First Noble Truth

There is always a shadow side to the light. When we inhale in our practice, an exhale is sure to follow. When we dance in joy and love and success, sadness, pain, and disappointment are always close. Sounds pretty pointless huh? Until we embrace the first noble truth on this path. Life is suffering. Yikes! Can we except this? The human form has both light and dark. We are here to experience, to grow and stretch, be uncomfortable, be unsure. There will be more light and joy and success than we can ever imagine if we can embrace the darkness that lives inside all of us. We are imperfect.

What then? Life is just a series of ups and downs? It doesn't have to be. Let's jump off the roller coaster, let's stop and try to like what is difficult, embrace, perhaps except a lack luster outcome as learning, and move one step closer to some light.  Less stark, less ominous.  Living in the grey, or the middle. Walk on your middle path. It won't be easy, but it will be interesting, rewarding, liberating.

Sushumna Nadi

            While practicing I like to use the spine as a boney landmark indicating 'center' or middle of my body. While inverted  or simply lying on the floor in a gentle twist I can try and use my internal eye to sense this intricate structure and where it is positioned in hope of playing fair with my left side and right side. What blows my mind is the feeling that overcomes the body while doing this. Energy is unlocked. Breath moves more freely. Dare I say that both ida and pingala nadi are able to move more autonomously yet in perfect harmony through sushumna? Perhaps!

Balance

"The quest for symmetry of the organism is bound to fail, but balance is here for the taking. Even the earth is only round from a distance. Up close, it's all bumps, dips and waves. So beautiful! And how sweetly it spins, balanced on its axis as it is. Finding our own balance upon it, whether from a distance or up close, we relax into our beautiful asymmetry."

Great Moments

I am going to try and really open my eyes today so I don't miss any great moments.  This picture taken by an unknown genius reminded me to practice staying awake.

Reminder

What makes you feel awake, alive?  Is it jumping in the ocean, listening to music or sleeping under the stars?  Maybe just taking a deep breath is all you need to remember that having been born into a human body is in and of itself magical.  I was reminded of this today while walking in my neighborhood.  I felt like crap as my big pregnant body tried to make it up a hill so I stopped, took a deep breath and looked out into the trees. The air smelled sweet and the ocean breeze cooled my face.  Instantly I was reminded on the genius of being present.  I felt alive.

"I don't believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive." --Joseph Cambell 

Seeing Your Future

A short but impactful six minutes on a man's last six minutes.  Let me know your thoughts on this one!

Accept

"The easiest way to relax is to stop trying to make things different."
--Joseph Goldstein

I've never been a women who yearned for her wedding day, or to have a bunch of children and devote my life to raising them.  I love to work.  I love to be productive. As a young girl my mother tells me I was always 'busy and important'..... I love to explore the human body and uncover it's layers until you hit emotions, energy, spirit. I love to teach and be of service to my students.  I love to practice Yoga, surf and hike until my legs want to fall off. This I know.

A few days after Thanksgiving past, I had been sleeping for about ten to twelve hour nights and had frequent indigestion.  I kept acting out in strange ways.  Buying baby clothes and pillows for our home.  Ted was getting worried.  I thought maybe I had just hit some sort of nesting phase of my mid thirties.  After breakfast I made a decision to buy a pregnancy test even though I was not "late," yet.

Now over six months pregnant I am starting to gain a little perspective.  My past struggles have become close friends.  It is as though they were preparing me for five months of sickness as my body adjusted to growing a little boy.  To be totally truthful, I have struggled with not having my body for my own anymore.  It is not mine.  It is now simply a tool.  I am a mammal that is hosting another life.  The intense sickness brought me to me knees, I stopped all physical practice and spent day after day plastered to my couch or my bed.  I felt useless. Who am I without my work, without my vibrant body, without my purpose?  I began to fight my reality with all my will.  As we all know fighting reality is a sad and fruitless fight.  The harder I wrestled the sicker I became.  I wanted desperately to change my current state.  I definitely couldn't run away. Just looking at my Yoga mat made me sick, and surfing was an altogether terrible idea.  I had to drop my agenda, I had to either accept that I am changing, my life is changing, I am having a baby and it is hard work to create him, or I was going to slide into some seriousness darkness.  It was up to me, as usual!

With the encouragement of my brave partner Ted,  I have started the process of accepting what is here and now.  I have been given a massive opportunity to share my life with a child.  My body will come back to me eventually and most importantly I am so very productive, it is just on the inside as I grow a human life.  This kind of creating is different for me.  It's internal, it's not about putting my energy out into the world but pulling in, reserving my strength for the creation of life.  It is so powerful that I have had to redefine my daily practice completely.  I see over and over again how situations can feel intolerable, but is often my own resistance that makes them so.

I realize more and more that this pregnancy has been the greatest teacher I have ever had. It has been the most awakening Yoga practice my body has ever endured.  I am still practicing to be present with it, to accept my strange new shape and quiet energy levels.  It is my new classroom.