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    Hot Summer Night (and Getting Hotter)

    ByElizabeth

    For the next few nights, lows will be in the 70s F and highs pushing or hitting 100F.

    Please don’t fight the season or waste emotional energy hating it. Instead, wear loose, light clothing; eat small, room-temperature meals with emphasis on seasonal fruits and vegetables; exercise in the early morning or evening and do cooling, easeful yoga practices.

    By all means, take advantage of technology and stay inside air-conditioned environments in the hottest part of the day. But please don’t crank up the cooling so that you can fire up your exercising or wear heavy clothes (for example, suit jackets and heavy shoes) or eat heavy, meaty and starchy meals. Fall will come soon enough.

    Being seasonal doesn’t just make life more pleasant and enhance flexibility and adaptability, it also minimizes our use of precious, nonrenewable resources.

    I’m looking forward to homemade popsicles, seated forward bend and twists, deep meditations, and early morning walks over the next couple of days. What about you?

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

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    Tomorrow Will Be a Great Day for Indoor Gardening! (Yoga for Gardeners Reminder)

    ByElizabeth

    It’s still March, and we’re in the middle of one big and fabulous rainstorm.  Tomorrow (Saturday) might not be a great day for getting out into the garden (unless you like wading in mud), but it will be an absolutely fantastic day to do yoga with an intention of readying body, mind, and spirit for the garden and to get in tune with all that is growing and has the potential to grow inside and out.  Come join me for Yoga for Gardeners at Willow Street Takoma Park and help support the Youth Garden at the National Arboretum.

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    Akasha (space)

    ByElizabeth

    When we can connect to the essence of the element of akasha, space, within ourselves, we feel less crowded by things pressing in on the outside, whether it be actual confinement or overcrowdedness or the sense of crowding from having too many pressing things to do.  For those of us who live in the District of Columbia, this weekend, with the extra million or two or three people in our neighborhoods and using our transportation systems is a great opportunity to discover the spaciousness within.

    Practice dwelling in a supremely spacious place in your heart when you meditate this week.  Start by visualizing a vast space just beyond your third eye (the point between the eye brows).  Once you can visualize that space, the chidakasha, draw the space into your heart and rest there.  Then, when you go out onto to the Mall or onto the metro or onto crowded streets, bring enough of your consciousness into the vast inner space that you can feel comfortable with the crowding outside.  When dwelling in the inner and outer at the same time, it will be easier to marvel at the outside crowds.

    For those of you who are extroverts who get exhilarated by crowds, of course, this practice would seem less critical.  I invite you to give it a try anyway.

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    Coming Snowstorm (and Heyam Dukham Anagatam)

    ByElizabeth

    As I think about whether I will be able to get up to Willow Street to teach my last classes of the session, how much shoveling I will need to do , whether the next forecast storm (middle of next week) might create challenges for my planned trip to NY, etc, etc, my favorite (well, in the top 10) sutra of Patanjali, sprang to mind:  heyam dukham anagatam, 2.16, which means roughly:  the pain that has yet to come can be avoided.

    I have several translations/commentaries of the Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras in my library.  All have a different spin on what this means in practice.  What I know is that it is at least partly about being in the present and taking things as they come.  One should still practice and plan.  By practicing and planning, we are better prepared for inevitable pains and challenges.  (For those of you who are giddy with excitement with the thought of a “white Christmas,” this Sutra still helps.  Part of the pain that can be avoided is disappointment when expectations are not realized the way we hoped they would be realized.)  Once we have prepared in a healthy way, though, there is no point in agonizing about what might come, in being in pain in the present because of the possibility (or even inevitability) of a future pain.

    The snow seems inevitable.  I am charging my camera battery.  I’m picking what is probably the last of the chard and the baby leeks from the garden, and I am getting ready for Serenity Saturday restoratives.  As long as I can walk to the studio — eight inches is just plain fun, not impassable — I’ll be there with a warm and full offering.  In the meantime, I am enjoying my day instead of worrying about the potential barriers to enjoyment.

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