Morning Brain

Taos New Mexico.


I often feel like my brain is soft and easy in the morning. My boyfriend and I always laugh about how we love each other more when we first wake up. Why is this? Why is it easier for me to sit and meditate when I rise after a long sleep then at the end of my long day? Do I actually love Ted more in the morning? Does my meditation practice thrive because I am actually still half asleep when I sit pre-cup of coffee? Maybe coffee really is that bad for me.

According to the science of brain plasticity it is not totally the fault of my coffee. This is great news! It has to do with space, the space similar to the sky in Wyoming, open, empty, wide and generous. When we wake up we have taken multiple hours to not speak, read, watch TV or listen to music. We have not made plans, taken on commitments or sat in traffic. We are somewhat empty. Our mind is mostly quiet.

This idea of space refers to our brains -- the mental space to take in information, store and process it. In order to take in new things we must focus over and over again on what we are trying to learn or correct, whether it is changing negative thought patterns or re-aligning an asana. Our brains are malleable, and forever changeable depending on where we focus our attention throughout our lives. With this in mind, I am going to take this space and sit, giving my brain an opportunity to un-clutter so that I might have the chance again today to be a better version of me.

Personal Practice

Under the Grand Teton


I am often asked how frequently I practice Yoga. As a teacher and a student, I feel like I am always practicing, whether I attend a class, practice at home, or try and be as awake as possible while walking down the street. What practicing means to me is quite different than what it might mean to you. Though we all have the same basic body parts, we are unique. Gary Kraftsow wrote "...we are nonetheless unique in our structural, physiological, and emotional functioning; and though we all have certain deep constitutional tendencies that remain constant, our own condition changes from day to day."

With this in mind, it is time well spent to examine and explore our personal needs in our Yoga practice and life practice. This is an art, the art of personal practice, which lies in the learning and listening to our present condition.

I spent the past week in the mountains. I did not plan on attending a yoga class. I also did not schedule to teach anywhere at anytime during that week. I did however plan to spend as much time in the mountains as possible. While hiking with Ted I found us in long periods of silence. Listening. Smelling. Observing. Allowing our minds to rest and our senses to become awake. It was a most fulfilling practice.

Envite yourself

This is a love poem. I think it is a love poem first for oneself. A process of questioning and looking within at our awareness of our own self love.

The Invitation by Oriah

It doesn’t interest me
what you do for a living.
I want to know
what you ache for
and if you dare to dream
of meeting your heart’s longing.

It doesn’t interest me
how old you are.
I want to know
if you will risk
looking like a fool
for love
for your dream
for the adventure of being alive.

It doesn’t interest me
what planets are
squaring your moon...
I want to know
if you have touched
the centre of your own sorrow
if you have been opened
by life’s betrayals
or have become shrivelled and closed
from fear of further pain.

I want to know
if you can sit with pain
mine or your own
without moving to hide it
or fade it
or fix it.

I want to know
if you can be with joy
mine or your own
if you can dance with wildness
and let the ecstasy fill you
to the tips of your fingers and toes
without cautioning us
to be careful
to be realistic
to remember the limitations
of being human.

It doesn’t interest me
if the story you are telling me
is true.
I want to know if you can
disappoint another
to be true to yourself.
If you can bear
the accusation of betrayal
and not betray your own soul.
If you can be faithless
and therefore trustworthy.

I want to know if you can see Beauty
even when it is not pretty
every day.
And if you can source your own life
from its presence.

I want to know
if you can live with failure
yours and mine
and still stand at the edge of the lake
and shout to the silver of the full moon,
“Yes.”

It doesn’t interest me
to know where you live
or how much money you have.
I want to know if you can get up
after the night of grief and despair
weary and bruised to the bone
and do what needs to be done
to feed the children.

It doesn’t interest me
who you know
or how you came to be here.
I want to know if you will stand
in the centre of the fire
with me
and not shrink back.

It doesn’t interest me
where or what or with whom
you have studied.
I want to know
what sustains you
from the inside
when all else falls away.

I want to know
if you can be alone
with yourself
and if you truly like
the company you keep
in the empty moments.

Monday Morning Thoughts

Photo by Sol Dust Love

As a teacher I attempt to say things more clearly and precisely without killing the effectiveness of what I am trying to articulate. I like the wisdom of Rene Daumal's take on this.

"It is still not enough for language to have clarity and content... it must also have a goal and an imperative. Otherwise from language we descend to chatter, from chatter to babble, and from babble to confusion."

Yoga Mala

Yoga Mala is a practice that Yogis enjoy during each turn of the seasons. Cleansing, challenging, and gratifying, the 108 sun salutations of Yoga Mala allow us to begin the new season with a meditative and awakened state of body and mind. There are many reasons that we practice 108. There are 108 Upanishads, the anciets Vedic texts. There are 108 beads on the Mala prayer bracelets. There were originally 54 sounds in the Sanskrit alphabet, which doubled is 108.

I started practicing Yoga Mala about ten years a go and have been in love with its powerful message ever since. Four times a year I come to my mat and move through Surya Namascar A, the first group of sun salutations in the Ashtanga primary series. I always find the first fifty four to be the most challenging as my mind frantically tells me to stop and do anything but another fifty four sun salutes. As my mind becomes quiet and the flow of my breathing takes over, this practice becomes enchanting, better yet, meditative. For today's summer solstice I will step onto my mat with a student and good friend of mine and we will welcome in summer 108 times!

Flat Feet

In my afternoon class yesterday was a seemingly aware young woman who informed me that although she heard my suggestion to lift the inner arches of her feet she just couldn't. Really? She had such a lovely body full of potential but her energy died at her feet. She had accepted the base of her body as dead, useless, ugly. Just two pancakes that hang out at the end of her ankles. Her embarrassment towards her malformed feet lived in the rest of her structure. She struggled to find grounding through her legs and stability in her spine. When we cannot connect with our roots it becomes very difficult to adjust and grow. Sadly this is a common response from students when given an adjustment during an advanced Yoga class. The thinking seems to go: why should I feel like I can change such a body structure? I'm well into my thirties, an advanced Yogi, and have already had one surgery.


Again and again I walked over to her and lovingly touch her inner arches to find her flinch every time I got close. She hated her feet. She hated me noticing them. So I decided to love them. Quietly I listened to her tell me why she would not lift them, why it was useless to even try. I decided to agree and instead ask her to lift her inner ankle bones. She gave me an awkward look and then lifted her inner ankles seemingly effortlessly. Attached to her inner ankles were the inner arches of her feet. Her flat collapsed feet followed suit and lifted with her ankles. Amazing. Her feet looked nice! We both smiled and I reminded her throughout class to lift her inner ankles/inner arches and I saw life begin to sprout in her feet and legs and spine.

As Theresa Bertherat writes in ' The Body Has Its Reasons' "... it's never too late to offer your body the time to pause and re-evaluate itself. It requires a little bit of humility, but you're amply rewarded by the joy of moving with grace and precision, of making full, round gestures, of rediscovering all the sensations in a body free at last to live its real life."

Perspective

Perspective. Through my twenties it was a thing I rarely applied. I was interested in fighting reality and forcing my way through life's ups and downs, allowing each event, each confrontation or hardship, to be swallowed up and stored in my digestive track. Ouch! The lesson each life event would produce, whether negative or positive, would get lost in my attachment to control the outcome.

There are few things in life which are under our control but I strongly believe our perspective is. Epictetus wrote " Our hopes and fears sway us, not events themselves... Authentic happiness is always independent of external conditions..."

Whether sitting with heartbreak, a transition in your career, or moving to a new city, hold close your perspective and the potential lessons that lay brightly beneath the events surface. Expansion is always around the corner!