With the paths that we’ve traveled and what we have encountered and what we have done, as a given, not as something to wish had happened another way or another path chosen, how are we going to best flourish now?
I interrupted a work conversation with a colleague for us to watch the light and have a moment of awe.
A regular brought a friend to this week’s group house practice. When I asked whether there was anything about her health or practice I should know to enhance her experience in the class, she advised me that she had been having trouble sleeping for the past few months in response to an event in her life. I did not ask about the event, but offered some of my favorite practices when I am not easily falling asleep:
1. gentle ujayi breathing with the exhale twice the length of the inhale. We were sitting up, but this is great to do in vipariti karani (legs up the wall pose).
2. chandra bhedana (the moon breath). This is similar to nadi shodana (alternate nostril breathing) except that for every breath, the inhale is through the left (ida or chandra nostril and the exhale through the right (pinga or surya) nostril.
3. This one I learned from work place yoga teacher Kathy Rowley with whom I took lunch time classes at the Department of Labor for a couple of years. I am not sure I remember it exactly the way she taught it, but it works:
Start lying on one side. Take sixteen deep breaths, keeping count of the breaths, with the exhales longer than the inhales. Quietly roll to your other side and take another sixteen breaths. Continue switching sides, slowly and without disturbing growing sleepiness, each set of two doubling the number of breaths you take. After 16 on both sides, then 32 on both sides, then 64, and so on (though so on is unlikely). Let the breaths get slower and deeper and when you get to the point where it does not seem right to switch sides, then you let yourself sink into deep relaxed sleep.
Ayurveda says one should only eat “fresh” food. What does that mean? How does that translate into having delicious food making the best use of every bit of it without waste and without having all of our time being devoted to creating it (from start to finish). Is making a fresh dish from a food item from yesterday’s meal “stale” food? I don’t think so, but then, I am not an ayurvedic practitioner. I am fairly certain it is less “stale” than “fast” or packaged food. And I am too much the New York grandchild of peasant immigrants to forego making the most optimal and complete use of all the food that enters my kitchen. Also, the simple efficiency of leftovers are too important a component of having the most personally and lovingly prepared food I can with my life style.
Here are some of my favorite ways to eat bread the day after it was a fresh accompaniment to a salad, sandwich, or larger, festive meal. (Obviously, this is not for all of those who cannot or do not like to eat bread, which I think of as indeed the staff of life.) Here are some of my favorites, not in any particular order:
Crostini/Bruschetta (topped with tapenade, salsa, chopped tomatoes and cucumbers, etc.)
Bread salad (with the best of the summer tomatoes and fresh basil)
Croutons (for salad or soup, my favorite is rubbed with a little garlic)
Red pepper spread with pomegranate molasses and walnuts (bread is the thickener)
Skordalia (also can be made with potatoes or a mix of bread and potatoes)
Stuffing for squash
Bread crumbs for a whole variety of things
Savory bread pudding
Yesterday I asked about setting an intention to be blissful in every thing we do for a day. Having the intention is a good start (I might not even have thought of such an intention without my yoga practice). What I really want is to be able to manifest that intention. For me, I know that it is important for me to live more consciously and with more subtle discrimination (viveka) if I am to come close to living such intention.
A rare few live in bliss without effort. For the rest of us, that is why we have the practices. So we can practice moving into and resting in bliss.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
