The Yoga Blog
Practice 6/27
- Uttanasana with Block and Chair
- Virasana
- Down Dog (Adho Mukha Savasana) with block
- Pigeon Pose
- Upavista Konasana
- Badha Konasana
- Janu Sirsasana
- **Progress in shoulder girdle.
- Felt lift of shoulder girdle from top of diaphragm. More breath and space, space in 3rd eye also
- Pascimottanasana
- Supta Virasana
- Headstand (Sirsasana)
- Shoulderstand (Sarvangasana)
- Savasana
i crave them like tastes
I’ve had to back away from my advanced yoga class, which is hard enough. And today, in the class I now take–still not a prenatal yoga class–I laid on the floor at the end of class, exhausted, and watched as my fellow classmates did pindasana and then its twist.
Ideally, the yoga practitioner, in my case a yogini, observes the fluctuations of the mind as they pass by the observing eye. In this particular case, I now observe and express the craving that came into my mind as I watched these practitioners do a pose that not too long ago, felt safe, comfortable, and challenging for me. I sought poses like this, in fact, because they quieted my mind and challenged the physical body simultaneously.
This experience led me to think: Surely we know now, as a yoga “culture,” what we know intuitively. Yoga is not about mashing the body into a shape for that goal alone, but rather, to stay in the pose and watch the reaction(s) of the mind. In my case, until the end of 2009, I will be watching my mind as I watch others’ poses. I post this reflection in honor of the attachment–ones that surprise me daily as my body swells and the lil’ lady grows–to what used to be “my practice.”
Yoga is indeed about letting go.
they saw her
So of the people in my life, the only people who predicted correctly that I’m having a girl were the Energy Apprentices I’m training. Of course I don’t think this is a coincidence; based on my experience as an Energy Healer, I believe you can see or feel the sex of a baby almost as accurately as an ultrasound can. It just takes a lot of training and stillness, probably akin to same kind of training it took to figure out how to build an ultrasound that can see the sex of a baby.
from the dalai lama
If one assumes a humble attitude, one’s own good qualities will increase. Wheras if one is proud, one will become jealous of others, one will look down on others, and due to that there will be unhappiness in society.
Breathing Under Water
I keep hearing the phrase, “under water,” as it relates to many people’s home and asset ownership situation.
It’s so interesting how cultures make up phrases that reflect energetic reality. Here’s the link. The vibration of the second chakra travels primarily through water — it is water, in a way. Underneath the second chakra is the first chakra, whose essence is terra firma, gravity, matter. We tend to understand the chakras most easily through the emotional body, or how we feel when one chakra or another gets revved up.
The emotional issues of these lowest two chakras are primarily rooted in desire, money, trust, and fear. We identify with the most basic “things” we “need” in this life through these chakras. Many of the needs are indeed totally real: a roof over one’s head, a feeling of security of safety, the right to be here and to have.
That’s why “under water” strikes me as so intelligent. If any of us were physically under water, we would obviously only be able to stay there a short period, or we would die from lack of oxygen. Of course, those of us with mortgages worth more than our homes are worth may feel like we are drowing, suffocating from the level of debt we’ve incurred, and from the fact that we are basically trapped there until the market “turns around,” and home prices again rise.
And in the first chakra, where fear and trust quite simply, then there is a choice. You decide to feel one thing or the other based on your current state. You can either let yourself drown or keep breathing because the metaphor is only that. Breathing mindfully reduces fear by its very function.
