Author: Elizabeth

  • Asana Practice and Digitalis

    ByElizabeth

    During last night’s yoga practice, we were exploring how advanced yoga postures such as headstand drop-overs could have therapeutic applications. If the practitioner is able to do the poses preparatory to the pose (for headstand drop-over to be accessible in a healthy way, the yogi should be able to do dwi pada vipariti dandasana and, of course, sirsasana, in good, easeful, steady alignment), then the pose can be integrating and healing for the shoulders and strengthening for the neck. For those with little cervical curve, really working to lengthen the side body, integrate the shoulders, and radically melt the heart (which is what is necessary to get into the pose), can help develop the cervical curve. Done out of alignment, the headstand drop-over risks the shoulders and neck–the very parts of the body that would be healed and strengthened if the pose were done in alignment–are at risk of injury.

    Four or five years ago, I was at an advanced intensive with John Friend where he likened advanced asana practice to digitalis. Digitalis, which is a beautiful flower, is one of the most poisonous plants in the garden. Taken the wrong way, it can make you very sick indeed. Properly distilled and administered in just the right dose, digitalis is one of the most powerful and curative heart medicines available.

    When we approach asana, especially the more physically challenging postures, with great respect, care, and discernment, we can not only benefit from its extraordinary healing and life-expanding powers, but revel and delight in dancing in our bodies. If we approach asana without honoring ourselves and the power of the practice, however, we put ourselves at risk and we fail to realize the benefits that are possible.

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    Web Version of October E-Newsletter

    ByElizabeth

    Dear Friends,

    Much of the conversation for the past few days has been about the weather.  Some people have talked about how much they hate the heat and how excited they are about the coming of cool weather.  Others are lamenting the passing of summer.  When it was this temperature six months ago, the same conversations arose, but mostly in reverse.  Right now, of course, it is perfectly and delightfully temperate.  Neither heating nor air conditioning is needed to have a healthy indoor environment, but because it is our nature to compare, it feels cold, just as the same temperature had us throwing open the windows and dancing for the joy of it being warm last spring.

    For me, the dialogue about the weather and the observation of my own reactions to the change of season is a perfect invitation to look at how perspective influences perception. One of the benefits of a steady and ever more refined practice is that it helps us feel a sense of awe and openess in the face of whatever comes and not be swayed by our history and personal inclination, allowing us to celebrate life more deeply and spectacularly.

    Upcoming opportunities to cultivate a sense of wonder (this Fall’s theme):

    The fall Willow Street session is underway.  There is still time to register and drop-ins are always welcome.  Join me Saturdays in Takoma Park for Flow at 8:45am and Gentle/Therapeutics at noon.

    William Penn House classes continue on Tuesday nights at 6:30pm with a wonderful and dedicated group of friends and neighbors.  All levels welcome.

    More experienced yogis will have a great opportunity to expand their practice at:

    Hanumanasana:  Nemesis No More, Saturday, October 16, 2010, 2:30pm-5:00pm, Willow Street Yoga Center, Takoma Park.  $35. Are there poses which make you cringe or yearn to have a break from class? One of the great fruits of yoga is “thinning the kleshas,” learning to feel aversions less powerfully and to better experience our intrinsically joyous light no matter what the world presents us. Enjoy an afternoon of exploring and delighting in a full-spectrum of standing poses, arm balances, and hip openers that might lead you to – dare we say it – a greater appreciation, if not downright enjoyment, of hanumanasana and will definitely bring you a delighted gratitude for vipariti karani (legs up the wall). For students Level I/II and up.  To register on-line, please visit www.willowstreetyoga.com or just drop in on the day of the workshop.

    Will you be in town for Thanksgiving?  Want to share the love and gratitude?  It’s the:

    Eighth Annual Thanksgiving Day All-Levels Yoga Fundraiser for Oxfam. Thursday, November 25, 2010, 10-11:30am.  $25. On Thanksgiving Day, join me at Willow Street Yoga Center, Takoma Park, for an all-levels fundraising class to benefit Oxfam.  Stretch your body and embrace your own generous spirit as we give thanks for our families, friends, and bounty.  Friends, family, and out-of-town guests of all levels of yoga experience, including first-timers, are welcome. To register on-line, please visit www.willowstreetyoga.com or just drop in on the day of the workshop.

    I’ve been getting lots of positive feedback about the updated subscription feature for the blog.  Give it a try, by clicking here and entering your information,  if you haven’t already and make it even easier to join the discussion.

    Look forward to seeing you soon.

    Peace and light,

    Elizabeth

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    Samskara (and the awesome and the awful)

    ByElizabeth

    Those of you who have been attending my classes for the past couple of weeks already know that my overall theme for the fall session is cultivating a sense of wonder (abhuta). Feeling wonder is one aspect of the Anusara principle of “opening to grace.” It is seeing who we are and what we are within space and time with a sense of amazement at the limitations and the foibles, as well as the strengths and delights.

    This week I was thinking about abhuta in the context of samskara — the markings or grooves or scars in our being from how we have lived our lives (and perhaps past lives, if those were also lived by us — personally not sure about that). I had a dialogue earlier this week that resulted from over 110 years of combined history that was not optimal. Reflecting on the precipitating factors, though, and marveling at the web of history, environment, education, and action that combined to give rise to the conversation led me to a sense of wonder indeed. It is by cultivating the ability to step back and appreciate the wondrousness of the dance that we learn from a steady practice that, I think, can help make it possible to shift in how we behave and react to things.

    From a physical perspective, most of our challenges and difficulties are based on what we have done with and in our bodies over the course of our lives. We use the yoga alignment principles to create new grooves and to shift from the old repetitive patterns, so that we can not only alleviate pain and misalignment, but to expand the possibility of discovering ever more joy and wonder in and through our bodies and senses. Both the physical and meditation practices help us shift similar patterns (dissolve and transform samscaras and their impact), so that instead of deepening old grooves, we erase or dissolve them and create new life-enhancing ones.

    It may seem odd to marvel at our stuff, especially when it does not appear to be serving us, but keep in mind that both the awesome and the awful, being both all about awe, can give rise to a recognition of the great and exquisite mysteries of being.

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    Tropical Storm

    ByElizabeth

    We’ve had many inches of rain today, strong winds, and tornado warnings. This morning I got a call from my handy man that the drain under my back porch was stopped up and the basement was about to flood. He should not have been at the house. The work was supposed to have been done a couple of weeks ago, but a host of different occurrences got in the way. He only checked the back patio (he was working on something in the upstairs bathroom) because he had installed my rain barrel and wanted to make sure it was working properly (a story goes with that too). I left the office so I could go home and bail and monitor. The handy man wasn’t able to clear the drain with a snake, but bailing it out and then using the handle end of a rake cleared it out.

    It is almost midnight and another band of heavy rain has been moving slowly through the area. I’ve gone outside a few times, but it all now seems fine. I’m hoping it will stay ok so that I can go to bed without worry.

    I said to the hany man that his having been here today was part of the mysterious workings of the goddess of sequencing; it saved me from a flood in the tenant’s apartment. He said, that’s great, but it does not justify my procrastination. My point to him is that we never know when something that seems like a problem may turn into a blessing. His point to me is that just because things turned out for the best does not mean we can abdicate our personal responsibility for our own actions.

    As I listen to a month’s worth of rain coming down in a few hours, I am reminded how lucky I am to have such things be my challenges, when so many are suffering.

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    Carbon-Free Website

    ByElizabeth

    For those of us living fully in our modern material world, as I am, it is important to think not so much about denying ourselves things or giving them up, but rather, seeing how we can make shifts to living more lightly.  One of my heavy impacts on the environment is computer usage.  Right now, I have on my work computer, my home laptop, and my Blackberry.

    All of you who are reading this blog are doing so via computer or by a personal device with web access that requires battery charging.  I’d hazard a guess that most of these portable computers are not being powered by sun and wind.  I am still waiting for Pepco to come and change the meter to hook up my newly installed rooftop solar panels to the grid, and I don’t have a solar charger for the Blackberry.

    One thing I thought I could do to help make enjoying this way of connecting have less impact on the environment would be to go carbon-neutral.  In the world of plastic, the ideal is don’t use, reuse, repurpose, recycle.  In the world of electricity, it is don’t use, use from better sources, off-set.  With respect to my blog, I am choosing to use the necessary electricity, but go solar with my house, buy electricity from a source that uses offsets (Clean Currents) for that electricity that is in excess of what the solar panels will provide, and I’m choosing to offset this blog’s impact based on readership through the Carbon Fund.

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    Rainy Morning NYC

    ByElizabeth

    The pouring rain is an inconvenience on a play day when I am toting baggage, writing materials, and electronic devices. It is hard to remember, when surrounded by concrete, glass, steel, and macadam, how urgently we need the rain. I am hoping for the trees, the farmers, and all of us, that it is also raining back home in DC.

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    Last Night I Slept At My Parents House (and akrama)

    ByElizabeth

    I slept last night in the room that I slept in as a child. My mother now uses the room to store some of the vestiges of her old antiquing business. The carpet, wallpaper, and curtains from the 1960’s are gone, but the bed is the same one in which I had slept. The picture on the wall is a kit for making a stuffed animal that my Grandma Rose had bought me (probably when I was about 8) at the Brooklyn Museum of Art that my mother decided would be better as framed art than a sewing project for me.

    The neighborhood looks different–it is far more developed as is everywhere near a big city–but the bones are the same.

    It is a challenge not to feel the weight of my history and ancestry when I return. Taking the time to meditate when I woke helped me stay fully in my adult self.

    When we meditate, we ideally dissolve our individual consciousness into the luminous spaciouness of universal consciousness. In that space, where we are temporarily not experiencing ourselves as an individual, we are also not experiencing our individual self in the sequence (krama) of time. The luminous spaciousness of meditative consciousness is sequenceless (akrama) and, as universal consciousness, is the place in which the sequences of being in time and space arise.

    What I experienced this morning when I meditated was that I did not have to be flooded with the emotions of my, to try to graciously describe, emotionally challenging childhood. In the space of meditation I could bring to my day an acceptance of all of my life and be where I am at present, coming to a place of recognition that although I lived all of my history, it neither defines me nor binds me from expanding into a space of growing love and light.

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    Wilmington Delaware Amtrak Station

    ByElizabeth

    I witnessed this family standing on the train platform while I was listening to a teleseminar from Paul Muller-Ortega on the “four stages of the word.” That a family dressed this way was waiting for the train gave rise to much thought for me about how I seek to integrate yoga practice into my daily life in a modern Western culture. How much is compromise or disservice to the “purity” of the teachings and how much of it is a part of a pulsing, growing, changing intersection of peoples and times?