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    Letter from FCNL on How You Can Help Shape the Budget

    I just received this letter and wanted to pass it on to those who have senators and members of Congress (those of us in DC still do not):

    Dear Elizabeth Goodman,One of our lobbyists just reported to me that some members of the supercommittee are telling us they are open to cutting Pentagon spending. “We need to hear what the folks back home in our state have to say about this,” we heard.The most important voice in this budget debate is your voices as constituents. As they make their decision, your members of Congress need to hear your side of this story. They need to hear about the consequences in your communities when money isn’t invested in schools, roads, jobs, and other local priorities.Today, will you write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper? Refer to your members of Congress by name and point out the needs in your local community.Communities around the country are being squeezed. More people are relying on food banks; local governments are copying with both the neighborhood and family stress of foreclosure; schools are increasing class sizes and shortening the school year; and critical maintenance on bridges and roadways. Police and firefighters are losing their jobs.  Yet, the Pentagon budget continues to grow.Congress will take action to reduce the deficit, which means budget cuts. But if Congress doesn’t act to cut at Pentagon spending by a significant amount — FCNL and others believe that number is $1 trillion over the next ten years — then the cuts to other programs will be much deeper. Cutting the Pentagon budget and potentially making more funds available to meet the needs of state and local communities.  There is an opportunity to make this change.Thank you for your action.Sincerely,Diane RandallExecutive Secretary  P.S. If you want to know more about how much Pentagon spending is slated to rise, or more on FCNL’s views on the debt, deficit and supercommittee, visit our website. 

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

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    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.

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