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Yes, There Will Be Class Tonight at William Penn House

ByElizabeth

For those students who live within a few blocks, have power, and are not needed for such emergency assistance that can be provided before the trains are running and the roads reopened, what better than to come out and practice yoga as usual?  (Or if the storm has made it impossible to get out, it’s a great time for your home practice).

The yoga practices are such a healthy way to channel the energy from having been cooped up by the storm and to revive and enhance one’s flexibility, adaptability, balance, and strength.  It has been my experience that steady practice invites us to be ever more capable to address what confronts and engages us on our path (whether we like it or not).  Sending loving energy to all who have been challenged hard by Sandy’s path or otherwise.

 

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  • Midnight Yoga

    ByElizabeth

    Every once and a while, I find myself restless at bedtime or wakeful in the night.  The following series serves to make it easier for me to go to sleep and for me to feel fully rested as if I had not been short sleep:

    1.  Vipariti karani (legs up the wall).  Start with legs up the wall for five minutes or longer, then move legs into baddha konasana (butterfly) for several breaths, then put them back up the wall.  While your legs are up the wall, first just watch the breath.  Then concentrate on the breath, inviting the exhales to be twice the length of the inhales.

    2.  Twisted forward bend.  Using a bolster and a folded blanket (or two or three folded blankets) lengthwise on your mat, place the left thigh next to the edge of the blanket pile, allow yourself to sit heavily.  Staying sweetly grounded, hug your hips together to embrace your core and then draw the left waist back as you bow forward onto the support of the blanket. You can allow your forearms and hands to rest on the floor or you can bend your elbows a little more and tuck your hands between the blankets under your forehead.   Keeping the attention on the breath, inhaling lovingly draw in, exhaling more fully accept the support of the blanket.  Hold for a few minutes and then repeat on the other side.

    3.  Supported balasana (child’s pose).  With your knees wide apart and the big toes together, draw the blanket pile between your knees up to mid-thigh.  Place another blanket (or a pillow) across your calves.  Bow forward onto the support of the blankets.  Half way through, turn your head to the other side.  If your thoughts are still active, just let them be and turn your attention back to the breath.

    4.  When you are ready to come out of balasana, tuck your toes under and lift your hips into adho mukha svanasana (downward facing dog).  If you’d like, you can stay here for several breaths with your head supported by the blankets.  When you are ready, walk your hands back to uttanasana (standing forward bend).  Quietly and mindfully get back into bed and lie in savasana.

    Sweet dreams!

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    Living Mindfully in a Heat Wave, Ahimsa, and “Opening to Grace”

    ByElizabeth

    Ahimsa, which is the first of the yamas in Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, and thus is the first practice or principle of the eight-limbed path, is usually translated as non-violence or non-harming.  Over my years of practice and study, I have read and heard many versions–some general, some personal beliefs–as to what it means to practice nonviolence as part of a path of yoga.  As I watch the way people around me are behaving and reacting to the heat and drought, I thought about how, for me, the practice ahimsa is as much about seeking to be in alignment with the movements and shifts around us that we cannot change as about refraining from specific acts of violence (though that is obviously a basic element).

    In terms of aligning with the world arounds us and the cycles of our own body-mind, when we are sensitive to what will best serve our own self while having the least impact on the environment, we are practicing ahimsa, in other words, “opening to grace.”  How does practicing ahimsa by behaving mindfully incorporate many aspects of the Anusara first principle of opening to grace? Opening to grace, as a practice principle, invites us to be open, sensitive, spacious, and radically affirm what is so that we can expand, shift, and serve ourselves and others in the best way possible under the circumstance. To be open in this way, try not to rage at the heat–or whatever is your weather. Soften, listen, and mindfully discover how you can live at your fullest, kindest, and most generous with what you cannot change.

    When the temperature soars above 95F for days in a row, it is an act of violence to rage against it or to consume outrageous amounts of fossil fuels to cool our businesses and homes enough to wear warm clothes, sleep under blankets, cook and eat hot foods, or do an athletic asana practice or workout (lest we feel that we are not fulfilling some externally motivated personal notion of fitness–having external notions of how we should look, act govern us without accepting the actual situation is its own form of violence against ourselves) that we would not do if we could not artificially cool our environment.

    Perhaps I have no call to speak on this: my central air conditioning is on, though I’ve been keeping it between 78-82F and I have been moving, dressing, and eating in a way that honors the fact that those temperatures are as cool as it is going to be until the heat wave breaks. Some might argue that using any air conditioning or even an electric fan or a refrigerator is doing excessive harm to the environment. That may in fact be true, but asking for more than we can do just makes things seem impossible, and then we are less likely to make any shift at all.

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

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    Web Version of May Newsletter–Invitation to the Dance

    ByElizabeth

    Dear Friends,

    One of the most captivating elements of dance as artistic expression for me is that it has the capacity to show the beauty in the full range of emotions.  Whether the choreographer is telling a story or sharing an impression, making a political statement or expressing a feeling, the dancer’s inherent grace can show us that there is beauty in all things, helping us through the artistic medium to abide with what might otherwise seem emotionally intolerable and to celebrate more fully that which would naturally make our hearts sing.

    Since I first began practicing asana, it has been for me an embodiment of the dance.  The exquisite technique of the Anusara® principles of alignment  transformed healing work into a dance of exploration.  The expansion of my strength and flexibility in middle age — when because of my dance history I thought only would contract with age — allowed me to express progressively more fully the joy I find in my body.

    This year, John Friend’s overarching theme for his workshops and trainings around the world is “Dancing with the Divine.” The theme resonated especially fully for me because I started attending regularly last fall the Sunday contact improv jam on Capitol Hill and have been re-exploring dance after all the shifts I have made with an ever-deepening asana practice.  It has been with an eye towards not only my own dance, but the connection of the community, and our dance of relationship with our living planet that I am choosing which trainings and workshops to attend this year.

    When deciding what my study priorities are for the year, I look first at where my practice and teaching could benefit from some deep attention and wisdom offerings.  I look to the local offerings to deepen my connection to my home community and to minimize the environmental impact of getting to be in the same room as the teacher.  I am thoroughly appreciative of how wonderful it is to have a burgeoning and dedicated local community that has incredible teachers and draws others.  When planning which workshops or trainings with John Friend I will attend, I look at whether there is an opportunity to combine a training with a visit to friends or family or an opportunity to see art exhibits or museums that are of particular interest to me.  I like to go to any trainings that I can get to by train and, like even better when it happens, where I do not need a car once I get to the training/workshop location.

    Next dance for me with the bigger community is the Anusara Grand Circle in Stratton, Vermont for the summer solstice.  My heart expands with the anticipation of being in the mountains of Vermont with clear, starry nights and bright, vivid almost endless days for a gathering of fellow yoga dancers, those I already know and love, those whom I will get to know better, and those I will meet for the first time.

    It is especially exciting to know I will have the opportunity to study with some of the incredible teachers in the international community I am honored to know, but from whom I have not yet had the privilege of taking a class.  It is also a great opportunity to be with people who are just beginning to get excited about Anusara (gatherings like this are a great opportunity to study with John Friend without having the formal application process.)

    Local yogis, I look forward to seeing you in regular class offerings in the neighborhood and Willow Street, including just until the end of May, Thursday night restorative yoga.  I expect delightedly to see you, too, as fellow students at many of the incredible offerings both in and around DC and the country.

    And if any of you are interested in coordinating a trip to the Grand Circle to celebrate the solstice, send me an email.

    Peace and light,

    Elizabeth

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    Furlough Week Two — Sutras

    ByElizabeth

    First too hot, now cool.

    It wasn’t until the weather cooled and the reality of a second week of work not being done that needs to be done to meet deadlines that the impulse arose to make the first batch of homemade granola of the season.  This batch could be called maple nut granola with raisins.

    Harvested last of the sweet banana peppers and a fire engine red cayenne pepper.  Also picked as a baby one last eggplant before pulling the plant to make way for tat soi.

    Most of the tomatoes I found on the ground still unripe.  With a generous portion of red wine and nice herbs, and the traditional way of cooking them for hours and then running through a food mill, and then reducing until reaching the desired thickness, it won’t matter that the tomatoes ripened on the counter.

    Assorted apples from the farmer’s market.  Dried fruit is different when it goes into the dehydrator within a couple of days of having been picked and early in the season when the apples are best.  An upside of being required to stay around home is that I have been able to experiment with the dehydrator that was a most generous birthday gift.

    There’s a bunch of difficult stuff going on, but there is no need to write about it anywhere except possibly in my journal, for much of it.  And as for the shutdown and its impact on real people around the globe (and all that interconnectedness stuff), I prefer today to write about granola and stuff from the garden.

    Anyway, I’m thinking I would just be preaching to the choir if I wrote another blog post about the importance of trying to keep up and understand as much as possible, speaking with others to shape your understanding and your voice, being in contact with your elected officials and signing petitions, and reaching out to friends and family open to such discussions to invite them to be engaged.

    It is times like these when I think of Patanjali’s sutra:  heyam duhkham anagatam (the pain that has yet to come can be avoided.)  I have contemplated this sutra much over a long period.  It is a good one for when I am reaching into the yoga teachings for insight into how I might respond more optimally under the circumstances at hand, especially that which is entirely out of my control.

    furlough 1a furlough 1b furlough 1c furlough 1d

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