Discussion of physical aspects of yoga (on and off the mat)
I am looking forward to head up to Vermont to celebrate the summer solstice with John Friend leading the way. He writes about the solstice here.
My studies today (it is a very rare day that I do not read some of a yoga text or commentary) included a mention of the body’s nine openings. The yoga treatises ubiquitously mention the “nine openings” of the body through which prana enters or leaves (is dissipated). Certain practices are designed to open the tenth, which is an energetic opening that corresponds to the fontenelle at the crown of a baby’s head.
A few month’s ago, my astute friend Jane, who has given birth and nursed, pointed out that a woman has 12, not nine openings.
What is a woman to do in response to this apparent disconnect or male exclusivity? Reject out of hand the teachings as only being misogynistic and of limited utility because they originated for male physiology and not female? Interpret the teachings and correlative practices as being based on the anatomical and energetic openings common to both sexes? Deeply explore the practices relating to this teaching and discover whether there are subtle ways to modify and reinterpret and apply the teachings and practices to address the lack of reference to and recognition of the three crucial additional openings that are fundamental to a woman’s being?
Guess which of these I am most likely to advocate and practice.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
Dear Friends,
My apologies for any potential confusion. William Penn House IS able to accommodate Tuesday night yoga classes in June and the conference people. Please disregard previous notice, or, in the immortal words of Gilda Radnor, “never mind.”
Hope to see many of you soon.
Peace and light,
Elizabeth
ps While you are on YouTube, check out some of the other great videos of Gilda Radnor. She was an extraordinary spirit.
The hunched over woman lit a cigarette. Another man bummed one from her and leaned against the trash cans to smoke. Smoking helps make the bus come–right?
Nowadays, I contemplate, or chant, or stand on one foot, or maybe post a blog entry.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
Congratulations and thanks for my friends and fellow Anusara yoga instructors, Kathy Carroll and Ellen Saltonstall for publishing, Effects of Anusara Yoga on Older Students From Their Perspective (Topics in Geriatric Rehabilitation • Volume 27, Number 2, 94–103 • Copyright © 2011 Wolters Kluwer Health | Lippincott Williams & Wilkins). They are both great teachers and warm spirits. Check out one of their classes when you have a chance.
A big thanks, too, for the regulars at the William Penn House class who graciously allowed themselves to be photographed.
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
Come join us. For details, click on the link above for “Classes.”
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
This bumper sticker (on an enormous black SUV with suburban plates) is likely intended to have only a message about the current wars in which the US is engaged. I wholeheartedly support the sentiment at that level.
What if we took it at other levels? What if we applied it to spiritual-religious practices? We could interpret this as suggesting that we honor the great teachers who have gone before us, invite religious observance and spiritual practice to heal ourselves and others, and dissolve notions of differences among religions and spiritual practices as bases for conflict. How many wars between countries or civil wars would end if saw unity while still honoring difference in this regard?
Perhaps most cogent for the yogi: what if we thought of the exhortation in terms of our own personal practice? It would be an invocation to honor our ancestors, heal the wounds of our family and upbringing (samskaras), and release inner conflict. This is, I think the point of practicing (whatever the style of practice) so that true peace can abound.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
It is too far from my current world and beyond my temporal limits at the moment, but if you are interested, please contact my friend Robin through the website link below, who writes:
Dear Friends and Colleagues,
Take care and thanks so much, Robin
Sometimes when I am looking for inspiration, I take a book off of my shelf, let it fall open where it will, and see whether there is a sentence or phrase that resonates for my day. Here’s my random quote for the day:
“May we be without fear/ by night and day!/ Let all the world be my friend!” Atharva Veda, XIX, 19 (Raimundo Panikkar, The Vedic Experience Mantramanjari)