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    It Takes a Snowflake

    It is almost inconceivable to my limited mind how many snowflakes it took to whiten our world yesterday morning.  This weekend, there will be far more snow (alas, it will be too cold to stick to the trees and create such a beautiful canopy; instead we will have howling winds and heavy going).  I might catch the first of the snowflakes tomorrow morning on my walk to work before the storm really comes in with all its wild fury.  When there are only a few, it is easy to see the individual flakes.  Once there is a storm, though, we tend only to see the storm.

    Just as it is hard to remember that the snow is about both each individual flake and the whole snow fall together, we forget about the simultaneous place of ourselves as individuals as part of the whole, or we get caught up witnessing ourselves as individuals and forget that we are all a part of a much vaster energy.  The reality is that we are all both all of the time — we are completely individual and part of a vast, interconnected web.  When we can remember and witness both aspects of ourselves, then we can most deeply witness, participate in, and appreciate the extraordinariness of being.

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    International Peace Day

    It is hard to imagine even one day in a single year when we could lay down our country’s weapons.  I am hoping that the upside of the rancorous budget battles will be an end to the United States’ current engagement in war (because in the worst of things, there is always cause for hope).  Today is International Peace Day.  What are your plans?  Might you make it a theme for your practice or, if you teach, your classes?  If you have the money, make a donation to an organization that works for peace?  Call or write your elected officials or write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper on an issue important to you that impacts world peace (this would include budget issues, education, environment, infrastructure, disaster relief, and family planning, and not just involvement in war itself)?

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    Daniel Webster Statue (and Siva tattva)

    On the column that supports this bas-relief and a larger than life standing portrait of Daniel Webster, is engraved: “liberty and union now and forever one and inseparable.” Kind of sounds like a description of the absolute consciousness, the one self, though that was probably, mostly not the intent.

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    Personal History (and Samskara and Opening to Grace)

    A samskara is generally defined as an impression left in us by a past action or experience.  I found myself thinking about the process of samskara yesterday, when I went with long time friends of my family to watch their son taking class at the summer program at the Kirov Academy of Ballet.

    I have not watched a ballet class (except on the occasional film) since I was actively studying ballet as a teenager and young adult.  I have long been conscious of how ballet imprinted my body image and way of looking at myself, but have not found a space before where I was able to look at this aspect of my history with fresh eyes.

    What was different yesterday, was that I was observing with openness.  I was sitting with people I have known all my life, sharing their warmth, love, and parental pride for their son, rather than concentrating on my own history.  It brought back memories, but not in the same way that sitting by myself or with a girlfriend, watching a documentary has done.

    In this open state of reflection, I witnessed something that I knew at some level, but had not given much thought to before:  how much having taken thousands of hours of ballet class has informed the way I teach.  My tendency in my own practice and in my teaching to see the details of  alignment and to try asanas repeatedly until it seems that I or my students have experienced the alignment in the most optimal way for the day is straight out of my experience in ballet class.

    Softening and witnessing instead of feeling or judging from past experience gives the possibility of shifting from samskaras, even ones that are very deeply etched into body and mind.  Being with my friends yesterday, of course, gave me the joy of seeing the spectacular dancing of these young men and the delight of connection.  It also gave me the unexpected gift of a moment of understanding how the Anusara principle of “opening to grace” allows us to shift.  When we are open, nonjudging witness consciousness  (an aspect of “opening to grace”), that is when we have the possibility with each thing we repeat, to experience it new without being bound by our samskaras.

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    Ready for EST (and another aspect of refinement)

    About a week ago, maybe even a little earlier in the month, daylight savings time started feeling artificial.  My body started insisting on sleeping nearly an hour later, and I found that I wasn’t really using the hour of light at the end of the day.  It was time to go inside and cook or read or otherwise move inward.  When we change the clocks this weekend, I will already have shifted, and the clock will feel as natural as living by a clock can feel.  Part of the refinement of a deeper yoga practice is learning to pay attention to such subtleties, to learn what is most optimal and when, both time of day and time of year.  This applies to asana practice (i.e., when to emphasize forward bending v. backbending),what we eat and how much, and what kind of activities we choose.

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