Oh boy, the things you find when you have to wake up for a 6:30 AM yoga practice/class. You all know I’m a huge fan of this online magazine. Pep talks for grown ups! It seldom occurs to us, but learning can be quite dangerous. Most worthwhile quests are. Is that maybe why institutional learning is so watered down? Fear of power sharing? Hmm…
I almost did not post today. But I do want to brag/share that I just threw some clothes on without taking a shower, took a train to the city and did 3 errands. I turned right around and came home (I never do that because I consider it a waste of fare money). I got back into my jammies and have been in bed reading Vanity Fair, and browsing online mags. No yoga no running, no puttering. Husband is working late, so no need to fuss with dinner. I feel like a teenager who suckered her parents into letting her stay home from school. Feels great. I did wake up last night at 3 AM to check out the eclipse but nada, the Connecticut sky was covered with low lying clouds. That oil bath and that salt bath are not looking like they’re going to happen. Happy Solstice boys and girls.
At my shala, (unofficially of course) no one gets a new pose on a Tuesday. Apparently some bad juju goes on on Tuesdays. Now tomorrow besides it being Tuesday, it is a full moon and it is the winter solstice and there is an eclipse. I read in a couple of places that all this on the same day has not happened since the 1600′s. I say tomorrow just play hooky, cozy up after a nice oil bath followed by a salt bath, followed by a nap.
Proof that I live with crazy:
He is taking me on a 7 hour road trip to test the new wood stove because it would be fun to just run away from everything next week during the holidays. Marital vows are no joke.
Ima gonna post these quotes after watching yogadork’s sonic yoga video add post. Sigh.
“Yoga is not an ideology, philosophy, or moral code about the “goodness’ of letting go and the “badness” of attachment. Letting go is what happens when the suffering of holding on is FELT and recognized.”
“Whether emotional or physical, embodiment means pain is inevitable.”
And My Favorite:
“The most pain-avoidant people have the least joy in their lives. In trying to armor ourselves against pain, we numb ourselves to all experience. In opening ourselves to felt experience, we allow ourselves to live life fully, not caught in patterned habits of reactivity. Rather than conditionally reacting to experience, we can choose to respond creatively. The doorway to this freedom is in bringing mindfulness to our feelings BEFORE they condition our reactivity.”
All 3 from Frank Jude Boccio’s contribution to Michael Stone’s FREEING THE BODY, FREEING THE MIND
I wish I’d posted before watching the video. Now I’m humming it.
In 15 days I will end my blogging experiment. I already began another blog, but more on that another time. I have to tally up every weekly chart,, so I can figure out what percentage of days I followed the tasks I outlined for myself. I can sort of predict the outcomes but we all love to see hard data don’t we? I have not weighed myself on like 3 weeks but not because I haven’t been taking care of myself. On the contrary, I am doing exactly what I said I was going to do at the beginning of the year, with very little push back, and during the holidays! Don’t let anyone tell you that practice doesn’t make permanent! I think that is my happiest achievement. That I became familiar with consistency. I was very familiar with the fear of falling down. Not very familiar with the actual falling down part, and not even remotely familiar with the getting up after falling part. I am thinking that I’ll take a photo and weigh in at the end of the month. I predict that I might be 10 to 15 lbs behind my goal at the deadline I gave myself. I’ll take it. With immense gratitude. And I will also predict that I will probably be at goal by the end of January, beginning of February. ASHTANGA yoga & Blogging: Awesome.
Today’s article in the magazine of yoga (see below) has a wonderful analogy that helped me further enjoy the memory of the handstand that the nice yoga teacher lady helped me put together last night. I even turned her down the first time because I thought it would not be “kosher” but she gently insisted and it was so much fun. So much fun that I signed up for a very reasonably priced handstand workshop.
