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    Web Version of E-Newsletter: Holiday Greetings and Schedule

    ByElizabeth

    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

    wreathed dome

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    The Power of Mantra (and “Alice’s Restaurant”)

    ByElizabeth

    Yesterday morning, on the listserv for the Friends Meeting of Washington, someone shared a link to the original recording of Arlo Guthrie singing “Alice’s Restaurant” as part of an email about Thanksgiving festivities.  Usually, I scan listserv emails quickly and delete, especially when they relate to events that I am unable to attend. I saved this one for later, though.  I’d woken up from some anguished dreams that were hard to shake, and on being reminded of it, I was sure that when I could make the time, listening all the way through Alice’s Restaurant  (it’s long) would cheer me up.

    This morning I did indeed listen, and remembered why we (at least those of us who attended Quaker Youth Camp in the early 1970s) memorized most of Alice’s Restaurant.  It spoke to us and inspired us and invited us to feel that we were not alone in thinking that things could and should be more gracious and peaceful.

    And the refrain is catchy and easy to sing.  This morning, at the end, when Arlo invites the audience (the 1967 album version was a “live” recording), I started singing along just for the delight of it, which led me to think about the power of mantra.

    Chanting or silently repeating mantra is one of the key yoga practices.  The purpose, roughly, of mantra is to replace one set of thoughts with another.  Repeating even just “om,” the simplest mantra, over and over again is meant to shift you from whatever mind state you might have been in (at least to the extent that you are having repeating troubling thought patterns) and into or  towards a more beneficent state.  In my own years of practice, I have found much power in practicing Sanskrit mantras, but many of the songs we have been singing for years, especially those that we associate with ritual can serve similar purposes.

    If you’re so moved and feeling that you’re having thoughts around this Thanksgiving holiday that you’d rather replace with more cheerful ones, invite the power of mantra and perhaps sing, along with Arlo  for the refrain in  Alice’s Restaurant.

    Oh yes.  Happy Thanksgiving.

     

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    Living Mindfully in a Heat Wave, Ahimsa, and “Opening to Grace”

    ByElizabeth

    Ahimsa, which is the first of the yamas in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, and thus is the first practice or principle of the eight-limbed path, is usually translated as non-violence or non-harming.  Over my years of practice and study, I have read and heard many versions–some general, some personal beliefs–as to what it means to practice nonviolence as part of a path of yoga.  As I watch the way people around me are behaving and reacting to the heat and drought, I thought about how, for me, the practice ahimsa is as much about seeking to be in alignment with the movements and shifts around us that we cannot change as about refraining from specific acts of violence (though that is obviously a basic element).

    In terms of aligning with the world arounds us and the cycles of our own body-mind, when we are sensitive to what will best serve our own self while having the least impact on the environment, we are practicing ahimsa, in other words, “opening to grace.”  How does practicing ahimsa by behaving mindfully incorporate many aspects of the Anusara first principle of opening to grace? Opening to grace, as a practice principle, invites us to be open, sensitive, spacious, and radically affirm what is so that we can expand, shift, and serve ourselves and others in the best way possible under the circumstance. To be open in this way, try not to rage at the heat–or whatever is your weather. Soften, listen, and mindfully discover how you can live at your fullest, kindest, and most generous with what you cannot change.

    When the temperature soars above 95F for days in a row, it is an act of violence to rage against it or to consume outrageous amounts of fossil fuels to cool our businesses and homes enough to wear warm clothes, sleep under blankets, cook and eat hot foods, or do an athletic asana practice or workout (lest we feel that we are not fulfilling some externally motivated personal notion of fitness–having external notions of how we should look, act govern us without accepting the actual situation is its own form of violence against ourselves) that we would not do if we could not artificially cool our environment.

    Perhaps I have no call to speak on this: my central air conditioning is on, though I’ve been keeping it between 78-82F and I have been moving, dressing, and eating in a way that honors the fact that those temperatures are as cool as it is going to be until the heat wave breaks. Some might argue that using any air conditioning or even an electric fan or a refrigerator is doing excessive harm to the environment. That may in fact be true, but asking for more than we can do just makes things seem impossible, and then we are less likely to make any shift at all.

    Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.

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    Adhikara

    ByElizabeth

    I was first taught that adhikara meant “studentship.”  Although that is not a literal translation, adhikara implies a dedication and steadiness in the student that makes the student worthy of receiving the teachings (of yoga).  As I was steadying myself during this momentous time and working in the garden, I was thinking about how the principle of adhikara applies to so many aspects of life, including gardening and being a citizen.

    One of the literal translations for adhikara is “competence.”  What is the competence one needs to have in order to participate in the study?  As I harvested the last of the peppers and eggplants and pulled up the plants, making room to sow another round of greens (not too late in my sunny, protected yard in the city), and decided to leave the orchids out for another week, I thought about how I knew what to do when in my garden.  By being present and observant for two decades in my yard alone, I have grown competent to know what will likely grow in my little patch of earth and for how long into the season, depending on the year’s weather.  My initial competence, when I started this garden almost 20 years ago, was some basic training in other gardens, reading technical books, and enthusiasm.  My consistent efforts to learn yielded results delightful to me from the beginning.  As I have continued my studentship in the garden, my appreciation grows.  The same is true for me also with cooking, relationships, and my participation in the community (not necessarily in that order).

    The fundamental competence of a student is having the basic skills to participate at the level of the teachings.  For a gardener, it is recognizing our climate, our space limitations, and our soil, and being open to learning what can be changed in a particular space and what must be accepted.  For a citizen, it is knowing basic civics, what are the most relevant issues for us and society at large, and what we can change and what we must accept (I think knowing the subtle differences between what we can change and what we must accept is incredibly difficult).  For yoga, it is much the same:  we must know what are true limits and what are false ones and be consistently present, practice steadily, and be ever open, not only to studying, but to the fruits of study (expected or not).

    I cannot change the weather, nor guarantee how other voters will vote, but I can continue to maintain the adhikara necessary to be a fully engaged student of this life on all days and not just the days it is fun or gratifying.  The yoga, on a day like today, is to act fully, accepting, and perhaps even appreciating, the limits on what I can control.

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    9-11 (and personal choice)

    ByElizabeth

    Secretary Hilda Solis sent workers at the Department of Labor an email invitation yesterday to do some volunteer activity today to honor those who lost their lives in the tragedy of 9-11.  She did not remind us of terror or enmity or need for war.

    It resonated with what my teacher John Friend, who often discusses the need to serve as part of our practice, counsels in times of distress.  He admits that it is not, as the t-shirt would have it, “all good.”  We can choose, though, how to respond to violence, to suffering, to meanness, to evil.  We can, he urges, seek to respond from “the highest.”  We personally have the choice to try to bring light when we encounter darkness.

    I do not always succeed, particularly with the small things, but I continue to try, and I deeply appreciate all the teachings and reminders I get.

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