Signs Around Town
That does not mean you have to like them or be without safe and compassionate boundaries.
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Blossoms Around Town
I was cranky at work today. I remembered to open to beauty. The scent of these lilies of the valley reminded me of my maternal grandmother and old-fashioned French perfume.
It is rare for tears to come when reading the news
Tears welled up this morning in sadness and honor with the news of Ted Kennedy, an incredible example of a life of service.
Invitation to the Gift of Yoga Practice
As I consider both what I want to change and what I am grateful for while we go through this time of imagination and possibility and grief and rage and creativity and patience and restraint and fierce need for engaged action, I realized that making offering is one of the holiday things I am still able to do that brings joy for the holiday season.
In that light, I invite you and others who might welcome starting a practice, strengthening their practice, and regardless, having an opportunity together consciously to support ourselves in body and mind, as well as spirit.
In that light, please join me and Suzanne Lynch for an all levels, all perspectives, all ages, light-hearted yoga and meditation practices on:
- December 25 (X-mas Eve) from 4pm-5:30pm
- December 31 (New Year’s Eve) from 4pm-5:30pm
To register, please visit: https://www.suzannelynchwellness.com/holiday-yoga-classes
Many thanks to Suzanne for gifting the extra administrative work to open her membership platform for these holiday practices. BTW, it is super helpful to register early to make sure we can get all the Zoom link for the practice with a minimum of extra admin.
If you are moved to make a donation, please consider a local or national food bank.
- Art and Culture | Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Community and Family | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Meditation | Quaker
“Meeting for Discernment for Peace,” Bhavana, and Heart-Oriented Posturing Language
On the Friends Meeting of Washington list serve this week, there has been a fair amount of email exchanged about an upcoming “meeting for discernment for peace.” Very roughly described, a meeting for discernment begins with a period of silent worship in which those present settle into the silence and surrender thought to allow the light of spirit to illuminate a specific subject of contemplation. The subject of the meeting serves to enlighten both the individuals participating and to further both the business and spiritual state of the meeting as a whole.
As I read the emails and invited myself to contemplate the questions offered for the meeting (I will not be able to attend because I had previously committed to volunteer work), it led me to think not only about the topic under discernment, but about how similar it seems to me to the yoga practice of bhavana and how bhavana supports the Anusara teaching method of “heart-oriented posturing language.”
When we practice bhavana ,we invite the fullness of consciousness to illuminate ever deeper levels of understanding of particular teachings from the yoga texts or similar ideas. It is similar to meditation in that we don’t try to think our way through the concept, but rest with it. Bhavana differs from meditation exactly because it is focused on the deepening of a particular concept rather than simply going into the space of meditation as an end in itself.
Although a meeting for discernment is practiced as a form of collective worship rather than an individual practice, it is much like bhavana, and I brought the Quaker method of resting in the light to reveal deeper insight regarding a concept when I first starting teaching Anusara yoga with its emphasis on having a class theme and using heart-oriented language to invite myself and students to experience a heart quality through asana practice.
The queries for contemplation at the meeting for discernment for peace, include the following:
What does it mean to “live in the virtue of that life and power which takes away the occasion of all war?”How am I deepening my understanding of peace?How am I living into this understanding?How do I support others in following peace?What can be most powerful about our practice on the mat is bringing what we learn in relationship to our body, mind, and emotions in attempting and achieving poses, off the mat. As I will be doing myself this week in my own practice in support of my friends who will be attending the meeting for discernment, I invite you, as you are practicing at home after reading this, to observe with love, spaciousness, and humor how you react to certain classes of poses, efforts you make, moves you are able to do or not do with ease. Where are you in conflict with yourself? What are you doing to deepen your understanding of how to be at peace with your strengths and shortcomings? How are you taking the observations on the mat into your daily life? How do you and how can you better use what you learn to support others, to eliminate the causes of war, and to foster peace? Podcast on Ayurveda for Yoga Students and Teachers
Thanks to the generous Cate Stillman for this podcast. What I like most about Cate’s perspective is her teaching that truly practicing Ayurveda is paying attention at the deepest level, including paying attention to what in the classic teaching of Ayurveda work for you and what do not–being that they are imbued with cultural elements of the Indian subcontinent that do not necessarily support or resonate with our culture or individual constitutions.
As I study more, I find that it turns out that I had been practicing Ayurveda already by keeping to a regular daily and weekly routine, eating seasonally and locally, eating with sensitivity to impact on my digestion and energy level, and by having a steady practice. Not being interested in detox (more some other time on the dangers of detox) or constitution types, or arcane herbal remedies (many of these, by the way, are becoming endangered species), it turns out, does not mean having rejected Ayurveda. I do know that whether I call it Ayurveda or just plain common sense, the more I live in a balanced, sensitive, and steady way in terms of diet, sleep, entertainment, work, and consumption in general, the more I optimize my health and sense of well-being.
