7.6.15

wonderlandish

"Actually, the best gift you could have given her was a lifetime of adventures."
~ Lewis Carroll

6.26.15

love wins

“If I had a flower for every time I thought of you...I could walk through my garden forever.”  ~Tennyson

6.8.15

my healing room

"when you arise in the morning, think of what a privilege it is to be alive; to breathe, to think, to enjoy, to love."

~ marcus aurelius

7.5.14

samatvamasana

We didn't really do much on the 4th so to celebrate America's (belated) birthday we headed to the mountains, hiking to Fern Lake and Lake Odessa.  It was a really beautiful morning.  I'm posting more than just one photo! 

"Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains.  You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow.  They smelled of moss in your hand.  Polished and muscular and torsional.  On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming.  Maps and mazes.  Of a thing which could not be put back.  Not be made right again.  In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery."

~ Cormac McCarthy

5.3.14

openness

"... The 'shoulds' of expectations.  These are the prisons of life.  Trying to change how we actually feel by ordering ourselves to do so is a strategy that goes nowhere, fast.  Open awareness is about accepting what is and not being swept up by those judging activities.... Our effort to combat our actual experience creates internal tension, a kind of self-inflicted distress.  But rather than march into our inner world and say 'No - don't do that!' we can embrace what is and notice what happens.  Amazingly, time after time people discover that letting things be also allows them to change.  We can approach our inner world with openness ad acceptance rather than with judgments and preconceptions."

~ Daniel J. Siegel, Mindsight

4.19.14

 

garudasana

i'm sort of slacking on the yoga-ness of the blog lately.  i am still, in my life, practicing yoga.  but we've moved back to the states, i haven't been teaching and i'm feeling uninspirational.  i'm learning a lesson lately, having nothing to do with asana and having everything to do with acceptance.

i'm learning about accepting life's unexpected trials, accepting another imperfect person's imperfections, accepting my own.  i'm learning about not struggling to change what i can't change.  i'm learning about allowing.  these are hard for me.  as a perfectionist and a control-freak i subconsciously (or consciously) feel like my actions can dictate outcomes.  but sometimes, especially when it comes to other people and their behaviors, they can't.  sometimes it's best to just realize that control is a complete illusion.

it's liberating, also scary, this acceptance trip.  it requires courage, trust, love and faith even as it tests those virtues.  when you're a fighter and a survivor the instinct to struggle and overcome is as vital as oxygen.  but to evolve you have to lay aside these instincts - rooted as they are in fear and restriction - and you have to allow.  so that's what i've been working on lately; allowing.  accepting. and loving.

but here's a yoga pose anyway, for good measure.  namaste bitches, xx.

"To find ease and a feeling of freedom in the pose, it might help to think about the myths behind Garudasana's name. Garuda, though often translated as "eagle," is actually a mythical bird in the Hindu and Buddhist traditions. As the vehicle of the god Vishnu, Garuda is said to be the king of birds. In Tibetan traditions, the garudas are considered a magical species; they are often described as "outrageous" because of their extraordinary ability to fly and fly and fly... and never land. They never have to land because they never get tired. And they never get tired because they ride the wind.
In Garudasana your body might feel awkward and constricted, but you can still ride the wind like an eagle. "Riding the wind" means riding the flow or energy of any situation or any challenging pose. Not to be confused with going with the flow or getting bowled over by circumstances, riding the energy of a situation means remaining open to what is occurring and finding a way to become stable, spacious, and steady within that situation, without resistance. When you resist, you're more likely to get tired and give up. In Garudasana, resistance will likely cause you to tense up and lose your balance. But when you stay open to possibilities, even when faced with obstacles, you may find that your energy renews itself endlessly." 
-yoga journal

2.9.14

sand dollar day

"anything can happen, child.  anything can be."
~mr. silverstein

i needed this reminder today; that i can manifest amazing things and routinely do. 

1.23.14

good news day

"and i feel i have something very serious and urgent to say to you, my non-existent reader, and i feel i should say it as urgently as if i were standing in the room with you.  that life -- whatever else it is -- is short.  that fate is cruel but maybe not random.  that nature (meaning death) always wins but that doesn't mean we have to bow and grovel to it.  that maybe even if we're not always so glad to be here, it's our task to immerse ourselves anyway:  wade straight through it, right through the cesspool, while keeping eyes and hearts open.  and in the midst of our dying, as we raise from the organic and sink back ignominiously into the organic, it is a glory and a privilege to love what death doesn't touch."

- donna tartt, the goldfinch

12.19.13

the light in me...

"a vase, like a building, like a body, has two spaces - the one that it contains and the one that surrounds it.  when we begin asana we worry about the shape of the pose, that is, how we look in the mirror, in other words, the space we exclude.  by now we should be worrying about the space we include, the space within, for it is largely that which gives true life and beauty to the asana.  it is called yoga svarupa - the self assuming its perfect form through yoga.  that is achieved through the inner distribution of space.  essentially that is how yogasana becomes effortless, with the natural beauty of molten gold being poured from a vat."
~ bks iyengar

i love love love this quote from light on life.  for most of us, those not trained formally in dance or gymnastics, etc,  the body can feel like a heavy weight that we're lugging around and attempting to manipulate.  we don't occupy every bit of it, living mostly in our minds.  we forget that the universe, or space, is always expanding, and that our physical bodies are made up mostly of space.  that same energy of expansion is within us.  
one of the best things about deepening my yoga practice has been becoming familiar with the inner space and the amazing and expansive nature of my inner self.  through steady practice, meditation and effort i have begun to occupy each room in my house, spreading from my mind down throughout my body.  when i want to move my foot for a giant step it is no longer being done from a distance.  my mind is no longer yelling down the chain of command, 'hey leg, drag that thing up here' my mind is in my foot, and my leg, and everything moves as one.  
to some people this is going to sound like some crazy hippy nonsense i know.  and it's early, i'm still drinking my coffee; maybe not the best time to convey philosophical musings but what it comes down to is this: as you practice yoga shift your concern from how you look in the pose to how you feel in the pose.  start to move from this inner feeling.  all the things that are always being repeated, remember to breathe, be present, blah blah, they are all helpful tools to get you to

this moment
in life
in space.
which you are.  

namaste bitches, xx.

12.16.13

"the clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness."
-j. muir

12.12.13

                                                                                            mridang bandha - drum lock

"life is about rhythm.  we vibrate, our hearts are pumping blood, we are a rhythmic machine, that's what we are."

-mickey hart

"eat drums! eat cymbals!"
-animal

12.10.13

hanumanasana

the following is a greatly abbreviated story of hanuman the monkey:

when hanuman was a young, little monkeygod, he thought the sun was a mango and went after it, meaning to swallow it.  the king of the devas, indra, was so enraged that the eclipse had been prevented by hanumans gluttony that he threw a thunderbolt at hanuman, smiting him.  as hanuman lay unconscious his father vayu, who was the god of air/wind, began to grieve, going into seclusion and taking all the air with him.  
in order to appease vayu the devas revived hanuman and each bestowed upon him an epic gift; shape-shifting, invincibility, amazing strength, and much more - essentially making him a super hero.  however he was also a young mischievous little monkey so they decided it best to place a curse on him so that he wouldn't be aware of his own powers and therefore couldn't use them against others.

fast-forward years down the road.  hanuman is devoted to lord rama, whose wife sita has been kidnapped and taken to a far away island.  it's so far away; impossible to get to. all seems lost, when hanuman's friend, the wise bear, jambavantha tells him, 'hanuman you have to go, you're the only one who can save her.  you have to jump to the island.'

hanuman says, 'there's no way.  i can't jump that far!  no one can jump that far.'

jambavantha tells hanuman that he is indeed the only one who can do it, he tells him that he is amazingly strong, incredibly brave, that he's invincible, protected, magical!  as hanuman listens to the words of his friend his belief in himself grows, breaking the curse.

hanuman takes a flying leap of faith, jumping all the way from india to the island of sri lanka, and rescues sita.  

this pose, hanumanasana, represents that great leap. it represents power that we all have if we just believe in ourselves, and the power that comes when others show their faith in us.

"the burden of all difficult tasks of the world become light with your kind grace." ~  hanuman chalisa

12.7.13

paramahamsa

"be kind to everyone; forgive everyone for everything."
- sri dharma mittra

.... i needed to remind myself of this today.

12.3.13

triang mukha eka pada pashcimottanasana

"blessed are the flexible, for they will not be bent out of shape."
-robert ludlum