Art and Culture | Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Community and Family | Meditation | Photos | Poetry
Signs Around Town
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Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Community and Family | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Meditation
Overheard in the Stairwell at Work
When I was coming downstairs in my building today, I overheard someone say to her colleague, “she said it wasn’t yoga; it was a core workout.”
I didn’t hear anything else. I wonder whether it was the teacher, a student, or an observer who was the “she” being quoted. I wonder what the person I heard speaking and what the person she quoted meant by yoga.
As for the “core workout,”I’m pretty sure, based on the location of the conversation–stairwell in a Federal office building–that by “core workout” it meant a class in the gym focused on toning and strengthening abdominal muscles.
In contemplating this snippet of conversation, I decided that yoga is the best core workout I know, if by core we mean center or essential–the very heart of being. What is yoga other than practicing and applying certain techniques to try and better live and act from the core of our being? Toned abs, if we get them, are just a bonus.
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Sometimes When the Complexity
Sometimes, when I step back in awestruck wonder at the complexity of human society and what it means to be engaged in rulemaking in that complexity, I like to take a moment and look at pictures from India, a whole other version with much the same and much different.
I invite myself to think about being human in this time and place with this many billions of others. And then I return to my work, confident that my work is both absolutely essential and completely meaningless in the grand scheme of things. In other words, I try to do my best, but still keep in perspective stumbling blocks to completing some mission in the way first intended.
I took this photo when we stopped on the bridge to Rameshwarum. I doubt I have either the fervor or the fortitude to have gone without the safety and comfort cushion of the bus. -
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Honeysuckle, Among Other Things
How could I question
The existence of soma?
I’ve smelled honeysuckle.
