In Case You Were Wondering How Uma and Sully Are Settling In
They are still not fully settled in to their new surroundings, but they are doing well. A pair of mockingbirds decided to set up shop in my backyard this morning. The cats are mesmerized.
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Taxing Yoga?
I just received the following email that makes it easy for you to comment on the DC Council’s proposed tax on yoga classes. If you believe yoga should not be taxed, please take action as moved:
Dear Elizabeth,
We just learned that the DC Council may impose a 6-8% sales tax on yoga classes and gym memberships. This Friday, May 7th (tomorrow!), they’ll consider the new tax. And, they’ll vote to approve or reject it soon thereafter.
Before this vote happens, please tell the DC Council: “Don’t tax yoga!”
Washington, DC is no stranger to the challenges of modern life that yoga is so well-designed to address: stress, stress-related illness, depression, anxiety, and the secondary impacts of these ills that make it harder for people to simply “get along”. Why put yoga — a potent antidote to these problems — further out of reach for District residents?
Some advocates of the new tax argue — mistakenly — that people who practice yoga and attend gyms are wealthy enough to afford the additional tax burden. The truth is that most yogis and gym members are middle income-ers who’ve simply made it a priority to invest in their health and well-being.
The DC Council should reward their behavior, and encourage more people to take responsibility similarly for their own well-being. Doing so will have direct upsides on the DC coffers. Why? Because when people are healthier, more balanced, grounded, and happy they’re also more productive, more self-reliant, and better able to function in our interdependent society.
If you agree, please tell the DC Council now: “Don’t tax yoga!”
We respect the DC government’s need to increase revenues in a time of economic recession. We just feel that taxing yoga and other health and wellness services is one of the worst ways to do it. Services that support people’s health and well-being are not luxuries. They are essential – just as much in the District of Columbia as anywhere, if not moreso.
Please make sure the DC Council gets that message. Tell them: “Don’t tax yoga!”
Many thanks,
Ian
—Ian Mishalove
Co-Owner & Director of Flow
Flow Yoga Center -
Stand Steady in the Light (Workshop at Willow Street this Saturday)
One of the most wonderful ways we can find our own steadiness using asana practice is the joy of standing balancing poses. Even when our feet are not steady, a gentle turning of our mind to a focused, steady place will bring us a sense of calm and ease.
Please join me this Saturday for:
Standing Steady in the Light: A Standing Balance Workshop, Sat May 8, 2:30-5pm, Willow Street Yoga Center, Takoma Park, $35. Find a place of deeper steadiness and balance in your own light and worthiness. Learn how to use the Anusara principles to enhance your ability to stand or your own two feet or on just one foot at a time. After we playfully explore a progressively expansive array of standing poses, we’ll finish with a few upside-down restorative postures to let our legs and feet feel the bright light created by the practice. Whether you find standing poses a challenge or revel in the dance, this workshop will illuminate your practice. Everybody welcome. To register, please visit www.willowstreetyoga.com.
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“You Seem Pretty Mellow,”
said the guy who is doing the exterior painting and repairs to me this morning, after we were talking about what needed to be done with the stairs, and we talked a little to the downstairs resident who was on his way out to work. Then he paused, after thinking about what he had seen of my house and garden and added, “unless it is cultivated.”
“Yes,” I replied, “it is cultivated.” I will never be completely easy-going, but at the same time as some might wish me more easy going, one of my strengths is my attention to detail and my ability to create order. I cultivate, though, an ease with necessary disorder — the disruptions that come hand-in-hand with construction, repairs, creation (art, kitchen, garden, home), growing relationships, and comfort where I am. We may not be able to change our nature, but we can make shifts that ease our being. Radical affirmation in yoga is accepting our tendencies, but then seeking shifts to make life even fuller.
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The Four Gates of Speech
One of the offerings in John Friend’s Anusara Teacher Training Manual, is the “four gates of speech,” which I believe comes from Buddhist practice. The four gates are:
1. Is it truthful?
2. Is it necessary to say?
3. Is it the appropriate time?
4. Is it a kind thing to say?
It is easy to see this application in terms of speaking with others, though not always easy to practice, especially in a group setting where the culture is to condemn and criticize.
A more subtle practice of the four gates is how we talk to and about ourselves. I am someone who was raised to have a very strong internal judging voice. Although with the steady practice of yoga affirmation, my tendency for self-judgment has eased, the propensity reasserts itself when I am stressed. I have taken to asking myself, when I hear the judging voice, does it pass the four gates of speech? I find it a challenging practice, but a necessary one. When we honor ourselves (we can honor ourselves and our own light and still know there are ways we would benefit from expanding or shifting), we will more easily honor, recognize, and affirm the light in others.
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Boycotting Arizona?
Having just returned from Arizona (yes, Sedona is in Arizona, as hard as that may be to believe from any perspective other than cartographically) from a meditation retreat, and having two more scheduled with my teacher at the same location during the year, I have pondered with my usual degree of self-questioning about the potential impact of my choices the suggestions to boycott Arizona.
I had decided — perhaps because continuing to study with my teacher, including on retreat is so important to me now — that as I pretty much go straight from the airport to the meditation retreat and back without shopping, I am probably supporting people who did not support the immigration law. On previous trips, in addition to paying for the food and lodging at the retreat (my teacher lives in California, so the tuition goes to California), we ate at a Mexican family-owned restaurant and a raw foods restaurant and bought some supplies at the natural foods store (eschewing the Whole Foods in favor of the local natural foods store). I’ve decided it is OK — perhaps even a good thing — to support those who clearly were not in favor of the immigration law.
What does it mean to engage in a boycott? Who does it hurt and help? What impact could the Arizona boycott have? Have you thought about whether to boycott Arizona?
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Great Swan
I found a used copy of Lex Hixon’s Great Swan–Meetings with Ramakrishna, last week that I am reading with delight. Lex Hixon has rendered the teachings from the seminal and extraordinary voice of Ramakrishna very accessible. It also provides in a light-handed and intelligent way, an excellent perspective on the history and dance of the mingling of East and West. Ramakrishna, as Swami Vivekenanda‘s guru, is an incredibly important part of the path of yoga to the West.
As an American drawn to the teachings of yoga, I feel it important for me to know the context of how these teachings reached me, and how they interconnect with the embodiment of religious and social practice in both the society whence they came and the cultures they have reached and shifted. Those who have imbibed the teachings with pure bhakti (devotion) might think it is not necessary to study so much. For me, whose nature and practice includes skepticism and questioning, the more perspective I gain by thinking, exploring, and studying, the more I am able to open in different ways.
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The Virtues of Romaine Lettuce (and embracing our place in the web of being)
This year, along with a mesclun mix, arugula, mache, and the tender green and red leaf lettuces, I planted several heads of romaine. It is not my favorite lettuce for salad; I have become spoiled by having baby arugula, spinach, and assorted greens and lettuces. As a replacement for bread, though, it is far and away the best lettuce. It’s flavor is green enough, but unobtrusive. It’s shape and sturdiness make it easy to use as an alternative for tortillas, pancakes (think mushu tofu), or pita or other flat bread. Tonight, I picked several leaves of romaine, which I rolled around sprouts, avocado, and sweet and spicy tofu (saute onions until golden; crumble and saute firm, silken tofu; stir in until just hot and thickened, a bar-b-que-like sauce of tomato paste, molasses, apple cider vinegar, garlic, Bragg’s amino liquid or soy sauce, chili sauce–proportioned to taste).
Which lettuce works when depends on all the other elements of the meal. One is not better than the other in the abstract, though you might have a taste for one more than another. One type might be better for a particular meal. So too, we each have our place in the web, and will be better aligned when we offer certain aspects of ourselves at particular places and times. Part of the discrimination (viveka) we learn in yoga to serve us in this life is developing an understanding of how best we can serve and where and when.
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Happy May Day (and radical affirmation)
It feels wonderfully auspicious to me that my Spring classes at Willow Street are starting on May Day. It is Beltane–the true end of winter and the beginning of the effulgence of the time of growth and light. It is May Day–the mark of a shift in power from the oppressors to the once oppressed, now freed (I’m not going to get into whether that really worked as planned). It is a time of tradition at my alma mater; the sophomores wake the seniors with strawberries and champagne, enjoying celebration and revelry (dancing around May poles and the like) as they get ready to take their final exams. Today is Kentucky Derby; I remember a party where the fact I had mint in my garden for the juleps started a fabulous passion.
The potential for delight, for freedom, for fullness is always with us. For me, yoga helps me find it and recognize it. The longer I practice, the more richness it offers. This Spring session I will be focusing on radical affirmation of the potential in ourselves so that we can recognize and reveal it. Much more on that to come; for now, I must head to the metro to go teach.
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“Iowa Bird Story”
The “Iowa Bird Story” is an extraordinary meditation on connection, living, leaving the body, and expression through art.