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April News (web version of e-newsletter)

ByElizabeth

Dear Friends,

The end of March is all sunshine and flowers after a turbulent month.  I’m hoping for some April showers along with the sunshine, so that my garden greens will flourish.  The pulsation between rainy and sunny, cool and warm, is a great reminder of the essential vibration of being!

There will be lots of great yoga opportunities to pulse with the shiva-shakti vibration in the next several weeks:

As always, William Penn House Tuesday classes are on a drop in basis with special pricing to make yoga affordable for public interest workers, students, seniors, and those in between employment.  Invite your friends.  Special for April, bring a friend new to the class and when your friend comes back for a second class, you or your friend get a class for free.

There are two more Saturdays of the winter session at Willow Street.  Registration has already started for Willow Street’s Spring Session.  My Spring session classes start on Saturday May 1st — Level 2 @ 8:30; Gentle/Therapeutics @ noon.  We love it if you register for the whole session, but drop ins are always made welcome.  While you’re visiting the Willow Street web site, check out the article I’ve written for the Spring Newsletter’s “Teacher Feature.”

This Sunday, April 4th, from 3-4:30, come celebrate the uprising of flowering energy at a special $10 community class at Capitol Hill Yoga.  100% of the proceeds benefit City Blossoms.

April’s Serenity Saturday — on April 17th — is certain to be a great way to foster growth of mind, body, and spirit, whether we are getting April showers or summery sunshine.  Visit Capitol Hill Yoga to register.

Mark your calendars for May:  on Saturday May 8th, when I’ll be leading an all-levels workshop on standing balances — Stand Steady in Your Light — as Willow Street’s Takoma Park’s studio.

Finally, a great thanks to all who come to classes regularly and support the monthly giving.  Yoga for Gardeners attendees had a great time and enabled contributions of over $200 for the Youth Garden at the National Arboretum.  The March and April classes will also support the Youth Garden.

Wishing a great blossoming to all.  I look forward to seeing you soon.

Peace and light,

Elizabeth

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    Podcast on Ayurveda for Yoga Students and Teachers

    ByElizabeth

    Thanks to the generous Cate Stillman for this podcast.  What I like most about Cate’s perspective is her teaching that  truly practicing Ayurveda is paying attention at the deepest level, including paying attention to what in the classic teaching of Ayurveda work for you and what do not–being that they are imbued with cultural elements of the Indian subcontinent that do not necessarily support or resonate with our culture or individual constitutions.

    As I study more, I find that it turns out that I had been practicing Ayurveda already by keeping to a regular daily and weekly routine, eating seasonally and locally, eating with sensitivity to impact on my digestion and energy level, and by having a steady practice.  Not being interested in detox (more some other time on the dangers of detox)  or constitution types, or arcane herbal remedies (many of these, by the way, are becoming endangered species), it turns out, does not mean having rejected Ayurveda.  I do know that whether I call it Ayurveda or just plain common sense, the more I live in a balanced, sensitive, and steady way in terms of diet, sleep, entertainment, work, and consumption in general, the more I optimize my health and sense of well-being.

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    Some Interesting Internet Reading (because I am all about the “big picture”)

    ByElizabeth

    I spend a lot of words on this blog extolling the benefits I have perceived in myself and in my students from the various yoga practices. I also candidly admit (when asked) that not all practices are for every one and certainly not all of the time.

    It probably seems obvious that challenging asana would not be right in the presence of certain injuries or illnesses, even if asana practice, which is good for our strength, balance, and flexibility, among other things, is generally beneficial overall. Being an advanced practitioner entails in good measure being sufficiently sensitive and aware of our edge day by day and even moment by moment in our practice so that we expand our capacity to live life to the fullest without blowing past our edge out of ignorance, carelessness, or ego and needlessly injure ourselves.

    What is more subtle is finding the same edge in meditation. I am not talking about physical discomfort sitting for meditation. That can be easily remedied with appropriate props, for example a cushion or chair. There can be such a thing as too much meditation or not the right type of meditative practice for certain practitioners or under certain circumstances. Going deeply into the self beyond the surface level of thought can release things that had been buried. We may not be surprised if we have nightmares or anxiety dreams when life is presenting us with lots of challenges and difficulties. It may be more shocking, though, if negative thoughts or emotions come up when we sit for meditation. Meditation is supposed to be benign and health-optimizing.

    One way to deal with the shock is to stop, but then we lose the wonderful benefits of meditation. What is more optimal is to learn where is our edge in meditation, just as we do for asana. As we get more proficient and experienced with meditation, if things are coming up that are difficult to handle, we learn when to shorten our time sitting, when to add in more physically comforting and boundary-enhancing asana, and how to release the negative stuff that is arising without it impacting our lives or relationships.

    The challenge is that it is precisely the steady, intense practice over time that gives us the insight to know when the practice is too much at a particular time. For me, finding the edge where I can expand perfectly can be a challenge, but is ultimately and completely worth my while.

    For some of the alleged dark sides of practice, try entering into your favorite search engine “meditation side effects.” Then read with appropriate skepticism; it is the internet after all, and you should be as skeptical about the claims of the negative aspects as you might be or once have been of the potential benefits of the practices.

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    June Greetings (Web Version of June E-Newsletter)

    ByElizabeth

    Dear Friends,

    One of the yoga practices in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras is sauca, which means cleanliness or purity.  It does have a basic aspect of physical cleanliness, which has lead me this year to do an especially vigorous spring cleaning.  I think following the principle of saucra also applies to the clarity of our intention for the practice of yoga:  are we seeking to experience and act from a place of deep connection to spirit (or good or oneness or divine or whatever you name it)?  In practicing sauca, I think the most basic question is whether we have dust on the mirror that reflects the good in ourselves obscuring our vision, whether there are blockages to the energy flowing to bring us to optimal physical and emotional health, or whether anything is getting in the way of our manifesting our intention?

    When it has been too hot to go into the garden over the past month, I have been reorganizing and sorting through old papers.  As a once every five or ten years spring cleaning, it is lasting longer than usual.  I tend to be good about keeping on top of these things, but there are crevises of old records of my life that seem to just get stuck back into a folder to be decided on some other time.  This afternoon I came across intimate letters from a friend who, not long after we went our separate what had become cross-continental ways with regret on both sides, discovered he had brain cancer.  There were a few notes not in envelopes.  I reread those, but did not open the envelopes.  Back into the miscellaneous file until the next time.  The same with the print-outs of emails to and from Peru right after 9/11.  It wasn’t avoidance.  Over time and distance, regret and grief have faded.  I did not have the need or the time to read them now.  They went back into the file because I am curious what will be my reaction to these documents when I am 87 should I be around in this body then.  I find that when I see them after again more years have passed, I can see how much the yoga (asana and meditation) as a steady practice over time has shifted how I relate to my past, to all the decisions better or worse that brought me here today.  I am more at peace with the various detours and convolutions for the teachings and the good at the time, even if they do not appear to have been squarely or most efficiently on the path.

    Just as most of us have pieces of paper or things that for some reason get saved, but spend most of their time in a drawer or a file cabinet or a closet, we have thoughts and emotions around past experiences that can emerge into memory at what can seem to be the oddest of times.  With a strong meditation practice, it can sometimes feel like we are cleaning out the closets of our mind.  With a therapeutically focused asana practice, it can seem as though we have found old energetic entanglements, and it may feel that it would have been easier never to have practiced at all.  If we stay steady and keep coming to class and our own practice, we witness how much change can be wrought.  When we remember to bring our clear intention to the yoga mat, the meditation cushion, the garden and the kitchen, the laundry, work and commuting and everything we do, then we in an ever more refined and deepening way open to grace, the fundamental AnusaraR principle.

    I am happy to let you know that I am now E-RYT 500.  My spring cleaning on the physical level motivated me to do the paperwork with Yoga Alliance.  My carrying the designation E-RYT 500 means that teachers taking my classes and workshops can get Yoga Alliance continuing education credits, in addition to Anusara study hours.

    I am looking forward to studying with Christina Sell at Willow Street Yoga next weekend.  Come join fellow yogis for what promises to be a joyously challenging weekend of classes.  The following weekend, I head up to Vermont for the Anusara Grand Gathering.  If you are going, let me know and we can try to connect.

    Special June Location Information for William Penn House Classes:  June 14 and 28, William Penn House will be completely taken over by conference groups.  Class will be held at the house location.  RSVP’s are required.  For those who have been regulars, but who have been full up with other things in life than class, it is a sweet way to get back.

    Hope to see you soon.

    Peace and light,

    Elizabeth

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    Choices, A Cardinal in the Grapes, and Viveka

    ByElizabeth

    This morning while I was out in the garden, I heard a chirping right above my head.  Within arm’s reach was a bright red male cardinal perched among the grapes effusively talking.  (I planted a tiny red, concord grape vine about six years ago, and it has flourished beyond my wildest dreams).

    There were enough ripe grapes for me to pick a handful for myself.  I have bird netting, but I have not put it over the grapes.  They did not do so well this year, many turning brown prematurely because, I think, of the drought-ridden winter followed by the extra wet and cool spring.  I am grateful that I will not be dependent on these grapes as food for myself to survive through next winter (I’m pretty sure; if not, I have bigger things to worry about).

    For the joy of having the birds come visit so fearlessly and delightedly, and because the grapes are not fantastic to eat, I leave all, but those I get by the small handful a couple of mornings a week for a few weeks, to the birds.  Maybe next year I will net the grapes, but then I’ll have to have a canning party to make jam.  In the meantime, I’ll marvel that every bird in DC seems to know when my grapes ripen.

    We make decisions like this all the time.  With how we shop, what we eat, what work we choose, how we travel, we are making decisions about habitat and environment for ourselves and hosts of other beings.

    In yoga, the process of ever refining our understanding so that we can be more in touch with how we act impacts our life force and our relationship with all around us, is viveka, or discrimination.   Just as the more we practice on the mat, the more we develop awareness of what leads us to feel more in tune and more celebratory of life, so too, we want to use that yoga refinement and discrimination to inform our acts off the mat.

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