Similar Posts

  • | | |

    Historic Anniversary and Yogic Discernment

    ByElizabeth

    January 6 is yet another day so historic it warrants reflection and impetus to action on every anniversary. (That might be resting, by the way, if you spend much of your temporal, energetic, and emotional resources in the efforts to make change and ward off evil.)

    One of the yoga practices is exercising discrimination and acting with discernment (viveka) in response to changes in the world, the human collective, and ourselves. Discernment requires learning and admitting to the difficult truths and learning from experts and innovators.

    Meditation, contemplation, reflection, and being present to oneself is all very nice, but without study and discriminative participation in the collective, it starts being more like spiritual bypassing than not.

    What are your thoughts on this day? How does staying present to the reality of it make you feel? How are you balancing taking care of yourself and participating in shifting the narrative?

    It seems somewhat fitting that DC has been crippled today by the first significant snow storm in quite some time.

  • | | | |

    Hot Day (and aligning with it instead if fighting it)

    ByElizabeth

    It astonishes me how much time is spent complaining that it is hot. It is July, and I live south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Much of what gives rise to the complaints has to do with trying to dress in accordance with traditional office dress, being active according to some preconceived exercise routine, and wanting to eat heavy food from a diet based on habit rather than season.

    Yes. It is hot, and being hot can be uncomfortable, especially if we try to fight it.

    If we wear loose, light clothing, exercise less vigorously and only in the morning or after the heat of the day has waned, and eat lightly of the fruits of the season, then we can experience less discomfort. We also then can better open to the delights of the heat–stretchier muscles, a call to stillness, and chilled watermelon are a few things that make summer a joy for me.

  • | |

    What is Beauty? (and “Ankle Loop”)

    ByElizabeth

    When I was meditating this morning, the last lines of Keats’ ‘Ode on A Grecian Urn’ welled up in my thoughts: “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, — that is all/ Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.”  How odd, I thought, for this to appear, as if out of nowhere.  I have been contemplating this week on what it means to be refined, but not in the way of an aesthete.  Rather, as I have been concentrating on the Anusara alignment principle of “ankle loop,” I have been thinking about how deepening our practice with repeated exploration and study we are able to refine our understanding and the flow of energy within us so that we can be more connected to ourselves and each other.

    As I understand the essential structure of the Anusara principles, the “loops” are really tertiary principles.  The primary principles are those of “attitude, alignment, and action,” which are the principles of how we practice.  The secondary principles are the fundamental physical and energetic principles — “opening to grace, muscular energy, inner/expanding spiral, outer/contracting spiral, organic energy.”  The loops serve to refine the secondary principles.  Ankle loop, for example, which starts at the base of the shin bone, travels down the back of the heel and then back up through the arch, energizes the foot, lifts the arch, supports our stance and helps us focus muscular energy.  When we are feeling challenged finding as much muscular energy in our feet and legs as would be optimal for a full expression of the pose, we can use ankle loop to refine our understanding and practice of muscular energy in the legs.  Keeping in mind the primary principles of practice, though, the refinements should also always lead us towards the heart and not just get us into details.  Getting more sophisticated and refined, likewise should not lead us to disdain for that which is unrefined.

    Funny, then, that the aesthete’s call to beauty should arise in my meditation while I have been consciously thinking about refinement.  What does it mean to appreciate and study refinements, but still honor and delight in a novice’s full expression of “attitude, alignment, and action” as much as an impeccably aligned and skillful pose that does not reveal a yearning for spirit?  Beauty may be truth, and truth beauty, but what is “beauty?”

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.