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    Exciting News—New Capitol Hill Practice Opportunity

    ByElizabeth

    Thanks to the gracious hosting by Woven History and Silk Road, I will be offering my first public, weekly yoga practice, since the beginning of the pandemic.

    It’s an all-levels, accessible, mask positive, donate what you may, yoga practice. We’ve chosen to begin with World Central Kitchen in recognition of those struggling to get food in too much of this world of which we are a part.

    The practice will be Thursday nights from 6:00-7:15pm. We will practice either outside (weather and mosquito permitting) on the back patio (brick) or in the shop (carpet floor). Please bring what props you like for practice. It’s great to have at least a towel to have something personal to lie down on for any recumbent poses.

    What we will practice will depend on who is there and what are the needs and wants of the day. Expect some combination of breathing practices, meditation, and movement focused on facilitating our embodied experience.

    Woven History is at 311 7th Street, Southeast, between Eastern Market and the metro.

    For questions about the space, including access (the front has a few steps), please contact Rabia at Woven History Road@gmail.com. For questions about the practice, please contact me or comment on this post.

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    State of the Garden (and Samtulana)

    ByElizabeth

    The grapes are not nearly as bountiful as last year.  The first 90F week was too early and sudden, which blasted dozens of newly formed grapes.  And then it was too wet and cool.  The few figs dried before ripening.  But it was a great spring for kale and chard, and the cherry tomatoes are pretty happy.  That the weather makes some things happier and some less happy is a tangible reminder why mono-cultures are so risky a venture.  One of the greatest gifts I get from the “failures” in my edible garden is gratitude.  I am reminded of how fortunate I am that the only repercussions of something not growing or producing well is that I have to buy more produce at the farm market or the grocery store.

    The rains and now the heat are  wondrous lovely for the mosquitoes.  Here’s me dressing for a morning’s work in the garden. You might laugh, but I only got two bites in over three hours in the garden, which included watering.  It likely would have been at least a dozen in loose trousers or shorts and a t-shirt.  This is also the outfit of choice when hiking in the woods filled with deer and mice and lyme-disease bearing ticks.

    garden 1a

    garden 1b

     

     

     

     

    I picked the marigolds yesterday to put on the altar.  The puja card of the day was “balance” or “samtulana.”  It was a perfect concept to meditate on for the day because little brings me back into balance better than spending a few hours gardening, and I’ve been feeling off-kilter.

    garden 1c

     

     

     

     

     

     

    Uma, of course, was there to lend moral support.

    garden 1d

     

     

     

     

     

     

     

    The “before” picture gives some idea of how simultaneously overgrown from the rains and heat-blasted from the past week everything was.

    garden 1e

     

     

     

    The “after” picture doesn’t reflect as much as I would like how much of a difference three and a half hours of weeding, deadheading, clipping, rearranging, harvesting, feeding, and watering made.  When I got hungry, I just picked sun-warmed, just ripened grapes and then got back to work.  Lunch, of course, emphasized contributions from the garden.

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    Found Exhortation (and “Opening to Grace”)

    ByElizabeth

    I was contemplating today the Anusara yoga principle of “opening to grace,” one aspect of which I always understood to be seeking to pause and listen in and from a place of luminous spaciousness before acting or responding to what one does or encounters. Ideally, the intentional practice of yoga opens the possibility of doing all this simultaneously and immediately, but most of us need to reduce the speed at which we approach or take in things if we are to experience and engage the fullest and most nuanced relationship with the wild extraordinariness of what is in and around us.

    If we move too quickly or push effortfully or immoderately past our limitations, we are at risk, as I have recently reminded myself in a rather clumsy way. When through our own actions or happenstance we are pushed past our healthy capacity, it is time to slow down, to pause, to reflect, to reinvite and reexplore the basics and seek a deeper level of understanding and capability if we are to expand our capacity to live with grace.

    Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.