My goal is a harmoniously engaged mind, not an empty mind (which is the goal of many yoga/meditation traditions). But if it is an emptying to allow a natural replenishment, that’s another conversation.
World Wide Knit in Public Day is this weekend — June 13th (and 14, 20, and 21). What will you be knitting? I have started a pair of leg-warmers. The pattern was really for ankle warmers, but I have chosen to make them longer than the pattern suggested. The nice farmers who raise the sheep, spin and dye the yarn, and sell it at the Dupont Fresh Farm Market, called them “yoga socks.” The yarn is beautiful. The sample pair looked like something I would want on my feet in colder weather. The project was small enough to tuck into my carry bag. Definitely a go for summer knitting (unlike the three-quarter finished mohair shruggy that has become a lapful of furry stuff).
“Why are they so short?” I asked. “We had originally designed them to be longer, but our teacher said we might need to grab our ankles?” they explained. “When would you do that, when it would not matter whether you were touching fabric instead of your skin,” I puzzled out loud, not out of criticism, but really wanting to know, thinking maybe in Pilates. The farmers could not really think of a reason. I bought an extra skein along with the kit to make the — oh, let’s call them footless socks — calf height. The yarn has a bit of a stickiness to it, so they are not slippery. They will be good to wear for yoga.
I’ve never knitted on double-pointed, size 2 needles, in the round before, though I happened to have four in the house (picked up at a yard sale for a $1 a decade or two ago and put in the sewing box). I tend not to knit from patterns for whole projects. So I had a little learning to do. The pattern did not explain how to use the double-pointed needles; that knowledge was assumed. I am not used to the contraints of following a pattern. Doing so, on occasion, though, forces me to learn a new technique. It took my a couple of hours to get into the rhythm, but now I’ve eased into the project.
I sometimes seek the same type expansion with cooking. Though easily able to cook something delicious without a recipe with most ingredients, sometimes I pick out a complicated recipe just to expand my skills in the kitchen.
Yoga, most of all, benefits from a combination of free exploration and attentive development to the knowledge imparted by a teacher. We are most full and expanded when we combine experience and teachings. We receive the teachings and then we practice again and again to make it not just our own experience, but part of our being. This process is called vikalpa samskara.
Last night in group practice, we were working on the mini-arm balances. As I demonstrated a pose, my spine shifted. From the middle thoracic vertebra right behind the heart all the way up to C7, each vertebra popped sequentially, releasing energy not only from each vertebra, but upward. I felt an incredible lightness moving from the heart space all the way through the crown of my head. We talked about it a little in practice, because the fact that some kind of opening had occurred was fully evident to everyone in the group.
As a purely physical matter, opening my thoracic spine is good. I have degeneration in my cervical and lumbar spine. Those parts of my spine are very mobile, almost unusually so, whereas my thoracic spine is quite tight. This imbalance can cause pain and muscle tension, though through therapeutic practice of the Anusara principles, I progressively find a healthy balance of stability and freedom. Go to any decent physical therapist for neck or lumbar pain, and the therapist will work to open the thoracic spine, which although it should be stiffer (being attached to the ribs and protecting the heart), likely needs to be more mobile to be in better balance with the rest of the spine.
This morning, I woke up still feeling more open around the heart space and noticing a shift in the energy in my upper back, neck, and head, and the sensation of the opening I experienced carried itself through my morning meditation.
We never know when we are going to get an opening in our practice. I keep coming to the mat and the meditation cushion because I want to be more open, more grounded, more free, more full of energy, more compassionate, more at peace, more in tune with others. It is fairly rare, though, that I experience a noticeable opening all at once (and the reason to practice should not to be to have wild moments, sensations, visions, etc).
When one comes, though, it leaves open the question: what will I do with it? Will I get absorbed in talking about it and reliving it? Will I think that I can slack in my practice because I have had a big opening? Will I return to how things were before? It is easy enough to do. Just witness the collective energy and momentary hopefulness of this country when it elected President Obama. Upon not getting instant change and relief, the country has returned to blaming, divisiveness, ineffectiveness, finger-pointing, greediness, warlikeness, and catering to the corporate war machine instead of moving towards universal health care, peace, and “green” energy consumption. It would likewise be easy for me to have enjoyed experiencing something wild and special on my mat and then go outside to walk to work and be tense and grumbly about the ice on the sidewalks, the snow in the forecast, and the limits I experience in my daily life. I know there will be some going backwards, but I will strive to take this experience to shift to a more optimal place in my practice on and off the mat.
Whether reaching on or off the mat, we want to keep the upper arm bone integrated into the shoulder socket.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
