On My Walk Home From Work After Having Been the Lead Speaker for a Webinar With 1008 Listeners
Plus or minus.
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- Art and Culture | Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Community and Family | Food for the Body | Gardening | Meditation
State of the Garden
Last week I went across town by bus to renew my expired drivers license and replace it with the real ID version. On the way home I visited a friend from work whom I haven’t seen in person since before the initial stay at home order. Then I left work early on Friday and went to see the Sonya Clark exhibit at the National Museum of Women in the Arts. The art was worth seeing, but it was overly crowded.
I spent the weekend with the garden and house and practices. Readying for what comes, but am sure I don’t want the old “normal.”
Extreme Pink
A friend who was a skilled gardener whose taste in gardening ran to the subtle and quiet (think Vita Sackville-West’s all white garden at Sissinghurst), used to tease me for my attraction to lush, tropical blooms.
There is a time and place for everything in this world–the quiet and demure, the loud and outrageous.
The wider range we can appreciate, and the better we can know the optimal use and place for things, the better we will flow and dance and integrate into the joyous possibilities in the fabric of being.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
What Students Hear
Last week I took a lovely all-levels yoga class where the emphasis was on fully engaging in the practice rather than striving to achieve a particular outward notion of what the poses should look like.
Near the beginning of the class, but after the emphasis on not striving had already been discussed, the teacher said that the ideal form in uttanasana — standing forward fold — for classical hatha yoga is with the feet together. But, he said, however, he said, but not, the teacher explained, if your back is curved like a “c” in the pose, and your lumbar vertebrae are higher than your sacrum. In that case, you want to take your feet wider apart or you will strain or injure your low back.
As I was fully into the pose, I could see the rows of students behind me. At least two fellow students in my immediate line of sight, promptly put their feet together, even though they had tight hamstrings and bulging lumbar spines and were clearly pushing themselves hard to get their fingertips to the floor. As soon as the word “ideal” was uttered, they could not hear the caution or could or would not apply it to themselves.
The evident intent of the teacher in his exposition of the pose was to give an example where the “ideal” form is most certainly not ideal and will not further the reasons we practice asana. But for so many in this society, striving is such an ingrained way of being, that yoga class can become just another way to achieve.
It was useful for me to witness how carefully one must teach to high achievers this principle of the “ideal” being what suits and not what will win accolades. How do we teach (and learn) the practice of goalless goals, of enjoying working for fitness (of the mind, body, and emotions) without pushing and striving? I’m pretty sure that invoking the principle of actionless action from the Bhagavad Gita would not have made a difference here. It seems a shame to think that the only way to protect all the students’ backs is never to mention the classical form of the pose, and to have to tell all the students (especially in a big class) to have their feet apart (or some similar alignment rule)for protection of the few who do not (or are not yet ready) to hear the whole lesson.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
