Some Things Depend on the Body With Which You Were Born
Similar Posts
- Art and Culture | Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Community and Family | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Meditation
Two Ways of Looking at Things (and Women: Count Your Apertures)
My studies today (it is a very rare day that I do not read some of a yoga text or commentary) included a mention of the body’s nine openings. The yoga treatises ubiquitously mention the “nine openings” of the body through which prana enters or leaves (is dissipated). Certain practices are designed to open the tenth, which is an energetic opening that corresponds to the fontenelle at the crown of a baby’s head.
A few month’s ago, my astute friend Jane, who has given birth and nursed, pointed out that a woman has 12, not nine openings.
What is a woman to do in response to this apparent disconnect or male exclusivity? Reject out of hand the teachings as only being misogynistic and of limited utility because they originated for male physiology and not female? Interpret the teachings and correlative practices as being based on the anatomical and energetic openings common to both sexes? Deeply explore the practices relating to this teaching and discover whether there are subtle ways to modify and reinterpret and apply the teachings and practices to address the lack of reference to and recognition of the three crucial additional openings that are fundamental to a woman’s being?
Guess which of these I am most likely to advocate and practice.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
- Art and Culture | Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Meditation
Serenity Saturday Today (at Capitol Hill Yoga)
If you are in town today and feeling the need for some R&R, please come join us at Capitol Hill Yoga (scroll down the page, past the Itsy Bitsy workshops, for SS info) today for this month’s Serenity Saturday.
It has been a long work week, and yesterday I though that I’d like to be taking a two hour afternoon restorative workshop myself this weekend. Last night I gave my self serenity Friday night (not so alliterative).
I’d been feeling a bit testy, and my thoughts were starting to be somewhat all over the place. I stepped back and thought about all that I’d put into my consciousness in the past couple of weeks: how many work telephone conferences and meetings in which I’d participated, how much the email and other computer communications, how many errands, movies I’d seen, parties I’d gone to, etc.
Diagnosis: overstimulated. So instead of going out and getting more stimulated (which can be the immediate reaction to feeling like one wants to get away from work and errand thoughts), I stayed home, cleaned the house, and did a long combination restorative, recumbent, and forward bending practice. This morning I woke up refreshed and newly receptive, ready to teach all day and share the yoga.
- Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Community and Family | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc)
Any Words of Wisdom? (and “Opening to Grace”)
I had lunch the other day with a friend whose life is suddenly brimming full with a variety of opportunities. Any one of them by itself would feel like a bounty. With multiple ones arising simultaneously, because they are not necessarily in perfect sequence with each other, making decisions seems like a conundrum rather than a blessing. Over a rather delightful lunch, my friend gave me many details of the various things that were going on, and the places where they seemed not to synchronize in a way that would allow her to have it all with ease. “Any words of wisdom?” she asked. When I was younger, I might have tried to make specific suggestions. Specific suggestions, though, are always colored by our own particular preferences, prejudices, and desires. Instead, I said, “In the style of yoga I practice, the first principle for starting every pose, which I find works for what I do off the mat as well, is to ‘open to grace.’
“Opening to grace means to soften, to listen, to open ourselves to the universal in which the details arise, to allow what is to be in the flow,” I added.
“Without getting into the details, the essence of the next alignment principle [muscular energy] is the application of proper boundaries. Even though we want to be soft and open, we still do not say ‘yes’ to everything. Although open to everything, we steady ourselves and use our knowledge to discriminate and find a good container for ourselves so that we can act with more light.”
“Ah,” my friend replied, “I’ve been trying to control everything without allowing things to unfold. What you are saying makes sense.”
My friend will find her own way, and I look forward to witnessing the great joys potentially unfolding for her. Any time she invites me to share some of the wisdom I’ve received from my teachers, it will be my delight to pass it on.
- Art and Culture | Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Meditation
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.
