Hand Mudras

Hand Mudras. They may not look like much, but we ceaselessly use our digits, and it feels so good to give them some appreciation and a gentle stretch. Plus, your lung, small and large intestine, pericardium and triple warmer meridian all end in your finger tips.
We do this series often. This little practice is very practical. You can take it anywhere - waiting on a bus, at the airport, in the cue at the market...
This is most of the series, there are a few more that are not shown. Many of the mudras come from the Salt Spring Centre of Yoga and they are compiled in a special way by Gioia Irwin.

Standing Series

Hello Friends.
The video last posted is being updated. My teacher asked me to slow the video down so it is easier to see the essence of the practice.
This is a theme that keeps coming up these days. The feeling of having so many things to do, so many scheduled events, moving out of my home, planning a wedding, planning work... planning a life. The challenge is to keep the stillness underneath all of the twirl and whirl of the moving world. Having a practice to slide into has been so fundamental. And the practice is sometimes just stopping and smoothing out the mind. Four deep breaths and a feeling that all the activity... doesn't mean anything at all?
I am amazed at the mind's ability to say... "ah hah! This must be important!" over and over again.

In the mean time,
here is a poem I like.

WHEN I AM AMONG TREES

by Mary Oliver

When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks, and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.

I would almost say that they save me, and daily.
I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.
Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”

The light flows from their branches.
And they call again, “It’s simple,”
they say, “and you, too, have come
into the world to do this, to go easy,
to be filled with light, and to shine.”

Lone Bird

photos by Sonnie and Lydia
Dedicated to the human spirit

The Peace Underneath the Storm

A friend recently sent an email and asked for a suggestion for a mantra she could use for meditation. I thought about this and could think only of one mantra I could suggest. The Ajapa (total awareness with the least effort) mantra. The mantra of the breath.
The aliveness that has mesmerized me for all these years seems to be inextricably linked with the movement of the incoming and outgoing breath that weaves it's way through the little rivers of the body - and the complicated web of thought.

Have you had the opportunity to spend some time with your breath?
Sometimes it feels like sitting down with an old friend. Old in knowing - and in connection to you. Never tells you what to do - in fact makes you listen very keenly in order for you to pick up any sort of clue that illuminates the present moment. Speaks in riddles and also knows how to uncover very old emotions and patterns in you. Somehow wants only the best for you, there is a very warm and tender undertone that is the current to each cycle. Grandmotherly.

I recently spent some time in the desert in Moab, Utah. I was there while a storm hit Indian Creek. I could watch the tumble weeds coming from afar, one after the other, and following them small dust tornadoes and the wall of darkness. The scene reminded me of the mind. The tumble weeds being the thoughts, the dust storms being the turbulence of the uneasy breath that preambles a storm of anger or sadness in the mind. Coming out of this storm it settled me knowing that the earth has these conflicts.

I once heard that the quality of the mind is just like the wind blowing through the trees. Completely random, coming from all directions. Completely natural.

After the storm the wind calmed and the breath of the mother settled and there was this tangible sense of peace.

Even the earth has short and long breaths and she embraces both her darkness and her light. She realizes there is an undercurrent of tenderness and love underneath. She IS that undercurrent. The sound of silence between all the sounds that is always there... the quality of the equanimous blue sky that is behind all the weather patterns.

It is all beautiful. It is all happening.

Anapanasati Sutta

1.Breathing in long, know breathing in long.
Breathing out long, know breathing out long.

2. Breathing in short, know breathing in short.
Breathing out short, know breathing out short.

3. Breathing in, experience the whole body (sabba kaya).
Breathing out, experience the whole body.

4. Breathing in, calm the body-conditioned breath (kaya sankhaara).
Breathing out, calm the body-conditioned breath.

5. Breathing in, experience joy.
Breathing out, experience joy.

6. Breathing in, experience happiness.
Breathing out, experience happiness.



"Blow firmly and very slowly into the hole of the thunderbolt with a suitable hollow stalk to allow air movement."
Hatha Yoga Pradipika

Metta for Healing

There will be a healing meditation for someone who is sick tomorrow morning Wednesday Sept. 29th at 8:30am - 9:00am in the morning and another one at starting at 9:00pm at night.
If you are sitting... please send out healing thoughts.
If you are not sitting. Please take a few breaths at these times - center yourself and send out a healing thought.

For all Living Beings.

Living or not, beings or not,
inside or outside of time.

Thank you

Sticking Around for a While

I was perusing Banyan Books some short while ago. There was an older fellow manning the front desk, he may have been the owner of the store to my limited knowledge.
I was looking for a book by the name of "Opening the Energy Gates of the Body" by Bruce Frantzis. (A book my teacher Gioia keeps reading from.)
I asked the kind gentleman if he knew if they carried the book (this particular store has an immense selection of books, video and audio for the mind body and soul... "the watering hole for the spirit"). Without a glance at the screen in front of him or even a moment lost he said "yes" and immediately escorted me, padding his way on the orange carpet, to the glossy new book. He slipped it out of it's shelf and gave it to me. It felt like what Christmas should feel like.
I was impressed he located it so effortlessly and commented. He replied, "You stick around long enough and you learn a thing or two."
He had shiny eyes and they seemed to be portals to some experience that I have not yet acquired.
I smiled with appreciation and nodded silently, grateful for brushing up against someone in an age group that seems like a phantom limb to me, and for the words of wisdom.
On the way back to Squamish, past the arbutus trees and the soaring bald eagles, I rested in the gentle feeling of contentment. The subtle yet powerful feeling that comes from committing to a good friend, a relationship, a practice, a community and a home. Some things that I humbly hope to learn from sticking around for a while.

Thanks to Ben Moon for photography.
Thanks for reading and please contact us if you would like to participate in The Yoga Jam class with senior teacher Ron Reid on August 5th at 5:30pm.

Love!
Lydia

Bowing Down and Touching the Earth

At the end of a yoga practice we often place our hands together and bow our heads down to touch the earth.


The simple act of placing the palms together could be a ritual of yoking the energies of the self into one place of pure presence. Have you ever felt like there are layers of you in different places? For example you are having a conversation with someone and your mind is involved with someone else... or worse yet... yourself?
Bowing could be surrendering the ego.

I have found this gesture useful. I am happy to come out of the drivers seat for a moment in time (because this isn't an easy thing for me!). I am pleased to use the moment as a dissipation of my thoughts. There is a possibility there to be opened by the moment and able to let go of self referencing.

I end my practice with this even if I am alone. Sometimes the act means that I am bowing to the center of my heart. It is always quiet there, vast, confident and completely free. It is the teacher.

Touching the earth with my forehead is also a reminder to me that I am part of the natural world. The earth shed a piece so that I could discover myself... and she will take my vehicle for exploration back some unknown day. It is easy to feel this in The Yoga Studio when I am gazing out at the great granite rock that blesses our space. This thought helps me stay aware of interconnectedness.


For some people this gesture might be a little weird feeling or even frightening? In a low grade, lukewarm sort of way. Maybe it even brings other sticky stuff? Mild aversion or repulsion or... whatever? Nothing is wrong with that.
Maybe there is a possibility that surrender or bowing in humility is not a part of our culture. Ritual or creating emphasis on the sacred may not be either.

If anything brings up peculiar emotions or brings up little waves of questioning - it is always skillfull to look deeper into the root of what is happening. This is the job of a yoga practitioner. To get to the root of things, record the data, find the closest thing that makes sense to the truth in that moment...
and prepare for that truth to perhaps have the fluid quality of change.

xoxo
Lydia