Tandava (and the Play of Shadow and Light)
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Each One, Reach One
I went with a friend from volunteering at the youth garden yesterday morning to join with others to heighten awareness of the potential impact on the fabric of our fragile democracy of what the current Supreme Court decides in Moore v Harper, which was being argued.
We got to talking to one of the fellow demonstrators. I had pictures of N (for more from N, see @blacklivesmattermemorialfence), from a previous demonstration relevant to voting rights earlier in the year. After we confirmed the connection, N asked me if I was a lawyer for the government; it turns out N also remembered that I had given directions and ended up walking a few blocks together to the gathering near the Capitol for the one year anniversary of the January 6th insurrection.
We all talked about impact and whether it makes a difference if we only inspire a few people. I shared a story about one of the very few comments saying I had inspired being more politically active and outspoken in the yoga context. Maybe, I conjectured, it doesn’t matter if we only reach one person, because we don’t know who is that person and how they will be moved. N plans to make a t-shirt that says, “each one, reach one.”
To whom will you reach out? What moves you?
- Art and Culture | Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Community and Family | Miscellaneous (blog matters, etc) | Photos
Web Version of E-Newsletter: Holiday Greetings and Schedule
Dear Friends,
I hope you are all doing as well as possible in the midst of this holiday season and that you experience much peace and joy through the coming year.
I write to you in the midst of preparations to leave for a return trip to India, part of the preparations being to let people know what precisely is the holiday schedule for Capitol Hill Group classes. I will be gone the weeks of Christmas and New Year’s and William Penn House will also be closed during that time.
There is William Penn House practice this coming Tuesday, December 17th, introducing the wonderful Craig Haas, long-time asana student, fellow walker on the path, friend, neighbor, and all around delightful person. Regular time and place. I will miss being there with you, but I will be on my way north for a night in New Jersey en route to southern India for a return journey.
I’ll be back full of stories and contemplations from the journey–how could I not–and will begin to share them on the first Tuesday in January–the 7th–when the regular schedule resumes. Do come join the practice for your own nurture and also because the more people who come the more we give to support the work camp program at William Penn House. 100% of the proceeds of the practice contiue go to benefit that work.
If you want to be in touch in the interim, I’m planning to post some pictures during the trip; do check in with me at rosegardenyoga.com or find me and rose garden yoga on Facebook. I don’t know yet how often I’ll be online and posting; I expect that I’ll need a few days here and there free of communication devices. But I will enjoy sharing with you all at least a few times.
Peace and light,
Elizabeth
- Art and Culture | Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Community and Family | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Photos
Expanding to Receive the Beauty, Opening to Grace, and the Isha Upanishad
In Anusara yoga, one of the ways the first principle of “opening to grace” can be experienced and practiced is as a radical expansion of the capacity to receive and appreciate the very wonder of being. During my visit to India with Professor Douglas Brooks, I found myself repeatedly thinking of the concept of radical expansion and also the preamble to the Isha Upanishad (long a favorite of mine; Shantala on their first CD, Love Window, have done an exquisite rendition), which can be roughly translated as saying that adding fullness to fullness is itself fullness (fullness can also be translated here as perfection).
What I believe this is saying that being itself is infinitely full; thus, we cannot make it more infinite by adding to it. Human consciousness of the infinitude of being, though, is limited by the filters of space and time. One of the key reasons to practice yoga (including meditation) is to expand both our capacity to appreciate the fullness and to receive its full wonder by uniting our own consciousness with the infinitude. When we can appreciate ever more the wonder of our being, we will naturally be more joyous, and I believe, led to be more compassionate and generous with ourselves and others.
Day after day on the India pilgrimage, just when I thought my heart and mind were already full to bursting, there were yet more experiences of the beauty and extraordinariness of life and creativity and nature. I found myself chanting the Isha Upanishad—purnamadah, purnamidam, puranata purnamudatacyate. Fullness and fullness is fullness. “Let me expand still more to appreciate to its utmost yet more beauty,” I thought to myself again and again. Though I already thought I’d developed a fairly full understanding of the concept through study and practice, I thought, “this is what John Friend means when he is talking about radical expansion.” I look forward to studying and practicing to experience and share ever more beauty.
