Blossoms Around Town

ByElizabeth March 15, 2022

A bit bedraggled from the freeze and still effulgence with spring beauty.

Art and Culture | Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Community and Family | Food for the Body | Poetry | Quaker

A Thanksgiving Gathering
ByElizabeth November 26, 2019November 26, 2019

A friend, who is on the board of directors, invited me to help set up and serve Thanksgiving dinner at the Latin American Youth Center. I took this afternoon off instead of tomorrow afternoon and helped out. I met several inspiring people and many kids who like cookies.

There’s a lot of art on the walls and some poetry. This reminded me of how grateful I am for what I have and where I am in life.

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Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Community and Family | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Meditation | Photos

Thinking About Gratitude
ByElizabeth July 15, 2014

When I was walking to work this morning, trying not to get enmeshed in anxiety about the stresses of the day to come, I invited myself to practice gratitude (and not just being grateful for having only first world problems).

I paused to look all about, at the beauty of this lush summer. When I turned around for a 360 degree appreciation, I saw the view following me was as engaging as the view in the direction I was walking.

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Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Community and Family | Meditation | Photos | Quaker

On the Way to William Penn House for Tuesday Night Yoga Practice
ByElizabeth April 5, 2016

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Art and Culture | Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Community and Family | Photos | Quaker

Signs Around Town
ByElizabeth March 27, 2022March 27, 2022

Odenton, Maryland

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Art and Culture | Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Community and Family | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc)

How Not to Wreck Your Body
ByElizabeth January 7, 2012

The New York Times just published a lengthy article on “How Yoga Can Wreck Your Body.” The response of one of my fellow certified Anusara yoga instructors was “duh!” This conversation greets me as I am about to offer a free gentle and therapeutic yoga class at Willow Street Yoga to invite new and continuing students to discover the power of the Anusara alignment principles to heal and transform challenges of embodiment. If I were not highly confident in the power of Anusara yoga to heal when practiced mindfully, I might be worried that the article would keep away potential students. Instead, I welcome the “news” as a way to broaden the invitation to discovery.

As I have blogged about before, at an intensive, John Friend once compared advanced asana to digitalis–depending on dosage and circumstances of the individual digitalis is at once the deadliest plant in the garden and one of the most powerful medications to heal the heart. We don’t read much about digitalis in the news, but we are constantly bombarded with contradictory news flashes about the health risks and benefits of lots of things — coffee, red wine, vitamins, running, anything that has been either held out as either a cure all or an evil that is ubiquitously practiced or imbibed. Why? I think it is because we in this society are hungry for panaceas, for effortless solutions, for the latest thing, for something to save us from emptiness and ill health, without actually having to work at it. It is newsworthy that yoga bears risks precisely because we (the general societal we) wanted it to be a perfect solution without actually requiring any change how we live the rest of our lives (including diet, exercise, relationship to others) and to bring to yoga the mindfulness, determination, and steadiness that it requires to bring the peace, harmony, and healing it offers.

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Art and Culture | Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Community and Family | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc)

Ignorance is Bliss Only If You Do Not Care What Happens the Welfare of All Beings (Do You Know How Your Tax $$ Are Spent?)
ByElizabeth April 15, 2011

If you are a true renunciate yogi, then the horsemen of the apocolypse don’t phase you. The ultimate bliss is leaving your body anyway. For those of us who are engaged in the world, care about what we eat, care where we live, care about the well-being of family and friends, then learning, understanding, and acting — knowing of course that we can control that and how we act, but not the outcome — is a critical part of a tantric yoga life.

It’s great to know how to place one’s hands for optimal alignment in downward-facing dog, but do you know how your tax dollars are spent? Here’s a little overview worth sharing widely. And perhaps it will make all that noise in Washington about the budget and the debt ceiling seem a little more important. Check out the “People’s Budget,” which enhances domestic programs, increases participation in paying for our society by the rich, and decreases defense spending and military action.

And then I highly recommend standing on your head or balancing on your hands or otherwise going upside-down, getting twisted, and knowing that the practice will help you stay sane and steady and able to act.

Read More Ignorance is Bliss Only If You Do Not Care What Happens the Welfare of All Beings (Do You Know How Your Tax $$ Are Spent?)

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