Thankful Thursdays: A gratitude practice

Thank you sun!

Thank you warmth!

Thank you students, thank you practice, thank you authenticity.

Thank you thawing earth, thank you fallen trees!

Thank you husband, thank you mother, thank you sister, thank you friends.

Thank you Dad for bags of delightful green tea and fresh fresh cinnamon!

Thank you universe, for manifesting.  Thank you light for dancing.  Thank you life for living.


*Thankful Thursdays are my weekly gratitude practice.  They follow the gratitude meditation which ends my Thursday night Kripalu Yoga class.  A gratitude practice, positive thinking, an abundance mindset.  All of these are practices which increase vitality, invite positive transformation, and allow happiness and fulfillment to exist in the here and now rather than in the someday-when.
(Always cross-posted to BunchberryFarm)

What are you grateful for???

Thankful Thursdays: A Gratitude Practice

Today I am thankful for body and breath.

I am thankful for change.

I am thankful for the way life is manifesting oh-so-rightly for someone very dear to me.

I am thankful for new paths unfolding.

I am thankful for friendship, for love.

I am thankful for sunshine on frozen earth.

And as ever, I am thankful for my students, and for my teachers.

I teach people, not pretzels.

Several times recently, I've been told by different people that "oh, I can't come to a yoga class, I'm so not flexible," or "I want to come to yoga, maybe once I can touch my toes, I can go to a yoga class."

I hear this, and I get it.  But it makes me sad.

It makes me sad because, for years, I took yoga classes and could not ever touch my toes.  I'd be holding onto my knee or my shin and looking around me and being maybe a little jealous of the all the toe touching going on around me.  I'd ask teacher's after class, "how can I work on my hamstrings flexibility?"  But there's no magic ticket to any kind of flexibility.  And if I'd waited to take yoga until I had that flexibility, I surely would not now be teaching. 

I now tell my students that forward folds teach patience.  And patience is its own kind of flexibility.

It makes me sad because it speaks to the way our culture views 'yoga' as being that magazine cover photograph of a superstar yogini with seemingly no physical limitations.  Yoga may very well get you to that pose one day.  But this perspective misses the whole point of yoga as a practice.  The practice that is yoga is an internal one, slowly unfolding moment to moment, breath to breath, over the course of years.  Yoga is a bringing-into-balance, not a getting-to-extremes-quickly.

It makes me sad because maybe these people don't actually want to come to a yoga class.  It could very well be that for whatever reason (they've heard so much about the health benefits and think they *should do yoga or they just don't want to insult me) they're just saying that they would come to a yoga class if it weren't for their inflexibility as a nice way of saying "I don't like yoga."  Maybe they DONT ACTUALLY WANT to do yoga or come to a yoga class. And that means that they are hiding thier own truth, they are habitually lying to self and to others.  I would rather hear that yoga sucks than see someone hiding from their own experience in this way.

It makes me sad because if these people do actually want to come to yoga, and really do feel they can't until x y or z; then they are missing out.  Not only are they missing out on time on the mat right now, chances are they are missing out on life.  Our daily responses are manifestations of our habits.  So if I put up barriers and reasons why-not against this one thing I really want to do; its likely I am doing exactly that in other aspects of my life.  What else is this person saying no to when they could be saying yes?

Thankful Thursdays: A gratitude practice

Today I am thankful for inspiration. For vision - both in the sense of envisioning and as eyesight.

I am thankful for the sight of grass next to slowly melting snowbanks in town. And I am grateful for the hope that sight lends me, the hope that the snow at our home on its northern hill will melt to make way for green growing things.

I am thankful for found and re-found communities and people.

I am thankful for my beloved man, that he follows his heart and that even when so far away in remote communities reached only by plane and dogsled, he is still so near, here in my heart.

I am thankful for my ability to catalyze healing, however incremental.

I am thankful for the return of late night platinum skies behind white birches, and for this grace of time to see them stark and subtle against each other before the trees fill the spaces between branches with leaves.

I am thankful for mud puddles!

Three Things

Last week my Darlin'Man toured Lear Khekwaii on the Kenai Penninsula (where Seward is; next week will be the Seward Penninsula, where Nome is).  They went, among other places to Homer, where the road ends at the sea, and volcanoes rise above the shore, and people make Alaskan wines and meads.  I've never been, and would dearly love to spend a few weeks camping down there.

Coming home he brought me gifts:  Three Things.

1- a sea shell from the shore

2- Coffee beans from a local roaster

3- a set of 7 notecards, each an image of a chakra.  The cards were drawn by inmate in an arts-in-the-prisons program, and the proceeds of their sale go to supporting said program.  I like to think that he (the artist's name was male) found some solace in attuning to these vibrant and transformational energies in his own body while he was dealing with everything that comes along with a prison term.  Maybe he found some healing for what ever wound led him to commit whatever act landed him in jail.

My Darlin'Man knows me well.  I cherish all three of these.

(This post crossposted to www.bunchberryfarm.blogspot.com)

“Love is the only path, love is the only god, and love is the only scripture. Impress this verse upon your memory and chant it constantly if you want to realize your dreams of growth.”—Swami Kripalu

TOMORROW! Heart and Throat Chakra

Tomorrow at HeartStream, we will be exploring the Heart Chakra, Home of Unconditional Love  and the Throat Chakra, home of Truth and self -Expression through yoga Asana, mantra, aromatherapy, and guided meditation.  Come join us!  If you have them, bring a pendulum, a peice of rose quartz, and peice of lapis lazuli. 

The Heart Chakra or "Anahata"  is located at the physical heart, itself the endocrine gland associated with this energy center (research shows that the Heart is not only regulated by the hormones in the bloods stream as other organs are, but actually secretes hormones to help regulate the rest of the body as well, making it function as an endocrine gland).  The Heart is made up 60% neurological cells and creates a measurable electro-magnetic field that extends 6-8 feet outside of the body.  The Heart Meridian begins at the Heart and extends out through arms and into hands, allowing us to physically hold the world or eachother in our heart energy.



We will use the sanskrit mantra "Lokah Samastah Sukhino Bhavantu" to practice extending our heart energy through compassion, and practice a series of heart opening asana. 

The Throat Chakra or "Vishuddha" is the home of Truth and is associated with our ability to express ourselves.   Verbal expression of course resides in the throat, but the chakra is also associated with our ablility to artistically express ourselves through any medium, our physical self expresssion, and our connection to our own beliefs and opinions.  The Throat Chakra is associated with the thyroid and parathyroid endocrine glands.

We will explore yoga poses that provide compression and release through the neck and throat, and also to release the neck and shoulders of the habitual tension and strain we carry that constrict the full functioning of our voice.  Then we will chant our way throug the Bija or Seed mantras that are associated with the first 5 chakras. 

"Did You Know: To produce a single phrase of speech - about 100 muscles of the chest, neck, jaw, face, tongue and lips must collaborate. Each muscle is a bundle made of hundreds or thousands of fibers. For the coordination of these muscles much more neurons than necessary are required for contracting the muscles from an athlete's feet. Just one motor neuron can trigger movement in the 2,000 muscular fibers existent on a calf muscle. But the neurons controlling the vocal cords or the larynx can be bound just one to two-three muscle cells" From AnatomyinMotion via Gracesanatomy.com


Check it out some more!

Mantra:
http://jivamuktiyoga.com/teachings/focus-of-the-month/p/lokah-samastah-sukhino-bhavantu

http://archives.amritapuri.org/bharat/mantra/lokah.php