Durga Vahana Vyaghra
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“Iowa Bird Story”
The “Iowa Bird Story” is an extraordinary meditation on connection, living, leaving the body, and expression through art.
Rudra (and fierce indignation)
Ruda, who is both the ancestor of Shiva and another name for Shiva, is known as the howler. Rudra is wild and fierce. Rudra rages. I heard Paul Muller-Ortega recently describe Rudra. He said Rudra rages, but offered that there are lots of things against which to rage, such as injustice and inflicted suffering.
The idea of Shiva/Rudra raging has filled my contemplations for the last week. The questions that arise for me is “what is divinely inspired rage?” “When is fierceness or rage serving to expand love and compassion rather than just destroying the self or others?”
When are rage and destruction necessary to optimize the flow of energy? I think of Rosa Parks, Nelson Mandela, Gandhi. I think of a surgeon removing a tumor. When I think of the ongoing war in Iraq; the newest reports of torture; the potential that corporate interests, ignorance, and bigotry may completely undermine this country’s coming to agreement on providing basic health care for all, I think that living a quiet life is not fully engaging a life of the spirit. How do I find a place of non-attached, but fierce action? How do I find Rudra and not get distracted by personal desires for outcome (and personal desires for simple peace and quiet)? When should I howl, to whom should I howl, and what?
This rage, this fierceness, must come from a grounding in the heart with the discrimination of study and practice. If I cannot find it myself, can I at least support those with the courage and wisdom to be directly engaged?
- Art and Culture | Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Community and Family | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc)
How Not to Wreck Your Body
The New York Times just published a lengthy article on “How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body.” The response of one of my fellow certified Anusara yoga instructors was “duh!” This conversation greets me as I am about to offer a free gentle and therapeutic yoga class at Willow Street Yoga to invite new and continuing students to discover the power of the Anusara alignment principles to heal and transform challenges of embodiment. If I were not highly confident in the power of Anusara yoga to heal when practiced mindfully, I might be worried that the article would keep away potential students. Instead, I welcome the “news” as a way to broaden the invitation to discovery.
As I have blogged about before, at an intensive, John Friend once compared advanced asana to digitalis–depending on dosage and circumstances of the individual digitalis is at once the deadliest plant in the garden and one of the most powerful medications to heal the heart. We don’t read much about digitalis in the news, but we are constantly bombarded with contradictory news flashes about the health risks and benefits of lots of things — coffee, red wine, vitamins, running, anything that has been either held out as either a cure all or an evil that is ubiquitously practiced or imbibed. Why? I think it is because we in this society are hungry for panaceas, for effortless solutions, for the latest thing, for something to save us from emptiness and ill health, without actually having to work at it. It is newsworthy that yoga bears risks precisely because we (the general societal we) wanted it to be a perfect solution without actually requiring any change how we live the rest of our lives (including diet, exercise, relationship to others) and to bring to yoga the mindfulness, determination, and steadiness that it requires to bring the peace, harmony, and healing it offers.
