Meditation

"We watch a sunlight dust dance, and we try to be that lively, but nobody knows what music those particles hear. Each of us has a secret companion musician to dance to. Unique rhythmic play, a motion in the street we alone know and hear." ~ Rumi  

I've been feeling a lot of pressure lately. A lot of pressure to be a certain something, do a certain something. I've had responsibilities pulling me in so many different directions, which each responsibility telling me that it is the most important and deserves my full attention. No wonder I've been withdrawing from social scenes and acting extremely introverted lately.

Over the next 12 weeks I'm going through Richard Foster's Book "Celebration of Discipline" where one by one, he takes you through 12 different spiritual disciplines. This week is meditation. The difference between Christian meditation and other forms of meditation (such as Buddhist meditation) is that while the goal in most spiritual meditation involves emptying the mind and detaching from the world, Christian meditation involves filling the mind with and attaching to God. It's very essence, explains Foster, is to be able to hear God's voice and obey His word.

Meditation is scary. It quiets the mind and quiets all the external voices from other people that tell me who I should be and what I should do. That leaves me with God. Just me and God. No one and nothing else to hide behind.

I often look at people who do it all and do it all well and I envy them. I envy how their lives are so put together and how they can be so accomplished and successful. And I think that envy is a catalyst for my taking on so much and thinking that I can do everything. I see role models in my life and wonder how I can be more like them. Yet as Rumi says, we can only dance to our own secret music companion. My life is going to be different from theirs, and I can only live my own life and not someone else's. And I'm realizing that the only way I can hear the music companion of my own life is to be alone and sit in meditation in front of the Creator of the universe.

The Healing Power of Yoga

This past weekend and week I've been doing an Ashtanga training with Nancy Gilgoff. Nancy has been practicing Ashtanga for almost 40 years, and is pretty much the female expert on the practice, being pretty much the longest female practitioner of this form of yoga. Having attended workshops and trainings with Manju Jois, David Williams, and David Swenson, I'm still blown away from what I'm learning from Nancy.

To sum it up, Nancy was a physical wreck when she started yoga, and Ashtanga healed her body. Not only that, but her nervous system/energy levels were completely out of whack and to this day, she relies on yoga to help her find balance. Because of this, she has a very firm belief in Ashtanga as an energetic practice, one that has the power to heal bodies beyond what Western medicine can understand.

As a teacher, I had many questions for her during her clinics about alignment and adjustments. Finally, she put me in my place yesterday and told me straight up "Ashtanga is not about alignments. Stop thinking so much with your head and practice with the body!"

That is difficult for me, no doubt, since I'm a very cerebral person (I am an academic, after all!), but I tried. So today, I rolled out my mat and forgot about everything except for three things that Nancy keeps emphasizing:

1. How can I make this practice as efficient as possible? (read: how can I minimize the amount of movement/fidgeting) 

2. How can I maintain my bandhas in every posture? (this involves a lot of back-rounding and curling in)

3. How can I effectively channel energy through the body and keep the circuit flowing? (this changes a lot of my hand options and the way I bind my hands)

Let me just say wow. WOW. Yoga releases a lot of emotions, and on Sunday Nancy held us in Kapotasana (pictured below) for almost 20 breaths. I have done backbends now for years without any emotional reactions (it's usually hip-openers that get me). Well, let's just say I felt a hint of tears after that backbend. And it wasn't until Monday night that all of a sudden I burst into tears. I'm now starting to recognize that really dedicating myself to this practice is life-changing. Just in the few days I've been practicing with Nancy, some hormonal imbalances I've had for years are starting to regulate. My spine is aching a little the way it used to when I had scoliosis, but I'm told that it's my body reliving old injuries as a process of healing itself. 

One thing I love about Nancy is that even after 40 years of practicing, she still says things like "I'm just now starting to get this thing," or "I haven't figured this out...yet..." She has inspired me to be a firm believer in the practice of Ashtanga. 

Luckily, I am almost done teaching Vinyasa. So starting September, I'm going to throw myself into the practice of Ashtanga. For a year, I will follow the traditional practice: 5 days a week Mysore and a weekly led Primary class. Rest on moon days and first 3 days of the ladies cycle. Weekly coconut oil baths and monthly castor oil baths (more on that later). And let's see what it does!

New Beginnings

Life's a-changing lately. I finally settled into my new cute little Hyde Park studio and am living on my own again. It's strange, it seems like life after Israel has been completely different than life before. I've found that my schedule has changed drastically, life has been simplified, and even my social circle has shifted slightly.

There is a fantastic quote my friend Noelle shared with me awhile back:

There is always something to do. There are hungry people to feed, naked people to clothe, sick people to comfort and make well. And while I don't expect you to save the world, I do think it's not asking too much for you to love those with whom you sleep, share the happiness with those whom you call friend, engage those among you who are visionary, and remove from your life those who offer you depression, despair, and disrespect. -- Nikki Giovanni

As much as I believe we are always called to embrace and serve others, I am starting the see the importance of carefully choosing who you surround yourself with. A dear friend of mine shared with me last week that in our life we have life-draining relationships and life-giving relationships. "Our friendship," he shared, "is life-giving."


Since then I've had that conversation with a few others. It's not that I'm simply surrounding myself with those who benefit me, but that I'm choosing to be with those who together we add to life whether than take away from it. Heck, Jesus did it when He surrounded Himself with Peter, James, and John on the darkest nights of His life.


And I guess that's what I'm trying to ask myself in making any decisions in my life. Are my actions (or my words, career-decisions, activities) glorifying and life-giving, or are they life-destroying?


That being said, lately life's been a-changing. Yesterday evening, I taught my last yoga class at UT. This morning, I'm excited to say I signed my contract to teach yoga at Castle Hill. I also took the leap and bought a domain name and ordered business cards in order to market myself as a bona fide yoga teacher. Finally, this evening, I'm embarking on a week-long Ashtanga training with Nancy Gilgoff!!