Wednesday, August 28, 2013

Just about Breathing

I have been thinking a lot about breath lately.  I have an impending workshop I am preparing for in October that focuses on Pranayama.  Pranayama is one of the eight limbs of Yoga as outlined by Patanjali and interpreted by many many other students and teachers of Yoga.

BKS Iyengar speaks about the breath (prana)  in his book Light on Life.  "Prana is usually translated as breath, yet this is only one if its manifestations.  According to the Upanishads, it is the principle of life and consciousness.  It is equated with the Soul (atman).  It is the breath of life in all beings in the universe.  They are born through it, and live with it, and when they die their individual breath releases into the cosmic breath.  It is the most essential, real, and present feature of every moment of our lives and yet it remains the most mysterious.  It is Yoga's job, and especially pranayama's, to enter into the heart of this mystery"

So this notion of the esoteric qualities of breath really does link us to each other.  Each breath I inhale, you have exhaled to release your breath to me.  Each exhale I release creates prana for you to inhale.  We constantly offer and receive without any real awareness on our part other than when we focus on this action with intention.  That means each inhale is a gift, a loving offering, intended or not, from every breathing creature on this planet.  Each exhalation ,intended or not, is an offering to every creature on this earth.   

I am honored and blessed to share this breath with all of you until I release it completely at the end of this journey.

Namaste

Sunday, August 18, 2013

Samskara

‘Asana, when done with the right intention, will help to transform an individual by taking that person away from an awareness of just the body towards the consciousness of the soul’.
(B.K.S. Iyengar, Light on Life, 2005)

In our class today at Sunrise Yoga Studio we discussed Samskara, habits that can undergo transformation when we first begin to notice their presence and then begin to offer acceptance and the willingness to change.  This applies both on and off the mat.  Check out this article to see a great explanation of the process of acquiring and releasing Samskaras with scientific reasons for the existence of out behaviors.

http://thinklikeatree.com/2013/08/12/yoga-and-transformation-changing-samskara/


Love and Namaste,
Becky

Thursday, August 15, 2013

Thoughts about August

August has always been my favorite month of the year.  My lucky number has been 8 and derivatives of that as well. Two and Four are good for me as well.   I was born in August and the date is the 24th.  I feel it is so lucky.  It feels different this year.  I still love August.  The weather is considerably cooler, it had been so cloudy and the rain has been so abundant.

Am I really in North Carolina?  The last few years it has been so dry and now I can't remember the last time I watered the gardens. Tonight I watched the sun set and the bats fly and realized that all this time while I wondered why the mosquitoes are here,other than to bite me, the answer was simple.  They are here to feed the bats when they fly and to feed the wasps when they are floating on the surface of the water that brought them forward into life.

What is to be is just what it is. Life is simple when you let it be.  It shouldn't be harder than that.
Namaste

Tuesday, July 30, 2013

Sweet Tomatoes

Harvesting food from my garden to eat is one of my favorite things to do.  It rewards me for all the mindful efforts I make in the spring and summer with planting, feeding, weeding and tending. This time of year the amount of tomatoes I receive are in abundance.  I eat as many as I  reasonably can,share many and put the rest up for winter recipes using fresh frozen tomatoes.  

The winter season has me crave this sweet flavor and the frozen sauce brings me back to sunnier and warmer days in an instant.  In that moment I am present in the cooler days and the warm memories.  Isn't that true with life?  A reading I shared this morning talked about the instantaneous change that occurs in our minds when familiar things arise in our presence.  Some of these are pleasant and some of them provoke feeling that are not so pleasant.  They way to releasing the impact, good and not so good is to see them for what they truly are, triggers into the past.  When we really see them, their impact lessens and we become more free to see old things and new things in new ways.  

Today I eat my sweet tomatoes in all their rich and natural abundance.  I endeavor to savor each bite as another new experience.  Like each moment of life, each tomato has its own flavor, experience and color.  I will welcome it while they are here.  
Namaste

Sunday, July 28, 2013

Golf brings me back to Yoga

Today I began my journey into the world of golf.  It began when a friend suggested we take a Groupon offer for lessons with a golf pro to begin this journey into golf.  We are starting this journey together.  We bought clubs, mine used from Play it Again Sports, hers a great deal new at Amazon.com.  I like giving gratitude to those that helped.  Play it Again Sports was awesome.  We knew NOTHING, they helped us understand so much about the tools we needed.  They even suggested items we could wait to explore if we needed them later.  Thanks to the salesman that helped.

Our lesson was so similar to Yoga.  Lloyd at Winding Creek Gold course in Thomasville was awesome.  The teaching was alignment based which my body already is so in tuned to understand and his style spoke to my intuition.  It was so much fun.  The best part was that we both arrived with beginner minds.  We fully expected to know nothing so the best part was starting from blank. I loved that place.

In so many places in my life I need to operate from knowing and in this place I ventured from knowing nothing.  I realize that in reality, every day I know nothing and tap in past experiences to think I know something.  Knowing nothing is so freeing to me.

Thanks to Carol for this new place I would not have traveled to.  You are my teacher today!  Namaste.