contentment and stress

Elsie’s theme for this week’s class (http://elsieyogakula.wordpress.com/) “Learner’s Inherit the Earth” spoke deeply to my ongoing struggle to find what I’m called to do. I’m working with Samtosha – contentment – and trying to discern whether the appropriate application is to find contentment in what I have – which is pretty great in a lot [...]

contentment

“As long as you have certain desires about how it ought to be

you can’t see how it is.”

 ~Ram Dass (ramdass.org)
 
There’s a difference between how you feel about how your life is and how you feel in a moment. But is contentment a feeling? Contentment seems to be an approach to activities, a choice to be [...]

Samtosha – Contentment

  Vacation started today at about 11:30 am, after about 20 hours in uniform, and with a spring in my step. The spring was as much for the feeling of  satisfaction of good night’s work as for the knowledge that tomorrow night I’ll be somewhere beautiful I’ve never been before. Wide open mental spaces.
With the [...]

San Diego Yoga & Surf

Short practice today between shifts. Lots of twists and backbends stretching my chest and shoulders.  Frees my heart.
Vacation begins on Monday. I’m embarking on one of my galavants. Destination: Southern California. Right now my plan is to camp in one of the State or National Parks, avoiding resorty places. But the point of a galavant is [...]

Teaching you, teaching me

I had the most lovely surprise today for my Noon class: two of my students from the senior center  arrived at the studio promptly at Noon.  I volunteered at the senior center for a year and fell in love with that class. My decision to stop teaching there was difficult, so the opportunity to teach some [...]

Zzzzzzzzzzz….

 Yeah, so this was me today. All day. All through the day I’d been looking forward to being at the Sanskrit seminar.
Made me a feel a little like this when I shook it off:

C’est la vie.
Actually, it’s kind of a pretty picture, but I digress.
I’m not sure why I keep doing things like this…  I [...]

Truth in Practice

   There’s truth in what we call practice. Abhyasa. Practice. Meeting the mat, what you bring, what you loose.
Another restorative practice today after indulging in lots of chanting along with Sonia Nelson via her CD of Patanjali’s Sutras. I’m getting excited for a Sanskrit workshop on Sunday and hope that seeing, hearing, saying and stumbling [...]

Restoration

 Ahhhhhhhhhhh…. 
Besides a weekend with my hubby, I’ve had a pretty vigorous daily practice for weeks now. Amazing and life-restoring as this is, I’m craving balance. A couple of weeks ago my partner remarked to me “your dan tien is low” (the ex-massage therapist – how does he know?!? does he have a tienoscope???). He was [...]

Imagination

When transgressions hinder, the weight of the imagination should be thrown on the other side.
Yoga Sutras
So much I find fascinating about this. I believe it’s a translation of II.33 and the translator Rolf Gates lists in his biblio is one Charles Johnston who lived (or at least published) in Albuquerque, NM in 1912. The translation [...]

word searches that lead here (and there)

Here’s a list of things people searched to get either here or to my other yoga blog:

peaceful yoga to do everyday
1

how to make myself meditate every day

brahmari
1

surya namaskar
1

yoga goodness
1

yoga foot chakra
1

lam vam ram yam ham om teaching sound yo
1

I list these only because some of them make me smile so much – esp yoga goodness [...]