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Savasana
When I first started teaching, one of the things I found most inspiring was seeing my students in savasana. It is such a rare and precious things to see a group of people deeply relaxed, especially for someone who came to yoga essentially restless and who inhabits a workplace that is, so to speak, rather caffeinated. For me, the practice of savasana has been transforming. After 10 years of steady practice, my sleep has deepened and become more consistently restful, which has enhanced my ability to come from a yogic place off the mat.
Savasana is in some sense for me always the so-called “pinnacle pose” of practice. The pinnacle pose is not necessarily the most physically challenging pose in terms of combined strength and flexibility, although it is an essential component of the sequencing of any good practice to have the poses gradually open all the parts of the body needed to do the most physically challenging pose.
When thinking about any practice and determining whether a cooling or heating, expanding or inward-going, playful or serious practice would be most appropriate, I ask whether the practice will lead to a place where is will be possible to be completely free and relaxed for 10-15 minutes? Will the practice enable the body feel open and released, strengthened and supported, integrated and aligned, so that lying on a hard floor will seem like being on the finest bedding? Will the focus of the practice help simultaneously free the mind of thought and burden and yet keep it focused and alert so that body and mind can surrender to the full, blissful of conscious being in the moment? Will the practice serve to align the koshas (or sheaths) so that the outer body is soft and relaxed, the energy body full and bright, and the mind and intuitive bodies one with the anandamaya kosha (the bliss body)?
Some teachers have said that savasana is one of the most advanced of yoga poses. I would agree.
- Art and Culture | Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Meditation
Ecstatic Serenity
When I was eight or nine, a teacher asked everyone in my class to say what they wanted to be when they grew up. The other children named the various jobs or professions that appealed to them at the time. I responded that I wanted to be independently wealthy. At that age, I was expressing something I already knew from family issues. Though I did not have the words for it or a clear understanding, what I was saying was not just false precocity. I knew at a basic level what is taught in yoga: I would need enough material support (ardha) to follow my heart in love (kama) and work (dharma); then my life could be free (moksha).
When I was 22 and visiting my friend Dan, he asked me what I really wanted to do with my life. We had just graduated from college. Dan was working for a sculptor who was a professor in the art department; I had just moved back to New York, had just gotten over a failed attempt to serve as an office manager for an off-off Broadway theater, was in a place of deep emotional and financial struggle, and was trying to determine what work and corresponding further education I wanted. “I want to be content,” I said. “That’s too passive,” he replied. “No, that’s not what I mean,” I tried to explain. “For me being content being satisfied and engaged with my work and life, but still working hard and having goals. It’s not just hanging out.” I had all sorts of things that I found interesting and possibilities for a life path, but I didn’t have one specific career or life plan that I was certain would be more fulfilling than any of the others. They just would have satisfied me in different ways. Because of the dilemma of too many choices, I wanted to be able happy with whatever choice I made, even if it seemed like a compromise. I was conscious that once I picked, because of the inherent limitations of time and space, that I would either have to be content with my choice or be unhappy. I have since learned to think of contentment (samtosha), which is one of the niyamas of the path of yoga expounded by Patanjali, as a practice rather than a goal (and it is a very important and continuing practice for me). Contentment is not an end, as I had thought when I was 22; it is just one part of the path to a goal of living liberated (jivanmukti), experiencing self as spirit in all that one does.
On a recent telephone seminar, Paul Muller-Ortega, my meditation and philosophy teacher, in the midst of a broad dialogue regarding various studies and practices, spoke a little of ecstatic serenity. Memories of the discussions I had had long ago about what I wanted welled up in the forefront of my thoughts. In thinking about what is my intention now, especially with regard to my practice (sadhana), I witnessed my previously stated intentions as just stages on the path to this discovery. As soon as I heard Paul say the phrase, I thought, “that’s what I want; I want to be ecstatically serene.” I seek to be always in some part of my conscious being still and peaceful, while simultaneously being passionately engaged in what life brings to me and I bring to life.
An Interface with India We Don’t Think About Much
Beautiful manhole covers.
Cicada Watch
Here’s some useful, along with some merely anecdotal and highly subjective discussion on the impending arrival of more cicadas than usual. I don’t remember them being overwhelming in 2004, but vividly remember being astonished by them 17 years earlier than that–more cicadas than I ever dreamed possible. A Jain would have had much trouble walking down the street for worry about stepping on one (or dozens).
