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Some Perspective

Thanks to my friend Dan Harper for sharing this quote from Alice Walker, along with his own cogent thoughts  This morning, when I was thinking about how to address some of my current challenges, I decided it was important for me to remember that one of the reasons I keep my job is to be able to cultivate generosity.  I went on-line and became a monthly, rather than an occasional donor, to “So Others Might Eat.”  I stayed with the emotion of how it feels as a small, middle-aged woman to walk, as I do a few times a week, past a homeless shelter on the way out of the office towards home.  I thought about what it would be like to be homeless and food insecure, especially in the unseasonable months.  I thought about how hard it is to be so many humans so crowded together.

I thought about how helpful the yoga and meditation practices have been for me to be present in the tangle of society.   Though after tonight’s class at Willow Street Yoga,  I will be teaching only one public class (the William Penn House class on Tuesday nights), I will be writing and practicing and studying and exploring.  One of the many intertwined threads leading me to limit my public teaching is to give me more time and space to pursue other creative outlets, even as I continue to deepen my explorations of the yoga and other practices and teachings.

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    on the train

    I am on Amtrak heading to the Anusara teachers’ gathering in
    Morrisville, NC. The train is surprisingly crowded and not surprisingly a whole different vibe than the train to NY.

    By day we will be practing and gathering in a hall at a Hindu temple. The grounds are reported to be beautiful and welcoming. By night, those of us who don’t have local friends will be staying at hotels off the highway with cable TV that usually serve the visitors to the big university ball games and events. We’ll then all be driving back and forth to the venue and out to eat.

    I find it of mild interest that I spend more time in cars and more time in a place with TV when I travel to study yoga than at any other time during the year.

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    Yoga Around Town

    I went to an in person yoga class today for the first time since before the pandemic started. I was alone in choosing to mask and distance—but the ventilation was good. I really enjoyed being there. In conversation after, a couple of people whom I have missed seeing quietly volunteered to me that they were fully vaccinated. I appreciated that.

    I passed this on my walk to practice.
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    The Search Continues (based on some dreaming)

    In 2000 or 2001, shortly before I started practicing Anusara yoga, a teacher who regularly played music in class, played for us a recording of Alice Coltrane singing a tantric chant to Siva and the Goddess Bhuvaneshvari.  I only heard the chant once while we were in savasana — corpse pose/final relaxation.  Although I only heard the chant once, for several months afterwards, I found myself having a recurring dream that I was wondering in a neighborhood that looked like the one where I grew up and went to high school and chanting the full chant.  At the time I merely found it curious that I seemed to have learned the sanskrit just by hearing the chant one time.  I have since learned that the recording may have been done right near my high school; that is where the Coltrane’s had a recording studio.  I also learned that the chant was a tantric chant.  At the time, my teachers were coming from a classical yoga perspective.  Did I actually learn the chant by osmosis?  Was having the very vibration of the chanting near where I lived and studied the catalyst for me, as a receptive being, discovering a path of tantric yoga?

    I have found other recordings of the chant.  One is Atman’s “Dancing to the Goddess” on the Eternal Dance CD, which is an electronica version.  The other is Ragani’s “Om Mata” on the Best of Both Worlds, which is a very nice kirtan/pop version.  I have several of Alice Coltrane’s recordings, which are great jazz, if you aren’t familiar with Alice Coltrane as a fabulous musician in her own right.  Recently I searched again on the internet to see if the bootleg had become available.  There was nothing on YouTube (though some good Alice Coltrane things to watch).    I bought Alice Coltrane’s “Radha-Krsna Mana Sankirtana,” which was originally recorded in 1977 (when I was in high school) and reissued in 2005, as I thought that was a promising source.  It has some good things on it, but no luck finding the recording I wanted to hear.

    The chant goes like this:

    Samba sadasiva, samba sadasiva, samba sadasiva, samba shambo.

    Om mata, om mata, om sri mata, jagade mata.

    Om bhuvaneshvari, sri bhuvaneshvari, hari parashakti, devi bhuvaneshvari.

    It is a chant to the benevolent, auspicious one within, the radiant goddess, the creatrix of the world.  Bhuvaneshvari is one of the ten wisdom goddesses.

    Please advise if you have access to the Alice Coltrane or another recording of this beautiful chant.

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    Healing (and the Garden)

    After sitting for meditation and writing in my journal this morning, I went out in the garden in my slippers to see what opened after yesterday’s juicy rains.  My journal-writing is feeling lonely because that was one of the times Becky (and Henrietta before her) and I always sat together.  Once I was in the garden, though, my heart lightened.  The beans and snow peas I planted a couple of weeks ago finally have started germinating.  Some of the seedlings I planted on Saturday have already doubled in size.  There are a few buds on the peppers that were not there Sunday and twice as many leaves on the basil.  The clematis seems to be a foot taller; is that possible?  (The okra still has not germinated; will it ever appear?  I do not know, not having tried okra from seed in a container in my yard before.)

    Though, as my sister said to me on Sunday, I will always miss Becky and Henrietta, I appreciate that my grieving is in the time of renewal, new life, and expanding light, and that I can spend the morning time that I used to devote to Becky and Henrietta nurturing the garden and myself in the process.

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