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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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Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Community and Family | Gardening | Meditation | Photos | Poetry
In Which I Take My Own Advice
In the middle of another
11-hour work day, not
Counting the time to
commute, the commute
Being the round trip walk
From home during which I
have been practicing japa–
Maha mrtyunjaya mantra–
For dear spirits recently
No longer in this body.In between the work,
Between those walks,
I stopped. I stopped
and smelled the roses.
Thus refreshed by visual
Beauty and warm sun
And intoxicating scent,
I had the energy to begin
Again–to continue,
To work well.
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Website Glitches Test Post
It looks like what was leading to error messages for seeing photos and inaccurate claims my mailbox was full was that I was out of memory for the website.
Overfull, it didn’t tell me what was wrong, but just blocked displaying photos and receiving messages. How often are people like that? When overwhelmed or stretched too thin, it’s possible to see stress and challenge, but not quite what is really the issue.
One of the ways a steady yoga and meditation practice can shift us is to heighten awareness. The error messages we perceive and send are better correlated to the issues at hand.
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State of the Garden
The roses–they are budding. Not just the roses, and not just in my garden.
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