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    Taking Woodstock (and spanda)

    ByElizabeth

    Kashmir shaivism, using the term spanda, talks of the ultimate pulsation of life itself, all being a vibration, everything a play of opposites, a constant dance of concealment and revelation.

    Yesterday I when I went to see Ang Lee’s Taking Woodstock, I thought about about what a dance of moments, desires, emotions, motivations, opportunities, and relationships made Woodstock the phenomenon it became.

    I remembered when I was a teenager asking my mother why we had not gone; I had some idea that good family friends had made the trek from Long Island.  She said it did not seem sensible to bring three girls under 10.  I am sure that if we had gone, my memories would have been of being dirty, hungry, tired, wet, and overwhelmed.  Instead, I grew up with the instant nostalgia of someone who was just a few years too young to make it up there on my own.  In this contemplation, I marveled nearly as much at the play of spanda in my own life as in the world around me.

  • Calf Loop (and enhancing the integrity of the energy flow)

    ByElizabeth

    When I think of the Anusara principle of calf loop, I think of playing with drinking straws as a child.  I’d take the straw out of the glass and bend it back and forth.  The straw would end up with a horizontal crease where it was bent — not quite a break — but the place where it bulged at the bend would prevent the straw from serving the purpose of enabling liquid to be drawn up through it.  When our knees (or our elbows for that matter) are hyper-extended, I think it disrupts the energy flow from the periphery to the core, weakening the pose, and breaking the integrity of the alignment.

    As one whose legs started out bowed (though less after over six solid years of working “shins in/thighs out”), my natural tendency is to hyper-extend.  I find that using calf loop, I do not hyper-extend.  Calf loop (also called “shin loop”) has us draw energy from the base of the shin, up the back of the lower leg, and loop it through the top of the shin and then back down the front of the leg.  We wouldn’t ever start a pose thinking about calf loop, but in the flow of a pose, after the major principles are activated, including muscular energy, we can enhance muscular energy and the integrity of the alignment of the knees by focusing on calf loop.  When I practice calf loop, I find that it lifts the calf muscle and draws it more firmly into the top of the shin, and moves the top of the shin forward.  These actions do not bend the knee, but firm the muscles behind the lower leg, including the calf and the popliteus (which is the muscle behind the knee that flexes the knee) to the bone.

    What is tricky — especially for those who tend to hyper-extend, is that getting the knee in proper alignment feels like bending the knee.  If we have been out of alignment, changing our stance will feel strange and perhaps “not right” at first.  The sweet subtlety of practice (whether trying to expand our ability to do poses, heal and injury, or live in better alignment overall)  is learning what is true integrity in a pose and what is habit, what will serve and enhance and what does not.

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    On the Way to William Penn House for Tuesday Night Yoga Practice (with a Detour to Stand with the People’s Filibuster)

    ByElizabeth

    The filibuster and related activities, including an interfaith vigil on Wednesday the 28th, continues until Thursday. Details on various Facebook Pages–ACLU, NARAL, Planned Parenthood, Move On, and others. 

    Mostly I will be working during the scheduled times, but I will head over outside of my work day again. Senator Chris Murphy was on his way to dinner with friends from Connecticut who had spent the day doing citizen lobbying–telling their story about why keeping and improving on the ACA was important to them. Senator Murphy said that he’d heard people were outside and felt he needled to at least stop by and connect. He said this is just the beginning, don’t let them tinker and declare a victory if they only deprive 5 or 10 million people from getting insurance; he said keep it up; he’d like to see millions of people coming to D.C. and making their voices heard.  I was starting to get caught up in listening and then realized it was time to be at William Penn House.

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