there is so much that has happened in the last few months (i almost wrote 'there is so much that happened in the next few months', which may be some kind of preminition...) so i feel very behind with writing on the blog. Never mind, I will start here from today with some abbreviated reflections on March and April, and then move forward into May. Time feels SOSOSOSOOO FAST at the moment. I am lucky for that.
The theme for March was innocence. So in the practice, I was exploring new ways to warm up, sequence, poses I have not done in a while, or not ever. But really what happened in that month, especially towards the end of the month was so much new information, major changes to the way that I practice, the way that I think, and the capacities I have to heal and work in my life. It's amazing how intention creates reality, and I truly feel like I have been able to approach my patterns with new eyes, deep innocence and therefore greater potential for transformation.
With so much newness, I went straight in Vipassana retreat in early April. I know feel like I am reeling with so much information and connection. It is beautiful and inspiring, wow. And it has been very difficult. So April is a short month, and as AstroZo says, time to integrate and eat brownies. Ok done.
Among the effects of the Vipassana was a deep, deep physical rest. This rest has indeed unwound some of the physical patterns that have shaped my movement for the last... while... So at the moment I feel both deeply week and depleted, like there are no reserves in the tank, but also very liberated from the patterns that were. Maybe in this time emotions, patterns that were constantly re-patterned into my physicality will have a chance to let go. it certainly feels that some have already, and some are on the edge.
So I am deeply thankful for this time of change and emergence. Among the things that I am noticing is that I feel like my brain is learning new thought patterns and is literally rewiring. With that comes a feeling like I am learning to run. Sometimes after a few minutes, i feel a sort of physical fatigue in my mind. Ultimately, learning new ways of thinking, or in this case transcending thinking will be such a gift.
So I am off to train, in the form of a one hour, saturday night meditation. woo hoo. what a life. but I feel so thankful and it is bringing such beautiful learning.
Nice to be back online.
Hari Om, Tat Sat.
Om Shanti, and all my love to all.
Saturday, 23 April 2011
Sunday, 27 February 2011
little thought
i am thinking about the name for my website, which will be done by Easter (now its in writing and public!) and I had the thought:
Yoga is not a noun. It is not a form. It is not a technique.
Yoga is not something you do.
Create a home for yoga in your heart.
Cultivate and tend it.
Be present and watch.
Yoga is something that happens.
Like photosynthesis.
Like the blossoming of a flower.
Like the sun emerging from the clouds,
on a deceptively cold february day.
Yoga is not a noun. It is not a form. It is not a technique.
Yoga is not something you do.
Create a home for yoga in your heart.
Cultivate and tend it.
Be present and watch.
Yoga is something that happens.
Like photosynthesis.
Like the blossoming of a flower.
Like the sun emerging from the clouds,
on a deceptively cold february day.
Saturday, 26 February 2011
On teaching
I wonder what khalil gibran would write on teaching. this is probably a sacrilege but it is the tone that comes to mind.
here's mine.
On teaching yoga on a saturday morning.
Your students are not your responsibility. Your own energy is your responsibility. Be neither attached to their success, nor distressed by their avoidance. They will receive what is needed when they are ready. It is their path, not yours.
Just as you let lose your words into the studio, so you let your soul. But do not be distressed if the student does not respond. For their own filters cloud their ears, and they may choose not to hear what displeases them.
Stay true to your truth, for even if you amend your statements after learning more, so you will learn more by being true then by censoring.
Do not answer too many questions, but keep asking questions. The student will easily flow forth with their own insight, but leave and make space. Throughout your teaching, create space, spaces for discovery, insight and deep breath. But guide that space with care and precision to lead it to optimal insights.
Worry not for what they may expect, because it is your duty to teach at every moment, not just deliver instructions to a vacuum. The words and instincts you are given are not from you but from the divine, so do not hold back.
Be neither authoritative, nor overly passive. Do not force your own technique nor let the student do whatever he wishes. Do not attach egoistically to your own perspective but do not accommodate the student's ego either.
DO not look at your students for validation or for praise. Make each class an offering and have no attachment to the return. The connection you feel to source is the validation you seek.
Be here now, open yourself to the flow and the flow will guide you. trust both your instinct and you knowledge.
And be grateful, for this is a beautiful job to be given.
Hari Om, Tat Sat.
here's mine.
On teaching yoga on a saturday morning.
Your students are not your responsibility. Your own energy is your responsibility. Be neither attached to their success, nor distressed by their avoidance. They will receive what is needed when they are ready. It is their path, not yours.
Just as you let lose your words into the studio, so you let your soul. But do not be distressed if the student does not respond. For their own filters cloud their ears, and they may choose not to hear what displeases them.
Stay true to your truth, for even if you amend your statements after learning more, so you will learn more by being true then by censoring.
Do not answer too many questions, but keep asking questions. The student will easily flow forth with their own insight, but leave and make space. Throughout your teaching, create space, spaces for discovery, insight and deep breath. But guide that space with care and precision to lead it to optimal insights.
Worry not for what they may expect, because it is your duty to teach at every moment, not just deliver instructions to a vacuum. The words and instincts you are given are not from you but from the divine, so do not hold back.
Be neither authoritative, nor overly passive. Do not force your own technique nor let the student do whatever he wishes. Do not attach egoistically to your own perspective but do not accommodate the student's ego either.
DO not look at your students for validation or for praise. Make each class an offering and have no attachment to the return. The connection you feel to source is the validation you seek.
Be here now, open yourself to the flow and the flow will guide you. trust both your instinct and you knowledge.
And be grateful, for this is a beautiful job to be given.
Hari Om, Tat Sat.
Saturday, 12 February 2011
innocence mission
Listening to adyashanti the other day doing my practice, it came that the next theme (after this month of forearm balances) is innocence. More to come on that in words, but in the mean time, I am playing with approaching everything in life, from the ever present overdancing thoughts, to the things I think i know, with the spirit of innocence. Wondering just what is, not what i want or need or am trying to do.
Not do, just wonder.
Nothing but the innocence of love.
New facet of the journey, and big potential.
Hari Om, Tat Sat.
Om Shanti.
A new world is possible.
Peace.
Not do, just wonder.
Nothing but the innocence of love.
New facet of the journey, and big potential.
Hari Om, Tat Sat.
Om Shanti.
A new world is possible.
Peace.
Tuesday, 8 February 2011
aligning
Sometimes I am so precious about blogging, like everything has to be some kind of masterwork before i can post it. This one is not, it is very much about me, in process.
The last few weeks, or years, or lifetimes, i don't know yet, i have been caught in what feels like a whirlpool of thinking. that every time i sit to meditate, or go about my own life, these thoughts become so haunting, that i start to feel debilitated. I feel like I know what I should be doing, but instead get caught in patterns of self destruction, patterns of negative thought, patterns of over thinking. and what it feels like is a shadow of me flying in circles in my head, while another little me is hiding in the bottom of the closet.
I DO NOT WANT TO LIVE LIKE THIS. Not eliminate, but not live in this pattern. What I am slowly recognizing is that I have to learn how to love. Love all of it, fully and with the greatest compassion. Love the hiding girl and her voice of fear. Love the flying witch and her insane mutteringsings, love the driven Sagittarian/Capricorn and the double sided Gemini. I don't even fully know what it means to love all these bits. But I know that that love represents coming into wholeness and growing up, and then having the beautiful life that I want.
It's difficult to say these things publicly. Really difficult. They feel big, and right away i can hear the mind chattering saying, how dare you write that. What if people...
But that is part of it. Accepting my vulnerability, and letting you see it too.
Anyway, this post was supposed to be about aligning.
The other day I was sitting at the beginning of a class, with my teacher Ana Forrest, when one of her assistants came and moved my body backwards in the simple sitting (meditative) pose. Ana's comment to me was, "What would it feel like to get your head in alignment with your power?". I suppose this echos something I have been told before, "you act with your head pointing." I think this means the same thing, that the head goes forward, sometimes too the chest and upper body into an ungrounded and over directed, unaligned place.
So I have been doing lots of abdominal work, a la Ana Forrest. I have been also chanting Har. Building the power in the navel centre for that energy to make change. But more than that, I am also learning the role and perhaps art of mental containment.
In yoga it is sort of obvious, a stage of the practice where the mind comes up with all kinds of reasons that you cannot hold this pose anymore, or you really need to repaint your fingernails instead of going to the mat or all kinds of stories that we put in front of actually doing. The class is too early, the class is too late, its too hot, its too crowded, i can't because this, that this that this that and the other. And then at some stage, or for a moment another part says, shhhhh. Go to the mat. Hold the pose, one more breath, just one.
which becomes two
which becomes another day when you woke up extra early
then another week
which becomes the practice.
For me, it goes in waves. There are moments when I feel so clearly and strongly the hushing presence. And there are other times when the mind wanders so completely on its own. And in those wanderings sometimes I forget that it is the other voice, the shhhh voice, the parent voice in the head, that must not hush the mind entirely, but look at it with the greatest love and say, no dear, you cannot have cake for dinner. no dear, you do have to go to school.
I feel like I have confused loving with a kind of self indulgence, really wallowing, that allowed sloppy thoughts, unfinished projects and self sabotage to become a habit.
This month I am working on forearm balances, in my practice and in my teaching. It is showing me many things -
the steadiness of practice needed to build up enough strength to improve
the steadiness of thought needed to maintain balance when it wavers,
the integrity of the body and mind needed to hold my sometimes floppy body as one unit
the sheer enjoyment of the challenge and how joyful it can be to grow.
So i am sitting with the intention of bringing my head heart and navel in line, the mind, the guiding heart and the power to work as one.
Here I am, work in progress.
We close the practice with three times Om to come into Harmony with each other, with all beings and with our own true nature which is divine.
Hari Om, Tat Sat.
Om Shanti.
Peace and that Greatest Love, ever expansive and also containing.
The last few weeks, or years, or lifetimes, i don't know yet, i have been caught in what feels like a whirlpool of thinking. that every time i sit to meditate, or go about my own life, these thoughts become so haunting, that i start to feel debilitated. I feel like I know what I should be doing, but instead get caught in patterns of self destruction, patterns of negative thought, patterns of over thinking. and what it feels like is a shadow of me flying in circles in my head, while another little me is hiding in the bottom of the closet.
I DO NOT WANT TO LIVE LIKE THIS. Not eliminate, but not live in this pattern. What I am slowly recognizing is that I have to learn how to love. Love all of it, fully and with the greatest compassion. Love the hiding girl and her voice of fear. Love the flying witch and her insane mutteringsings, love the driven Sagittarian/Capricorn and the double sided Gemini. I don't even fully know what it means to love all these bits. But I know that that love represents coming into wholeness and growing up, and then having the beautiful life that I want.
It's difficult to say these things publicly. Really difficult. They feel big, and right away i can hear the mind chattering saying, how dare you write that. What if people...
But that is part of it. Accepting my vulnerability, and letting you see it too.
Anyway, this post was supposed to be about aligning.
The other day I was sitting at the beginning of a class, with my teacher Ana Forrest, when one of her assistants came and moved my body backwards in the simple sitting (meditative) pose. Ana's comment to me was, "What would it feel like to get your head in alignment with your power?". I suppose this echos something I have been told before, "you act with your head pointing." I think this means the same thing, that the head goes forward, sometimes too the chest and upper body into an ungrounded and over directed, unaligned place.
So I have been doing lots of abdominal work, a la Ana Forrest. I have been also chanting Har. Building the power in the navel centre for that energy to make change. But more than that, I am also learning the role and perhaps art of mental containment.
In yoga it is sort of obvious, a stage of the practice where the mind comes up with all kinds of reasons that you cannot hold this pose anymore, or you really need to repaint your fingernails instead of going to the mat or all kinds of stories that we put in front of actually doing. The class is too early, the class is too late, its too hot, its too crowded, i can't because this, that this that this that and the other. And then at some stage, or for a moment another part says, shhhhh. Go to the mat. Hold the pose, one more breath, just one.
which becomes two
which becomes another day when you woke up extra early
then another week
which becomes the practice.
For me, it goes in waves. There are moments when I feel so clearly and strongly the hushing presence. And there are other times when the mind wanders so completely on its own. And in those wanderings sometimes I forget that it is the other voice, the shhhh voice, the parent voice in the head, that must not hush the mind entirely, but look at it with the greatest love and say, no dear, you cannot have cake for dinner. no dear, you do have to go to school.
I feel like I have confused loving with a kind of self indulgence, really wallowing, that allowed sloppy thoughts, unfinished projects and self sabotage to become a habit.
This month I am working on forearm balances, in my practice and in my teaching. It is showing me many things -
the steadiness of practice needed to build up enough strength to improve
the steadiness of thought needed to maintain balance when it wavers,
the integrity of the body and mind needed to hold my sometimes floppy body as one unit
the sheer enjoyment of the challenge and how joyful it can be to grow.
So i am sitting with the intention of bringing my head heart and navel in line, the mind, the guiding heart and the power to work as one.
Here I am, work in progress.
We close the practice with three times Om to come into Harmony with each other, with all beings and with our own true nature which is divine.
Hari Om, Tat Sat.
Om Shanti.
Peace and that Greatest Love, ever expansive and also containing.
Sunday, 12 December 2010
Everything you give with love
Last year at this time I was working in a Primary school in North London, predominantly non-English native children, predominantly Muslim, many Turkish, Somali or East African. Still at Christmas, it is tradition to do a Christmas play, a nativity or something like it. What I loved about North Harringay is that they did not insist that the plays be nativities, and in fact chose beautiful plays to put on.
The younger children did a show called Babushka, an adaptation of a Russian folktale, about an older woman who obsessively cleans to fill a hollow place in her heart. She learns from the traveling kings, who ask for rest in her home, and an angel pasing her window that a baby has been born in a dirty stable in Bethlehem, a special child. Mortified at the thought of the child born in a dirty stable, she packs a doll, a blanket and a bottle of cordial as gifts, as well as some cleaning products so she can clean the stable. Following the new and brightest star, she begins her journey.
On the way, she meets a little girl with no toys. To her she gives the doll. She meets an elderly couple weary from their journey, and to them she gives the cordial to drink. And as she is nearing Bethlehem, she meets a shepherd boy who is cold in the night and to him she gives the blanket.
When she arrives at the stables, she has no gift to give the baby Jesus. She almost turns away, when Mary calls to her, and invites her in. Babushka realizes that the baby in the manger has the doll by his side, is sleeping on the blanket, and Mary and Joseph bring her a glass of cordial. The children sing:
"Everything you give with love, you give to him: AMAZING.
Everything you say with love, you say to him: Amazing.
Everything you do with love, you do for him,
because he is love.
Yes, he is Love."
I have been thinking about the practice of bhakti, (practice does not seem exactly like the right word...) and this Christ consciousness, or this true understanding of love, incarnate.
My all time favorite book is Franny and Zooey, by JD Salinger. It to embodies this sense that if we attach to the external, beauty gets parsed into intellectual exercises, the great thinkers reduced to phony ego serving activities. And that even prayer can become that when its intention is not aligned. Franny in the throws of her own mental drama, comes to realize that it is not only through becoming reclusive and praying, or breaking down inside, that she can best serve. And her greatest service was in the actions, for her acting. And that in the moments of doubt, to do it for someone else, someone with little else, is what true inspiration is. Or more accurately, where she can eventually find peace and rest.
Like Babushka, when you make offering to anyone, you give to all. When you act in service of of any one aspect of humanity it becomes manifest in the greater sphere. And like Franny, if you act as service, it aligns you to love in the complete, universal and unconditional kind. We stop separating ourselves and start acting in alignment, both with our own particular role in the human incarnation, and with the entire universal energy.
Its about doing and acting from love. It is about doing what is required now. It is about loving that role.
It is about creating with the christ consciousness of unconditional love, with detachment from return. Or with simple knowing that the urge to keep acting, praying, living, being is the return message. (Rumi)
So this year, at this time, I am meditating and thinking through the messages come through from the universe, through the language ofo the emotions and the heart. What successes are coming, where I feel most aligned and content? Where has love comes through, and given courage? How to not discriminate in my own actions so that they become in service of the highest good of all.
Obey, serve, Love, Excel. Obey, Serve, Love, Excel. Thank you teachers in every form you come, from children's stories, to yoga gurus, to sages disguised as beggars, to messages from the heart.
Hari Om, Tat Sat.
Om Shanti.
Love and Peace to all.
The younger children did a show called Babushka, an adaptation of a Russian folktale, about an older woman who obsessively cleans to fill a hollow place in her heart. She learns from the traveling kings, who ask for rest in her home, and an angel pasing her window that a baby has been born in a dirty stable in Bethlehem, a special child. Mortified at the thought of the child born in a dirty stable, she packs a doll, a blanket and a bottle of cordial as gifts, as well as some cleaning products so she can clean the stable. Following the new and brightest star, she begins her journey.
On the way, she meets a little girl with no toys. To her she gives the doll. She meets an elderly couple weary from their journey, and to them she gives the cordial to drink. And as she is nearing Bethlehem, she meets a shepherd boy who is cold in the night and to him she gives the blanket.
When she arrives at the stables, she has no gift to give the baby Jesus. She almost turns away, when Mary calls to her, and invites her in. Babushka realizes that the baby in the manger has the doll by his side, is sleeping on the blanket, and Mary and Joseph bring her a glass of cordial. The children sing:
"Everything you give with love, you give to him: AMAZING.
Everything you say with love, you say to him: Amazing.
Everything you do with love, you do for him,
because he is love.
Yes, he is Love."
I have been thinking about the practice of bhakti, (practice does not seem exactly like the right word...) and this Christ consciousness, or this true understanding of love, incarnate.
My all time favorite book is Franny and Zooey, by JD Salinger. It to embodies this sense that if we attach to the external, beauty gets parsed into intellectual exercises, the great thinkers reduced to phony ego serving activities. And that even prayer can become that when its intention is not aligned. Franny in the throws of her own mental drama, comes to realize that it is not only through becoming reclusive and praying, or breaking down inside, that she can best serve. And her greatest service was in the actions, for her acting. And that in the moments of doubt, to do it for someone else, someone with little else, is what true inspiration is. Or more accurately, where she can eventually find peace and rest.
Like Babushka, when you make offering to anyone, you give to all. When you act in service of of any one aspect of humanity it becomes manifest in the greater sphere. And like Franny, if you act as service, it aligns you to love in the complete, universal and unconditional kind. We stop separating ourselves and start acting in alignment, both with our own particular role in the human incarnation, and with the entire universal energy.
Its about doing and acting from love. It is about doing what is required now. It is about loving that role.
It is about creating with the christ consciousness of unconditional love, with detachment from return. Or with simple knowing that the urge to keep acting, praying, living, being is the return message. (Rumi)
So this year, at this time, I am meditating and thinking through the messages come through from the universe, through the language ofo the emotions and the heart. What successes are coming, where I feel most aligned and content? Where has love comes through, and given courage? How to not discriminate in my own actions so that they become in service of the highest good of all.
Obey, serve, Love, Excel. Obey, Serve, Love, Excel. Thank you teachers in every form you come, from children's stories, to yoga gurus, to sages disguised as beggars, to messages from the heart.
Hari Om, Tat Sat.
Om Shanti.
Love and Peace to all.
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