We Are Open!

Since Pacific Yoga opened its doors last month, I have had the blessing of practicing closely with each of the extraordinary teachers that make up our team, and in the company of yogis, new and old, from many different walks of life. I’ve heard instruction to fire up the core, focus intently, open up the back of the heart, breathe life into the hips, to meet fear with support in order to invert it into courage. I’ve witnessed folks with obvious doubts try, and succeed. I’ve watched people face their limits, fall down, get back up, wipe off the sweat and find a way. I have faced some of my own dark places and found glimmers of light. I have been inspired.

We all have our obstacles: old patterns, bad habits, attachments and injuries. Yoga practice offers a tool for working through whatever ours might be. It helps us clear the blockages, realign, forgive, and heal. It teaches us to breathe again, and opens us up to the flow of life.

I am so happy to offer up this space where we can come together in support of one another, to encourage each other to thrive.

Vantage

I sat on a rock by the river just before sundown, soaking up the unseasonably warm air. The water was rippled with movement and bands of soft luminescent color. I remembered, watching as the horizon turned an airbrushed peachy pink, that life is not so black and white as I've been seeing it recently. Life happens chromacolor: sky blue, mallard green, Autumn shades of yellow, gold, bleeding red and blazing orange. Life happens unexpectedly, and changes right before your eyes.

Life happens dove gray, I thought, looking up at the large bird in the leafless tree above my head, and then realized that the bird was more white than gray, way too big to be a dove, and staring right back at me with fiercely neutral black-ringed eyes. It looked like an owl, peaceful despite his penetrating gaze and proudly puffed up chest, but strong and predatory like a hawk or a falcon, mostly white with light gray markings, and those intense black patches encircling his far-seeing orbs. His beak hooked down in a curve, as if in deep self-contemplation.

I stood up from where I'd been perching on my rock, stepped back enough to take him in, and stared in wide-mouthed awe at the regal fellow up in his post looking down on everything below. He barely stirred, completely undisturbed by me. I couldn't take my eyes off of him.

When he finally took flight I heard him, felt him, take his leave. Even for his impressive size, he moved precisely, a few powerfully intentional dashes at the air with his enormous wings and he alighted, glided off gracefully, and left me staring in disbelief at the endless blue space he'd just crossed with such effortless ease.

I sat back down on my rock, alone then, under a bare tree, watching the rippling water and the slowly darkening scene all around me. A man strummed an acoustic guitar a little ways upstream, and as his song wafted over, I listened.

I swelled up full, like the river, reverberating with pleasure and flowing in tune. Perfection.

"What do yogis do when they're not standing on their hands?" a beginner to yoga asked me recently. The best answer is that when yogis aren't practicing asana, they live the adventure of being truly, fully, authentically present to life. Asana is just the warm-up, the stretch before the next leg of the journey. It's everything else once the mat is rolled up and tucked away that's the practice.

Photo by Andrew Schwartz

(Re)Collecting

I walked the beach this morning, collecting. I picked up an array of shells of varying textures, shapes and sizes that reminded me from where we humans draw our inspiration: a piece of scallop shell that looks just like corrugated roof; a snail shell with cathedral ceilings; a spiral staircase, the only remains of a conch. I found one smooth, grey wing feather. I ran my fingers across them one at a time as I walked. They got me thinking.

Everything is so intentional. The long, tapered wing feather is prepared perfectly for flight. The short, downy chest feathers are different; they have a pile effect to give warmth and create a buffer from the wind.

I bent down and snapped off a length of a large tree branch that had washed up from the ocean onto the beach at the shoreline. I walked on, touching the moss-like growth covering the smooth wood. I wondered how old it could be, if it had lain rooted down there for hundreds of years, perhaps once stood in the same piece of earth, but above water, or had been broken away from some other place and swallowed under for a time.

In any case, it had been down there and stayed put for an amount of time enough to have grown a furry forest of sea brush, become a landscape unto itself. From seed, to tree, to aimless log grown ecosystem turned epiphany, this stick has served its purpose.

Beginnings and endings happen simultaneously, not chronologically. There is no moment of pause to determine which causes the other. They occur at exactly the same moment, cannot be split apart.

Watch the ocean spilling and receding. There is no first movement, only movement. Look well at the shells along her foam moustache. Step on one firmly; it crumbles: sand. The life it had contained inside it has become food for the little scurrying pipers or the gluttonous gulls. Life feeding life feeding life feeding lifeedinglife.

The dead stuff, cast off, breaks down and becomes foundation for new growth.

Photo by Andrew Schwartz

I'm Just Me

My niece Ashlyn will be three-years-old in June, a fact she won’t miss an opportunity to tell you within seconds of meeting her. “When will you be three?” an uncle asked her when she told him the big news. “On my birthday!” she said.

Her twos were not so terrible as everyone said that they might be, though recently, toward the tail end of her second year, she’s developed what at first I interpreted to be an attitude. “That’s mine,” she told me when I picked up one of her toys. “They’re mine,” she said when she showed me her new fish, “It’s not yours. You can’t have them.” At first, I reassured her that I wouldn’t take her things, thinking maybe her new little sister might be making her feel jealous. After awhile, I explained that we all need to share things, especially things we like. Later, annoyed, I started to just ignore it whenever she did the mine and yours thing with me.

Loquita! (Crazy little girl!) I told her with wide eyes the other day when she was acting rambunctious. “No, I’m just Ashlyn,” she said back. I laughed thinking that because she didn’t understand the Spanish she assumed I’d called her some other name and corrected me, but another time I complimented one of her drawings by saying she was an artist and she said, “No. I’m just me,” and I got it.

Ashlyn’s learning a language and developing identity, figuring out what’s hers and who she is.

Thirty-two years from now I wonder if she’ll be trying to peel it all off of her Self too?

“Mine” is a word with a lot attached to it. More and more often I find myself working on unlearning it. Mine hurts, when it’s said to you by someone unwilling to share. It stings when others don’t see value in what you’re holding up as yours. Mine is selfish sometimes and draws boundaries around itself. Mine doesn’t play well with others. Mine doesn’t always endure.

But “me”, I think that she’s understood that one perfectly and I hope she doesn’t lose that. The older we get it seems to me we begin to wrap ourselves up in our “mines”. I am becomes I am a writer, I am employed, I am North American, I am a homeowner, I am married, I am beautiful. The more we try to identify ourselves, define ourselves, by the things we think we own the more complicated life becomes.

What do we really own anyway? More importantly, who are we underneath the shelter of all our possessions? Unfortunately we don’t come to that until we lose something big, which inevitably we all do.

If we could teach our children that nothing in life is really theirs right from the beginning, would we rob them of their lessons? What might the world be like then?

If entire languages can disappear across the ages, what would it hurt to drop a few words from our own?

Could we ever agree to just drop possessive pronouns and just be our Selves?

Photo by Federico Di Fresco

Aim True

Photo by Federico Di Fresco

Free will is tricky. Like anything free, it comes with a catch. It gives us the impression that we have some control over life when in fact the only control we truly have is over ourselves and how we choose to act.

Each second of our fleeting lives contains a choice. Some are huge decisions that can alter the course of one’s existence, while others seem insignificant, like what to have for breakfast or whether to call Mom now or later. Every action has its reaction, even if it’s not apparent right away.

We humans have done our best to concretize our control over life, paving, constructing and crafting our environments in such a way that the power of Nature appears diminished. Those in positions of power even assert control over each other. It’s as if we believe we’ve mastered the Universe as the highest form of life, but when Nature asserts her strength, takes herself back, we’re surprised and appalled at her fury, devastated by her "destruction" and disruption. Animals and those tuned to a simpler existence, “lower” forms of life by human standards, recognize the warning signs and find safety in many cases. Those of us pounding the pavement with iPods in our ears and texting on our cell phones, assessing our value by how many dollars we have in the bank or how productive we can be in one day, remain oblivious until it’s too late.

Seems like a pretty grave way to live, making such a big deal about every minute detail, but a lifetime can pass in the blink of an eye. It's important to be conscious of how you spend your free will.

Arriving back in the states after three years in the Third World was a shock to the system to say the least. I vowed to myself to maintain the simplicity I’d pared down to, promised myself I wouldn’t rush to keep up. In a matter of weeks, though, it seemed that not keeping up meant being in the way and at risk of being barreled over. Adaptation, I decided, meant moving at the pace of life, and so I sped up.

After a few weeks of doing too much and staying too distracted to notice, however, I found myself way off track. I got totally wiped out. Anxiety erupted in my chest like a volcano. Restlessness shook me out of good nights' sleep. Enjoying proper meals eroded to grabbing on the go. Before long, I felt like a disaster.

One afternoon, on the el train high above the streets of Philadelphia, on my way home from doing too much, exhausted, I looked above the rooftops and saw the sky, vast, infinite. I looked across the skyline to the sun glinting off the rippling river. I saw the cars jammed nose to tail, crawling on the interstate below. It dawned on me that places are created things one can choose or opt out of to any degree. Anywhere in the world you go, there is Divinity all around. The sky is the sky wherever you go. The rivers and seas are watery universes flowing alongside our own. The trees stand rooted and reaching out their message for hundreds of years, fruiting, offering, dying, and fruiting again. The sun and the moon shine an endless circle of light around us all.

Suddenly I realized that adaptation is not about moving at the pace of the culture around you. Adaptation is tuning into your own Truth and living according to that, regardless of what else is going on.

I chose to slow down.

Meditation has been a part of my whole adult life. There are still days, though, when I get caught up and bypass it. Drinking the morning cup of coffee and coordinating what to wear can seem more important when preparing for the day. Perhaps perpetuating illusion is less scary than facing reality. Thankfully, my practice has also taught me that chiseling away the falsities surrounding my core of truth makes life more enjoyable moment to moment. Meditation and asana are not just exercises. They’re tools for precisely this task: whittling ourselves to a sharp point.

And so came back to sitting, and rediscovered the best part about practice: it's immediate medicine. It doesn't take days or weeks to get through your system. It brings you back to now, NOW. Unfortunately whatever mess you've made in your absence does require tending to, and that can take some time.

There is a parable in the Mahabharata about an archery contest in which Arjuna, the story’s hero, partook. One by one, the town’s best archers came to test their skill. The target was a revolving wooden fish suspended from a tall tree above a pool of oil; the bullseye was its eye. The challenge was that the archers were to hit the mark by fixing only on its reflection in the pool. Each contestant arrived at his turn. To test his aim, before being allowed to shoot, the contestants were asked, "What do you see?". Each in turn replied, “The fish, the tree, the pool”, and was immediately dismissed.

When it was Arjuna’s turn to shoot, he was asked what he saw. He replied simply, “All I see is the fish’s eye”. He was permitted to shoot and hit the eye dead on.

Free will is a gift, a tool to be utilized with precision. We have the choice to wield it about like an octopus, flailing in every direction, but while we may accomplish many small things, maybe even hit close to our target, chances are we’ll lose sight of the mark.

A better use of our freedom to choose is to turn it on ourselves, to identify one by one the things that aren't true and whittle them away, like a sculptor revealing a work of art, or a warrior carving his arrow.

Let yourself be honed to a fine point (and trust that this may be an uncomfortable process!).
Aim true, and let yourself fly.

Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high;
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments by
narrow domestic walls.
Where words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms toward perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening thought and action--
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake.

~Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali

Today is not the first time that my practice has calmed a crisis. Literally stopped it in its tracks.
Practice is a path, and I chose wisely.

Broken hearts are some of the hardest wounds to heal. It doesn't matter if broken by death, separation, or some kind of betrayal. It's a pain that eats you alive from the inside out and can't be avoided. It's deeper than any comfort can reach. Clinging to the pieces and trying to force them back together only prolongs the pain. There's no pill to swallow to dull the ache. Being self-destructive only compounds things.

Just about the only thing to do is be with it in all its shifting agony.

I cried tidal waves until I felt empty. I was shaking. I paced back and forth through the house. I took a long hot shower. I wrapped myself in cotton from feet to head. Turned on some music and got on the mat.

I found myself standing barefoot on a chunk of Vermont.
Outside, mountains and pine trees weighed down with snow.
Beneath me, another version of the forest outside, hardwood, firm and smooth.
All around my shelter, the same blank shimmer, sky the same color as the frosted ground.

Within, a similar dullness: flat, dead versions of life; a clean slate frozen in time.

There was no sense in sitting in what was already too still.

I stood.

Consciously expanded.
Emptied and released.
Conjured up some warmth.
Suppled myself.

Softly,

I planted my feet like a hero.
I praised.
I bowed.
I opened.
I embraced.

Finally, I laid down.

Reabsorbed.

The best cure for a broken heart is to wrap yourself around it like you would the person you wish you could hold.

Really it's that reflection that needs restoring.

The only medicine for loss of love is more love.

No Bottom, No Top.

You are infinite, which means that no matter how deeply you explore,
you can always dive deeper.

If you think you’ve hit the bottom, it’s because you’re thinking!

Same goes for the top.

Autumn

Trees grow,
brighten, darken,
let their fruit and leaves drop
to the ground,
stand naked and still
as everything they've created blows around
and away from them.

They never stop their praise of the sky.

Perhaps we should listen
to what the trees have to say to us about faith.

Why do we chase and grasp at the things we say we love?

A human being is a part of the whole called by us universe,
a part limited in time and space.

He experiences himself,
his thoughts and feeling
as something separated from the rest,
a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.
This delusion is a kind of prison for us,
restricting us to our personal desires
and to affection for a few persons nearest to us.

Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison
by widening our circle of compassion
to embrace all living creatures
and the whole of nature in its beauty.

Albert Einstein

Adjustments

Adjusting to a new place is never easy. Even for all the moving around I´ve done recently, the first step is always elusive at first. I find myself surveying unfamiliar surroundings finding things that I love and things that I hate, things that I´m immediately drawn to and things I flat out resist. As I begin to relate with these things, however, they can tend to reveal themselves as quite their opposites, giving me whole new perspectives. Like yoga inversions, they turn me on my head. I suppose this is why I love traveling so much. We can learn so much about ourselves from a little bit of discomfort.

Yesterday, I spent my first full day on the beach in Miramar, expecting it to work its usual magic. Sitting in sand near the ocean tends to make me feel right at home wherever in the world I am. Instead of the peace and space I´d hoped for, I found thousands of Argentines packed together like sardines, both in and out of the crashing sea. Hyperactive children ran everywhere, superchared from too much matè and sugar. One small boy even unloaded a can of carnival foam all over me while trying to aim at his sister. With no room to move, every person walking by resulted in coarse sand kicked in the face. Most annoying of all was the myriad of vendors who passed by one per second screaming out whatever they were selling, as if you didn´t notice as they kicked hot sand at you. Cries of ´Heladoooooosssss!´and ´Chorrrrroooooossss!´ finally ran me off the beach, irritated and feeling that this is just not the place for me.

Today, I tried again to find solace at the beach, though a bit further down the coast from the hoards of vacationers. Fede, more familiar with the town, led Bruno and I to a mostly unpopulated stretch of gold sand where the only sounds we could hear were the waves tumbling ashore. It was just us and nature for as far as I could see. I stepped from the car and lumbered toward the ocean noticing how difficult it is to move through the deep, sinking sand of this place. The stronger I struggled on, the more deeply the earth swallowed my feet. Feeling frustrated again at this new terrain, I trudged on toward the water seeking out a place to practice.

Ankle deep in sandy earth, I saluted the sun. My Downward Dog was buried up to the wrists and ankles. My Cobra was more like an earthworm. Buried in the groove I´d made, Corpse Pose lived up to its name. By the time I sat up, I was just another grain of sand.

Somehow yoga practice always sloughs us down to truth.

I found my way back, later, to a more populated swatch of beach closer to home. I stretched out on my pareo to read, but before long, heard the now familiar bellow, ¨Churrrrrroooossss!¨ and thought, oh please no. When I looked up, I saw a wiry, suntanned man lugging a heavy basket three times wider than himself, marching his way through the ankle-deep hot sand, working hard to earn his day´s living. My heart swelled.

Perhaps the irritations we feel are meant to capture our attention and force us to look at what we need to see. Anger and frustration are opportunities to love. Resistance is the boiling point before dispersing into acceptance. The things we don´t like are oftentimes mirrors showing us our own blemishes. This morning I´d searched for a perfect place to ´practice yoga´when, in fact, the world is the mat and wherever we are is the best place to unfold it. This new home has me looking myself square in the eyes and seeing where my own work is. The starting place, as always, is exactly where I am. The challenge, at heart, is always the same: how to open unconditionally to love.

On some level, we´re all forging our way through deep sand, aren´t we?

When you are inspired by some great purpose, some extraordinary project, all your thoughts break their bonds; your mind transcends limitations, your consciousness expands in every direction, and you find yourself in a new, great and wonderful world. Dormant forces, faculties and talents become alive, and you discover yourself to be a greater person by far than you ever dreamed yourself to be.

~ Patanjali







Photo by Allan Vasconcellos

Focus

My boyfriend and I were talking over coffee in a tiny streetcorner cafe this morning when his expression changed suddenly and he said, "Baby, whatever you do, don't look at the TV." Of course the first thing I did was turn to look. What I saw was a continuously streaming video clip of a young man being beaten to death by three other men. Over and over again they played the violent scene. The sound had been turned down low, so all we knew was based on the video and accompanying captions, which weren't at all informative. A man had been killed. We didn't know why. We didn't know when. All we were sure of was the terrible sensation of being assaulted again and again by ugly images. Feeling unsettled, we paid our bill and left to walk back home. "That was a public news program," Fede commented, frustrated. "There's something positive going on somewhere in this city. I'm sure of it! Why weren't they talking about that?" I didn't have an answer, so I didn't say anything, just nodded my head.

This evening, we sat together working to transform this blog to accommodate our new location. We sifted through the photos we've taken since coming to Buenos Aires looking for an appropriate new image. What we landed on, finally, was a tiny sliver of the most unlikely picture taken on the banks of the Rio de la Plata. It was crooked, out of focus, and not at all pretty, but there was something, some glimmer, that captured what I was feeling when I took the snapshot that made it just right. As Fede cropped and arranged I said, "It's so funny how Photoshop can work such magic. All you need is a fragment out of a total mess and you can preserve what's beautiful." "It can work the opposite too though," he responded. "Remember the news this morning?"

Life is just like that. It's good and bad, beautiful and ugly, messy and perfect, scary and sublime all at the same time. It takes acceptance of both sides to attain balance and wholeness, of course, because there will always be some of each.

Still, it's important to realize we get to choose what we zoom in on and what we crop out.

Burbujas!

Last December, l went to a 5-year-old's birthday party on the beach. lt was everything you'd expect from a kid's party: chocolate cake, presents and party favors, plus the added bonus of almond & palm trees to climb and play under with the ocean just a short sprint away through the sand. lt was the kind of fiesta even the adults could enjoy. Every child was sent away with little bags of fun: spinning tops, candies, mini action figures, and ice cream cone-shaped bottles of bubbles suspended on strings long enough to hang around your neck. Before l left, as always one of the last to leave the beach, Katherine (the birthday boy's mom), giggling, gave me my very own bottle of bubbles, which l didn't need to pretend at all was supercool. l put the string right over my head, unwound the cap and gave the wand a long blow in gratitude. Blue-tinted bubbles spewed out into the breeze and we all laughed out loud. Seeing how much l enjoyed them, Katherine offered me the last left-over bottle of red bubbles as well. Thinking maybe Karen would like them, l thanked her, said happy birthday to little Garrett, and headed home walking up the mountain, the bottle of blue bubbles bouncing against my chest as l hiked. With no shame whatsoever l confess to blowing them more than a few times along the way.

When l got home, Karen was sitting on the back balcony. She had her back to me and was staring out at our meager glimpse of ocean. l couldn't see her face, but from her posture could tell that she was feeling sad. l went around the side of her and sat down in one of the chairs. "Hey," l said cautiously. She looked like she'd been crying.
"Everything ok?" l asked.
"Not really," she replied and began telling me about what had her so down. As she was explaining, she noticed the blue plastic ice cream cone dangling around my neck (it wasn't exactly fashionable or small). She stopped mid-sentence, scrunched her eyebrows together and said, "What's that around your neck?"
"Bubbles," l told her, looking down and remembering they were there.
"Bubbles?" she asked, sounding a little bit like a sourpuss grown up. l blew bubbles at her. She just stared at me kind of like l was a little bit stupid. But when l fished in my handbag and said, "l brought some for you toooo-ooo," and revealed the red cone, her entire face lit up in a slightly reluctant smile. The latest drama temporarily forgotten, we sat on the back porch blowing streams of bubbles out across the backyard not saying a word. l have no idea what happened to Kar's bubbles after we moved apart and l moved in with Fede. (l hope she still blows them and smiles once in awhile.) Mine fell into the hands of 4-year-old Adira, our new downstairs neighbor's little girl.

She'd wander up to our place now and then and find whatever she could to play with. l saw the familiar brightening of face the first time she noticed the bubbles on the kitchen counter. "Burbujas!!!" she shrieked and started jumping up and down excitedly until l handed them down to her. She hopped around the house blowing and giggling as they fell down all around her until her father came up to collect her and bring her home. She cried so much when he told her she had to go that l let her keep the bubbles. Of course l knew they were in better hands, but still felt a small pang as l watched her go with them.

Months later in Nicaragua, walking down a street on the way back to our hotel in Masaya, l stopped in my tracks beside a sidewalk vendor. He had bottles of bubbles in all shapes and sizes dangling from strings amid suspended bags of chips and snacks. Fede followed my gaze and bright face and said, "Ohhh oookaaay," and asked the vendor to please take one down. l blew them down all three remaining blocks back to the hotel. Fede walked ahead, shaking his head slightly, but laughing.

Back in Manuel Antonio, l initiated a new house rule, applicable to everyone within its walls, as l put the new bubbles on the kitchen counter: lf you see them, you have to blow them. Since then, at least of few sprays of colorful fun have brightened up our every day. Josie's lightened up the mood with them during concentrated work sessions with Fede. Erin has blown her share while visiting for breakfast or lunch. My mom and dad showered us with some while they were in town. Even my friend Meg from home took her share of turns. Jessica's 7-year-old son Julian filled the apartment with bubbles, blowing through the wand with the bottle around his neck during a recent visit. Anyone who's eyes have fallen on them, no matter their age, status, or origin, has happily unwound the wand, shimmered bubbles all about and finished smiling.

This morning, l woke up and put on my glasses. The first thing l saw was that bottle of bubbles sitting on the bedside table. Before l even sat up, l blew a few clusters up into the air. As they rained down softly and popped landing on my skin, l wondered in my early morning haze, "What is it about bubbles that always makes you feel so happy?" Maybe it's that they very simply remind us of so much we already know. Floating spheres of different sizes, colors, and duration, all made of the same substance, drifting surrounded, impelled by, and filled with the same invisible stuff. They are beautifully contained space. And when they diminish, they're still exactly what they were, minus the shiny outer shell; you just can't see them anymore. They're like the giant planets and stars, microscopic molecules, or even us. maybe it's because they show us the truth of existence in a playful second. They remind us to enjoy the fleeting trip that we all have, the little things. They remove the weight and make us feel the lightness we are, all in a colorful instant.

l got out of bed and lit a candle on the balcony, got a cushion from the couch and sat down. l closed my eyes and breathed the fresh morning. At first, there were lots of thoughts, sensations, weight to wrestle with, and achy awarenesses. But the longer l just sat there breathing, l found the sameness between what was outside my bubble and within. l found the peace in that, the truth in the space, and then lifted up and floated off into my day.

Slow down.

Where are you rushing off to?


b r e a t h e

Pay attention.

THlS is life.

There are hundreds of paths up the mountain, all leading in the same direction, so it doesn't matter which path you take. The only one wasting time is the one who runs around and around the mountain telling everyone else that their path is wrong.

~Hindu Teaching

Continuity

l've been having so many aches and pains lately they've become an excuse for not practicing. l can't practice today because my back hurts too much from sleeping in this awful bed. l can't practice because l have menstrual cramps. l have a headache. My neck hurts from the chiropractic adjustment l received a few days ago. Even as a yoga teacher and long-time practitioner/believer, sometimes l manage to forget that it really is the cure-all for everything. Our laziness has a way of telling us lies sometimes and when we're out of practice (perhaps as a result of listening to that lazy voice) we might tend to take the route that seems easier. The whole thing turns into a vicious cycle. Precisely why we need to practice our way out of it.

My screaming low back finally spoke louder than the lazy voice and led me grimacing to my mat. Just a gentle practice, is what l told myself, coercing myself into Savasana to begin. The Earth, as always, rose up to catch me as l lay myself down. Then, all those other little voices inside of every ache and pain became audible enough for me to hear. l listened in to every whisper, every twinge and groan, and coaxed openness where things had been shut down for too long, sent kindness where it was needed. l hugged myself over and over again until l felt better all over, outside and in, even way deep down. Then, l spread out and let the Earth hug me too, and remembered that l'm just a speck of substance in a great, swirling universe. l sat up feeling much lighter for all my realization.

Sri Pattabi Jois passed away today. l read the news when l logged onto the internet this morning. l never practiced with him. ln fact, l've never even practiced in an Ashtanga class. But yoga is yoga to me, whether you practice on a mat in your own home or studio, in an ashram in lndia, or on a surfboard out in the ocean, and l gave a moment of pause, gratitude to the spirit of him for guiding so many to their paths. l thought of my own teacher, who'd followed his way and is surely feeling the loss today, and sent love to her. Surely, his light has not gone out, for people far and wide are glowing with the tiny flicker he passed on that has been regularly stoked and passed on in turn. lt's important to remember those who lit your flame with love, honor, reverence. More important still to know it's up to you to keep it burning.

The light within me bows to light within you.
Namaste.

Reflection

Everything's reflective.

The sun,
admiring itself in the open sea.

The sky-kissed surfaces of the shiny black rocks.

My boyfriend's camera lens.

Each of us to each other
and others to us.


We should remember this whenever we start to compare.

Only Breath

Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu
Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion

or cultural system. I am not from the East
or the West, not out of the ocean or up

from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not
composed of elements at all. I do not exist,

am not an entity in this world or in the next,
did not descend from Adam and Eve or any

origin story. My place is placeless, a trace
of the traceless. Neither body or soul.

I belong to the beloved, have seen the two
worlds as one and that one call to and know,

first, last, outer, inner, only that
breath breathing human being.

~Jelaluddin Rumi
From Essential Rumi
by Coleman Barks

Why do I teach yoga?

When a wave of ocean tumbles onto the shore, the white, salty froth disperses into thousands of little foam islands of all different shapes and sizes. But as the water recedes back into itself, each individual is collected back into the frothy fold. They never really left each other, but I bet they thought they did. The spaces between them after such togetherness must have felt like emptiness for sure, when all along, they were swimming in their own source.

To me, even more interesting is the rim of foam that edges the sea as it rolls out upon the beach. Though this rolls on further away from the rest, it stays connected, each bubble one with the others besides it, as if holding hands to create an invisible barrier to send all the rest back home. Not to create separation, water from land and vice versa; merely to remind them where they come from. It remains behind in absolute surrender, embracing the sand with absolute acceptance until they melt into one. And they are, after all. Are they not? Millions of years of embracing like that is how the sand came to be. The whole planet, born out of a love so big that a single grain of sand, a tiny island of substance, could not possibly know.