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    Praying Mantis (and pausing to make offering)

    ByElizabeth

    This morning as I approached my office, I noticed in the middle of a wide patch of sidewalk that is flanked by the street on one side and a brick building on the other, with no tree boxes or other plantings for several yards in any direction, a praying mantis stranded in the middle.  I wondered how it had gotten there and worried that it would not survive if it was just stuck in a sea of concrete.

    I crouched and put out my finger.  The praying mantis crawled on to my hand.  I did not have time to go all the way back to the park next to the Capitol or to the nearest “island” with trees, but I took it to the nearest tree box, certain that there would be enough mosquitoes for it to eat well.  When I placed my hand next to the bush in the tree box and helped the praying mantis move onto the greenery, it first came back onto my hand again.  So I talked to it (as if it understood English) and encouraged it to get onto a branch (yes, I was getting some strange looks from passers by at this point).  I watched as the praying mantis eventually turned around and started moving into the denser foliage.

    With this act, did I make anything in the world better except give myself the joy of interacting with a wonderful being?  Does it matter?

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    Arugula and Green Garlic Pesto

    ByElizabeth

    There’s lots of arugula in the garden.  Some still new enough to save for salad, some that has bolted in the heat.  The cilantro is just about gone with the dry heat.  The basil and parsley have gone to flower.  As I thought about how best to enjoy all of what was there while simultaneously best tending the garden for optimal growth (much like yoga practice), I remembered that I had seen a farmer with arugula pesto at the Dupont Circle Fresh Farm Market last week.  I bought something else from the farmer to honor the idea, fully conscious of my own garden full of arugula calling out to me.

    Making pesto was a great way to optimize the bitter tang of the flowers on the older plants.  (I left a few of each type of plant to go to seed for a second crop starting in late summer on a volunteer basis).  I added enough of the young arugula and some tender parsley and basil leaves, along with the basil flowers, to bring out the arugula taste that would have been hidden by the bitterness in the plants that had flowered if not been combined with other foods.  I pureed the chopped greens with olive oil, walnuts, and green garlic.  Salt and pepper to taste.

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    How Not to Wreck Your Body

    ByElizabeth

    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.

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    Spring

    ByElizabeth

    When I was walking about yesterday, I thought I could not bear to leave the exuberance of DC’s spring. Only my house sitter would be able to watch all the new seedlings coming up in my garden. I would miss the last of the cherry blossoms. Then I thought that it would be spring where I am going–and no doubt gorgeous in its own way.

    In photo from front to back: tulips, azaleas, redbud, dogwood (pink and white).

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

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