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    My First Five Thoughts (Compound) Before Getting Out of Bed This Morning

    ByElizabeth

    1. Still dark, too early to get up; oh right, daylight savings time.
    2. Wait; wake up call is Sri Rudrum; here’s the part I’ve learned by heart to help invoke auspiciousness, wisdom, compassion, light, interconnectedness, steadiness, fierce will, etc; good reminder; don’t sleep through it.
    3. Nuclear reactors in Japan; wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; Libya; aftermath of BP oil spill, Katrina, and 9-11; budget talks prioritize war and business as usual; no senators or Congress person for DC; mountaintop coal mining; tar sands; diabetes/obesity epidemic.
    4. Time to nurture cats and plants and sit for meditation; I am indeed blessed.
    5. How do I bring “2” and “4” to my response to “3”?

    Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

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    Overheard in the Stairwell at Work

    ByElizabeth

    When I was coming downstairs in my building today, I overheard someone say to her colleague, “she said it wasn’t yoga; it was a core workout.”

    I didn’t hear anything else.  I wonder whether it was the teacher, a student, or an observer who was the “she” being quoted.  I wonder what the person I heard speaking and what the person she quoted meant by yoga.

    As for the “core workout,”I’m pretty sure, based on the location of the conversation–stairwell in a Federal office building–that by “core workout” it meant a class in the gym focused on toning and strengthening abdominal muscles.

    In contemplating this snippet of conversation, I decided that yoga is the best core workout I know, if by core we mean center or essential–the very heart of being.  What is yoga other than practicing and applying certain techniques to try and better live and act from the core of our being?  Toned abs, if we get them, are just a bonus.

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    Earth, Water, Fire, Air, and Ether

    ByElizabeth

    We are composed of nothing different than earth, water, fire, air, and space, and much of yoga practice  (as are related practices such as ayurveda) is designed to recognize and align our elemental identity.  It is human nature to manufacture, just as it is the nature of a beaver to make a dam or a termite to make a mound of mud that displaces what was in its path.  Why then is it so common to  think of man-made as completely separate from “nature” rather than to recognize the wild and extraordinary creations of humans as an integral part of the complex fabric of being on this planet?

    Photos taken on a Thanksgiving trip shared with friends and family:  DC to NJ, Cape Cod, and back to NJ before heading home. Without the time on highway and train, I could not have seen so much “nature” in so short a time.  Nor, might I add, would I have appreciated being out exposed to the wind and water without the shelter and protection of manufactured goods (including houses, cars, and clothing, etc).  This does not mean, of course, that to live better, we should not seek to balance and diminish our consumption of resources for our protection and comfort.

  • Seva

    ByElizabeth

    Now the real work begins!  That is what President-Elect Obama, the headlines, the pundits, the commenters, all said, hardly pausing to savor “victory.”  Unlike 1992, no one is suggesting that it is now time to party like it’s 1999.  I am elated by the result, but personally most encouraged by the earnestness of the reaction, the call for selflessness and effort to begin.

    In yoga, one of the primary practices is seva or selfless service.  I think a critical aspect of seva is joyousness.  This is not a call to knuckle down soberly as a puritanical denial of pleasure.  Rather, it is a call to discover the pleasure in giving of oneself without asking anything in return. I begin, this morning, by giving financial support to certain groups that are hard at work to end war and torture and support the environment, but in dire need of support because of the financial crisis.  I have celebrated this morniong with heart-opening asana, and plan to take a lunchtime walk in the neighborhood and prepare delicious food from the garden, while most of my day will be devoted to working and teaching.

    Each day, as this new path opens and work continues, I will strive to remember the words of Hafiz:  “[Spirit illuminates] the affairs/ Of the whole universe /While throwing wild parties/ In a tree house — on a limb / In your heart.” (The Subject Tonight is Love, 60 Wild and Sweet Poems of Hafiz, Versions by Daniel Ladinsky).

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    Signs Around Town (and Thoughts on Sadhana)

    ByElizabeth

    Although incorporation of practice (and the mindset of making everything a dedicated practice) ideally becomes routine, actually practicing should be a never routine, freshly curious, heartfelt engagement. In that regard, I try not to get inured to seeing the signs in the neighborhood.

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