Similar Posts

  • Serenity Saturday tomorrow (4/17)

    ByElizabeth

    Today it is going to reach a high of 84F and the pollen count is off the charts.  Tomorrow there will be a high in the low 60s.  Whatever the temperature, whichever your natural preference or aversion, find rest, solace, and delight in two blissful hours of restoratives at tomorrow’s Serenity Saturday at Capitol Hill Yoga from 3pm-5pm.  Register on-line or just show up and pay at the door.

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    Vacation

    ByElizabeth

    I am delighted to be going on a short trip to a warm place (Tucson) to do nothing but yoga and visit with friends and acquaintances.

    My work life is such for the next several months that I cannot take a long vacation.  I can find a few days here and there, though, and it is critical to my working well.  I find if I work with too much effort or for too many hours or days in a row, I lose my sense of humor and my creativity.  These are truly essential components of doing a good job.

    If you cannot get away for a day or two or five, take five minutes to just breathe without following your thoughts.  It is not a vacation.  It is meditation.  It will not serve in the way of a vacation, but it will provide a needed break from attachment (perhaps to the point of misalignment) with the mindstuff (citta) and will enable you to continue with your efforts more at peace with both the efforts and yourself.

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    Answer to a Question (and Reminding Myself of My Own Advice)

    ByElizabeth

    The other day, a friend who is starting to teach in the evenings asked me how I make the shift from stressful work day to being in a good space to teach.

    Without hesitation, I said:  “meditation.”  I then qualified that by saying it is anything that gets you quickly and effectively connected, centered, and grounded.  I don’t know anything that would be consistently effective than meditation.

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    Any Words of Wisdom? (and “Opening to Grace”)

    ByElizabeth

    I had lunch the other day with a friend whose life is suddenly brimming full with a variety of opportunities.  Any one of them by itself would feel like a bounty.  With multiple ones arising simultaneously, because they are not necessarily in perfect sequence with each other, making decisions seems like a conundrum rather than a blessing.  Over a rather delightful lunch, my friend gave me many details of the various things that were going on, and the places where they seemed not to synchronize in a way that would allow her to have it all with ease.  “Any words of wisdom?” she asked.  When I was younger, I might have tried to make specific suggestions.  Specific suggestions, though, are always colored by our own particular preferences, prejudices, and desires.  Instead, I said, “In the style of yoga I practice, the first principle for starting every pose, which I find works for what I do off the mat as well, is to ‘open to grace.’

    “Opening to grace means to soften, to listen, to open ourselves to the universal in which the details arise, to allow what is to be in the flow,” I added.

    “Without getting into the details, the essence of the next alignment principle [muscular energy] is the application of proper boundaries.  Even though we want to be soft and open, we still do not say ‘yes’ to everything.  Although open to everything, we steady ourselves and use our knowledge to discriminate and find a good container for ourselves so that we can act with more light.”

    “Ah,” my friend replied, “I’ve been trying to control everything without allowing things to unfold.  What you are saying makes sense.”

    My friend will find her own way, and I look forward to witnessing the great joys potentially unfolding for her.  Any time she invites me to share some of the wisdom I’ve received from my teachers, it will be my delight to pass it on.

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    Ganesha’s Vahana

    ByElizabeth

    I don’t have much family, and I know little about the family I have. I am the one living with this photograph (the only one I’ve seen) of my maternal great grandmother because we are the only two with frizzy hair. The story I heard about her was that she gave birth to my grandmother en route from Eastern Europe and carried her across the ocean to the lower East Side.

    This Ganesha makes me think about that level of determination –what we can do when we figure out how to turn a rat into a ride.