Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Meditation | Photos
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Hot Summer Night (and Getting Hotter)
For the next few nights, lows will be in the 70s F and highs pushing or hitting 100F.
Please don’t fight the season or waste emotional energy hating it. Instead, wear loose, light clothing; eat small, room-temperature meals with emphasis on seasonal fruits and vegetables; exercise in the early morning or evening and do cooling, easeful yoga practices.
By all means, take advantage of technology and stay inside air-conditioned environments in the hottest part of the day. But please don’t crank up the cooling so that you can fire up your exercising or wear heavy clothes (for example, suit jackets and heavy shoes) or eat heavy, meaty and starchy meals. Fall will come soon enough.
Being seasonal doesn’t just make life more pleasant and enhance flexibility and adaptability, it also minimizes our use of precious, nonrenewable resources.
I’m looking forward to homemade popsicles, seated forward bend and twists, deep meditations, and early morning walks over the next couple of days. What about you?
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
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Unexpected Rain (and Opening to Grace)
I thought perhaps that I was still dreaming when I heard the soft patter of early morning rain. It has been so unfortunately dry. There was no rain in the forecast–only impending blistering heat–for days to come. But a cool rain it was indeed, nourishing the garden and giving temporary relied to my soul, anxious about drought.
As I enjoyed the unexpected rain, I thought about the practice of opening to grace. We cannot make it rain, though we might pray or dance for it. We can, though, make the ground and garden ready to receive it, even as we simultaneously plan and prepare to live as mindfully as we can with drought.
When we simultaneously open to the gifts of grace and work in recognition of challenges and limitations, we can experience and offer the most joy and fullness of being for ourselves and others.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
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Art and Culture | Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Community and Family | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Meditation | Photos
Mantra
The texts on sadhana — yoga practice — say in simplified essence that mantra is the fulcrum between the unknowable universal and manifest particulars. What language we use and how we use it can either lead us towards skillfully navigating life informed by illuminated understanding or blundering through things with obscured vision (or, I add, somewhere in between, but which do you want to be your goal?). If you listen for your authentic voice, what words do you want to utter, which do you want to embody, which do you want to offer? The mantra is a tool (in the best sense of the word) to find a source for our own language (thought and spoken) that recognizes the common bond of dwelling together as neighbors (near or far) on this earth, in this universe.
New York City, June 13-14
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Found Exhortation
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
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Art and Culture | Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Community and Family | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Meditation | Photos
“What Is It?”
As I squatted on the brick sidewalk to take this photo during my lunch time walk, a nice-looking older man stopped and asked “what is it?” He was quite tall and standing at an angle that would not have showed the shape as well as from where I was positioned.
“Stand on this side; what do you see?” I asked. He looked from my perspective. “A leaf,” he said with a quizzical expression, wondering why a dessicated bit of English ivy would have captured my attention sufficiently for me to take a photograph.
“Look again,” I suggested. “Can you see anything else?”
“Ah,” he said with delighted recognition: “it’s a heart.”
“Yes. I see them and other interesting shapes in all sorts of things–litter, blackened chewing gum, the pavement itself.”
“Everything has more than one form,” he rejoined. “You are blessed.”
And thus we went our separate ways, having brightened our day with this small connection. If he lives in the neighborhood, no doubt we will recognize each other enough from this encounter, at least to smile and say hello.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
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State of the Garden — Close Up (and Anticipation)
To deny or ignore the future is not the same as living in the present. To live perfectly in the present as a responsible and engaged part of the collective being, one must still plan for the future that will become a present. It is the perilous attachment to a particular outcome that can make bitter the present, not the engaged expectation of the future that is an inevitable part of living in the present.
As I worked in the garden this morning, I thought how much presence I find in the enjoyable anticipation of what will ripen in the future. And while anticipating cucumbers and tomatoes (and taking note of the damage caused by the birds), I set myself to enjoying fully the greens and herbs–the current abundance.
Blueberries, purple Cherokee tomato, grape tomato, echinacea, burpless cucumber, Italian eggplant, red Concord grapes, snow pea, green bean (Kentucky wonder)–June 10
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Signs (Affixed to Other Signs) Around Town
Could also be a “found exhortation.” Woke up grumpy today and have been reminding and encouraging myself act on all the ways and reasons to love/be loving.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
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Signs Around Town (Excerpt)
How can one be lost if one is thinking? Just asking.
Excerpt from curator’s notes at the National Gallery of Art exhibit “I Spy–Photography and the Theater of the Street, 1938-2010” (No photographs allowed).
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
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Asana, Pranayama, and Yoga Practice | Community and Family | Food for the Mind (Yoga Philosophy, etc) | Meditation
Hrdaya
To see the heart of things takes making more spacious and softening one’s vision not looking ever harder.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.