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May 22, 2013 Happy Birthday Mama/Jolie!!

This is just a ploy to see if my mom actually reads my blog. I have a sneaking suspicion she doesn’t. But she may do after I shame her publicly! Those of you loyal readers who do, make sure not to mention that her birthday wish is here.
All pretend shaming aside, how fortunate are Desi and I that our mother not only practices yoga with us, but teaches? We truly use what we’ve gleaned from our years of practicing as a family to stay as healthy as possible, being a family, and subject to the drama of family dynamics. There’s nothing I can’t express to my mom. There’s nothing she hasn’t supported with her entire being, no matter how crazy the dream. We are grateful to her for kindness, our …

May 15, 2013 Hafiz Poem relating to previous blog entry…

MY EYES SO SOFT

Don’t
Surrender
Your loneliness so quickly.
Let it cut more
Deep.

Let it ferment and season you
As few human
Or even divine ingredients can.

Something missing in my heart tonight
Has made my eyes so soft,
My voice so
Tender,

My need of God
Absolutely
Clear.

May 9, 2013 Like Cures Like

I got a splinter deep in my heel a few days ago. It’s takes flexibility of the contortionist variety to remove a splinter from the center of the heel, but I had a memory of the children in Kenya, who get splinters daily   because they live where the dreaded Acacia thorn rules the desert, as well as they don’t have shoes. I got splinters at least weekly and I have shoes so you can imagine the length of the thorn. The memory spurred a thought. Along with shoes, nomads also lack tweezers, needles, etc- all handy for splinter removal. What do they use? They use the Acacia thorns! Like cures like. It’s a homeopathic law. If you are nauseous, you take the most minute dose of Ipecac, and you …

April 30, 2013 Cabo Pulmo, Mexico

Today is my sweetheart’s birthday. The groundskeeper here at our little rented casita forgets his name is Lee and keeps calling him Al, which makes us laugh as he isn’t at all an Al. We’ve just had lunch: fresh corn tortillas, sautéed jalapeño, red and yellow peppers, an amazing fish called Amber Jack, (which the groundskeeper caught for us) rice, avocado, lime and salt! Beautiful! The taste was deeply gratifying especially after the sort of hunger only playing in the sea and sun conjures. Last night we read the stars and marveled as more lights went out, more constellations appeared, reminding us of how eternal the universe is and how benevolent for allowing us to be here, co-creating, reveling in all there is, above and below. We’ve decided to practice being more …

April 24, 2013 Vital Living!

Wow! What a profound transformation I’ve been able to witness in this week-long immersion into the tools that we’ve identified as most effective in shifting the physical, emotional, and even spiritual conditioning. This is, by far, our best offering because of the intensity, the expertise of the staff, and the method of the daily instruction. I’m extremely proud to be part of this immersion into self. When at the end of my life, if I have the gift of being conscious, I’ll feel good about co-facilitating Vital Living. I’ll feel good knowing that I taught from my practices and my heart, given the most refined instruction I am capable of to date. May will be our last immersion for a bit. If you are at all interested, talk to us …

April 10, 2013 – Blossoms in Snow

Blossoms in Snow
 
We hang from the limbs like everyone’s prayers
fragile, wondering if we spoke too soon
if we emerged from our deep winter too happily pink.
 
We’re exposed, paper thin nakedness.
There’s no greater vulnerability
than a rosy smile in a blowing blizzard
 
And yet, we have no choice,
when that heavenly union of time, sun, and rain
meet us in the center of our divinity.
 
We are blossoms and we are here to:
 
Open
 
Yield
 
Shimmer
 
Bloom!

April 3, 2013 Syncopation

This morning after teaching yoga, I walked out into the slightly overcast obscured warmth of the sun. In the distance I heard the prettiest reverberating song. I couldn’t place it, so I changed course and started walking in the general direction, but noticed even that was shifting. It was definitely birds but I wasn’t sure doves or larger. I looked to the trees but saw nothing. Just then, my friend, Teri called. “Are you walking?” she asked as she was also walking and had just taken class. “Yeah.” “Well, look up. That sound is geese.” I looked up but they were blocked from sight by newly budding trees. “They’re really high. You can see them because they fly into the light, and then they go dark again.” she explained. I …

March 27th What’s so important about routine?

The first time I realized I was without a routine, something, one thing, that I would do everyday, (and because I wasn’t a coffee drinker, not even that could save me from being routine-less ) was when I travelled to Africa twenty one years ago and saw a continent steeped in routine. Everyone from the very young to the very old had routines. Making chai together, building a fire, letting the animals out to pasture, and daily ceremonial rituals. The same thing impressed me years later, when I was in India. Now, I have many of my own routines…lighting candles everyday in the Fall and Winter, meditating, blessing my food, greeting the day, and even singing to my cats first thing in the morning, which has become part of their …

March 20th, 2013 Spring already?

Whatever the scientists and politicians dispute, we used to receive more snow before Spring had sprung. I’ve lived in Colorado all my life and I’ve been paying attention. We used to have to deserve Spring, to have endured a cold and snowy Winter before prepping our beds and making way for the warmth, the morning bird song that has an entirely different tune. I admit I preferred that. I don’t like the way Spring nonchalantly rolls in now, dry dirt a few feet down, the smell of never really frozen dog poo everywhere. But, it’s what we have now. We’re forced to get to know another way the season’s merge, become one another. It’s different. Some of us remember the way it used to be. I don’t know why I …

March 13, 2013 – The Great Buttocks Controversy

Some hatha yoga schools teach to firm the buttock muscles in the asanas, while some others promulgate to keep the buttocks relaxed throughout the performance of the pose. Hard or soft?…this is the big question when it comes to the buttocks in yoga practice! This lively discussion of the proper alignment and action for the hip muscles in modern hatha yoga is what I call “The Great Buttock Controversy.”
Yin or Yang? Soft or Hard?
Over the 30 years I have explored and practiced the extreme opposite viewpoints in asana alignment for the buttocksthe dimpled hard butts of Iyengar yoga and Anna Forrestt to the soft butts of Yin yoga and Angela Farmer. I found benefits in both approaches. From Iyengar yoga I learned how the control of my hip muscles was …