Emerging from the Depths


My friend and Willow Street colleague Natalie Miller taught a lovely class on Monday night, using sauca as her theme. She said that she had recently read a book that described the yamas as things we do to be better persons, but that the niyamas were precepts for our spiritual practice to lead us better on the path. In that sense, she suggested, sauca is about clarity or purity of intention.
What I love about contemplating and practicing with these concepts is that they are so pregnant with meaning; they have so much to offer wherever we are in our life and on our individual path of spirit exploration. The more we contemplate and visit and practice and discuss, the more we will discover both about the meaning of the concept and about ourselves.
For those students who live within a few blocks, have power, and are not needed for such emergency assistance that can be provided before the trains are running and the roads reopened, what better than to come out and practice yoga as usual? (Or if the storm has made it impossible to get out, it’s a great time for your home practice).
The yoga practices are such a healthy way to channel the energy from having been cooped up by the storm and to revive and enhance one’s flexibility, adaptability, balance, and strength. It has been my experience that steady practice invites us to be ever more capable to address what confronts and engages us on our path (whether we like it or not). Sending loving energy to all who have been challenged hard by Sandy’s path or otherwise.
If you haven’t seen it already on the District Kula website, please check out my guest post for District Kula on my Thanksgiving tradition–the Thanksgiving Day fundraising class for Oxfam. Many thanks to District Kula for inviting me to blog as a guest.
Looked at from one perspective, the yoga teachings say that outer peace will come from the cultivation of inner peace. I do think that it is hard to wage peace on a global level if one does not truly cultivate inner love and peace. Where I differ from some is that I do not believe it is sufficient to take care of your own inner peace without a care for how one fits into the global web.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
When I was out at lunchtime to run an errand, I crossed paths with the neighbor (or visitor) wearing this shirt. I asked if I could photograph him. He seemed a bit taken aback, but posed for me when I said that I would only photograph the quote. After all, anyone who would walk around Capitol Hill with a Bayard Ruskin quote on his chest would likely want to motivate as many people as possible to think about that quote and act accordingly.