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    Today I Was Overwhelmed With Grief

    I practiced, including a Zoom class led by my friend Suzanne Lynch, I asked for help, I expressed appreciation to various friends and colleagues, I went out into the garden at lunchtime, made several more donations, and sat under the cat. And I re-centered enough to be able to persist.

    I hope you all are finding your way in this. Let me know if you want to practice–on-line.1

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    Ready or Not Here It Comes (Summer Heat)

    This morning when I stepped out into the back garden, I heard the sound of clippers on the other side of the fence.  It was my back garden neighbor of over 15 years.  “Is that you?” I asked.  “Yes,” was the reply and we both walked up onto our decks so we could see across the fences.  “It must be summer,” my neighbor said, in acknowledgment of it being the first morning of the season we coincided in the garden.  “I am so ready,” he said, and we caught up with the winter news and discussed what was going on in our gardens.  I told him about Becky, marveling at her wonderful long life of 21 years.  “It was time, then,” he commented.  “I still miss her, though,” I replied.

    Yesterday, several people said to me that they were not ready for summer.  Whether people were ready (or not) for the 90 degree weather seemed to depend a lot a preference cold or warm weather.

    It hardly matters whether we are ready for a shift in the seasons, the loss of a precious being, or the arrival of gray hairs and degenerative arthritis (I am finding myself  not ready for any of these, really).

    Life comes to us, ready or not.  We can use our yoga practice, especially asana, to help us expand and shift and be prepared for whatever comes, by inviting all of our practice and our growth (which includes both expansion and contraction) a rich exploration.  We can experiment with where is our edge, listening to both ourselves and our teachers to discover not only what we are ready for, but also how we react when confronted with that for which we think we are not ready.  By seeking the subtle knowledge of when our mind is ahead of our body and when our mind is holding back our body, we can enhance our ability to respond to what comes in the most open, sensitive, discriminating, flexible, and thus, life-enhancing way, on and off the mat.

    In the meantime, I give in to the premature summer heat.  This morning, I picked spinach and herbs to go with mushrooms from the fresh farm market for breakfast and made a posy of pansies for the altar.  Why leave them in the garden if they will just wilt in the heat?  It was a great afternoon for a siesta and a treat to be out in the city in the morning unencumbered by sweater or jacket.  For my evening practice, I will emphasize deep, cooling forward bends and pranayama.  Will I be ready for the cool days to come back at the end of the week?  I do not think I will have a choice.

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    Curiouser and Curiouser…

    Last night, I took some lovely photos in the rain when I was walking to get a massage (it is pretty awesome to get a massage on a Monday night; try it sometime and see how it changes your perspective on the work week). After I came home and had dinner, I resisted the temptation to curl up on the sofa with a book. Instead, I got on the computer to take care of email correspondence that had accumulated over the day and the weekend while I was at the workshop with John Friend. I uploaded the photos from my walk and tried to post an entry. I got a message when I was in WordPress saying that the photo upload had failed. I exited from that screen and tried to access the file uploader. I could not get in. I then exited the prompt that I had failed. It would not let me cancel. Next, I exited the admin portion of my blog. The computer was not happy about that, but eventually it seemed to close the program. After that, I could not get back either to my public page nor to the admin page. I tried several times, but to no avail. I sent an email to my website designer–could she get in?

    I woke to an email from my website designer saying no problems for her. After I did my morning practice and before heading into the office, I tried again. On my home computer, no access at all to either the public or administrative portions of the site. I reloaded Firefox. That did not do the trick. I scanned my computer, but it showed no errors. I have access to the blog from my Blackberry, my office computer, and my IPad, but not from my home computer–my central place, the place where all my files and photos and bookmarks and maximum computer capabilities are one.

    As Alice (in Wonderland) would say, “curiouser and curiouser.” I am sure with research and trying lots of alternatives, we will find a solution to this peculiar glitch.

    I think staying fully connected to the ultimate loving ground of our being can feel like this strange denial of access to my blog. We get glimpses. We have studied enough to know what it is on an intellectual basis. We feel connected when we are at a big workshop (or sometimes it looks like every one else has found the bliss and we are the only ones who are not tapping in–note to self, usually that’s not true) or are in class or practicing, but not when we get challenged by daily life.

    Two things serve to bring us back to center–the first is to keep practicing and making the effort, just as expanding knowledge and trying different strategies will get me back my full blog access; the second is grace (and being open to receive it). And when grace comes, we then need to keep practicing so that we stay connected and can live in and from grace more and more of the time and remember and reconnect more easily when we get disconnected.

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

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    Needless Anxiety (and messages from the universe in my spam folder)

    From a German language spammer advertising “female viagra” comes this bit of universal wisdom on a day when I found myself needlessly anxious about a mistake that was fairly easily rectified:  “It sounds like you’re creating problems yourself by trying to solve this issue instead of looking at why their [sic] is a problem in the first place”

    If I were one who just trusts naturally that many simple things can be fixed easily if I just ask for help, there wouldn’t have been any need to be anxious.  It would have been better not to have made the mistake in the first place, but as much as I might dislike it, I will inevitably make mistakes–here, not getting my dates right for asking for sub coverage for a yoga class.  With the wonderful community in which I am blessed to be a member, it only took a few phone calls to work things out.

    It is one of my biggest challenges to have to ask for help.  Having to ask for help because I made a mistake made it even more challenging.  A big part of my yoga is learning  to soften and trust in such situations.  When I did just that, I not only was able to ease away from needless anxiety, I was able to allow in more love and support.  Sometimes we need to be put face to face with our toughest stuff to open at another level.

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    What Does It Mean to Be a Grown-up? (and Householder Yoga)

    My friend Dan posted a blog entry earlier this week talking about getting distracted by a rainbow.  He wrote that he was sure that other “grownups” did not get distracted by the rainbow. As I was observing the way people were commuting this afternoon, grimly looking down, hurrying along, texting and phoning, and apparently completely disconnected to the beauty around them, I thought of Dan’s blog.  I thought not seeing the sky or turning away from its beauty is not being fully “grown up.”

    Part of my friendship with you, Dan, is sharing the wonder of looking at rainbows.  It is the “distraction” perhaps that is the invitation, at least in my own practice, for more skill.  In seeking to live the life of a “householder yogin,” I am trying to be the grownup who always sees the rainbow and takes time to see it, but has the skill to illuminate even the most mundane of daily activities with the wonder of seeing the rainbow.

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