Typing as fast as I can without editing because this is the time that I have. Purnima, powerful full moon coming and I'm waiting for the blood to come. This time makes me, um, extra sensitive... to sound, to light, to other people's energy. I wish I had time to research this more. I'm certain someone else has had these thoughts. Probably Uma Dinsmore-Tuli for sure. The Yoni Shakti message coming through louder and louder this time is that, regardless of whether conception happens, 28 days creates the possibilities of life exploding on to the scene. I think we end up preparing for the birth of something each time we bleed. And I wanna be like: (What's so amazing about really deep thoughts?)
Instead of a pencil behind my ear, signaling learning, research, it's the obvious tampon signal (my period underwear won't stay behind my ear.) This is your signal to blast the doors of awareness open with me, embrace the flavor of divine incoherence -- I'm hear for you. Or, you can back the fuck off and I'll be in my red tent. Oh wait, I am a householder, and meanwhile the world goes on.
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an occasional poem
sifting through mismatched toddler socks growing faster than a blackberry yantra and you used to fit in my arms i’ve cried oceans laughed from deep places hallucinated angrily pulled thorny weeds admitted the ethereal fullness of [tastes crossing my palette] somatic states ecstasy. and disgust. with my self. crocuses. the Amazon is burning and apples are dumping from the mama tree live ready to begin the 13-year journey, taking the same dirt and stony walk to our little village school, looking lazily at Ollie’s ‘Anne’s shoelace’ and for dead things hummingbird feathers and snakes Wondering, how Mothers do how I could love beings so Fiercely and be so ready for them to have an other time how exigency stretches through five years (why must we pay for preschool childcare why can’t we take care of our own children without wanting to punch something when shit gets hard and it shit does. need water) the grace of blood ties and kula-sangha and me deeper and deeper, into the world and sometimes into luxury and then back to home and the grace of the Mohawk, and of lasting love. dandylyons. alover. small moments of describing the pain of a scrape welcome, change https://knowyourmeme.com/photos/1287545-2017-solar-eclipse “Between the moon and sun This life is never done” -- Trevor Hall Two years ago my family moved out of the city, to a quiet little village in the Mohawk Valley of Western Oregon. Each day, as my children and I grow and change, we wake up to bird chatter, and, after the Spring rains come, at night we fall asleep to frogsong. It’s the slowest pace of life I’ve known in some time. It’s given me new eyes on the passage of time, and on the challenges of daily life. In Sanskrit, the term for a meditative vision of sublime light in moments of intense beauty is “darshana;” to see; to have insight. After years of moving through [life and] yoga poses with a kind of ferocity, my mind in the books, biomechanics and philosophy of it all... a return to a closer relationship with Nature has given me new eyes on reasons for Hatha Yoga practice. How many Sun Salutations have I done? What do they give to my being? Have I remembered to remember that traditionally, we face east to greet the mystical-normal-yet-daily rising of the Star closest to our planet? This past winter, we ran outside to catch the last of the sunlight on the shortest day of the year, watching the sun paint the sky fuchsia, asking, What kind of awareness arises with this darshana, these eyes on the sun? Then, with my back to the east, one of the kids shouted, “Mommy! Look at that big beautiful moon!!” We all turned around at the moment and saw a colossal full moon rising above the cloud forest, bringing forward the reflected light, ushering us into the darkness and inner work of night and winter. Asking again, what kind of awareness comes from darshana on the moon? And what of moon salutations? How do these sequences of postures offer an opportunity to play out the celestial narrative within? The workshop I’ll offer at Yoga Yoga in June, 2019, represents a focus on this deeper relationship to the stories and poetry of the language of Hatha Yoga, and to the movement of sun and moon within the matrix of philosophy, asana, mantra and the breath. Here is a brief excerpt from the course material: “In order to understand the purpose of practicing Chandra Namaskara, that is, the energetic and physiological benefits, let’s first compare and contrast the philosophical and metaphorical ideas of Sun and Moon in Yoga, subtle body anatomy, and later, in Indian mythology. The sun is an embodied, living entity/energy/myth within the physiological practice of yoga asana. Heat represents the sun’s energy in the body. Much mythology refers to the Sun as a masculine-encoded energy. Awakening, in terms of solar energy, means movement toward the idea of enlightenment as an “up and out” model. The sun mimics the outward flowing energy of the heart. Or, rather the heart mimics the sun. Sun dominates the upper body, chest and arms. The moon is also an embodied, living entity/energy/myth within the physiological practice of yoga asana. Cooling represents the moon’s energy in the body, and is feminine-encoded. Moonlight is the reflected light of the sun. As above, so below -- lunar energy dominates the lower body, the lower back, the “pit of the belly” (reproductive organs, womb), the legs and feet. Lunar practices move slowly, and in broad arcs, cycles or circles (mandala.)” Artists compilation by Libby Cox of Painted by Rhoda Nyberg, this famous portrait is from a photograph taken in 1918 by Mrs. Nyberg’s father, Eric Enstrom, a photographer from Bovey, Minnesota and Durga/Kali image from Pinterest. Artist unknown.
[October, 2015] unfinished excerpt Two small boys, a new marriage, a wing, and a prayer to all the gods who would listen--my husband and I lit out from Austin, Texas, to Eugene, Oregon, to live with my husband's parents. Husband's got a Ganesha tattoo, an expired massage license in the state of Texas, and a bikram yoga valedictorian's trophy. He's also got a coupla decades' distance from most of an undergraduate degree from a Christian College, where his father was dean and a Jungian, Evangelical Christian family psychologist, mother a devout wife... the mom and dad we headed off to see to receive daily help. We landed in Oregon in an empty house, new to the whole family. The next day I left for 66 degrees North Iceland for 10 days. Ever heard of the 'planning fallacy?' My dear friend who recently graduated from Social Justice school took a requisite psychology course where, she told me, she learned of such a thing. It's likely familiar to you... things almost always take way. way longer than we think they will. Flash forward. Winter Solstice 2017, and I'm standing with my two naked pagan toddlers in our new home in the Oregon countryside, miles from the suburban gilded cage we've been living in for the past 2+ years. How can I begin to describe these years? Voila, an attempt at painting a picture. Years of processing my love for this family has given me some amount of neutrality, in that I believe neither 'side' believes one description of the culture of a home, a love, and a body is necessarily better, just. so. different. I . have two small tattoos, piercings and ancient piercing scars, blood-red-dyed french sheepskin wool boas and runway stilettos, much of which I often wear while I'm singing OM in front of bronze statues that look like demons but are really divine mothers. Caked-on eye makeup, and an aversion to cake. tired eyes. Stacks of thrift store books about feminist art and yoga and giving birth under rainbows and waterfalls with unicorns (there were, sadly, no unicorns present at the birth of my children. and believe me. with the amount of painkillers and sleep deprivation present, i would have seen them if they were there.) Photos of trips to India and photo albums full of memories of a past life with a beloved former husband and the friends who I lost when I left. They . have Big Lots nativity scenes and faux wrought iron lamps. Picture frames that hang empty on the walls, waiting for them to emerge from mourning the death of many friends and family, as they approach their golden years. Church every Sunday. Immense relief that Obama is no longer president. More than 50 years of marriage. Sons and daughters who are ministers at various and sundry megachurches. They're kind, funny and generous people. So, we chanted to Durga in the toy room, and Gave Us This Day Our Daily Bread in the dining room. The Cycle of Kali Ma; Or, On Birthing Twins "If Mama Ain't Happy, Ain't Nobody Happy." "They'll break you like a wild horse." -- Jenn Wooten "The first principle of storytelling is that You are every character in the story." Deep in a dark cave in Southern France called Chauvet, lie the pristine remnants of paintings made by human hands from more than 30,000 years ago. "It is as if the modern human soul has awakened here." - Master Storyteller Werner Herzog above image: Horses painted on the cave walls at Chauvet, Southern France A Birth Story In the middle of the night, about two weeks after the boys were born, I got into the shower, shaky and sleep deprived. I moved like the Walking Dead, spurred on by less than 4 hours of sleep per 24 hours for days and days... 30 hour labor, 11:23pm double birth, helpful hospital techs knocking at our door every 15 minutes, one for me, then one for each child... I was softly doped up on narcotics to stave off the pain of a Cesarian birth. My first time on narcotics. My first time having surgery of any kind. I survived a full term twin pregnancy, with two giant boys, two placentas. And a massive hemorrhage. One of my favorite quotes from my teacher is, "Lather, Rinse, Repeat." Douglas Brooks makes reference to this quip frequently and lovingly, saying something like, 'What does a philosopher do in the shower? S/he reads the shampoo bottle, and sees on the directions, Lather, Rinse, Repeat. Recursive directions. So, Lather, Rinse, Repeat. Until when? That's when you know there's a Self, because you get out of the shower.' So, there I was, drenched in shock, water, soap and more bleary-eyed than ever, reading the shampoo bottle. When... [all of a sudden... cue low loud drum beats], some neural thing in me shifted, and my mind exploded into life and it felt like the proverbial 92% of my brain that isn't awake WOKED UP. The shower became a cosmic telephone booth. Where I could talk in real time, with my mind, to anyone I wanted. Like collective selective telepathy. A switchboard where I could talk to {my self} aloud to anyone I wanted, as though they were standing right there with me, with their rubber ducky, having an epiphany about life the universe and everything right at the very same time! Who needs the internet/matrix/i-phones, I thought aloud to myself, when Epiphonic Kundalini Awakenings happen?! Remember this song, O Dynamic Ones? Operator! Of information. Get me Jesus on the Line. Operator Information I'd like to speak to a friend of mine Oh prayer is the number Faith is the exchange Heaven is the street And Jesus is his name Operator Information Please give me Jesus on the line So, it turns out sleep deprivation can be quite dangerous. So can birth and birth trauma. Call it what you will. My family and I choose to call it my Week of Epiphany. My Kensho experience. [Wikipedia says, "Kenshō (見性) is a Japanese term from the Zen tradition. Ken means "seeing," shō means "nature, essence".] Other schools may call my experience a Kundalini Awakening. A psychotic break. { reframe } A visit from Kali. I became MA. Ma. Mamma. I became a Mother. I was safe and sound in our apartment, receiving visitors that week. If you saw me that week, (you know who you are... and thank you), you likely saw that look in my eyes. Some of you came to see me specifically, at my request, to help me integrate. I cannot recommend enough having a postpartum doula. They are lightworkers. Lightworker is actually the English translation of the Icelandic word for midwife. Others brought food. Some of you had no idea I was in that altered mental state (for almost a week). The doors to the Cosmos blasted open and I could see the Big Picture. I felt euphoric. As though everything were at my fingertips, and I could conjure anything I needed. I wrote and wrote and wrote, and had ideas for books and trainings and paintings. And, I learned, when the doors open that widely, anything and everything has the potential to come in. Delusion, fear, hallucinations, and light. Thank the gods I was surrounded by loving family and friends. Those of you who know me might likely know this about me: 1. I have never taken or tried mushrooms, LSD, ecstasy, cocaine, heroine, etc. (Although I have been known to be somewhat Bacchanalian at times.) 2. I am a huge fan of Oliver Sachs, the Man who wrote The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, The Anthropologist on Mars, Musicophilia, Awakenings, Hallucinations, and, and, and recently, his own obituary. 3. I have done and continue to do copious amounts of yoga and reading about consciousness. 4. I have a sister, my best friend, who has successfully bridled the wild horse of the BiPolar state, since 1990. 5. My best friend in high school was in and out of hospitals, in my patchy memory, with eating disorders, and mis-diagnosed mental illness because her Christ-loving family told her the voices she heard were the Devil speaking through her. Um. We wore a lot of red lipstick and fishnets and listened to Tori Amos and Nirvana. And 'grossed people out' by kissing under the bleachers at football games. And so, in many ways, I felt prepared for a sea change of cognitive perception. (just kidding) Our story continues. Later that night, in the middle of the night. My body sat up in bed, as though possessed by forces invisible to me. My head threw back, Luc-Besson-Fifth-Element-style, and I felt this [wordless. there are no words to describe it] surge of energy blast in an unfurling fern frond spiral up my spine and out my mouth. Then, I lay back and systematically tightened and loosened various parts of my body's musculature, rearranged my bones into anatomical neutral, and lay still, corpse-like, in savasana in my bed, breathing quietly and watching with my mind's eye the super highway of signals traveling through my nervous system, as my bodymindheart-nadis tried to make sense and heal. ... ... ... There is nothing wrong with me. There is nothing wrong with me. I am healthy and whole. And a delicately balanced body mind. It took me nearly three years to admit to my family and my therapists that I had PTSD and Postpartum Depression. I take medication, and (now) I eat well, and practice yoga. And, I ask my circle of close friends, and my Bhairava husband, to Check Me if I get sleep deprived again as the boys progress and regress and get up in the night. Or if I'm feeling the stress of parenthood in general. Or, if I'm freaking out about the state of the nation and the planet. I call someone. I ask my friends and students to come to me, so I don' t have to drive or engage in the larger outside world, when I'm in anything resembling this liminal state. Yoga is great. So is a vast and diverse network of healthcare professionals, Eastern and Western. While I did not know him, I was rocked to the core to hear about the passing of Buddhist scholar Michael Stone. His brother eulogized him beautifully HERE. I immediately sent the article to my sister. ... ... ... About 8 months ago, I called my parents, my mom, to ask her questions about our female ancestry. Douglas Brooks told us one summer, as an introduction to our kula talks on Shiva Nataraja (the dancing Lord of Yoga and the dance of life, the universe and everything), "When you look into the mirror, your face is a museum. How many of us in the room can name all four of our great grandmothers?" They all had entire lives about which we likely know little. What was it like for my mom before she went on mood stabilizing medication--after THREE vertical cut c-sections, 2 miscarriages and a brother who died somewhat mysteriously. of pancreatitis. in San Fransisco. at age 28. when I was just three months old? [He had become involved with Sufism, and my dear sweet New England Christian family was freaked the fuck out about the Sufis showing up to ask for his remains. I don't know that whole story.] I had just read a book my sister (bookstore owner, and therefore my personal "drug" dealer) sent me, on a whim, thinking I might like it. It's called Ancestral Mind: Reclaim the Power by Gregg Jacobs. Simultaneously, my father just completed his book on our family's ancestry. I realized how little I really knew about my mom's early years with me. I asked, also, about her mom, my maternal grandmother, who also had three children. And a WWII shell shocked veteran husband who came home and baby boom my mom and uncle (who died). And a propensity for booze. My grandmother, my mom said, was given so much medication that she had enough energy only to lie sluggishly and dazed, on the couch while my mom and cousins played on the Lake in the summer. I don't know a lot about feminist theory, and I can't quote you much beyond a bit from Reclaiming Cunt, 1/2 of The Feminine Mystique (one on a very long list of books that I'm half way through.) But I can say this. We say women are hysterical and have a history of removing the entire uterus, to exorcise the hysteria. There is nothing wrong with me. ... ... My job as a yoga teacher, teacher's mentor, meditation and mantra teacher has evolved over the years. In ways that astound me. I've started sharing more of myself and my personal digestive processes of the teachings given to me. And, I've slowly started sharing versions of this story in small settings like the Philosophy and Mythology course, where I've kept company with 8 or 9 people, intimately, over a period of months. And, you know, we talk. About stuff. So, as I was saying, my job as a yoga teacher and meditation facilitator has evolved, and increasingly, I find myself in a position where people are asking me about their meditative experiences. "Is what I'm experiencing "normal"?" I AM NOT A PSYCHOLOGIST. I DO NOT HAVE A DEGREE IN PSYCHOLOGY OR A CERTIFICATE IN YOGA THERAPY. I DON"T HAVE A COLLEGIATE DEGREE IN PHILOSOPHY. My "papers" are : a studio art degree in figurative oil painting and dance; two halves of a graduate degree in art education which don't add up to a master's degree and a certificate in Waldorf high school arts teaching. My alphabet soup is, E-RYT 500. I've been to Iceland, France, Brazil, India, Indonesia, Costa Rica, Mexico, Spain, Germany, England, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Holland, Belgium. I've lived in Pennsylvania, New York, Paris, France, Colorado, Texas, Massachusetts, Texas, and Oregon. And I regularly travel into the cave of my own heart. I've been everywhere, man. I've been to Reno, Chicago, Fargo, Minnesota... Wait. What? Gods Bless Johnny Cash. So. I am a mom (and a wife, a sister, a friend, a lover, a daughter, a granddaughter, a teacher and a student.) When I was 10, my mom got me this beautiful little art print of a cartoon cat. It says, "I am me. I am just me. I'm a little like other cats. But mostly I am just me." (The best you can to is to become yourself; because everyone else is taken. -- Oscar Wilde) ... ... ... I can only tell you my own story, and say, I got expert care. From medical doctors. From a former yogic monk. From a college professor who likes to talk and travel with friends to India. From a psychologist who specializes in Kundalini Awakening experiences. From a shaman. From my mom and dad. From my husband. From my yoga kula and friends. It takes a village. Don't suffer in silence. I think I'm still a decent yoga teacher, even though I couldn't breathe/pranayama and chant my way through a hormonal and chemical imbalance, awakened by the birth of my children, and set in my DNA. So. Check in with yourself. Eat and sleep well. Drink more water than you do booze. Don't sleep with your computer or your i-phone in your bedroom. Turn off your computer and I-phone sometimes. Surround yourself with great company. Take medication when you need to. Exercise and do yoga. Love yourself, and Love your life. As Appa ( through Douglas Brooks ) says, "it's the only teaching." Call me if you have questions. Or come sit on my toy room floor. Love. (Photograph of the stairs at Shakespeare and Company bookstore in Paris. Hafiz quote.) With Gravitas, Witchez. Friday, the 13th of October Ladies and Gentlemen! Boys and Girls! Cats, Dogs, Dandies, Dappers, Mammas, Papas, Lovers, Philosophers, Artists, Scientists, Musicians, Ghouls, Snakes and Monsters... Friends & Students Old and New: Welcome to the Greatest Show on Earth! It's a veritable Circus On Fire and it's called ___ YOUR LIFE ___ Samhain [SOW-win], All Hallow's Eve, Diwali, Trick of Treat, Harvest... is a time when, astrologer Chani Nicholas tells us (please read and see Huff Post article), the veil between realities--between life and death--is thinnest. This is a time when the Wind (Vayu) whispers the stories of our ancestors in our ears; when the ghosts of the past appear. Now is a time to Bring Out Your Dead. When the light outside fades and darkness comes, Yoga offers us a spectacular seat (asana) at the most spectacular performance around : Body, Mind & Heart In Conversation The birth of new things, from the death of past and possible future selves. What's hiding in the dark? We can shed light on things that we may not want to see in the "florescent light of an operating room." (John O'Donogue, Anam Cara.) Who are we when we're not lit up in pixels on [f*ing] Facebook and Instagram? Some of us are Broke Down. Sorting through the remnants of our genetic material and our old choices. We need the shadows, the subconsicous places. tired parent with WWII vet dead grandfathers and dead uncles divorce lost friendships teenage trauma bloody birth postpartum depression scars half-finished paintings half-finished books (I'm asking for a 'friend.') So, YOGA. Cultivate a relationship with all every part of yourself. With all the selves you are. And we must die to become someone new. When you met the new you, were you scared? Were you cold? Were you kind? Yeah, when you met the new you, did someone die inside? -OK GO, Upside Down & Inside Out [Hungry Ghost] Yoga is a process, said my teacher's teacher, of radical affirmation: "Every part of us that we do not learn to love will become hostile to us." Time to love. And so, after several nights in a row, trespassing into my unconsious (thanks for the poetry, Ji) : Voila. TWO BIRDS YOGA TRAINING 300 HOUR PROGRAM No need to want to teach yoga to study yoga But, if you want, we'll do our utmost to support you and each other in becoming stellar teachers With Love, Libby and The Lightworkers, Witches and Yoginis photo: Appa's Ganesha. India 2017
OM GAM GANAPATAYE NAMAH Maybe others will find solace in a personal story. Maybe I will. Here's something of what I haven't said, and why self-compassion and the [read brene brown] gifts of imperfection are stepping up to the plate in my own life. I have a nasty. fucking. temper. And it's rearing its head. If I've never said it: I, too, am a survivor of sexual assault. I live in a safe place, with loving people, some of whom voted for Trump. I'm a stone in coarse-grade sandpaper. But Donald Trump doesn't live in my house. My unresolved sorrows do. While I will work toward compassion for my friends and family who voted for Donald Trump, I will not respect the decision they made to vote someone into office who attempts to normalize the rape-culture-boys-will-be-boys patriarchy, just to start. I will not and cannot respect that decision. I'm searching my heart for the next thing. Ekabhumi Charles Ellik, upon receiving so many accolades from his Shakti Coloring Book told Yoga Journal that part of his elation on the publication of a book of images of wild goddesses in the yoga world is that it shows us that so-called "enlightenment" looks like more than what we perceive it to be in the media: “The magazine about Yoga with the largest circulation in the world, Yoga Journal, just did a full-page spread endorsing the Shakti Coloring Book. WOW! This is especially exciting for me, because it's an opportunity to introduce sacred art as an intrinsic part of Yogic practice to a HUGE number of people who may think it's only about stretching and feeling calm. Though many of the readers may have some familiarity with a few of the goddesses, my hope is to expand folks' idea of what an enlightened being can look like (not just skinny and limber) and act like (not just gentle and calm)." My job doling out yoga philosophy and tools in times of need has, at times, and recently, put me in a position of mentorship and support. Just in case it's not abundantly clear, I want to reiterate that: even. yoga teachers. don't have "it" all together. This election has triggered much for me as the next person, of that I have no doubt. And my response? I'm going to dig in. I'm going to figure out how to engage my own inner darkness and dig and dig deep to become a better mother and a better wife and more forgiving of the irony that 15 years of yoga practice has made me MORE ferocious, and LESS complacent. And I have two toddlers who need a sweet and steady mama. I'm not silent. I'm preparing. Right now I'm dealing with the cognitive dissonance of mourning the death of my former self, and birthing into motherhood; of living with people who do not have the same spiritual beliefs that I do; and of owning up to capitalistic debt in the name of spiritual advancement. While I wish dearly I could be there in person, you won't see my face at the Standing Rock protests, and you likely won't see much from me on Facebook. It's not because I have become complacent. It's because I'm working on the microcosm. I'm here. With boys on my left side and boys on my right side... I need a big loan From the Girl Zone Building. tumbling down. As I understand it, the word "Hatha" most commonly translates to "sun/moon", equals and opposites. My teacher also translates the word as "force" or "to strike;" to take us out of our comfort zone, to stretch and to grow. --- But for now, let's just say that Hatha means, "opposites," and Yoga means, "held together." Tonight, I get ready to light out to France for a week... Away from my family, I am preparing to go on a different sort of adventure of heart and mind to my soul city, the formidable Paris. I hold the paradox of two phrases of equal weight in my little world. L'habitude engendre l'ennui. and... Enlightenment is a practice of cultivating boredom. First, the French proverb: L'habitude engendre l'ennuie. -- The common English proverbial translation would be, "variety is the spice of life." But the direct translation from the French, is, "Habit makes for boredom." That's why traveling. One of the great bittersweet blessings of being a mother of young boys is becoming accustomed to staying stapled to home, fully glued to whatever it is they wish to do, unable to finish a thought, text message, and email, phone call, or pretty much anything that I would want to do for myself. And so I strive to find the little beautiful things in the every day-- the strange moments where, for example, opening an umbrella becomes, for a moment, the Best Thing Ever, and then becomes an hour's worth of toddler breakdown when they realize they don't know how to walk through rooms with said object, and I regret showing them umbrellas at all. As Winnie the Pooh would say, tut-tut: it looks like rain. Mental and emotional thunderstorms ensue from all parties. The second idea that keeps running through my mind comes from the fact that I'm realizing that I'm one of seemingly few yoga teachers these days who do not teach with music. I was teaching a class today to folks who are probably more used to flowing to great mixes. (Don't get me wrong, I like moving to music.) I got to wondering what it was like in those folks' heads, walking into my class, perhaps expecting that there would be music and finding none. I commented partway through the class, laughing as I said, "The owner of the studio (who was in class) and I joke a lot about how I don't use music in class. I come from what we might call the more "curmudgeonly old-school" yoga studies."
"So," I instructed, "watch what happens in your minds eye when you're met with quiet space. That's when things get interesting. That's when Yoga starts." What I didn't say in class today was something that stayed on my lips the entire class: enlightenment practices look sometimes like what my sister's best friend, Heather Madden, who is a poet, would call "cultivating boredom." Enlightenment looks a lot like cultivating boredom. And so the wave between Quotidian and Exotique continues. I quietly hope that I am making the best choices for my family by stepping away for a personal breath, to live my dreams of travel, of art, of yoga, and of making the world a little bit smaller, by sharing great company in far-off places--- It's going to be epic, this trip. And it's going to be epic, to come home, and cultivate boredom. Everyday life is far from such a description, yet held in the paradox and the artistry of living every day as a parent. Watch what happens when you're met with loud space. That's when Yoga starts. May we all slow down enough to see the way things really are. –Judith Lasater
In my dance life, I learned early on that if I wanted to develop graceful movement, I had to learn to “fall” out of things slowly. Moving slowly meant I could study the moment where I lost my balance or my focus, and “ABC CBA” the process… look at it backwards and forwards and trace the movement patterns. Rudolf Steiner had a mental exercise at day's end for his teachers and students to reflect on the day, running through it backwards, especially the off-balance parts of the day. He called it "ruchshaw" meditation. I came upon the same process the semester I had a dance teacher who studied Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen’s Body Mind Centering methods. We learned a piece of choreography, and then we would have to reverse it. Not just do the other side, but reverse the entire chain of movement, like videotape running in reverse. The key was to move slowly. Slow movement means more mindfulness and the ability to open up the process for close meditation and the development of muscle memory. It also means strength building. “Falling” slowly out of a posture in yoga does the same thing. [Studying the moment of upset with a friend or a loved one does the same thing.] Study the moment where you lose your balance and it becomes an exercise in curiosity about the body moving in space, replacing any storyline where judgment and criticism may creep in. [Study the moment when you've lost your balance in life and the same gift of insight can happen.] Even after years of practicing yoga, I still tell myself I’m not good enough, strong enough, practiced enough, dedicated enough; I’m not enough. Compassion is a process. Compassion happens in slow motion. |
Libby CoxYoga you can bring home. Archives
January 2022
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