The yoga of food

Last night I ate pizza at delicious Amorina. Delicious and classic with red checkered tablecloths, flowery wall paper, warm chandeliers & people.

The girl sitting next to my friend and I was eating her very own pizza. She was by herself and enjoying her food a lot. She also had a journal on the table that she was writing in.

The journal, the pizza, the contented woman would have been enough, but then after dinner she ordered a cappuccino. It was lovely and foamy. I was really impressed.

Then she ordered dessert. Maybe it was ricotta cheesecake? I'm not sure. It didn't matter what the dessert was, only the fact that she ordered it. Though I do remember little caramel swirls on top.

I wanted to be her friend. Actually I wanted to be her, sitting alone with something to write on and enjoying, luxuriating over an incredibly complete meal.

That would have to be the yoga of food, exactly!

the best yoga teaching advice that anyone ever gave me

"eva, you just gotta love 'em."

-Jonathan Gordon, The Yoga Center of Brooklyn

the inside and the outside

I talked to Erin at her little party last night.
Erin is a painter with very lovely hands. When she spoke, she painted the air around us with her fingertips. It was like watching a work in progress, very fascinating!
This is what she said, paraphrased, as I remember (it was late...)

You know, sometimes its good to remember with all the stuff that goes on here, [imagine long thin fingertips swirling around the temple/forehead area] that real life happens out here. [imagine now, same fingertips swirling the air around and in front of her, my neighbor, and myself]

We talked about how, while being in a serious muddle, we see our friends, or snow, or a cat tucked into the recycling box and it (whatever your it may be) really doesn't seem so bad.

My quandary here is that yoga philosophy says that "reality" does happen in our heads. The world is an illusion. An illusion that is put there to teach us something, but still an illusion. And everything out there is colored by what is in here.
Maybe its a give and take? Our thinking paints the illusion brighter or darker, and that illusion does the same to our paint?

good stuff to ponder...but outside pondering or in??! Oy!

This is Erin's painting up above. Click on it to see more!

a present for you!

I am so excited about these presents!
They are lovely and sweet and of course, a surprise!!
If you would like one, email me your address and I will mail you one as soon as they are ready.
While my supplies last.
my email: eva@livingroomyoga.com

just do it

I bring this up because I have been meaning to, for the last 6 months (or more!?) dye my ugly brown shoes black to make them cute (er) and wearable.
I just did it.
It took me 8 minutes, and even inspired the dying of other (not so attractive) shoes as well.
Now I feel accomplished, calm, and curious at whatever took so long.

In a yoga class, the teacher says what to do, and the students do it. The simplicity of following clear directions makes them feel so good. It clears their minds, organizes their bones, and energizes a sense of possibility.

If you would like to experience this phenomena in real time, do this:

1. Stand up and lift your two arms up toward the sky, palms facing in.
2. Pretend you are holding a clear tube that surrounds you completely.
3. Imagine that this tube goes straight up into the universe and burrows down into the earth. You are right in the middle of all this.
4. Close your eyes and breathe 5 deep breaths, in, and out.

Lovely, yes?

Left and right peace agreement

I am trying to declare peace between the left and the right sides of my person.

Here is a little background on the two sides: The right is tighter, smaller and more demanding. She is like a button mushroom that wants to be in control and controlled at the same time. The left is more introspective and relaxed, like an oyster mushroom. She likes to relax and read and sleep late. She can also be a bit of a slug.

The internal war often starts first thing in the morning. Something mysterious will wake me up. The right side is the first to speak. "Out of bed with you!" she says, very similar rhythmically to "Off with your head, you!" The left side pretends not to hear her. She is still considering a dream. There is a woman with the part of her chin that is under her tongue and between the boomerang shape of her jaw and the rise of her neck, gone. Something had fallen through there, or like in a whirlpool, actually sucked through.

The right side doesn't let the left finish thinking about the lady w/ no undertongue part. She insists that she write about the lady from the dream immediately. The left side doesn't want to. She is heavy like potatoes, and besides, one arm is asleep and unable to move. That arm, the left points out silently, knowing that the right has won the fight anyway, is the right arm.

In an alternate universe the two sides of a person could react to each other in the same way that two cats living in the same studio apartment do: reluctantly. The two sides could howl at each other, and then make out all in the same breath. They are cute together. At night they unzip. Then they air out. When they come back together they are able to snuggle once more in the peace and quiet in which they live.

My universe is different. It has something to do with patterning. Faced with multiple left and right situations, they cling to each other to stay afloat but bruise each other in the process.. There is nowhere else for the two sides to be but married to each other. And like any couple that has been together for more than 30 years, they know what the other will say before they say it, even though they don't necessarily like it. They hold serious grudges. That is why this peace agreement is so important.

hope

The sun is finally peeking through the clouds and it is really dazzling my eyes.
The colors are a little brighter after you haven't seen them for a while, no?
I wonder if we need to feel sadness in order to have happiness, or hopelessness to find hope?
I don't want that to be the case. I want to feel smooth all the time, but that is probably asking too much.
From her book Writings, p. 135, Agnes Martin writes:

When we are unhappy it is because something is covering our minds and we are not able to be aware of happiness. When the difficulty has passed we find happiness again.
It is not that happiness is all around us. That is not it at all. It is not this or that or in this or that.
It is an abstract thing.
Happiness is unattached. Always the same, it does not appear or disappear. It is not sometimes more and sometimes less. It is our awareness of happiness that goes up and down.
Happiness is our real condition.
It is reality.
It is life.

In yoga-speak, the things covering our minds are veils. The veils teach us, they frustrate us, they fill us with sensation and the need to run. In order to see reality, or happiness/bliss, we must work at moving through them, to our middles.

Agnes Martin was so yogic!
Real proof that you do not need to bend your body into a shape to be a yogi.

decidedly unyogic

I haven't written in a while because I've been feeling decidedly unyogic.
I'm trying to feel differently & maybe that is the problem?, the trying?
The artist Agnes Martin wrote about how when all pride is gone, then you are truly free.
Freedom = ?

a new intent!

Big news! I am now a blogger for intent.com
I actually just posted my first one about introductions.
Its a good one!
If you would like to read it, click here: Namaste
Please know that I will not ignore this bloga! It's like my baby (if I had a baby~)
Intent is just a way for me to reach a few more peeps.
So feel free, on your yogic computer wanderings, to visit me there. I would love to have you!

Infiniti's pace?

How would it be to act as if there were no beginning and no end to whatever you were doing.
As if there were only the action itself.
I did sun salutations once for 45 minutes straight. I'm not sure if I just worked myself into a tizzy, or I really did start to feel the pulse of the universe in my bones.
The experience did feel never-ending, and my purpose felt different than usual. Pretty much no purpose.
Acting without end could be like running in a marathon, without all the people cheering. Maybe it would be quiet and your feet would make nice noises pushing off the pavement.

(this is my friend morgan's painting. her website is www.morganmckeehan.com)