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Do You Have A Way to Care for Yourself Come What May?

ByElizabeth

Life will be more rather than less challenging for most for the long haul. Engagement is not optional.

Do you have a ritual or routine that you can rely on to provide a personal pause for gratitude/beauty/center/calm—whichever serves best?

It might include aspects of yoga practice or it might be something else. I had a friend who, at the end of every work day, lay down on the sofa and listened to classical music to restore themself. Perhaps you dance or sing or walk or nap.

I’m spending much time in the garden, including volunteering at bigger ones, and am most at peace these days when fully engaged with the plants.

But the most reliable source of grounding and sweetness for me, whatever might be going on, is meditation. Perhaps that is because I can do it no matter my health or location; it is free, portable, and simple, whether meditating on the breath or with a mantra.

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    Coincidence or Correlation (and Overnight Cinnamon Apple Oatmeal)

    ByElizabeth

    On my way to and from work, I watched the buds and blooms–some brown, some bravely hanging on, some withering around the edges and starting to wilt; the cherries–mostly in bud or just starting to open–that haven’t fully blasted yet, will do so by the end of the cold period following the storm.

    I’ve seen years when the cherry blossoms were torn from the trees at their lushest by a violent storm coming through with a cold front and and years when a spring snow added to the blossoms and years when the blossoms were well before or after the parade.  I haven’t seen a year in my over 30 years here, where the blossoms just died from a weirdly early false spring followed by a winter storm with bitter cold.  I am sure it is just coincidence and not correlation that this sorry withering of the loveliest part of Washington spring happened this at this particular time.

    In the meantime, I am certain that I will need to go out first thing in the morning to shovel and then will need to turn on my computer and go to work.  I’m sure I will find the snow (when I am not thinking about the impact on flowering and fruiting perennials), even the shoveling, invigorating and somewhat enjoyable.  To provide nourishment that takes into account the extra exercise and how the shoveling time will impact my usual morning routine, tonight after washing up, I put up overnight apple oatmeal.  Into the slow cooker went a couple of diced apples, a handful of raisins, steel cut oats, cinnamon, a bit of butter, and a dash of salt.  When I wake up, It will smell something like apple crisp, and it will be just the thing to fuel snow shoveling.  With the extra, I will make muffins for later in the week.

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    Misty Dawn Walk

    ByElizabeth

    I just returned from a trip to the Catskills for a long weekend of yoga, meditation, and a swimming lake in green mountains. I woke each morning before dawn and went out to be with the rising of the light.  One morning dawned with a dense mist and fog.  The doe was about to bound across the path as I was walking.  She stopped short.  I stepped back.  Both of us equally startled.  We looked at each other benignly curious.  Then she ambled off and I did the same. On the way back to the guest house, I saw a porcupine run across the lawn.  I understand that they are great pests, but I truly enjoyed getting to see one.  I think I might like the porcupine as a spirit animal.

    Lake 1a Lake 1bShe was lake 1c

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    Eating Local, Annamaya Kosha, and “Human Landscape Dance”

    ByElizabeth

    When my friend Mac asked if I would let my readers know that his dance group Human Landscape Dance will be performing at Dance Place on Saturday and Sunday, July 9th and 10th, I agreed without hesitation.  As I was contemplating what to write, I found myself thinking about the koshas–the energetic sheaths of the body.  The yogis claim that the individual has five koshas.  The outermost, the annamaya kosha, is the “food body.”  “Food” in this context encompasses everything that comes into our body through all of our senses–touch, taste, sight, hearing, smell.  I thought about what it might mean to “eat local” if eating meant everything that we encounter with our senses.

    I am not a locavore (I too thoroughly enjoy avocado, coconut and, in winter, citrus), but I do try to emphasize local food as the mainstay of my diet.  I do it mostly for energetic reasons.  I want fresh food to have been picked as recently as possible and not to have grown weary from travel.  I want as few hands as possible to have touched the food I buy, and those hands to be those of a person who is happy with farming and is paid a living wage by the sale of the produce.  When your food growers, transporters, and preparers live nearby you are getting to know your neighbors and community, and not just getting food from a faceless corporate entity.  Over the years, you get to know each other a bit and learn what friends you have in common.  More threads are woven into the fabric of your community.

    Just as knowing the person who grows and sells you food means you can be more certain that it was raised and offered for sale with nourishment intended at every stage, so too having the art and entertainment we bring into our senses be created within our community creates a network of connection and support that we do not get when we only consume commercially prepared entertainment (though I cheerfully buy music from my favorite “stars,” go to the movies, and enjoy trips to Lincoln Center,and London’s West End, etc., just as I get avocados and citrus along with the greens from my garden and the fruits from the local farmers’ market).

    I feel blessed to be able to connect with Mac as a neighbor (Mac, his wife Jennifer Mueller, who is a student of mine and fellow yoga teacher on the Hill, and their delightful daughter live several blocks from me) and others who are performing next Saturday as fellow dancers at the Sunday Contact Improv Jam.  My dancing and personal explorations are raised up by the company of the wonderful dancers and friends who share that space, including those who will be performing next weekend.

    Why wouldn’t I want to both support my friends and learn more about them by going to Dance Place to receive the dance offering they are so lovingly preparing for all of us?  Such is the nature of feeding mindfully the annamaya kosha to help lead us to the opening and nurturing of our innermost spirit, finding and creating more bliss in ourselves and in the very essence of our community.

    FYI.  I’m looking for company to carpool or walk together to and from the Brookland Metro (for safety on the way home).  Perhaps Sunday CI Jam, dinner on the Hill, and the Sunday night show?

    Photo courtesy of Human Landscape Dance.

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