A friend once suggested that I took photographs to give myself separation. I do gain perspective, as I do from meditation. The chaos will not go away, and our relationship with it can change.
Each Willow Street session, I choose an overall philosophy topic or book to inform the themes for my classes. I choose them based on something that I believe is relevant to what is going on in the world, something that has captured my interest, or something that I believe supports the growth of the groups of students attending my various classes.
When exploring particular readings for this purpose, I do more than read. Rather, I contemplate, journal, practice asana (in a sense choreographing the philosophy using the principles of alignment), and meditate with the reading in mind. Paul Muller-Ortega calls studying by going beyond book knowledge and continuously contemplating, refining, and exploring its living meaning for us is vikalpa-samskara — the practice of study. (Siva Sutra Pravesana, An Introduction for Practitioners of Yoga).
This session, the central text I am reading is Swami Chidvilasandana’s The Yoga of Discipline. The book contains a series of lectures discussing how being steady and constant in our yoga practice (including bringing yoga principles to our daily lives) will help us become more gracious, happy, and able to serve society. The lectures draw on teachings from the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali and from the Bhagavad Gita (suggested translations in another blog entry to come). I am freely drawing on those as well, even those sections not discussed in The Yoga of Discipline.
I picked this text at this time because I am feeling such a deep need and such gratitude for my yoga practice, study, and community in this time of uncertainty. It has been my own personal experience that longer I have had a steady practice, the better able I am to come from a place of light in times of flux, pain, or complexity.
E
Sometimes I contemplate the many names of yoga poses that are for animals and how and when that influences my asana practice.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
In this realm we can be hit by a car. That’s why, though I see benefits to having some experience with a wide range of practice, I prefer to concentrate my regular practices to those that are designed to maintain compassionate and serene engagement with embodiment to those designed to renounce, escape, exempt or rise above the messiness, complexity, and, sometimes, trauma of embodiment.
What about you? Perhaps you do not feel any need to examine this question.
Dear Friends,
Hope you all enjoyed the big snow. I missed seeing Saturday regulars and drop-ins with the snow canceling the last day of Willow Street classes and December’s Serenity Saturday.
If you are in need of a little last minute, holiday yoga, come join us tonight at William Penn House, 6:30 pm, all levels class.
For a great way to begin the year, on New Year’s Day itself, come to Capitol Hill Yoga for “Flow Into Grace” a heart-opening, body-shifting (gently), and intention-setting workshop with a combination of all-levels flow and yoga nidra. To register, please visit, www.capitolhillyoga.com. Late night revelers welcome; it doesn’t start til mid afternoon!
I’ll be taking my own holiday break so no Wm Penn or house classes next week, while I am in NY visiting friends, family, and enjoying the delights of the city.
Wm. Penn and house classes resume the first week of January. That week is also free class week at Willow Street Yoga Center (www.willowstreetyoga.com). I’ll be offering 8:30 am level 2 and 12 noon Gentle/Therapeutics on Saturday, January 9th.
If you were registered for Serenity Saturday in December, call Capitol Hill Yoga to switch your registration to New Year’s “Flow into Grace” or January’s Serenity Saturday (January 16th).
May you all have healthy and delightful holidays whether traveling or staying at home.
Peace and light,
Elizabeth
