In Which My Camera Sees the Good
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It was one of those days when it was hard to get home. I’d gone to the museum to see the Harry Callahan at 100 and then went out for tea in Georgetown with a friend. I stopped on my way home for some groceries. I got to the bus stop just as a bus was arriving, but with a big suburban SUV hogging the bus stop and the dark rainy night, the driver sailed past without stopping. He must have been really late and was taking advantage of a short break in traffic. I caught a taxi rather than wait in the cold rain for the next bus.
Traffic was completely still on K Street because of the police trying to clear out Occupy DC from McPherson Square and a number of streets were closed off to traffic, so the driver went to H Street, which was almost equally congested. Things started to move for a bit, but then there was then some issue with another big black SUV with suburban plates in Chinatown that had been pulled over by the police. This resulted in absolute tirade by the taxi driver as to why DC should not be allowed to be a state. I was having trouble explaining that Federal voting rights for citizens in the District had nothing to do with whether the cops could have pulled the car over better or faster so that it would less obstruct traffic. I gave up completely when he started in on how DC schools should be better than Maryland’s and Virginia’s because they had so much more tax revenue.
I remembered I had my camera in my pocket. I accepted the the meter was going to run unless I got out of the taxi in the rain (and then what was I going to do?) and enjoyed photographing the lights of the city at night. Sometimes, my camera really helps me accept whatever is and see the beauty in it.
Devotion (Bhakti)
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Much is said about devotion in yoga, and there is a great privileging by many of the path of devotion — bhakti. With no clear answers, I contemplate often what it means to practice bhakti, to be devoted in a religious or spiritual sense. Witnessing those on pilgrimage when I was in India (it was “pilgrimage season”), I was flooded with memories and ideas for contemplation about what it means to be devoted and how people express devotion.
Among the thoughts and memories were having observed the operaphiles in their expensive clothes swoon and gasp and applaud at the Vienna Opera House on the opera level where I had paid a dollar for standing room; having been literally swept off of my feet in the press of the crowds heading to the tube at Wembley Stadium after seeing the Rolling Stones in concert; watching the people do the standing wave thing at ball games while hollering for their team as if their whole view of the world was dependent on who wins; having taken, standing room only, the third class train from Florence to Rome during Easter week (a different pilgrimage season), on asking who is that woman on the billboards, discovering that India, too, has a habit of electing movie stars to political office.
What Do You See?
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What do you see when you walk down the street or into a room? Do you see more or less depending on whether the surroundings are new to you or familiar? John Friend has said that when leading a class teachers need to be able simultaneously to see the whole room (and how everything and the students are in relationship to each other in the room), each student as a part of the whole and as a whole person, and the individual alignment of each student.
What it takes to do this is the ability to be completely soft, spacious, and open in our seeing (“open to grace”) and also well enough educated and experienced to appreciate and understand the details. I think that when we can see both the big picture and the details simultaneously, we have the greatest opportunity to experience the most of life, are more likely to be able to look for the good, and to make the most positive changes.
“In, Back, and Apart”
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As I was preparing my week’s classes, I was led to contemplate the off-the-mat import of the words — “in, back, and apart” — used to describe the actions that activate the Anusara alignment principle “inner spiral,” which is also referred to as “expanding spiral.”
The meaning and point of “yoga,” we are told is union. In the Anusara system, inner or expanding spiral is a critical element of the “universal principles of alignment,” which are designed to get us physically and energetically into our optimal blue-print.
How can going in, back, and apart be what would create an expansion that would enable us to better experience our whole selves and all beings as spirit and in unity? Doesn’t that sound entirely backwards?
Going “in” is one of the key aspects of yoga practice. If we only look out, we can get caught up is grasping and longing, which causes great suffering. Although we need also to appreciate the outside, going in, especially by means of meditation. Going in is what enables us to discover our only true freedom, which is the freedom to choose how we react internally to whatever is going on outside of ourselves.
Moving back in yoga is not the same as backing off or away or turning one’s back on things, which would move us away from connection. Rather, when we move our awareness to the back body or open to what is all around us and not just what is forward-looking, we can soften and open to the unknown and to the unseen, allowing the subtle energies to move and guide us to deeper insight as to what connects and unifies.
Moving apart in inner spiral literally is the expansive component of the action. Moving apart is not becoming more separate, but making space (spaciousness) where there was binding, allowing for more freedom to experience all that is possible. It is also about breaking apart from our preconceived notions of being limited and different.
Moving in, back, and apart does not just realign the legs so that we can heal our pelvis and low backs and radically expand our flexibility even as our bodies age (as if that weren’t good enough). Energetically, it can revolve our whole way of connecting to ourselves and the world.
Peace and light, E — Posted with WordPress for BlackBerry.
After the Exhileration, Work
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We all (or at least most of those who would be reading this blog) have heard the Buddhist-inspired saying: before enlightenment, the laundry. After enlightenment, the laundry. The question is whether after the moments of enlightenment can we infuse doing the laundry with more joy, acceptance, and peace. A young adult acquaintance asked me the other day whether I was readjusting ok. I did not know to what he was referring, and he had to explain that he was asking how I was doing on my return from my India trip. “It was just a vacation–albeit an extraordinary one,” I replied. “Life continues.”
“The good experiences just slip away like dry sand through my fingers,” he made a motion of letting something slip away.
“When you practice and when you get older, it will be easier to bring the temporary, good experiences into your life without feeling they are lost when you have moved onto the next thing,” I said with hope that would actually be true for him, he seemed so bereft.
The yoga teaches us neither to be out searching for the highs nor actively avoiding the lows; the dance of grasping and avoiding is what makes us suffer. That does not mean that the highs, the times of wild abandoned joy, the experiences of utter fulfillment, of exquisite understanding are of no value. What brings joy is a thing of wonder and an opportunity to deepen our ability to love and be generous. They are only a problem if we ruin our time by vainly clinging to or trying to repeat the sensation. As our practice (and our understanding of a life well-lived and loved) matures, we understand that there is no readjusting in the return to the day to day. We welcome what we have had, try to remember what we have learned, including how much joy and delight we are able to drink in, and approach each day as another opportunity to seek and share connection.
In Our Own Back Yard
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It is a great privilege to be able to travel and to experience and witness what is made especially exciting to us by virtue of its difference. If we are open to it, though, we really need go not much further than our own back yards — I use that the term back yard metaphorically as I don’t really have one — or to shut our eyes and sit for meditation to witness the wondrous.
Lunchtime walk after the storm blew through.
“This Is Soul Kirtan”
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One of the ways I prepare for a restorative workshop is to spend some time looking for new music to play quietly in the background to enhance the fullness of the experience. In the past couple of days, I have enjoyed listening to quite a quantity of new and new to me music appropriate for my upcoming Finding the Warmth Inside: Relax Into Optimal Alignment with Anusara Restoratives on February 25th at Willow Street Yoga Center (click on the link for details and to register). Among the music I downloaded, which I am thoroughly enjoying (though it might be too upbeat for the restorative workshop playlist), is C.C. White’s “This is Soul Kirtan.”
As I was listening at my desk and swaying to the beat, I thought about the non-dual tantric philosophical principle that exhorts us to find the good in everything, to recognize that in all there is still a “divine” spark that is expressed in the creative effulgence of the universe itself. The music is joyous, delightful, offered with love, delivered with a high degree of professionalism–both the musical performance and the recording and presentation. I tried to fathom just how many centuries of human migration, suffering, oppression, bigotry, and then fighting for tolerance, education, equal rights, spirit, and freedom had to occur for this music to be able to exist at all and to be published and embraced, it being an extravagant blend of Indian spiritual/religious practice, American soul and blues (and all its history), and classical Western musical technique.
Hare Om Ganesha Revisited
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I bought in India this sweet image of ganesha. When I came home, I had the treat of going shopping for here and looking though dozens of strands of beads until I found just the right ones to complement the colors in the painting and the energy of the image. The brown and green tones of chunky turquoise felt just right. In creating the necklace, I took the time to see how the individual stones related to each other both in shape and color. Just as taking time to get in alignment can enable us to create beauty out of challenge, so to, taking the time to arrange the stones makes the difference between something merely strung together and an artistic creation.
“Seriously”
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A friend from the DC Sunday contact improv jam (one of my favorite places to play) sent this link showing a clip from a documentary in progress about the importance of play to our health. One of the things that I love most about Anusara yoga is that John Friend has always described its practice as being “seriously playful.” I was born serious nature and have worked hard in my adulthood to learn to play spontaneously, and what is being offered here resonates for me.
This is a long clip, but well worth the time. Anusara yogis, notice how familiar some of it sounds. Enjoy!
Asta Vakrasana Variation
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I was working with photos today and came across this shot a friend took a little over a year ago. Long gone is the memory of exactly why I did not stay fully in the pose. Perhaps this was the beginning, and I was planning to plant my hand, lift my shoulder and hug my shoulder blades onto my back, and then do enough inner spiral and kidney loop to float off the ground. Possible, as I have been known to get into asta vakrasana going from the ground up. More likely, my exit strategy of the moment was releasing all the way to the floor. What I like about this picture is that it shows me having a really good time, not me being a failure for not being perfectly in the pose. Though it is always worth striving for the best we can do, for most things in life, the best we can do is try for the full pose and then find the joy and the beauty when we don’t end up embodying our notion of what should have been.
