I stopped to take a photo of the question. This delightful dog would not move and insisted on attention. He finally moved far enough off of it to have it legible after he insisted I rub his belly. I guess I could have gone without a photo, but it was nice getting the canine love. His human was patiently bemused.
Dear Friends,
Midnight of the new year found me sitting in a hotel room near the Chidambaram temple at festival time engaged in intense conversation while listening to wild music and chanting and the cracks and explosions of fire crackers. Quite a change from my long-standing practice of making a healthy meal, doing a long yoga practice, taking a hot bubble bath by candlelight and going to sleep well before midnight so that I can start the year rested and refreshed (an excellent way to spend New Year’s Eve if you haven’t tried it). Though I did not start this new year well rested, I wouldn’t have traded the experience I had for the world. Sometimes we need to radically break out of our old patterns to discover how much we can expand.
One of the practices at the temples we visited on the India Pilgrimage with Douglas Brooks is to take a coconut and break it open. The coconut symbolizes your head and all the preconceived notions and rules we set for ourselves that bind us into our old habits. The symbolic act of breaking open the coconut is to remind us that we sometimes need to break ourselves open in order to get at the true meat of our existence and to drink the sweet nectar of life.
Many times during the trip I thought about my first experiences attending “Advanced Intensives” with John Friend. I, like many others I know, showed up at my first Advanced Intensive wondering how I got there, asking myself whether I was worthy, and worrying that I was in way over my head and would get injured. Though I have now been to a number, each time I still have had to practice with both an absolute willingness to be open to the possibility of expansion while being impeccably mindful of my own limits. It is a subtle dance of consciousness, and part of the learning is finding the exact balance point where we can both break out of our preconceived limitations and still honor that we in fact have some.
I approached going to India with much trepidation. A friend whom I met in Peru and who I later visited in South Africa, having seen my emotional reactions to the deep poverty of developing nations had warned me off of India. As one who likes things to be quiet and clean and thrives on healthy meals and regular sleep, I knew India would be physically and emotionally challenging. But I wanted the visions. I wanted to see and experience its very “otherness,” its beauty, and the source of the yoga teachings. I packed my bags with emergency supplies, some of which I turned out to need, some of which served others on the trip, most of which I ended up donating to a village that the trip helps to support. I had to ask people to help me (one of my hardest practices) by being close when we were in dense crowds. I confess that I wore earplugs when it got really loud in the temples, which it does. And having prepared and taken care, I was exhilerated. I experienced radically more with my heart getting fuller and fuller in a short time than I thought ever possible for me. Like discovering one can do a wild yoga pose that one thought totally out of reach and then sensibly stopping before blowing past physical limits, I broke myself open and was able to drink deeply of the nectar. And yes, I did actually hurl a coconut to the ground to break it. And yes, it took two tries.
I was lucky. This time, I got to choose when and where to break open the coconut. Sometimes life does it for us and then we have the choice either to despair or to rise to the occasion. This year, I invite you to the yoga to find where you can break open and find ever more sweetness, nourishment, and delight than you ever dreamed possible. For me this includes not just the exhileration of advancing the intensity of poses, but the deepness of meditation, the precise use of alignment for therapeutics to better experience life, and the emotional depth of a long restorative practice.
Come join me as regular classes continue at William Penn House on Tuesdays, invitation group house practice for charity on Wednesdays, and gentle/therapeutics at Willow Street on Saturdays at noon in Takoma Park. All info on the classes page of the web site. Mark your calendars, too, for:
Finding the Warmth Inside: Relax Into Optimal Alignment with Anusara Restoratives, Saturday, February 25 2012, 2:30 PM – 5:00 PM, Willow Street Yoga, Takoma Park Studio, $35.00, click to Register Online or download a paper form to bring to Willow Street in person. After a little gentle stretching and self-massage to bring awareness to the breath and body, we will enjoy the exquisite application of Anusara’s Universal Principles of Alignment to restful and supported restorative postures to release old patterns and invite in the new to find greater ease of body and mind. A great workshop and practice for all levels.
I have been sharing photos and experiences of India on the blog (if you have missed them, do check them out and enjoy). Some of you have asked how you can subscribe to the blog in addition to the newsletter. Please just click here and follow the instructions to get the blog posts by email.
I look forward to seeing you through the new year and sign off expressing my ever growing love, appreciation, and gratitude for all of you and the deepening and expanding connection through the yoga, neighborhood, and all that life here in DC and in the greater yoga community brings us.
Peace and light,
Elizabeth
A mourner asks, who is going to step up and defend the rights of women?
My answer is each and every one of us; how can we expect someone else to step up unless we are doing it ourselves?
I think the wish that RGB Rest In Peace and rest in power can be an exhortation to the living. When we can live resting in our own peace and power, then we will have what we need to persist and shift.
Dear Friends,
One of the yoga practices in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras is sauca, which means cleanliness or purity. It does have a basic aspect of physical cleanliness, which has lead me this year to do an especially vigorous spring cleaning. I think following the principle of saucra also applies to the clarity of our intention for the practice of yoga: are we seeking to experience and act from a place of deep connection to spirit (or good or oneness or divine or whatever you name it)? In practicing sauca, I think the most basic question is whether we have dust on the mirror that reflects the good in ourselves obscuring our vision, whether there are blockages to the energy flowing to bring us to optimal physical and emotional health, or whether anything is getting in the way of our manifesting our intention?
When it has been too hot to go into the garden over the past month, I have been reorganizing and sorting through old papers. As a once every five or ten years spring cleaning, it is lasting longer than usual. I tend to be good about keeping on top of these things, but there are crevises of old records of my life that seem to just get stuck back into a folder to be decided on some other time. This afternoon I came across intimate letters from a friend who, not long after we went our separate what had become cross-continental ways with regret on both sides, discovered he had brain cancer. There were a few notes not in envelopes. I reread those, but did not open the envelopes. Back into the miscellaneous file until the next time. The same with the print-outs of emails to and from Peru right after 9/11. It wasn’t avoidance. Over time and distance, regret and grief have faded. I did not have the need or the time to read them now. They went back into the file because I am curious what will be my reaction to these documents when I am 87 should I be around in this body then. I find that when I see them after again more years have passed, I can see how much the yoga (asana and meditation) as a steady practice over time has shifted how I relate to my past, to all the decisions better or worse that brought me here today. I am more at peace with the various detours and convolutions for the teachings and the good at the time, even if they do not appear to have been squarely or most efficiently on the path.
Just as most of us have pieces of paper or things that for some reason get saved, but spend most of their time in a drawer or a file cabinet or a closet, we have thoughts and emotions around past experiences that can emerge into memory at what can seem to be the oddest of times. With a strong meditation practice, it can sometimes feel like we are cleaning out the closets of our mind. With a therapeutically focused asana practice, it can seem as though we have found old energetic entanglements, and it may feel that it would have been easier never to have practiced at all. If we stay steady and keep coming to class and our own practice, we witness how much change can be wrought. When we remember to bring our clear intention to the yoga mat, the meditation cushion, the garden and the kitchen, the laundry, work and commuting and everything we do, then we in an ever more refined and deepening way open to grace, the fundamental AnusaraR principle.
I am happy to let you know that I am now E-RYT 500. My spring cleaning on the physical level motivated me to do the paperwork with Yoga Alliance. My carrying the designation E-RYT 500 means that teachers taking my classes and workshops can get Yoga Alliance continuing education credits, in addition to Anusara study hours.
I am looking forward to studying with Christina Sell at Willow Street Yoga next weekend. Come join fellow yogis for what promises to be a joyously challenging weekend of classes. The following weekend, I head up to Vermont for the Anusara Grand Gathering. If you are going, let me know and we can try to connect.
Special June Location Information for William Penn House Classes: June 14 and 28, William Penn House will be completely taken over by conference groups. Class will be held at the house location. RSVP’s are required. For those who have been regulars, but who have been full up with other things in life than class, it is a sweet way to get back.
Hope to see you soon.
Peace and light,
Elizabeth
Dear Friends,
I hope this email finds you as well as possible under your personal circumstances. Here, up front, are the details for the Thanksgiving Day fundraiser. A longer story follows, if you want to scroll down and read it. I hope many of you who will be in town can make it, and I wish all the healthiest, most joyous, delicious, and abundant holiday you can have:
Thanksgiving Day, Thursday, November 28, 2013. 11th Annual Thanksgiving Day Fundraiser for Oxfam.
Location: William Penn House, 515 East Capitol Street, SE, Washington, DC 20003.
Time: 10:00 a.m.-11:15 a.m.
Yoga Details:
Benefit for Oxfam: Suggested donation $20. As in most of the previous years I have offered this class, I will collect checks made out directly to Oxfam, America (preferred over cash); even better, you could make an on-line donation before the class. I will then forward 100 percent of the proceeds to Oxfam, America. I also will match any individual donations over $20 up to $200. As always, the amount is suggested; what is within your means is a sufficient amount.
No Advance Registration. Just show up at the door. Though I enjoy the spontaneity of teaching whoever appears, the more the advance knowledge of who and how many plan to attend, the better I can design the class to suit more of your needs and desires, so I welcome your letting me know by replying to this email, sending me a private message, or by liking and then commenting on the Rose Garden Yoga page on Facebook.
This is the 11th year for this yoga practice. The first time I offered this practice, I was mostly through the year-long teacher training then at Willow Street Yoga and teaching at a studio on the Hill that has long since moved and reconfigured itself. My initial intention was to remind myself (and anyone else who wanted to share and listen) that one of the most effective ways to kindle appreciate for the abundance in one’s own life is to commit an act of generosity (even if one that is relatively modest and also provides benefits to the giver).
These are, for so many I know and for countless more I only read about in the news, challenging and unrestful or even unimaginably painful times. I am thankful that my resources are sufficiently abundant that I can draw on the practices and work and community and creative pursuits of various sorts (including here cooking and gardening, though perhaps those would go under practices, too) to find my soul, to reconnect with my inner strength, and remember how much good I have in my life.
Being able to share the yoga with friends old and new with a shared intention to be generous to ourselves and others and make our thanks giving that much more nurturing and powerful a holy day certainly is on my gratitude list for this holiday season. Come join us at William Penn House on Thanksgiving morning or for the regular Tuesday night practice (100% of student donations go to benefit the work camp program run by William Penn House). If the current limits of time, space, or circumstance make not possible sharing the yoga face to face, do please still be in touch.
Peace and light,
Elizabeth
