the cannon-like flight

Jeremy said something really good on Friday night. Just out of the blue he said:

When we are born its like we are just shot out of this cannon and even when we think that we aren't doing anything we still are moving and changing. Our bodies are burbling and digesting and growing or shrinking. We are spinning with this earth around and around. Day after day. It never stops. There really is no such thing as doing nothing, because its like we are part of this force that begins the day we are born and goes until we die.

And my yoga-fying brain thinks that stopping for a moment to watch that cannon-like flight is fascinating.

And, in case you are wondering, Jeremy is my husband-to-be! Wahoo!


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Newton's Yoga

Today, my student was telling me how yoga is rooted physics; he said that to whatever we do, there is an equal and opposite reaction.
I totally agreed with him.
Ooh!, but now I wonder what is the equal opposite reaction of "totally agreeing with him"?


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blue sky meditation

Close your eyes and imagine an endless blue sky underneath your eyelids.

When your mind begins to think, for example, "I wish I was sitting on the beach with this blue sky instead of in my bedroom", see the thought on a puffy white cloud and watch it float through the sky.

When your mind asks, "Should this puffy white cloud be big or small?", label that as a thought and put it on another cloud. Watch that cloud float along.

Judith Hanson Lasater said in her restorative yoga trainin that we shouldn't worry about how our mind keeps on thinking when we try to meditate.
She said that thinking is the brain's job. Just as you can't ask your skin not to sweat, or your lungs not to breathe, asking your brain not to think is impossible.

The key is to not grab onto the thoughts. The key is to watch them for what they are, only thoughts. They are not you.

You are the blue sky.

oh well

I have a friend named Annie. She was my roommate two times (!) in college. I realized during the second time that she was a natural born yogi, with no Asana practice necessary.
When she did her homework, she did it. When she watched TV or goofed off or whatever, she did that too. She wasn't worried about homework when she was playing, or wanted to be playing while she was working.

She also taught me her secret mantra that I still think about: "oh well."

You can put it at the end of any and all sentences for a super-yogic effect.

1. I left the lights on in my car and now it won't start and I have no time to move it, oh well.
2. I missed the train and now I'll be late, oh well.
3. I can hold a handstand longer than anyone else, oh well.
4. I lost $20 bucks, oh well.
5. I ate too many cookies, oh well.

Try it, and notice if you feel a little more even, and a little less like holding on.
For a physical practice, try this: go to the beach and scoop up and handful of sand. Let the sand fall through your hands back onto the beach. Pick up another scoop of sand and let the second scoop fall through your hands back to the beach. Continue for as many scoopfuls as it takes until you realize that here is an endless amount of sand for you to scoop and drop.

the you!

The you who is really you, was the you that you were when you were 2, and is still the you now that you are the lovely age of __.
You are still that cute, lovable, with big open eyes, or howling with tightly closed eyes.

I was listening to an interview on the radio yesterday, and the interviewee, Ruth Reichl, told something that her mom used to say.
I thought the quote so lovely that I stopped in the middle of washing my bowl, and messily wrote with wet hands and happy self,

"When you find yourself, when you know who you are, you will be beautiful."

vacation!

A few thoughts on vacation through the eyes of yoga:
1. Change what surrounds you, and then, "Who are you!?" in this new place.
2. Because everything is constantly changing; changing our locale floats on that swelling wave.
3. The universe is vast, and we are small.
4. Our eyes are much bigger than our bellies.
5. Health is wealth (as Swami Vishnu Devananda was so fond of saying).
6. Vacation stirs up prana.

And now, a short exercise on #3.

Read this through, and then close your eyes. Sit comfortably. Take 5 slow breaths, in and out. Now imagine that you are 100 feet above where you are sitting, and look at yourself sitting there, in space. Really look. Look at where your edges meet the space around you. Notice how far away you are from the closest furniture, from a wall, from the structure of your building. Now see yourself in relation to your neighborhood, to your city, to your state, your country, the world we live on, then finally the universe.
If you keep this up, you may be enlightened by the time you get to the universe part!
Now begin.

note: the reason I write of vacation is that I am about to take one, so if I don't write for a few days, this is why!

small avocado

I saw a small avocado when I was walking home from the train yesterday. It was perfect, simply resting on the corner of the sidewalk, where the slope met the street.
The avocado looked so ripe and lonely there; it looked like an orphan, round and soft and little, especially compared to all the cement that surrounded it. My heart really felt it's situation.
And then I had a little round epiphany; we are all like that avacado, just talking and moving and making stuff.

listen

Everything is so loud. And its not just the cars and jackhammers. Its the lists of things to do and places to go and millions of people and physical pain.
I'm thinking that when there is this storm swirl of noise, and you are feeling wrong and you don't know why, you must listen very carefully to you.
Put earplugs in if you have to, wrap your head with a scarf, relax your belly and listen like you have never listened before.
You might hear something really good.

living advice

I keep thinking about what my Alexander Technique teacher Chloe told me.

She said, "Try to walk with an unheld heart."

That was on Saturday. And now, whenever I try that, I feel so mysteriously happy.
So I offer the advice to you and your respective, lovely, warm, beating, hearts.

pace

Remember that you are in no rush.
Really, no rush at all.