pains and challenges.  (For those of you who are giddy with excitement with the thought of a “white Christmas,” this Sutra still helps.  Part of the pain that can be avoided is disappointment when expectations are not realized the way we hoped they would be realized.)  Once we have prepared in a healthy way, though, there is no point in agonizing about what might come, in being in pain in the present because of the possibility (or even inevitability) of a future pain.

    The snow seems inevitable.  I am charging my camera battery.  I’m picking what is probably the last of the chard and the baby leeks from the garden, and I am getting ready for Serenity Saturday restoratives.  As long as I can walk to the studio — eight inches is just plain fun, not impassable — I’ll be there with a warm and full offering.  In the meantime, I am enjoying my day instead of worrying about the potential barriers to enjoyment.

  • | | | | |

    Chanting the Names/Listening to the Silence

    ByElizabeth

    Krishna Das reminding his listeners the reasons he practices and offers kirtan scrolled across my Facebook feed last week with this quote:

    “My path is to be in the living Presence; We have to find a way inside us, we have to find a way to open our hearts, to quiet our minds, to let go our fears and our selfishness, our guilt and our anger and jealousy; Everything is already present in our own hearts; By repeating these Names over and over, we are moving ourselves into that place in us; the Heart in us is deeper than any emotion or psychological issues; I don’t know if there is God, I know there is Love – Unconditional Love and I know I like to be in that love, and that maybe God; all you have to do is look, and chanting remembers us to look.”

    I am in a space right now where chanting is serving me to help remember the good, despite all that is going on that doesn’t feel particularly good or hopeful.  I don’t believe in “God” as an actual being (though I can no more disprove the actuality than anyone has been able to prove it), and history certainly proves the power of the idea of such a mystical being.

    Regardless of whether the very real ideas of God(s) represents an actual being, it has been my beautiful experience–studying with Krishna Das and others over the years–that engaging in practices that turn our hearts towards love and universality helps us be sweet living in relationship to ourselves, to others, and to the ecological fabric of the whole of embodied existence.  I chant because calling out the names in their universal multiplicity is a recognition, not dissimilar to what I have found offered in the silent collective worship of Quakers, that everyone has their own individual access to and ideas of the sublime, of the divine, of what brings them to feel a fullness of love.

  • | | | | |

    A Walk in the Woods

    ByElizabeth

    It is good to get outside as often as possible.  Though I spend most of my time in the city, by commuting and doing many of my errands on foot and by gardening I spend a good amount of time outside (perhaps even more than people who commute by car and then drive to “nature” to go hiking), attuning with weather and the seasons.  Like my friend Reya, I think it is important to spend time outside nearly every day.  Though I do not leave the city much, I know the weather and the seasons fr0m my walking around and through the neighborhood to work and to shop and in the green urban spaces that are so precious.

    Do you have a favorite green spot near you if you live in the city or the suburbs?  Do you give energy to support and share green spaces?

    Bronx River, New York Botanical Gardens

One Comment

  1. Walking can be: Exercise
    Transportation
    Entertainment
    A form of Meditation

    And, in the right company, an act of Love.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.