Tag: yoga

Feel the sky

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“Smell the sea and feel the sky, let your soul and spirit fly”  —Van Morrison

I love the term “gravity surfing,” coined by the amazing yogini, Ana Forest, to define balancing. Figuratively and literally gravity surfing is the space between lightness and groundedness, the effervescent center (samana vayu) that unites our inner winds of inward/upward energy (prana) and downward/outward energy (apana).

The work of apana is lessened by receiving and improving the quality of prana. Prana and apana are always working to balance each other in an isometric push-pull dance. As a metaphor of life, minimizing the input of negativity and maximizing the input of positivity will help improve the balance of prana and apana. And let our soul and spirit and body fly.

Metta = Lovingkindness

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May all beings be free and safe from harm
May all beings be happy and fulfilled
May all beings be healthy and strong
May all beings have ease and joy in their lives
And be free from suffering.
— Lovingkindness chant

New Year’s, or anytime really, is a good time for metta meditation. The concept of metta is that we direct lovingkindness first toward ourselves and then, expanding outward, toward someone we love, one we are neutral towards, someone we may have conflict with, and ultimately to all beings everywhere.

It can be as simple as a momentary focused intention in our yoga practice to offer lovingkindness through our efforts, toward someone or something in our life. Every drop of sweat, each hip-opener, that third backbend.

Ultimately, the most powerful insight that comes from a metta-infused yoga practice is the sense of compassion and nonseparateness – of being inclusive rather than exclusive. For a lot of us, past conditioning led us to not trust our capacity to love. Practicing metta yoga opens our hearts wider, reminding us that we can indeed love, both ourselves and others, and that everything comes back to love.

Happy new year and happy new you!

Grateful

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The way things are right now since like forever doesn’t exactly make fertile ground for this season of thankfulness. Yet gratitude is a skill we can apply to make those everyday sweet little things visible again even amid so much COVID (as my former teenagers would say) suckiness. And the thing is, something awesome is usually just around the corner when we’re in an open grateful space. So I humbly recommend we plant some gratitude seeds on our sticky mats and water them with a little sweaty movement. Hari Om!

Reflection

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‘Tis the season for reflection. The colder months that move us inward toward the winter solstice are a good time for nurturing “good” habits and eliminating or changing “bad” ones. In Sanskrit, the word samskara means inner patterns and memories, etched like grooves to create our mental, emotional and physical default settings. The prefix sam means well planned, and kara means “the action undertaken.” So, samskara literally means “the impression or impact of the action we perform with full awareness of its goals.” Each time we act or react, a subtle impression is deposited in our mindfield. Each time the action is repeated, the impression becomes stronger. Voilà – habits are formed.

Samskaras are powerful, which is why even though we know better we don’t always change the behavior. One of the myriad benefits of yoga is an effective way to change these grooves (“the way you do any one thing is the way you do all things”). We can eliminate old unwanted habits by leading our malleable brains and bodies toward new positive pathways and experiences through the yoga practices of:

  • intention (sankalpa)
  • practice (abhyasa)
  • intensity (tapas)
  • stillness (shani)
  • awareness (vidya)
  • fearlessness (abhaya)
  • vision (darshana)

In yoga we are often reminded to let go of the past and begin again. Yet, as we enter the season of giving and receiving, by first reflecting and then acting on the root causes of unproductive patterns leads to growth and change. Sewing new vital seeds into the fields of intention, practice and persistence will facilitate samskara’s internal rhythms to create freedom and a new vision for ourselves.

The perfect Rx

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As healthy practices go, yoga and meditation are at the top of the Rx pyramid. The symbol “Rx” stands for the Latin word “recipe” meaning “to take.” Rx is, of course, more widely known as a prescription. I think a more appropriate metaphor might be to “give and take” since by definition an Rx is prescribed and then taken by the patient/practitioner.

I really like the recipe concept, as in, yoga and meditation are essential ingredients in the perfect recipe for healthy aging. So, in the spirit of the Rx for health, peace and longevity, I humbly prescribe a dose of healing meditative yoga today.

Happy flowing and healing!

Sunrise

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It’s funny, the only time we seem to make it out for the sunrise is in some other enchanted place like, say Lake Tahoe. In the mountain pre-dawn air watching the awakening of the natural world, iridescent sky, sounds of waves on the lakeshore, geese and the growing hum of insects are meditatively sublime. In a way it’s like awakening from a deep savasana, a little sleepy yet feeling reenergized.