One of Many Ways to Respond to the Blizzard
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And when I go fully back online tomorrow, give an extra donation to So Others May Eat. The organizations that help the hungry and homeless are, I’m sure, strained beyond capacity.
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- Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Community and Family | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Meditation
Found Exhortation (and “Opening to Grace”)
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.
- Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Meditation | Photos
Found Exhortation
One of the most profound and essential teachings of the great yogis is to “watch the gap.” We are given the practice of watching the gap, the space, the pause, the turning point between the in breath and the out breath, the out breath and the in breath. In the gap, we are able to witness perfect fullness (purna) and perfect emptiness (sunyata). In minding the gap, we can experience perfect stillness and serenity. It is an extraordinary practice in its simplicity and in its gift of peace and repose.
Whether you have never heard of this practice, learned it at some point but have mostly forgotten about it, or just did it with your own practice, I invite you to take a few minutes on reading this: make your seat steady and as comfortable as possible, close your eyes, invite an intention of finding a still spaciousness in your heart. Draw your attention to the breath and start to notice the space (maybe almost instantaneous and unobservable, maybe a real pause) between the in and out breaths.
If you are moved, comment on your experience to share with each other. There is no one right reaction nor a wrong one. If it was challenging to sit still and focus, just be gentle and soften to how enjoyable it can be to do nothing other than watch the breath, like the sweet and easy restfulness of watching the movement of waves at the beach.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
Jai Hanuman
Since arriving in Santa Fe late this afternoon, I’ve encountered many of the Hindu pantheon, almost more prevalent than who is indigenous or long settled here, but that’s probably just due to the first places I walked. Fitting perhaps since I’m mostly on this trip to bathe in the yoga practices.
