It is hard to believe that having arrived home only two weeks ago from my trip to India that I have already gone on and returned home from another trip. As I looked out the train window at the landscape that still holds my interest though I have seen it hundreds of time, but yet is restful in its very familiarity, I thought about how strange and wondrous it would seem to one newly visiting from a place like Tamil Nadu, especially the rural areas.
When I saw this on the sidewalk, I wondered whether it was litter–the content of a note unless autographed by someone famous is still litter if it is discarded on the street; or was it a note that slipped out of someone’s hand who would miss having the phone number and the reference; or was it intentionally placed on the sidewalk so a do-gooder who routinely picks up litter from the sidewalk and walks it to the nearest trash can would be given a message?
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
Third Floor, Glen Cove Community Hospital
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
Sometimes I wonder why a thing appears in a particular place at a particular time. Then I wonder why I wonder. It is not as though I am going to get an answer. It can be good fun, though, speculating on the how and why as long as we don’t get too caught up in needing an answer.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
Dear Friends,
Midnight of the new year found me sitting in a hotel room near the Chidambaram temple at festival time engaged in intense conversation while listening to wild music and chanting and the cracks and explosions of fire crackers. Quite a change from my long-standing practice of making a healthy meal, doing a long yoga practice, taking a hot bubble bath by candlelight and going to sleep well before midnight so that I can start the year rested and refreshed (an excellent way to spend New Year’s Eve if you haven’t tried it). Though I did not start this new year well rested, I wouldn’t have traded the experience I had for the world. Sometimes we need to radically break out of our old patterns to discover how much we can expand.
One of the practices at the temples we visited on the India Pilgrimage with Douglas Brooks is to take a coconut and break it open. The coconut symbolizes your head and all the preconceived notions and rules we set for ourselves that bind us into our old habits. The symbolic act of breaking open the coconut is to remind us that we sometimes need to break ourselves open in order to get at the true meat of our existence and to drink the sweet nectar of life.
Many times during the trip I thought about my first experiences attending “Advanced Intensives” with John Friend. I, like many others I know, showed up at my first Advanced Intensive wondering how I got there, asking myself whether I was worthy, and worrying that I was in way over my head and would get injured. Though I have now been to a number, each time I still have had to practice with both an absolute willingness to be open to the possibility of expansion while being impeccably mindful of my own limits. It is a subtle dance of consciousness, and part of the learning is finding the exact balance point where we can both break out of our preconceived limitations and still honor that we in fact have some.
I approached going to India with much trepidation. A friend whom I met in Peru and who I later visited in South Africa, having seen my emotional reactions to the deep poverty of developing nations had warned me off of India. As one who likes things to be quiet and clean and thrives on healthy meals and regular sleep, I knew India would be physically and emotionally challenging. But I wanted the visions. I wanted to see and experience its very “otherness,” its beauty, and the source of the yoga teachings. I packed my bags with emergency supplies, some of which I turned out to need, some of which served others on the trip, most of which I ended up donating to a village that the trip helps to support. I had to ask people to help me (one of my hardest practices) by being close when we were in dense crowds. I confess that I wore earplugs when it got really loud in the temples, which it does. And having prepared and taken care, I was exhilerated. I experienced radically more with my heart getting fuller and fuller in a short time than I thought ever possible for me. Like discovering one can do a wild yoga pose that one thought totally out of reach and then sensibly stopping before blowing past physical limits, I broke myself open and was able to drink deeply of the nectar. And yes, I did actually hurl a coconut to the ground to break it. And yes, it took two tries.
I was lucky. This time, I got to choose when and where to break open the coconut. Sometimes life does it for us and then we have the choice either to despair or to rise to the occasion. This year, I invite you to the yoga to find where you can break open and find ever more sweetness, nourishment, and delight than you ever dreamed possible. For me this includes not just the exhileration of advancing the intensity of poses, but the deepness of meditation, the precise use of alignment for therapeutics to better experience life, and the emotional depth of a long restorative practice.
Come join me as regular classes continue at William Penn House on Tuesdays, invitation group house practice for charity on Wednesdays, and gentle/therapeutics at Willow Street on Saturdays at noon in Takoma Park. All info on the classes page of the web site. Mark your calendars, too, for:
Finding the Warmth Inside: Relax Into Optimal Alignment with Anusara Restoratives, Saturday, February 25 2012, 2:30 PM – 5:00 PM, Willow Street Yoga, Takoma Park Studio, $35.00, click to Register Online or download a paper form to bring to Willow Street in person. After a little gentle stretching and self-massage to bring awareness to the breath and body, we will enjoy the exquisite application of Anusara’s Universal Principles of Alignment to restful and supported restorative postures to release old patterns and invite in the new to find greater ease of body and mind. A great workshop and practice for all levels.
I have been sharing photos and experiences of India on the blog (if you have missed them, do check them out and enjoy). Some of you have asked how you can subscribe to the blog in addition to the newsletter. Please just click here and follow the instructions to get the blog posts by email.
I look forward to seeing you through the new year and sign off expressing my ever growing love, appreciation, and gratitude for all of you and the deepening and expanding connection through the yoga, neighborhood, and all that life here in DC and in the greater yoga community brings us.
Peace and light,
Elizabeth
One of the first things I did when I got home was to start several kinds of sprouts. Soaking beans overnight is, if you think about it, just a prelude to sprouting. I often sprout beans for a few days even if I plan to cook them. Once they have just sprouted (usually after two+three days), cooking time to tender is only 10-15 minutes. I had some sprouted chickpeas, a couple of potatoes in cold storage (aka the vegetable bin in my refrigerator). Today was the first day I was really able to get into the garden since my return. In addition to carrots, I was able to pull a substantial quantity of various greens: kale, chard, curly endive.
The stew: saute in olive oil (or a mix of olive oil and butter), minced onion and garlic, diced celery and carrot until translucent. Add to pot peeled and cubed potato and sprouted chickpeas (if using only soaked chickpeas, cooking time will be 3-4 times as long; or you could use already cooked chickpeas) and stir to coat with cooking oil. Add a couple of dried hot chilis (optional) and some sprigs of rosemary and oregano (fresh is best). Cover with vegetable stock or water and cook until chickpeas and vegetables are tender. In a pressure cooker this took about 10 minutes. Chop whatever fresh greens you have on hand (anything, but collards; if all you have are collards, kidney or pinto beans would work better than chickpeas). Add the greens just before serving and cook only long enough to wilt greens. Season with salt and black pepper to taste. I used rind from a spanish rosemary-crusted goat cheese when cooking. This would be optional, but if you want just a hint of cheese flavor, cooking with the rind of a hard cheese is very nice.
Ah, it is good to be home.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
In Anusara yoga, one of the ways the first principle of “opening to grace” can be experienced and practiced is as a radical expansion of the capacity to receive and appreciate the very wonder of being. During my visit to India with Professor Douglas Brooks, I found myself repeatedly thinking of the concept of radical expansion and also the preamble to the Isha Upanishad (long a favorite of mine; Shantala on their first CD, Love Window, have done an exquisite rendition), which can be roughly translated as saying that adding fullness to fullness is itself fullness (fullness can also be translated here as perfection).
What I believe this is saying that being itself is infinitely full; thus, we cannot make it more infinite by adding to it. Human consciousness of the infinitude of being, though, is limited by the filters of space and time. One of the key reasons to practice yoga (including meditation) is to expand both our capacity to appreciate the fullness and to receive its full wonder by uniting our own consciousness with the infinitude. When we can appreciate ever more the wonder of our being, we will naturally be more joyous, and I believe, led to be more compassionate and generous with ourselves and others.
Day after day on the India pilgrimage, just when I thought my heart and mind were already full to bursting, there were yet more experiences of the beauty and extraordinariness of life and creativity and nature. I found myself chanting the Isha Upanishad—purnamadah, purnamidam, puranata purnamudatacyate. Fullness and fullness is fullness. “Let me expand still more to appreciate to its utmost yet more beauty,” I thought to myself again and again. Though I already thought I’d developed a fairly full understanding of the concept through study and practice, I thought, “this is what John Friend means when he is talking about radical expansion.” I look forward to studying and practicing to experience and share ever more beauty.
I was not witness to the most abject poverty in India (both because of where I went and because of how I was guided). These makeshift, but semi-permanent shelters seen from the window of the bus made me think of the Occupy movement. They are nothing like those of Occupy and much of what Occupy is trying to warn against forgetting to care. And, oh yeah, McPherson Square is still occupied, though more and more uneasily.
It was just approaching the deep dark of the solstice when I left for places warm and light. Last week, when I got home, just by comparison to the sultriness of southern India, it felt dark. This morning, though, I noticed earlier morning light. When the wake up call sounded, I was deep in a rather wonderful dream in the violet-tinged landscape of the American southwest. As I had an early meeting at another governmental agency that required me to walk 10 blocks further than my usual walk to work, and I did not want to miss my regular morning practice, I had to get up right away.
The light through my second floor skylight seemed softer than it had just a few days earlier. Instead of being absolutely dark, there was enough of a hint of dawn that there was no need to turn on the light just to walk downstairs. I thought perhaps a little of yesterday’s snow might have accumulated. No snow. It was just the first glimmer of the days starting to get longer. When I walked past the Capitol on my way to the meeting, I saw several robin red breasts. With global climate change, many of them now do not fly farther south for the winter.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
