Here’s Murugan (a/k/a Subramanyam or Kartikeya) with a fantastic peacock ride (vahana) in one of the magical pieces of fabric on exhibit at the Textile Museum.
I wish the evident influence of colonialism and global capitalism that influenced what textiles were created and preserved over the centuries.
This morning, without thinking, in apparent keeping with the dark, wet, gray day, I picked out a brown sweater to wear. Then I thought, “what, am I crazy? I could bring color into the day.” Now I am dressed in the colors of the ocean on a bright, sunny day. To add some more light to my day, I started the day with some backbends and arm balances. If I had the luxury of staying inside all day, I perhaps would have done a more inward practice. I have committed to go out, though. To be happy to go out in the rain, I needed to create an abundance of bright, wide awake energy on the inside.
Yesterday (latest in the season ever — see interesting articles in the New York Times last month about Thoreau as a climatologist) I spent the morning bringing all my tropical plants inside. Part of the reason it was later is that I have learned that the orchids and night-blooming cyrius like nights in the low 40s and can tolerate the occasional single night in the high 30s, but most of it is that it is a warmer season than any in the decade I’ve had a significant number of tropical plants. I also bring inside the lemongrass and lemon verbena (annuals here; perennials where they are native). I also like to bring in rosemary in a container. Also, what were once small plants in growers pots are now a huge jasmine and a bay tree. When I bring all of this inside in the winter, I transform the house into a retreat. When I bring it all outside in the early spring, my tiny yard is full and lush before the annuals start flourishing.
Once the tropicals were all inside, I cleaned up, tended the beds and containers, and strew some more winter kale and baby spinach seeds (no frost in the forecast for the next 15 days — so I could have new kale and spinach through December; also, some of the seeds will wait and be the early ones that come up during that warm week we always have in February).
Putting the garden to bed has a sweetness to it. I prepare for next year, but also engage in tending what will flourish best when the days are coldest and shortest. It is a going inside, knowing that there is a need to go inside and let some things be dormant in order to flourish fully when the sun is bright and hot and calls me outside.
This type of gardening is stressful for the lower back, hips, and shoulders. Throughout the hours I am gardening, I like to engage my alignment by intermittently doing some poses, strongly integrating my shoulders, hips, and core: working strong “shins in/thighs out” I practice uttanasana (standing forward fold), utkatasana (chair pose), and adho mukha svanasana (downward facing dog), and maybe even handstand. It is critical to make sure not just to bend from the knees, but also to make sure you have a good lumbar curve and your tailbone is tucked, when picking up containers or other heavy objects.
At the end of several hours of gardening (bringing the tropicals inside also entails vaccuuming), I need to realign, stretch, and reintegrate, but I’m tired. I also want to practice in a way that honors and celebrates the sweet inward nature of the work I have just done. This is what works well for me:
1. Seated foot massage.
2. Balasana (child’s posture) with arms stretched out, palms, forearms, and armpits lifted. Inhaling lift underside of arms to strenthen, exhaling soften between shoulder blades to integrate.
2. Chakra vakrasana (cat/cow breathing).
3. (putting the garden to bed sun salute): Table pose (if you make sure you have good lumbar curve, table is one of the best postures for making sure hips, back, and shoulders are aligned well); Downward facing dog (play in the pose to integrate and stretch the legs and arms and strengthen your core); Palakasana (plank);Table pose; Balasana;Table.
Repeat the series several times. Add in lunges (coming into the lunges from table). Add in twists from table, threading one arm through and coming down onto that shoulder). Add in pigeon pose (with a forward bend).
4. End with legs up the wall, a supported or seated forward bend or two, and savasana.
Enjoy how this practice nourishes and realigns, but generally draws the attention inside, getting you ready to enjoy the inside while waiting for the next growing season.
E
ps While I was practicing, I had a big vat of tomato sauce cooking from the last (perhaps second to last) harvest of cooking tomatoes.
Come join us this day after the Solstice and make friends with the darkness, as we begin to tilt towards the light.
No practice between Christmas and the New Year. First practice of 2016 is Tuesday the 5th.
Dear Friends,
One of the yoga practices in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras is sauca, which means cleanliness or purity. It does have a basic aspect of physical cleanliness, which has lead me this year to do an especially vigorous spring cleaning. I think following the principle of saucra also applies to the clarity of our intention for the practice of yoga: are we seeking to experience and act from a place of deep connection to spirit (or good or oneness or divine or whatever you name it)? In practicing sauca, I think the most basic question is whether we have dust on the mirror that reflects the good in ourselves obscuring our vision, whether there are blockages to the energy flowing to bring us to optimal physical and emotional health, or whether anything is getting in the way of our manifesting our intention?
When it has been too hot to go into the garden over the past month, I have been reorganizing and sorting through old papers. As a once every five or ten years spring cleaning, it is lasting longer than usual. I tend to be good about keeping on top of these things, but there are crevises of old records of my life that seem to just get stuck back into a folder to be decided on some other time. This afternoon I came across intimate letters from a friend who, not long after we went our separate what had become cross-continental ways with regret on both sides, discovered he had brain cancer. There were a few notes not in envelopes. I reread those, but did not open the envelopes. Back into the miscellaneous file until the next time. The same with the print-outs of emails to and from Peru right after 9/11. It wasn’t avoidance. Over time and distance, regret and grief have faded. I did not have the need or the time to read them now. They went back into the file because I am curious what will be my reaction to these documents when I am 87 should I be around in this body then. I find that when I see them after again more years have passed, I can see how much the yoga (asana and meditation) as a steady practice over time has shifted how I relate to my past, to all the decisions better or worse that brought me here today. I am more at peace with the various detours and convolutions for the teachings and the good at the time, even if they do not appear to have been squarely or most efficiently on the path.
Just as most of us have pieces of paper or things that for some reason get saved, but spend most of their time in a drawer or a file cabinet or a closet, we have thoughts and emotions around past experiences that can emerge into memory at what can seem to be the oddest of times. With a strong meditation practice, it can sometimes feel like we are cleaning out the closets of our mind. With a therapeutically focused asana practice, it can seem as though we have found old energetic entanglements, and it may feel that it would have been easier never to have practiced at all. If we stay steady and keep coming to class and our own practice, we witness how much change can be wrought. When we remember to bring our clear intention to the yoga mat, the meditation cushion, the garden and the kitchen, the laundry, work and commuting and everything we do, then we in an ever more refined and deepening way open to grace, the fundamental AnusaraR principle.
I am happy to let you know that I am now E-RYT 500. My spring cleaning on the physical level motivated me to do the paperwork with Yoga Alliance. My carrying the designation E-RYT 500 means that teachers taking my classes and workshops can get Yoga Alliance continuing education credits, in addition to Anusara study hours.
I am looking forward to studying with Christina Sell at Willow Street Yoga next weekend. Come join fellow yogis for what promises to be a joyously challenging weekend of classes. The following weekend, I head up to Vermont for the Anusara Grand Gathering. If you are going, let me know and we can try to connect.
Special June Location Information for William Penn House Classes: June 14 and 28, William Penn House will be completely taken over by conference groups. Class will be held at the house location. RSVP’s are required. For those who have been regulars, but who have been full up with other things in life than class, it is a sweet way to get back.
Hope to see you soon.
Peace and light,
Elizabeth
