Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice

Discussion of physical aspects of yoga (on and off the mat)

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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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    Gratitude and Self-Acceptance

    ByElizabeth

    On Friday night, Betsy Downing was at Willow Street’s Silver Spring studios leading a weekend workshop.  The focus of the weekend was learning how yoga practice can assist us in “interesting times.”  In this regard, Betsy invited us to recommit to two practices that we know support us when we fully practice them.  I did not feel the need for more meditation or asana or pranayama.  I do those steadily.

    I have been struggling, though, with where I am lately — I think something was triggered with all the confined time during the great snows.  This morning I decided that for me, this invitation would best serve if I allowed it to help refocus my practice.  In getting a little off-kilter, I forgot to practice fully gratitude and self-acceptance.  Remembering to practice those fully will nourish me well in these challenged times.

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    What a Difference a Month Makes

    ByElizabeth

    Here’s an aerial view of the back garden on the equinox after I spent several hours cleaning, deadheading, repotting, mulching, etc.  As you can see, the moss is ecstatic from having had the weight of the snow on it for several weeks.  Coming up in quantities almost enough to pick are lettuce, spinach, cilantro, parsley, chives, onions, lemon balm (always have too much of that — if you’re local let me know if you want some).  The first rosebud emerged sometime between Friday and Sunday.  It is hard to believe that just a month ago, I was blogging about indoor gardening — how to find delight even when snowed under (scroll to the bottom of the linked post to compare pictures of the same view).

    As you can see from comparing the two photos, things were still growing under the snow or getting ready to do so.  That is what practice is like for me.  Sometimes I feel completely snowed under by an injury or rush jobs at work or personal circumstances beyond my control.  I keep practicing, but I don’t have the time or energy for long practices or full weekend workshops, when it is easy to get to a place of delight.  Other times, things are less pressured, and I feel brimming over with health.  Then practice feels wildly effulgent.  For my garden to offer its full potential (as is true with my practice), I need to spend lots of time and effort in it for the next several weeks.  I know that if I do so, I will be blessed with fullness.

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    Samtosha (and the “Founding Fathers”)

    ByElizabeth

    I am subbing Fusion Flow tonight up at Willow Street. Natalie, for whom – am subbing, has been teaching the yamas and niyamas this session. She asked me to cover “samtosha” tonight.

    In contemplating this principle of practice again (it is high on my contemplation list), I thought of the what was drafted by the “Founding Fathers.” We are not guaranteed the right to happiness, but the right and freedom to pursue it.

    That leaves open the question of what is happiness and whether and how to pursue it. It contains, I think, a hidden agreement that to keep the right open to all that happiness cannot be realized by the acquisition of external power and things that will prevent others from having the same freedom.

    When I get caught up in our current societal vision of what we are supposed to have or be, a reminder that “samtosha” — contentment — doesn’t just happen, but is a practice, always regrounds me. I choose to come back to a space of gratitude, and my my whole self eases. I return to a place that serves me and enhances my own freedom to find happiness, while bringing me to a place that is aligned with that freedom growing for what and whom I touch.

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    Tomorrow Will Be a Great Day for Indoor Gardening! (Yoga for Gardeners Reminder)

    ByElizabeth

    It’s still March, and we’re in the middle of one big and fabulous rainstorm.  Tomorrow (Saturday) might not be a great day for getting out into the garden (unless you like wading in mud), but it will be an absolutely fantastic day to do yoga with an intention of readying body, mind, and spirit for the garden and to get in tune with all that is growing and has the potential to grow inside and out.  Come join me for Yoga for Gardeners at Willow Street Takoma Park and help support the Youth Garden at the National Arboretum.

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    New Spinach (and Udyamo Bhairava)

    ByElizabeth

    The fifth sutra in Abhinavagupta’s Siva Sutras, is “udyamo bhairava” — the great upsurge of consciousness.  When we are open and aware, we can witness this upsurge, the very pulsing of life energy in all that is in and around us, from the springing up of thought in our minds to the burgeoning of spring.  The more we practice and live attentively, the more we will see the joy in this upwelling.

    When I go out into the garden on the early spring days to see what needs to be cut back, what is volunteering, and what is coming up from fall plantings, I approach with great openness.  When we plant in the fall, we do not know with any certainty what kind of winter we will have.  Although the long-range forecast was for colder than normal with precipitation near normal (which translates into more than average snow), who could have expected three mammoth snow storms?

    I plant with hope and some expectation, but am ready for the loss of some perennials, the failure of some seeds to germinate, and the unexpected pleasure of experiments working or welcome volunteers.  This steady planting without specific expectation, with openness to discovery, with joy and attention to the miraculousness of what rises up in the spring, is a very tangible example of what I read in the yoga philosophy.  It is how I, I believe, we most optimally would approach asana and meditation, as well as all aspects of our daily being.

    Below:  new spinach coming up in a container from seeds I planted around Thanksgiving from an expiring packet.

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    Sauca (Another Perspective)

    ByElizabeth

    My friend and Willow Street colleague Natalie Miller taught a lovely class on Monday night, using sauca as her theme.  She said that she had recently read a book that described the yamas as things we do to be better persons, but that the niyamas were precepts for our spiritual practice to lead us better on the path.  In that sense, she suggested, sauca is about clarity or purity of intention.

    What I love about contemplating and practicing with these concepts is that they are so pregnant with meaning; they have so much to offer wherever we are in our life and on our individual path of spirit exploration.  The more we contemplate and visit and practice and discuss, the more we will discover both about the meaning of the concept and about ourselves.

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    Heard on the Elevator (and intention for change)

    ByElizabeth

    The elevator I rode to my fifth floor office this morning was very full.  Several of the people in the elevator were wearing visitor badges.  As I walked on, I heard a woman say to a colleague, “…if you get a good one, they can do amazing things.  I had a frozen shoulder, and it was just incredible the change from the physical therapist.  I highly recommend [don’t remember the name].”  Her colleague, who evidently had extremely limited range of motion and a limp from something with his hip, said, “that would be great, but I don’t have time for something like physical therapy.”  They got off (slowly) on a lower floor, leaving me and someone I know who works on my floor.

    “He obviously does not want to heal or change if he doesn’t have time for physical therapy for something that is debilitating,” I said.  “He would vehemently deny it, if you told him that,” replied my co-worker.  The reality is that if we want to change or heal or grow, we have to make an intention and then stick with it.  Whether it is healing an injury through therapeutic yoga and/or physical therapy or a more internal shift sought through yoga, we must be steady and committed to our intention.