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Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
Because I am a Jnana Yogi at Heart
I feel compelled to learn more about ways to live differently and in better alignment with nature (in addition to studying the yoga texts). I then ponder, study more, and try to act when I can. Here is a good article from our friends at the Union of Concerned Scientists on biomass, about which anyone who is interested in sustainable energy should know at least a little.
ps. CS, please feel free to add your two cents if DH tells you about this blog entry or if you happen to read it on your own.
Yoga of Eating Part I (what it is and what it isn’t)
Yesterday, a former student of mine stopped me in the hallway at Willow Street and asked whether the “Yoga of Eating” workshop I will be leading on June 13th will cover Ayurveda. “I will mention it,” I said, “but I will not be teaching it.” I didn’t have time to explain further because I was about to lead class. As far as I got was to add that I was not sufficiently trained to teach it.
Ayurveda is a wonderful science, and I honor and respect my yoga friends and colleagues who study, practice, and teach Ayurvedic principles. Ayurveda is a much broader discipline than yoga, though, and is really medical practice rather than yoga. Asana are among the practices that might be recommended by an Ayurvedic practitioner for a client or patient, but eating in accordance with the Ayurvedic principles is not the same as bringing yoga to how we eat. For me, many of the principles of Ayurveda I have read or been taught are useful, but it has not resonated for me as a governing system, just as I do not believe in applying all of the principles of Western medicine to how I heal and nourish my body.
Bringing yoga to my eating, like bringing yoga to all of my life off the mat, is both simpler and harder than being taught a science such as Ayurveda with fairly clear, but quite complex, do’s and don’ts and then following them. For me, practicing the yoga of eating, is practicing conscious eating. It is practicing reverance and moderation. It is balancing nourishment and pleasure. It is knowing deeply when the will to eat is serving us or getting in our way. It is both simple and subtle. It is easy to say, but deeply challenging and sometime complicated to practice — just like practicing the Anusara yoga principles of alignment.
Slowing Down (and vinyasa krama)
I wanted to share this article on “ecotherapy,” a term I had not heard before. I found the article interesting because for years now, I have gradually practiced all the elements listed in the article as treatment for depression, not because I had been told by a therapist to do so, but because, despite my feeling the repercussions of going against the grain, I felt happier and healthier settling in one place, traveling more slowly, connecting with my pets, and tending a small patch of nature.
These shifts in lifestyle simply feel to me more in alignment with my own nature and that of the earth. I found, incidentally, it gave me much more time overall to do things. People ask me how I do so much (usually referring to the day job, the yoga teaching, the gardening and cooking, the volunteer work). Thinking of the way they live, and what they do, they ask when do I rest? I say that my life is in fact rather slow and restful. I rest when I meditate. I rest when I am taking the time to make a home-cooked meal — every day when I am in town, often two or three times a day. I rest when I am tending the garden. I do not think of cooking and gardening as chores, but as ways to nurture myself.
I rest when I am commuting because it is on foot or sitting on the bus or metro (note: instead of getting anxious or angry when metro is slow, think of it as an opportunity to draw into yourself and meditate, contemplate, or read).
Not having moved or changed jobs in years, even though there have been serious challenges with both where I live and my job, I had the time, money, and energy that would have been used up in a major upheaval, to engage in the study and practice to become a certified Anusara yoga instructor, and before that, to study drawing and photography and to exhibit my art. Staying in place, I continue to have time to study and to read (not watching TV helps alot, too, for finding time). The choices are different with children in the house, but it is still possible to make choices that require less racing around for the family.
This, to me, is a larger aspect of vinyasa krama, the art of sequencing. When we sequence how we move in space and time in a holistic, sensitive way that honors the rhythms and cycles of our bodies and the earth’s, then we feel less trapped or overwhelmed. When I was trying to keep up with society, I was often sad and anxious. Now I am much less so. I have often attributed it to these choices. Now, I see, society has given us a word for it — ecotherapy. With a word coined for it and put in the press, will people feel more comfortable practicing it?
