Ahimsa. First, Ethics.

(more for the body, mind, feeling, world workshop coming up Sunday December 30th.  Come!) Ahimsa.  First, Ethic.

Karin L Burke

My practice began with asana.  It began in the body.  Words and understanding, all this ethics and philosophy, came later. I felt a strange, deep stirring when I practiced.  I didn’t know a thing about yoga philosophy; it would be a stretch to say I ‘understood’ it.  Yet I intend to say exactly that:  I think that strange and deep physical stirring was ethical, what the body said and the mind heard was the beginning of understanding.  This is who you are, body said; why can’t you remember?

First, the body.  Later, the words. Like life its own self.

What I thought, at that point in life, was that philosophies and religions fail when you try to use them as actual tools to open jars with, relieve headache, or cope with a difficult human being.  They are pretty.  Pretty like a dress you wear on banner days when you yourself feel gorgeous and all the world is right.  But most of our lives – my life, anyway – didn’t happen in the way of lace and poetry and kid gloves.  It happened with bitten nails and chapped lips, screaming alarm clocks, and much weariness.  Makeup, and make believe, church and ethics, all amounted to the same thing.  Fairy tales and palliatives.

Yoga’s ethics are different.  They are not an excuse or escape from the body, but an expression of the body.  They are part of the human, as skeleton is.

Harm none, honesty, purity, ahimsa are words written on and of bodies.  They are as much a part of us as is skin.  As is bicep, bone matter.  The smoke and heat of blood.

*

When I was a girl, I wrote poems.  Sometimes, lacking a notebook or simply trying to catch the moment of clarity, I wrote on the inside of my forearm.  But I don’t think convenience was the whole reason I wrote there; I think it was a part of what the words were, a piece of their meaning.  It was important to have the ink there, on my flesh like that; a constant flicker of ink in corner of eye reminder.

Like a branding.

Words for the sake of argument are sterile.  Words in a book may or may not be read.  Words around ideas are just words.  As marking, though, as witness, words take on gravity and dimension.  They are a manifesto taken to bodily extremes; a manifesto of the body and for it.

One of these poems little girl me wrote described a storm and a lost man.  It got cold.  The sky poured.  The man was alone, had nothing, and there was darkness.  Over and again the poem said naked, damp, and hungry.  Every human being of us knows what that means.  All the saints and native gods of all the corners of the world have known it.  We know.

As in, This is my flesh.  Our veins are veins of compassion, not of blood.

When I was a young woman, I still had poems inside me, but my lifestyle ricocheted from safety and fairy tales to darker, harder places.  New Orleans Parish Prison, for one.

I thought, while sitting there one day, that I was now qualified to write folk songs.

I have a tattoo, now, woman grown, on the pale and thin flesh on the inside of that left forearm.

Yes: the place I used to scribble and ink on day after day.  It is my handwriting, this tattoo; the needle traced over what I myself had written and made it stay.  Naked, it says.  Damp.  And hungry.

When people ask, I say it’s just a prison tattoo.  This makes them laugh and the conversation stray.  But it is exactly true: I laid my forearm across another woman’s lap and she patiently, slowly, branded me.

When people ask about the words, all that nakedness, they usually think it’s some innuendo.  All is sex.  I don’t correct them.  But the words are not about lusty, satisfied desire so much as they are a description of need.  These are the words we know.

Is it strange, I wonder, or delightful, that the most rigorous intellectual exercises and sublime metaphysical contortions of yogic science echo what I’ve felt and tried to express my whole life:

We know what the words are.  We ought to know our veins as compassion.  We ought – because we do, in a sense – have first words branded into our arms and the palms of our hands.

To have the words bless and sanctify everything we touch, mark everything we do, witness our hours; we ought to be reminded of ethics as soon as we are reminded of body.

First, ethic; first.

All two year olds know what generosity is.  And every two year old knows selfishness.  We stay infants all our lives.  Unless we decide to grow up.

*

You stand, you breath: the whole body trembles.  The nerves flash.  The breath roils.  It all says yes: yes, this has been true, all along.  This is who you are.  You were born to love, and yet you are alone.

Figure this out.  Go slowly.

*

Nonviolence is not a discrepancy or diversion of the body.  It is the logical outcome of having one.  Do this, and remember.

*

Still, I am a wordy, philosophical kinda gal.  It tickled me no end when I found the philosophy.  I found the philosophy to be a pure distillation of what I felt on the mat, knew with my hands and my eyes.  The point of practice is not physical contortion and heavy breathing; it is a question of aliveness, is sensitivity.  Yoga is ethics, first.  If it begins as a flash of physical knowing, it holds true all the way to the most rigorous of intellectual understandings.  Compassion is a truth we know across all the different fields of knowledge.

The logic of yamas and niyamas appeals to our highest level of intelligence.  At first glance smarts isolate us, put the smart one on a different level and lead to accolades, cloisters, academia. Intelligence separates us from the fold. But this isn’t the whole thing; intelligence taken to its conclusion resolves to withness and leveling. Full expression of genius lies in relation, not isolation.  I don’t say easy, I just say genius.

The fully developed human being knows his own self, and where he stands.  He knows everything amounts to this: either he sees the body of every other as equal in importance to his own, or he does not.

Compassion, ahimsa, is inborn and instinctual.  But it is also – and this makes it rare – a truth the mind can find no shortness with.  Any shortness found is with the self, and not compassion.

Like god, I suppose: bigger than mind, it contradicts the mind.  This doesn’t prove the smallness of god. It proves the smallness of self.

*

Ahimsa is historical. Hippocrates, father of medicine and citizen of ancient Greece, is credited with the healer’s code to ‘first, do no harm’.  He understood medicine holistically and humanely; illness is not the concern of wellbeing, wellbeing is.  When healers act out of their own diagnostics of what is ‘wrong’, they may injure the person while treating the limb.  To ‘fix’ a disease or wound at the cost of harming the person in some way is worthless, even if the disease is ‘cured’.  To not harm, then, takes precedence over the healer’s own accomplishment and the treatment of disease.

A doctor is concerned with physical pulp and tissue.  Oxygen, the grey matter of the brain, depression and anxiety and the muscle fisted heart.  From there, directly, a doctor is concerned with the soul and the being.  With communities.  With the bodies of history and the eyes of the not yet born.  Compassion, ahimsa, is the only way such disparate bodies of knowledge form a whole.

**

The body is knowledge, see?  To feel is to sense one’s humanity, however jaded and limping.  To sense is to know.  To know one’s own senses is to realize the mirror and shadow and echo of oneself in everyone else’s body.  It feeds directly into using one’s wisdom as a means of connection.  One’s history and secrets and accomplishments as communication.  One’s fear as the impetus to love.

The body is wild, and messy, and discordant.  There are reasons we prefer to live in our heads.  And yet to feel what one feels, moment by moment, is ultimately the kindness of telling the truth.  It demands bravery; it is frightful to see not with our expectations and ideals and shoulds and oughts and musts but with what is.

The word courage translates, in latin and old french, ‘with heart’.  Compassion, as translated as the greek of the new testament, means to feel ‘from the bowels and gut’.  It is not easy, no.  To face reality.  To stop living in the boundaries of our heads and enter the field of the body, where things are not so orderly and are, quite frankly, terrifying and hard to understand.

It is large and expansive, that land of what we do not understand.  To ground ourselves there we ourselves must grow huge.  We must, sooner or later, realize that courage, bravery, ethics, true self, are not things without fear.  But a place where the fear doesn’t matter any longer, where fear can be felt without leaving us paralyzed.

**

Our eyes grow gentle to see this way.

This is what eyes were capable of, all along.

You were born to love, and yet you feel alone.  Figure this out.  Go slowly.

**

If you pay attention to the breath, eventually you realize it is not you, breathing.  It is your body responding to the universe.  It is atmospheric pressure, breathing you.  The breath is, with out you.  When you end, there will still be others breathing.

This is a primordial, gut wrought, deep stirring experience.  It starts in the privacy of the body.  From there, it softens the eyes and reveals a universe, an atmosphere, a word.  It speaks. We develop like children: first in body, later in language and its brainy knowings.  If you allow yourself to feel what you feel, see what you actually do see, you resolve to fierce compassion.

Ethics are visceral.

Every human being is marked, branded.  We all have these tattoos across our foreheads, written into the lines of our hands, but the things are mostly invisible and private.  I am born to love, built of it, it says; and yet I feel alone.

We know the words by heart.

Breathe out, look in, let go.

Forget about enlightenment.Sit down wherever you are and listen to the wind that is singing in your veins. Feel the love, the longing, and the fear in your bones. Open your heart to who you are, right now, not who you would like to be. Not the saint you’re striving to become. But the being right here before you, inside you, around you. All of you is holy. You’re already more and less than whatever you can know. Breathe out, look in, let go.

—John Welwood

Go on.

Your body is capable of things you think - right now - are impossible and ridiculous. It isn't a question of body. It is a question of commitment, time, willingness, life. Your life, I tell you, is much bigger than your thoughts are.

Go on.

And if this is true of your body...what might be true of all those other things left buried inside you?

Witness. Mindfulness.

Written for the upcoming Body, Mind, Feeling, and World workshop.  If you're interested, sign up. “The empty sky is my witness.” – Jack Kerouac

We want peace.  We want relief.  We want a sense of calm and a broader opening to joy.  These are universals, although they come to us in very particular and personal ways.  And they are things that are promised us, in yoga, in meditation, in spiritual paths of any shape or origin.

The way in is paradoxical, and has more to do with not doing and not reacting than with a ‘practice’.  It comes in stepping back and witnessing who you are.

The irony is of course that we think we know.  We think we know better than anyone else does, certainly.  There is a sense in which this is true: no one else knows our secrets, or is as preoccupied with our thoughts and feelings and beliefs as we are.

But there is also a larger sense in which this isn’t true at all.  We don’t know who we are.  We don’t have the foggiest.  We have a tendency to become attached to our thoughts, feelings, and beliefs and confuse them for ourselves.  And we have a tendency to stay so close we can no longer see the big picture.

Once upon a time, someone told me “your thoughts aren’t true, you know.  You don’t have to believe them.”  This was a revelation.  It continues to be a revelation.  This was the beginning of many deep changes in me, starting with a yoga practice, an exploration of mindfulness and meditation, and not a little soul searching.  In any journey of healing or self work, honest appraisal of our thoughts and beliefs has to come in to play.  This causes a minor eruption.  A revolution, complete with burned citadels and blazing flags, from the heart outward.  It results in clarity, centeredness, and purpose.  It creates a sound refuge.

And it’s tremendously hard to explain, as it’s a thing of experience.  Of show, don’t tell.

Sakshin, the Witness, is the you of you that is larger than your conscious thoughts or fleeting emotions.

The human animal is a thinking and reflective animal.  Not only do we think, but we have the capacity to watch ourselves think.  We have the gift of self awareness.  The easiest way to envision this is to call up in your mind a picture of yourself, where ever you are right now.  Watch as this character of your mind stands and leaves the room.  You can do this whether you actually leave the room or simply use your imagination.  This quality is what allows us to remember, to learn from what we remember, to ruminate and change our minds, and to create or plan.

But the camera can pan back even further, to where we see the thoughts, can start to question where the thoughts are coming from, ask who the thinker is.

Sakshin, the seeing witness

Sakshin, the Witness, becomes our closest ally in our daily practice.  We are ambitious, judgemental, competitive, and want to change.  But we cannot create any substantive change until we know and accept what is.

Sakshin is the quiet water beneath the constant chatter and fluctuations of our everyday consciousness (citta).  It is those fluctuations Patanjali wanted to quell with the practice of yoga.  The fluctuations are caused by perception, thought, emotion, memory.  Because of avidya – our inability to see, our mistaken ideas about dualities, our ignorance – we imagine that these fluctuations define and limit who we are. Our ignorance hurts. We suffer.

All our life, and much of our strength, is spent is assigning values to people and things. We analyze, we criticized, we compare.  We feel envy.  We feel lack. Or we feel pride, ambition, dedication. But we are rarely taught to accept and simply mirror what is.  Sakshin engages both the outer and inner worlds on their own terms and lets them speak in their own words. It is  present-centered, with no memories of the past or concerns for the future. Sakshin is self-reliant, independent of approval or disapproval, self-accepting, and big enough to hold both success and failure.

Mindfulness, buddhist Practice

In meditation we learn to be non-reactive.  There’s a thought, we let it pass without judgment or any need to follow; there’s an itch, we let it be without moving; there’s a sound, you notice and refocus on your breath; there is a surge of emotion, you feel it fully without turning it into a command or a story.

The practice is simple.  Not doing.  Not attaching.  But it has never been ‘easy’.  It teaches the  vast difference between what’s actually happening and what the mind is making up.   Oddly, this practice allowed me to be more engaged with ‘what’s really happening’ and with the processes of my mind.  It has allowed me greater spontaneity, a relief of grief or doubt or regret, and a full appreciation of my strengths and limitations.

The paradox is that being attached to a thing – emotion, say – I neither get myself or the benefit of the emotion.  Anger is a prime example: if I follow the anger, believe it as ‘truth’, I set off a chain reaction of further emotions, hormones, chemicals, and neurotransmitters. I engage my whole fight or flight response.  Typically, I also recall other incidents of anger, or reflect on neutral events in the past, and suddenly ‘understand’ them in terms of this anger.   Fuel to fire.

Mindfulness, however, fully engages with the emotion, feels it full on, and lets it be what it is.  It gives a sort of dignity to the thing.  Approaching anger with that tender, nonjudging Witness, I can often see what is making me angry (usually not what I first thought).  I can see what it is that I think I need, or what I think it is I’ve been threatened with. Fears and pains are teachers.  We should listen to them.  Benevolent curiosity toward anger is the first teacher of compassion; I learn compassion (not pity) for myself, but also a kind regard for the other party, whose needs and motivations are often remarkably similar to my own.

Being mindful toward my anger also graces me with a kind of flexibility, generosity, and bigger than myself ness.  Anger rankles and burns. It consumes.  But it is also only a piece of who I am, not the whole.  And it often consumes more precious and tender aspects.  Mindfulness allows me the room to give anger its place without letting it hold sway.

The big, sweeping space of mindfulness is the active practice of keeping the mind focused on what you are experiencing in the present moment, moment by moment, without commentary, analysis, or judgement. Without reference to the past.  Without expectations or fear.  Again, oddly, the practice makes us big: by dissolving the ties we take for granted (why does he always do this?  Why can’t I ever…? I hate…I wish…every man is the same…my body does this every time I get a headache) we have the room to try other approaches.  We see people for who they are, rather than what we’ve come to expect from them.  And we see that who we are need not be attached to who we’ve always been and the way we’ve always done it.

Typically, we use the breath as a  vehicle or focusing point for our meditation.  But we can apply mindfulness to anything: different sensations in the body, sounds, emotions, even thoughts.

Finding the clarity born of mindfulness, letting go of distractions, needs, and expectations that carry us away from the present, only happens with time, commitment, and a surrender to the process.

The process can be scary.  We learn how little control we have over our own minds. The light we start swinging around can illuminate parts of ourselves we’d rather not know, or force us to reckon with things we’ve spent tremendous energy avoiding.  When people begin a ‘meditation’ practice, they often say “I’m no good at this.  You tell me to follow my breath but I can’t shut off my thoughts long enough to do that.” Depending on who we are, ease of sitting with the uncomfortable may be terrifying. Impatience, self-criticism, perfectionism, and the desire to quit or run away run deep in us.

In the end, mindfulness is not about escaping thoughts or emotions, or turning the thoughts off. Thought happens.  No one can stop thought.  If that were possible, there would be no reason for meditation, ‘liberation’ of yoga, or any of the self-soothing strategies humanfolk have devised over time.  We don’t escape thought and feeling and what is, but radically change our relationship to them.  “You don’t have to believe your thoughts.” said unnamed teacher: mindfulness and witness open the heart to possibility.  It allows choice, rather than reaction.  It opens a space for Right Intention to steer our lives, or true belief, or the really right thing to do.

Thoughts and emotions can overwhelm: most of the ‘problems’ in our lives have to do with our reaction to thoughts or feelings we didn’t know how to think or feel.  Mindfulness won’t magically stop this, but it will bring it to light.  At those times, we can begin to fall back on compassion  – again, not pity – for ourselves, the great reality of where we’ve been and the greatness of the task we’ve begun.  Facing demons rather than running from them. Mindful witness is a place to begin the forgiveness of self, and of our failures.

Yogic Sakshin, the Eternal Witness as ally

Begin at the beginning.  Begin where it’s practicable.  Begin with the body.

Sit back or lie down on the floor and close your eyes.  Step back from your body, as you might step back from a puzzle or slightly crooked picture frame.  Scan your awareness over your body’s surface.  Easy.  Do this from the soles of your feet to the crown of your head.  Feel, for example, where your skin comes into contact with the world, the border between what’s inside and what’s out.  Feel where fabric of your clothes touches your skin.  Feel the heat or coolness of the floor.  Feel where the air in the room moves over your body.  Feel where your skin is soft, where it’s calloused.  Where it’s warm or cool or cold.  If you can’t stay methodical, let your awareness play.  Just keep refocusing on being aware.

Begin to start scanning those places of your body where we don’t often go – with awareness, with breath, with vision.  The back body is key.  Notice if there are areas beyond the vision of your Witness (internal organs can be hard.  Or areas of injury may simply feel ‘injured’, not detailed).  Somewhere along the way, we lose large tracts of ourselves to a kind of physical avidya (ignorance or not knowing).  Eventually, someday, the Witness will be the guide that brings you to those places.

Follow your Witness inside, away from the surface, toward the contents of your citta (everyday consciousness…that fluctuating mind).  What do you see in there?  Our brains consume more energy and more sugar and more blood than any other part of our body, but we’re largely unaware of what it’s doing.  Forget the whole we only use 10% part.  Generally speaking, I’m wholly unaware of that 10% I am supposedly using.  Ordinarily, we identify with the fluctuations and so submerge or lose ourselves in them.  We lose not only them, but ourselves.  The Witness will tell us the kinds of thoughts we have.  I was surprised to learn how much time I spent planning and worrying and projecting – I thought I was a lazy and sanguine kinda gal.  Most of us are consumed by planning, rehashing, competing, preparing.  Any and all of these have a value and a place – but if we’re not aware, we’re not even getting the benefits of worrying, planning, or preparing.  Or of reflection.

Use Sakshin to step back from the contents of your mind and regard what you see without favoring any one of them, or trying to dismiss the unsavory. Appreciate that you can remember yourself and know yourself apart from these rippling thoughts, cataclysmic or therapeutic or preoccupied as they may be.  Allow each its full expression without getting mired in them.  They are a part of you.  Wings, or limbs, or potentials.  But they are not who you are.

Sakshin is the means by which we inquire into and enlighten ourselves.  It asks, sometimes irreverently, sometimes compassionately, who we are.  The more open we are to the Witness, the more we begin to see our ignorance/avidya; we begin to realize we don’t even know who we are.  This is a gift.  We have worlds of potential in us, big areas of healing that have historically looked like lost causes, huge reservoirs of flexibility, endurance, compassion, attention, and creativity that remain lost in the morass until we approach and learn, Witness as guide.

The elementary act of witnessing, and not doing anything, is enough to initiate the process of transformation.  Physical transformation, emotional transformation.  Revolution of spirit.  When the Witness shines the light of awareness on the unnecessary or unhealthy doing-somethings we engage in, the doing-somethings immediately lose some of their potency.  The grip of avidya – and hence, suffering – is weakened.  Stubborn, trenchant tensions or habits or beliefs spontaneously dissolve and transformation becomes effortless.  We subtly change.  The authentic slips in.  Breathing, and all the other things we do ‘just happens’.

Your inner being is nothing but the inner sky. Clouds come and go, planets are born and disappear, stars arise and die, and the inner sky remains the same, untouched, untarnished, unscarred. We call that inner sky sakshin, the witness, and that is, the whole goal of meditation. -Osho

“I am the goal, the supporter, the Lord, the witness, the abode, the refuge, the friend, the origin, the dissolution, the foundation, the substratum, and the imperishable seed.” -Bhagavad Gita

This, Gargi, is just that which is not changed.  It is not seen, but is the see-er.  It is not heard, but is the hearer.  It is not thought, but is the thinker.  It is not known, but is the knower.  Apart from it, there is no see-er.  Apart from it, there is no hearer.  Apart from it, there is no thinker.  Apart from it, there is no knower. Gargi, in this alone which is not changed, all space and time are woven, warp and woof.- Brihadaranyaka Upanishad 3.8.11

“Some look upon this Self as marvelous; others speak about It as wonderful; others again hearof It as a wonder. And still others, though hearing, do not understand It at all.”  ?

Winter blue. On why I need a kapha practice.

(Scroll to the bottom for quick info on kapha balancing poses, diet, schedule, etc). An odd winter, really.  Last week friends in Chicago told me that temperatures had reached 70 degrees, and I walked the dog in a tee shirt wondering what December meant any more.  Perhaps it means volatility, rushing change, sudden dark.  I have no doubt that freakish weather is part of our environmental legacy and 'super storms' will continue ravishing whole cities - but I don't know what to expect of ordinary every day weather.  Yesterday, suddenly, snow.

Not snow.  SNOW.  As though we'd been brought back to that allegorical childhood we all had, where it pillowed and drifted and blew round the corners of houses until houses disappeared, laced and dusted trees until tree became wonderful.  I listened to the radio Saturday - in itself, not a thing I do any longer but remember from childhood - and watched as the traffic slowed, announcements were made of closings, predictions of school cancellations rolled in.  My sister and I drove many miles across country to the extended family Christmas.  There was fog and heavy air, there was miles and miles of white, disappeared fences, undulating fields.  The car slid in the parking lot as we arrived and feet made that squeaking on new snow noise.  It was warm, though: on the sidewalk a black water puddle and I paused, as the door opened and the riot sound of family and warmth and dozens of children I don't know rolled out the opened doorway; I paused and watched the lazy snowflake hit the puddle like some kind of haiku.

When I woke, Sunday morning, the world had vanished.  It continued to vanish, all day long.  There was no traffic, although I live on what I think is one of the busiest intersections in town.  The neighbor boy, drippy nosed and snowsuit clad, knocked on the door and offered to shovel.  I let him.  It snowed on and on, and he kept shoveling.  Every few hours I'd open the door and let my dog go out to join him - two black figures cavorting in on an immense canvas.  A world blanched of all sound.  A freezing of time and reality.  He'd knock again, I'd say he really didn't have to shovel til it ended, he'd sniff and go back to his self-imposed responsibility, the shovel and snowsuit outsizing him.  The winter outsizing both of us.

I sat at the table in the very quiet house and drank tea.  Ate oranges.  Put on more socks.

I watched a mood walk closer to me like a wall of fog approaching over a body of water.

Depression comes that way, some times.

Winter used to be my metaphor for it, depression.  A wall of blank.  A kind of dying.  A place where everything is isolated, nothing makes a sound, and you might lose limbs if you aren't careful.  The heart might freeze inside you.

This is the thing, though: I don't slide down to those depths the way that I used to.  I don't much want to die any more.

But I do notice: the moods in me like weather, like season.  How real they are and how they change the timbre of my voice, the appetite on my tongue, my ability or inability to remember.  I watch, too: how the smallest, dumbest things are the things that help me.  Cinnamon.  Light.  Taking off shoes and socks and getting bare feet, bare hands, on to the mat and moving until I sweat.

Look: the ancients understood seasons - night to day, fall to winter - and they understood characters - gregarious and earth motherish, or bookworms, clowns, family centered or rogue.  They understood that happiness and enlightenment come from a full on acceptance of who and where we are and living appropriately.

The practice of yoga is learning who you are and where you are (winter, family, mid west plains) and understanding.  Understand that this affects your basic experience of life and learning to dance, move, adapt, thrive within it.

The boy kept knocking on the door.  I gave him an orange and hot chocolate.  The dog first loved the snow, then shivered.  We hunkered down, and then I wrote this:

Hands and eyes and mind grow dry and numb, the fire all draws in.

Which is my poet brain striking on the truth of ayurveda of this season.

Winter begins dominated by vata and moves toward kapha.  To survive, we need to balance kapha energies with food, with self care and body movements, with kapha balancing yoga practices.

Winter's short days affect us, whether we are fully Seasonally Affective Disordered or simply hungry for more light and longer days - a greater sense of awakeness and time to live.  Further: holiday season will bring with it a sense of being frenzied, broke, over wrought, under appreciated, lonely and misunderstood no matter how fantastic your social and familial relationships are or whether or not you observe a holiday.  Even the fact of NOT observing a holiday can stir up deep rooted emotional connections.  The end of one year and the anxieties about a coming one contribute foreboding, a sense of shortness, or overwhelm.

Know this, and accept.  Accept, and then find wild joy, anyway.

Yoga teaches us survival, and then more than survival into joy.  There are things, yoga teaches, you can do.  Do them.  Perhaps there is a reason we humans have a hodge podge of celebrations - and all celebrations of light - in the darkest days of winter.

Celebrate ridiculously, for this is how human beings get through.  Celebration, commemorate, make holy, pray, observe, and practice.  Same things.

My niece has learned Christmas songs in the last few weeks.  From her carseat in the back during that long drive, she kept refraining, every now and again.  Let it snow let it snow.  Let it.  Snow.

Let it.  Accept, and find deep joy in the deep snow, deep joy in the deep body.

KAPHA BALANCING PRACTICES - FOOD, SCHEDULE, SKIN, PEOPLE, ASANA

Mid to late winter tends to be dominated by kapha energies; the sky is low, often cloudy, gray and days are cold, damp and heavy.  Life - even in the busiest places, moves more slowly.  When in balance, kapha energy provides lubrication and structure.  This has to do with joints, mucus, the texture of our skin and our hair.  Kapha type people are often the strongest and have the most stamina.  Kapha has to do with strength, vigor, endurance, stability of both body and mind.  It is responsible for lubrication of joints, flowing of thought and emotion and ideas, moisturizing skin and fascia, maintaining immunity and lymphatic balance.  Out of balance, it leads to sluggishness, fatigue, ache, mucus related illness, excess weight, negative emotions such as attachment, envy, greed (and the loud relational negatives of loneliness, comparison, jealousy which can tip into over dependence or far too much isolation).  Too much kapha energy is earthiness, solidness, taken too far: a sense of being stuck in the mud, buried, dark, cold.

In general, we should follow a kapha - pacifying regimen in the winter. But dry, cold, windy weather can at times provoke vata, too, and can lead to arthritis, indigestion, etc.

FOOD - Appetite tends to become 'heaftier' during winter months - which can lead to weight gain if we answer with highly processed foods and corresponding lower excericse.  However, kapha in itself is the withdrawing of energy from the extremities to the organs, and many people may lose weight in winter if they don't add proteins and grains significantly.  We should not eat the same foods we ate in the summer seasons, and need bulk and warmth and spice.

Incorporate whole grains, buttermilks or cottage cheeses if you do dairy, steamed vegetables, warm soup, and spicy food into your meals. Because your appetite is heartier in the winter, eat more protein- beans, tofu, eggs- and if you’re not a strict vegetarian, chicken, turkey, and fish. Add warming spices such as cinnamon, cloves, and black pepper to promote digestion. Drinking sweet or dry wine with your meals will stoke your agni (digestive fire), improve your appetite, and increase circulation. Avoid cold drinks and opt for hot water, hot tea, hot cocoa or chai.

SCHEDULE - much like the cold wet autumnal season, a schudule can help get through the dark time of winter.  Think of softening the schedule, but keeping it moving.  If possible, allow yourself to wake up a little later.  Avoid naps (but know they can be healing, too; just don't fall into a rut as kapha tends to over sleep and the sleep makes us more tired).  Try to be active early in the day and include excercise; give yourself pleasurable activities for the late afternoon and evening - think joy and interest.  Schedule something to look forward to (big: a vacation or long awaited purchase or accomplishment, small: a movie you really want to see or book to read, a lunch date with a good friend, a self indulgant purchase that won't break you in anyway but feels good).  Try new things to keep your interest involved and yourself challenged.

SKIN

Think circulation.  Massage, get a loofah, scrub and exfoliate.  Find an oil appropriate for your skin and stimulating (bergamot, rosemary, juniper, vertiver, melissa) and indulge in it.

ASANA PRACTICE

Hard enough to sweat (ayurveda says on brow, armpits, joints and a feeling of dryness in the mouth is the point you need to get to) and challenging enough to break you out of 'stuckness' and stagnation.  Aim to counter Kapha's natural tendency to feel cold and sluggish.  Move through flow and sun saluations with as much a sense of speed and warmth as you can without losing connection and integrity.  This will lighten and warm you.

Most standing asana are invigorating, especially if you hold them for a longer time.  Try holding for 20 breath (that is much longer than you may have ever, ever done so).  Backbends are also heating, and getting extesion of arms and legs (up, over head) promotes the heart to push and the circulation to flow.  Open your chest and the front lines of the body as much as you can.

Kapha is said to be dominant 6- 10 am, so do some sort of asana or excercise then if at all possible.  Just a few minutes.  One salutation.  One stretch. Just do something.  Incorporate firey pranyama into the practice, especially at the beginning and close.  It cleanses that heaviness, mucus, and chest gunk, as well as energizing the digestive system and balancing energy levels throughout the day.

PEOPLE:

Kapha doshas are trustworthy, stabilizing, grounded people.  But they can tend to be too sentimental and nostalgic for how things were and unable to move forward.  As winter and it's Kaphic tendencies set in, make sure to watch your own proclivities toward others.  Keep yourself challenged and excited and avoid getting stuck in the past.  Realize not all relationships need to be ideal to be rewarding. Allow yourself to be given gifts and appreciated. Practice open hearted gestures of compassion, play, service.  Don't try to be oversimplistic about your feelings (guilt, depression, fear), but see them for what they are without letting them become everything.  It is possible to know you feel guilty but also know you ARE not a fundamentally guilty person.  Go for lightness and laughter.  Watch comedies.

No feeling is final

“Let everything happen to you. Beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.” — Rainer Maria Rilke

Praying with our hands. Dancing with God.

prayingwithourhands-FLYER <---

A workshop

  Sunday, January 27

9 a.m. - Noon, $40

register here

"Let my prayer arise in Thy sight as incense, And the lifting up of my hands be an evening sacrifice." Psalm 141:2

"The Incarnation establishes without a doubt, once and for all, the given-ness of union with God.  We do not have to attain divine union.  We do not have to climb out of our messy flesh into the pure Spirit of God.  God has become man.  Our flesh is his flesh.  Our body is his body." -Carmelite monk William McNamara

"Our whole notion of reality has actually been topsy-turvy.  Instead of God being a vast imaginary projection, he turns out to be the only thing that is real, and the whole universe, despite its immensity and solidity, is a projection of God's nature." -Deepak Chopra

There is confusion: some people say yoga is a religion.  Some people say it is exercise.  It is neither, but sometimes there is confusion.  So: what is yoga?  And why is it spiritual?  Or is it not?

We tend to think of prayer, spirituality, and ourselves in intellectual ways.  We are taught that 'spirituality' is a thing we find in special places, handed on by qualified others.  We disregard the physical as a handicap, an embarrassment, or a weakness.

We lose out when we do this.  Spirituality is not a thing to be found in churches once a week or at turning points in a life story.  It is not to be found in retreats or cloisters.  It is here, and it is now, or it is nowhere.  Nor is it a thing taught by others, if we are honest: religion is the song of the heart.  Our relationship to our body says a lot about what we think of God's creation.  The most profound connection to the divine is always experienced inwardly, as something between ourselves and God.

There is a strong tendency to deny or disparage the human body, to suggest its the source of sin and weakness.  Yet in the Christian tradition itself, God chose to incarnate his son.  Maybe this wasn't only about suffering, but also about love.

Who are we and what are we supposed to do with this life?  This body?  How do we, personally, incarnate the idea of gratitude, anger, joy, salvation, devotion, or love?  What is peace, and what is praise?

We go through life's stages.  We know youthful play, thrills, and heartbreak.  We know relationships, parenthood, and work.  We know illness, trial, and loneliness.  Ultimately, I think we are called to dance, and to pray.  These are things that are done with bodies.

A workshop dedicated to exploring 'religion' and 'spirituality' in terms of yoga.  To finding 'self', and mapping the relationship between this 'self' and God.

Wear: comfortable clothing you can move freely in, as well as a warmer shirt to cover up with/socks as we will NOT be engaged in a strong practice or move the whole time.  Have something comfortable for the discussion part.

Bring: a notebook and pen, your mat if you've got one, possibly a towel or small blanket to sit on and shift around on as we discuss.  (pillows, props, all welcome.)  Something to sip.

Any questions?  Let me know.  I'm excited!

Give the gift of yoga

Why not give yoga?  To your mom, to your boss, to your best friend? Easy.  It's elegant, it's personal, it's meaningful.  (Yes, yes, I still remember the one who first got me in a studio.)

Buy a (new student) $30 for 30 days package, a workshop (every last Sunday of the month, $40).

Or, hey, ask your loved ones to buy you a month.  You want that more than socks, don't you?

I have a stack of holiday cards I can fill out with the gift information for you to give to your loved one.

If you are not a student, but would like to purchase a gift, you can click on the paypal 'donate' button to make your purchase.  I will add your gift to the student's account or create an account for a new student.

The point (practice)

The point, I think, is not to live some other life but to fully live the life that we have. It is not easy for me to swallow this.  More often than not, I want things to be different.  I am not entirely satisfied with the face that I have, nor that I am a middling age woman, nor with my bank account.  I live smack dab in the middle of conservative suburbs in the Middling West, which is the antithesis of what I expected and worked for.

I overheard a woman in a restaraunt the other day, with a crestfallen look and her hands limp on either side of her plate: this isn't what I wanted, she said.

Which is what most of us get.

I used to teach a woman who was driven and focused as a tiger.  She was beautiful and, I think, relatively 'successful' by anybody's standards.  We practiced headstands one day and I saw frustration cloud her face to a cool marble tone.  I'm not strong enough, she said; I'll never be able to do the variations.

I answered that it would come.  But I think I answered, wrong.  I think I should have said it doesn't matter.  It doesn't matter whether or not she will ever find lotus and hanumanasana and pincha while standing on her hands.  It is a truth that she maybe never will.  We can't predict things and she may never practice again, let alone for the years more the pose might take.  She might lose her limbs or her health.  She may lose interest.  She may never get the poses she wants.

But the practice still has a radical and precious worth.  I watched her move away from the wall and knew she was more comfortable doing those poses in which she looked like a rockstar.  It's enough, she said, speaking of the sweat and the work out and the core work.

But there is something, something to practicing those poses we are not very good at.  Something to inhabiting the land of This Is Hard For Me.

When I was a little girl, I believed, I knew, that I was going to be a monk.  I wrote silly poems that were half prayer, half song, and half magic spell and this seemed to me the most important thing I could do with my life.  I felt the truth of human love and suffering and likened that somehow to god.  And, it seemed to me, that if god or love exists, the only rational way to spend my life was in dedication to it.  As I grew up, though, I lost my sense of god.  Churches seemed ridiculous places for me to be.  I lost all feeling of 'faith' without losing that first tug and pull to be what I wanted to be: a monk, serving love, writing poems, standing for healing in a broken world.

These suburbs rankle me, and newspapers bother me, and my schedule sometimes leaves me feeling very little of 'purpose' and much more of 'fatigue'.  I spent the afternoon, yesterday, writing poems and daydreaming under a tree next to a monstrous bed of peonies.  The poems were intoxicating and wild and breezy, the heat was dizzying, the afternoon passed slow.  But I hit a wall of doubt: the notebook is so messy.  The poems are not finished, not edited, not publishable let alone memorable.  I looked from the black ink on the limpid paper and then to the ants, colonizing the blooming peonies.  What's the point...I found myself thinking.  I can't describe these flowers.  No one will ever read my poems.  I will never be a monk.

I stood and brushed the humid dirt from my knees and my seat, gathered my papers and headed back into the house.  But as I did so I remembered some of my students, the conversations we have had, the way their movements sometimes strike me dumb and make me teary.  I recalled to myself the days I am most tired, most frustrated, think myself most stupid and a bad teacher and stuck in middling america; the moment I show up, my mood no longer matters.  Something happens.  I let my 'self' be pushed aside and let the yoga talk, instead, I try to be present not to my wheeling thoughts but to the bodies and lives that show up in the room with me.

I wanted to be a poet monk, to stand for love, to touch beauty and heart and soul every day.  It occurred to me, standing in the hot sun with my arms full of half written poems, that that is exactly what I am.

The point is not to change our lives, but to change our selves so that we can live our lives, fully.  To find the precious worth of what we can do, are doing.  To appreciate that we are getting the myriad benefits - postural, hormonal, strength and tissue and joint wise, now and today.  That this is more real, and more beneficial, and a bigger point than the imaginary pose we might or might not someday hit.  This is real, while we spend most of our lives blind and desirous of the imaginary.

To be present while moss covers our face, or the drone of suburban lawn mowers drills into the fantasy, to watch ants and peonies and be okay with whatever poems we can write.

Yoga is courage

Yoga is courage.  It is the bravery to look at reality full in the face, and be touched by how deeply you love.  Yoga invokes the courage to remove our absurdities and crutches and blank stares. The startling revelation of love. All the saints of history have known this. All of our great artists. This is the message of all the angels and messengers.  And a few, stellar people-of-our-own-lives whom we are blessed to rub elbows with now and again. Grief, hard knocks, and fear reveal our attachments, true.  But they also show the glorious aspect of that attachment: we are woven into the fabric of the world, we are linked to everything that is.

Pain is a badge, or maybe a threadbare, greasy flag, that indicates our humanity.  It waves it's gritty fibers in a soiled, but archly noble, patriotism for our homeland.  This is our humanity.

And humanity is a beautiful, gorgeous, precious thing.

The Strong Body, Quiet Mind Project

The Strong Body, Quiet Mind Project provides high quality yoga classes to veterans, first responders, at risk youth, and survivors of trauma.  All veterans and first responders are invited to participate - service and health providers are invited to collaborate with Return Yoga.  Participants are asked to pay $30 per month for unlimited yoga classes.  A veteran's i.d. card or first responder i.d. is all you need to sign up. Sign up must happen in-studio for Strong Body, Quiet Mind.  Every class on Return's schedule is open to project participants.

Participants are invited to all yoga classes rather than 'special' classes: there is no need for labels, anonymity is respected here, and all to often 'help' comes with stigma.  The truth is, we all need healing. Further, 'special' programs or classes are all to limited in time and scope, leaving participants after a few weeks rather than encouraging an on-going, life process of growth.

The Need:

Our society is rife with anxiety, stress, and trauma.

Studies have shown that PTSD and 'shock' in this generation of military will overshadow anything known to previous generations, costing billions. Veterans returning from service are finding a depressed economy, a dirth of future and career opportunities, and a shortage of services that answer their physical and psychological needs.

Research is showing that domestic violence and sexual assault survivors are just as likely to suffer trauma symptoms, with an even fewer sources of support and intervention.

Similarly, first responders are on the front lines of crisis situations day in and day out.  On going exposure to traumatic situations takes its toll on responders, who are under appreciated, under respected, and under protected.  Trauma, stress, and shock are status quo.  The private costs are often invisible, but no less deep.

These populations suffer in their own lives, and the effects of trauma are passed onto the next generation. These demographics are over-represented in the unemployed, the homeless, the incarcerated, those seeking emergency services, addiction services, and medical assistance. Their children struggle in education, health, and social connections. These kids are more likely to be involved in crime, high risk behaviors, and have inadequate medical and educational support.

HOPE

Trauma has proven to be one of the most difficult issues to 'treat'. However, current research has shown that the skills of mindfulness, meditation, and yoga promote autonomy, well being, and genuine healing in away medicine and traditional 'talk therapy' can't. 8 weeks of a yoga practice has proven to calm the sympathetic nervous system and increase activity in the areas of the brain associated with the parasympathetic nervous system, sense of safety and autonomy, and cognitive functioning. Further, yoga can be taught at very little cost, with no negative side effects, and is accessible to any level of ability/mobility.

The effects of trauma (or stress, for those who have been labeled too much already) are pernicious, at times devastating, at other times manifesting as a numbing sense of being 'damaged' or 'broken'. Many who have lived through trauma (from a car accident to the death of a loved one, a sexual assault to active duty)often describe it as a chronic state of hopelessness.

Yoga is a rediscovery of hope, and the lived experience of grace.

It was so for me.

There is a profound difference between trying to 'get over it', and feeling oneself okay from the soles of the feet to the deepest parts of the brain.

Yoga allows us to experience ourselves not as 'wounded' or getting over it, but as powerfully alive and worthy human beings.

How the Program Works:

Return subsidizes costs directly, in such a way that every class dollar spent by students goes to funding the Strong Body, Quiet Mind Project.  Return is incorporated as a non-profit.

Additional funding may come from community or private donations or grants.

If your program is interested in accessing yoga classes for your demographic, please contact Karin Burke at karinlburke@gmail.com.  All support, whether by participating in class or donating directly, is greatly appreciated and provides a demonstrable good.

Fertility yoga

Now and again people ask if I teach or would teach a prenatal yoga class. The short answer is no.  The long answer is yes; always, of course.

I do not host a specifically prenatal class; such classes are hard to maintain fiscally, hard to hold class numbers high enough, and it is impossible to randomly pick one time during the week when all the interested pregnant women could make class.  It doesn’t help much if I do offer a class Wednesday mornings, if four out of five people can’t make that time slot.  In my experience, holding a prenatal class is too small for too big a need.

I do, however, teach pre, post, and fertility yoga.  I also know that fertility and health often times include loss of a child, aging, and sexuality issues that a ‘prenatal class’ doesn’t touch.  While pregnancy certainly does have specific practices in the yoga tradition, I also believe that fertility touches men’s health as well as women’s, that bio, psycho, and social aspects of gender, identity, self esteem, health and wellness span relationships and life cycles, and yoga has specific tools and suggestions for ALL of these things.  The question is not what prenatal yoga is, but what your process is and where you are.

My recommendation is this: take a private session to discuss your own needs, goals, and circumstances.  You will learn in a private or two the poses that will help and the way to avoid or modify poses that are contraindicated for pregnancy.  Once you have done this, you can attend ANY yoga class, anywhere, safely and effectively.  Of course, you can continue taking a private sessions as you need and want the individual feedback and support.  I believe that individual feedback and support is crucial; pregnancy, sexuality, and fertility issues are profound embodied and psychological experiences, felt individually and existentially.  You deserve such support.

Once you have that foundation, I strongly recommend attending the healing classes.  Unlike a once a week, hard to get to prenatal class, healing classes are held five nights a week.  Classes are small and tailored specifically to who shows up for class.  Each class explores specific healing postures and meditative traditions for our own unique needs.

Those who have a long yoga practice behind them can absolutely attend strong classes the full term of pregnancy, provided they are willing to make appropriate modifications.

Body, Mind, Feeling, and World. A yoga and mindfulness workshop.

Sunday, December 30th 9am - 12 pm.  $40.

Register here.

What: a workshop part movement, part dialogue, part silence.

Mindfulness, yoga, and 'stress reduction' are buzzing words these days, related to everything from dieting to worship to treatment of mood disorders.  But students repeatedly ask me what exactly meditation is, how body movements can possibly heal old hurts or daily grind stress, and what 'enlightenment' and poses named after saints and myth might have to do with our 21st century selves. Learn what science and ancient tradition say about 'mindfulness'.  Learn, too, what 'healing' and 'stress reduction' might mean in your own body and life.

Wear: comfortable clothing you can move freely in, as well as a warmer shirt to cover up with/socks as we will NOT be engaged in a strong practice or move the whole time.  Have something comfortable for the discussion part.

Bring: a notebook and pen, your mat if you've got one, possibly a towel or small blanket to sit on and shift around on as we discuss.  (pillows, props, all welcome.)  Something to sip.

Any questions?  Let me know.  I'm excited!

Holiday Schedules, and a workshop

In asking students whether they would be a) in town and b) interested in yoga during the holidays, the only clear answer I got was yes.  Yes. So, as I'm not leaving town myself, I plan on having class both Thanksgiving day and Friday morning at 6:30 am.

I'll close Christmas eve and day, but will have regularly scheduled classes the rest of the holiday season.  Including new year's eve and day.  (It is good to start the year this way.  It is good.)

Also, since a number of students have requested longer workshops, I've gone ahead and scheduled one.  On Sunday, December 30, from 9 am to noon I will host something part movement, part dialogue, part meditation.  I'm calling it 'body, mind, feeling and world: yoga and mindfulness'.  More to follow.

Come, practice.  The door is open.

Bicycles and pick up trucks and classes

Dear everyone, Most of you have already figured out - in the most inconvenient of ways - that classes are cancelled this week.  I am terribly sorry for the inconvenience and am trying to keep you all up to date, now.

I intend to be back in the studio Monday morning - have a further dr appointment Monday afternoon, and will go from there with updates.  I assume we will be 'back to normal'; if not, I will post here immediately and change the online schedule as needed.

Just over a week ago my bike and I had an unfortunately close encounter with the grill of a pickup truck.  It was scary but uneventful, and in my flustered state I walked away fine.  Fine, I thought, was everything.

Monday evening, though, I started to throw up.  Odd, I thought, since I didn't feel sick in the least and couldn't figure anything funny in my diet.  But I kept throwing up and shortly thereafter started feeling very, very dizzy and confused.  Confused enough that I became scared (when minds get bleary, we start to fear losing reality pretty quick).  And so tired I could hardly manage walking from one room to another.  So, I went to the ER.

I was diagnosed with concussion following the bike accident and told to sit still for a week.  Told that concussions are very common and usually not a big deal - that most people don't even realize they've had them.  But, being a bruise on the brain, they can also be a very big deal indeed.  The issue seems to be that we can't really know, but have to just wait.  Sit still a week, let bruises heal, and then see.

I could tell you the whole range of awful emotions I've gone through and how I've been crying my way through the last few days.  How dare I be so irresponsible to students, I thought.  What kind of shoddy buisness am I running that has to close all sudden like just a month into being open?  What a horrible teacher I am, after all.  Let alone all the financial fears and the fact of being uninsured, the fear of what a week closed will do to a business just trying to start, what students will think...let alone the scary, mostly unspoken, but vaguely there idea that my mind and body might have to make permanent adjustments to what I've been calling 'yoga'.

But the larger point, and truth of the matter, is this: yoga is bigger than my little accidents and the studio itself is more important than what happens there over the course of one week.  The studio will be just fine, in the long run.  The students will be just fine.  And even if I do have to make adjustments to my own practice, to acknowledge embodiment and injury and limit, I can still be an amazing teacher.  I simply have to accept that I'm not so in control as I thought or wanted.  That the glossy skimming on and feeling in control is more dangerous, really, than is dealing with things as they come and doing what I can.

All is well.  Yoga is big.  I just have to practice sitting still and not knowing for a little while.

Thank you all for your kind thoughts; they have helped and continue to help.  I will see you all soon.

Namaste,

K

Thursdays - yoga for athletes. All. Day. Long.

We know - science and brute experience both have proven - that yoga works synergistically to improve athlete's performance, recovery time, prevent injuries, and hone all of the 'mind' stuff that brings athletes to their very best.  We know that any and all yoga classes hit on the same skill sets and muscle and joint groups that athletes are prone to injure or over stress.  That in mind, however, and knowing there is a huge athletic community who are doing much of their community stuff on Wednesdays, I think I'm going to focus Thursday classes (all four of them) on yoga for athletes.  There's a restorative class and there are strong classes.  Both complement a runner's (or cyclists, or gymnast's, or ball player's) lifestyle. Same classes, and you do not need to be a runner to benefit.  But the focus - and my language and teaching directives, might tend more to the specific concerns of sports medicine, integration, recovery.

Sound good?

Transitioning into fall, ideas and recipes and asana

Autumn is ruled by the vata dosha (that which blows) and the meridians of lung and large intestine.  In brief, the vata dosha provides that wind and momentum from which ideas, creativity, spontaneity come from.  Vata 'rules' the nervous system (whereas Pitta is digestive fire and Kapha is the physical, solid body).  In a vattic time, then, things tend to be unpredictable, dry, ungrounded, very active, and cold.  To maintain our internal environment and our emotional, physiological environment, then, we apply opposites: we need to create warmth, stability, routine, and rest. To see how the lung association might apply, simply realize how your breathing constricts in cold.  Shallow breathing contributes to restlessness, anxiety, a sense of business or urgency if not the whole sympathetic nervous system's fight or flight.  Freeze or flee.  Breath, lungs, and prana are all intimately related to circulation, which has everything to do with warm and immunity body wide.

The colon or large intestine is implicated, here, like the lungs, as a thing we need to keep in balance, a thing prone to suffer the winds of change and cold.  Foods we've eaten before (ie raw or fresh vegetables, astringent and cooling foods of summer, let alone highly processed foods) will contribute to dis-ease in our bodies.  Instead, focus on slowly cooked, warm foods.  Whole grains.  Roasted things and mildly spicy things.  The ability to digest is literally the ability to digest our life, experiences, ourselves.  Ayurveda sees food as medicine and medicine as food.

I've tried to gather some recipes, some practices, and some ideas that are known to be balancing to vata dosha.  The beauty of such practices are you can take those things that work for you and dismiss what doesn't.  If you watch, you'll notice change and shifts and you can choose what to add or what to take away.  There is no need to empty your refrigerator or start some esoteric practice of yogic cleansing.  But there are literally thousands of things you can do to heal, sooth, and ground yourself.

You can ease times of barrenness and transition - whether it be seasonal, or you personally have vata dosha, or you are going through a period of transition and cold in your life.  You ease it by establishing ritual and routine to catch and hold you.  Slowing and quieting down. Keeping warm and hydrated from skin to bone. Establishing self-care boundaries and a supportive routine.

ASANA - POSTURES - A PHYSICAL PRACTICE Poses that work on the colon (the bodily seat of vata), intestines, pelvis, lumbar spine, and sacroiliac  bring energy back down into the base of the torso and keep us out of our heads, or give our heads some reality.

Spinal twists and inversions of all kinds soothe this dosha. Sitting and standing forward bends are soothing to the sympathetic nervous system, particularly for insomnia; boat, plank, staff, and plow are also powerful vata-reducers as they all engage the yogic core, cull up our strength, and tap us into stability. To support grounding, work with standing poses such as mountain, triangle, warrior, and tree.  Do sun salutations S-L-O-W-L-Y, seeking out the strength, foundation, and deep inherent rhythm of the sequencing. Let child’s pose lead you back to your innate innocence and trust, again tapping the parasympathetic nervous system, lowering the head to the earth, and finding connection. End your practice with a long savasana (20–30 minutes); it is really okay to do NOTHING for a while.

Focus on breath that is full.  Breath has everything to do with our nervous system and our circulatory system; keep yourself warm, calmed, and grounded with the breath rather than creating over stimulation.  Use the breath to come back to being a being who has lungs, a belly, a back, and toes.  Focus on being a being who breathes.

IDEAS for transitioning into fall

Keep warm, keep hydrated, eat nourishing foods, find ritual and meaning.  There are thousands of personal ways you can do this.  Buy yourself the most comfortable and comforting scarf you can find and make of it a symbol (or hat, or socks, or whatever).

Nourish your body with hydration from the skin, in.  Go with sesame oil, coconut oil, or shea based lotions over the cooler, biting months.  Recognize how 'products' can dry you out and go for natural or organic when you can afford it.

Old yogic texts say ritual can be anywhere; so does mystical Christianity, Islam, Judiasm.  Rise and go to bed at the same time every day, or practice making your bed on waking as a ritual of order and self care.  Meditate, somehow.  Use a kitchen timer to watch your breath for five minutes, take a walk and count your steps, or write a gratitude list every night before you sleep.  Return to practices that have soothed you in the past; candles or worship services or lunch dates with friends.  Return to an old, beloved book.

And spend some time being purposeful.  Give meaning to the things you do.  Do one thing at a time and know why you do so.  Stay connected to the absolute so you don't get lost in the drivel and spin.

Embrace the rituals that fall can offer - from football to apple picking to Thanksgiving and bounty.  Rituals matter and inform us when we feel formless.  First the gesture, then the grace.

If there are projects you can close, do so.

And find deep rest.  In your asana practice, in your schedule.  It is a time of retreat, poignancy, and deep center.  Sleep.

RECIPES

ok, I have a juice, a link to smoothies, a chili, and a sweet potato thing but I am very tired and writing the recipe for the sweet potato thing might have to wait.  All stick to the concepts: earthy, comforting, patient, non astringent.  Think of it like this; in late summer and early fall we ate lots of produce, apples and pears being at their peak.  Now, we eat the same foods, but we bake them and drizzle them with cinnamon and nutmeg and molasses.  They are astringent and drying, raw.  Good to cool you off and energize you - but at this point we are cold and scattered and need to pull in to mellowness and ripeness.

Karin's Addicted To fall juice:

I am a juicer.  Not all people are.  You need to have an expensive piece of culinary equipment to pull it off.  But it's an amazing way to get all the nutritional benefit of fruits and vegetables before they are cooked out or lose their alkalinity (ask me what that means, if you want to know), and you can get the punch of many veggies in a single serving.

For weeks, I have been addicted to this: juice of 3-4 small beets, 3-4 small carrots, a nub of ginger (yay, warming), an apple or pear, perhaps an orange, perhaps a sprig of basil or cilantro or parsley.  Juicing is impulsive and you use what you have, but this combo has me very energized, very awake, and very clean and grounded feeling all day long.

Smoothie

I'm also a smoothie -er.  Check out this summerized list, which I found a few days ago: 10 best Healthy Fall Smoothie Recipes

And finally, a hearty, spicy, sweet CHILI that I kind of made up over the last week.

Butternut Squash Chipotle Chili

• 1 medium red onion, chopped
• 2 red bell peppers, chopped (or equivalent jarred roasted red peppers)
• 1 small butternut squash (less than 1 1/2 pounds), peeled and chopped
• 4 garlic cloves, minced
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• ground sea salt
• 1 tablespoon chili powder
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/2+ tablespoon chopped chipotle in adobo (start with 1/2 tablespoon and add more to taste, I thought mine was just right with 1 tablespoon)
• 1 bay leaf
• 1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 14-ounces canned diced tomatoes, including the liquid
• 4 cups cooked black beans or 2 cans, rinsed and drained
• 2 cups OR one 14 oz. can vegetable broth
• 2 Avocados, diced
• cilantro (optional, for garnish)
• 3 corn tortillas for crispy tortilla strips if you want to be fancy

Instructions

1. sautée the chopped vegetables (onion, bell pepper, butternut squash, garlic) in olive oil on medium-high heat. You’ll need to stir the ingredients every few minutes so they can cook evenly.
2. Once the onions start turning translucent, turn the heat down to medium-low. Add all of the spices and canned ingredients, and stir. Cover for about one hour, stirring occasionally. Taste test for spice level and add more chipotle if desired.
3. By the time your chili is done, the butternut squash should be nice and tender and the liquid should have reduced a bit, producing the hearty chili consistency that we all know and love.
4. Make the crispy tortilla strips: stack the corn tortillas and slice them into thin little strips, about 2 inches long. Heat a small pan over medium heat, add a drizzle of olive oil and toss in the tortilla slices. Sprinkle with salt and stir. Cook until the strips are crispy and turning golden, stirring occasionally, about 4 to 7 minutes. Remove tortilla strips from skillet and drain on a plate covered with a piece of paper towel.
5. Serve the chili in individual bowls, topped with crispy tortilla strips and plenty of diced avocado. I added a little sprinkle of red pepper flakes (optional). You might want to serve this along with some chipotle hot sauce (Tobasco makes one) for the spice addicts like myself.

Transitioning into Fall, #classnotes

I walk my dog along the river, most mornings.  It is good for me.  Yesterday, though, I groaned and creaked; the sky was gunmetal gray, the river black, the wind staggering and pulling leaves and milkweed silk away into what could only be darkness.  Darkness, and cold.  The sound of those brittle leaves, skittering down the pavement when there was no other human noise, pulled at something in my belly. How is it the quickness and fullness - the stark raving beauty of the autumnal feasting and festing and chittery birdsong - so quickly became this dankness and sharp?  I slouched deeper into my coat and my hands would not stay warm.  The dog I think has better transitioning skills than I do; he wanted to stay.

I wanted to go.  We cowered and shuffled our way home through a neighborhood that seemed all railroad track and chainlink fences, beer cans like leaves rolling down the street.  Last week I didn't notice, these.  I noticed the trees on fire.  I noticed the warmth in the sun.

It is good for me, these walkings and meditations: I wondered how it is one transitions into fall.  Or, more generally, how we weather the cold and barren times of change.  What happens to us when we are blown upon?

This, in itself, has been the revelation: it is not a question of how 'one' bears transition or seasons, yoga doesn't ask that.  Yoga asks how you, yourself transition.  If you do.  And how that happens to be working for you.  And if it might change - you might change - to not only cope better but to find the joy in it, the harmony.

In the ayurvedic system, autumn is governed by the vata dosha.  In Chinese medicine, the season affects the lungs and the large intestinal meridian.

Vata: that which blows.  The lungs constrict in a blast of cold air - and stay in shallow breathing patterns if either the external or internal cold lingers on.  This fuels anxiety, hyperexcitability, irritability, a sense of being ungrounded.  The vata dosha itself rules the nervous system, our 'moods' and 'thinking' and 'cognitive ability'.  Imbalance of the vata dosha results in skittery, blowsy, richocheted movements that seem to have no center or gravity.  There is endless activity, but nothing much that matters.  There is crisis, after crisis, after crisis and a hyperfluidity of people and circumstances and things without any of it connecting together.  Imbalance can manifest as lack of enthusiasm, loneliness, fear.  Diminished creativity, unstable memory, scattered thoughts.

The leaves, I think.  The wind.

The large intestine, the colon, is essential to the apana vayu or grounding movement of energy.  It is digestive, yes, but it is also related to our ability to be grounded, nourished, not wispy and famished or bloated and lethargic.  The intestinal meridian needs, in this season of cold and withdrawing, warm and slowly cooked foods.  Earthy, comforting foods. We need not scattered activity but meaningful rituals and deep, profoundly deep, retreat and rest.  The body needs movements that are slow, purposive, contemplative. It is good to do

The preparation and culmination of all that feast, I think.  Rest.  Truly rest.  Create and establish rituals that will hold you in the lean time, the meaningless activity.  Find connection to the unchanging aspect of it - life, I mean life - that exists within and underlies everything.

The surface is blown clear, frozen, withered away.  The way through is to find the deeper core.

Fall is, or can be, a potent time to begin to withdraw and to rest.  To complete things we have started, even as the season completes her own work.

How do you transition? I wondered about myself and realized I wasn't sure I'd ever asked such questions before.  Do I transition?  Or do I react and feel victimized?  Do I, vata style, keep going and going and going in an attempt to override reality with endless activity and surgical attachment to the cellphone?  Attempt to keep busy rather than deal with mental, emotional, or physical issues?  Vata also has a tendency to cling tenaciously to false ideas and hopes even when faced with evidence to the contrary in unconscious efforts to escape dealing with a deeper reality.

The days are neurotic here in Minnesota - it was 80 degrees and colored like jewel box or a laquered chinese painting last week and now here I am scrounging for warmer socks and something to cover my head.  Vata is a dosha, which is usually understood as a personality type.  I am not Vata - I am kapha and pitta pressed so hard it's become stone - but doshas are NOT personality types but characteristics and patterns.  Characteristics are things that all people have, and seasons and earth and rhythms, too.  Vata changes without me directly influence my internal environment.

And what does this mean?  I am so glutted on yogic information it becomes hard to know what to teach or why.  And the accumulated wisdom of thousands of sages, the ruthless edicts about diets and cleanses and practices, the strange stories of yogic transformation that involve at times stopping ones heart or sleeping in the snow or somehow bilocating oneself to be in different parts of the world at once; what does any of that have to do with who we are?  How can yoga mean anything to those of us who do have jobs and families and televisions and high fructose corn syrup?  The stories are lovely as fairy tale and the promise of souls waking up speaks directly to what we most quietly long for.  But what do the stories have to teach us?  Where our our stories?

Again, revelation is backward turning and face slapping.  Biting like the wind, I suppose.

All of this yogic knowledge, the practices, are only relevant if we can apply them to our own selves.  It would be unrealistic and unhealthy to swallow any prescription wholesale, or to believe yoga will turn you into a wandering saint humming chants.  Or to take what any yoga teacher tells you, any class teaches, as the answer.  The answer is in the question.  The answer is in beginning to question.

From there, possibilities unfurl and something deep in the earth is set in motion. 

The point lies in knowing how change affects you, and diet and movement and circumstances, and in learning how powerfully we can respond and grow.  The point lies in realizing we are not powerless, but poignant. Thriving in that power, within and without.  Becoming, through the practices, better selves.

Next post will highlight key concepts, asana, dietic stuff for transitioning into fall.

Strong Medicine

More and more I find myself referring to yoga as medicine.  As science.

Of course, I say in class, yoga has elements of a spiritual path.  It has elements of fitness and diet.  But it is not a religion and it is not a fitness program.

Yoga is a science.  Yoga is strong, strong medicine.

In a world of many illnesses, a country of unprecedented stress, anxiety, mental illness, obesity and cardio vascular diseases, you would think this would be embraced.

It is not.  Western Medicine itself will only refer to yoga as a useful tool for 'stress reduction', in spite of a growing body of evidence that it can reverse heart disease, treat 'treatment resistant depression', and ease carpal tunnel syndrome, to pick out of a grab bag.  Even within the world of 'alternative medicine', mention of yoga is dismissive and scant - perhaps because nothing is ingested or inserted or removed from our bodies and we can't fathom medicine, otherwise.

And even in the world of yoga, it's teachers, authors, and serious practitioners, yoga is called a 'discipline', a 'practice', or a personal path.  I don't mean to suggest it isn't those things.  But I believe it is more.  I believe it is science and ought to be treated as such.

We know it builds strength and confidence, if not character.  We know it improves flexibility and stability, that it fosters serenity and poise.  Beyond its attributes as preventative medicine, we know that it heals - not cures, necessarily, but heals in quantifiable ways - low back strain, chronic pain, MS.

One of the difficulties is financial: studies cost.  More deeply, it is that cultural assumption that healing involves ingesting something, inserting something, or removing something from the body.  The cultural assumption focuses on disease rather than health and has no real way to discuss, let alone understand, yogic well being.

This raises a question.  Call it philosophical if you like.  Wonder about your own, or your best friend's, particular body if you want to be more poignant.

When you have an intervention which appears safe and effective, when it has no negative side effects, when it in fact has positive side effects, should one wait for proof before trying it?

I say no.  I say yoga will help in ways you wouldn't think possible.  I say it will change your ideas about health and wellness.  I say it will heal you, though the healing may not be what you expected.

I am not a doctor.  I will never encourage someone to go against a doctor's advice.  I will and frequently do insist a student talk with a doctor before beginning, changing, or returning to a yoga practice.  But I do believe a yoga practice can compliment traditional medicine, and make us more well.

And I believe yoga's potency, what makes it strong medicine, is largely it's ability to return you to control and autonomy: it will immediately teach you things you can do to relieve symptoms and influence your health, whereas so many of us feel we have no choice, no influence, no way to navigate the body mind other than to 'suffer' it or 'deal with it'.  How powerful it is for the fibromylagia patient, who has been told there are no cures and that she must learn to live with her pain, to realize there are, actually, things she can do for herself.

This is fierce medicine, indeed.

Vitality...Prana...The moving dance

I have been reading Martha Graham, a visionary and classically trained dancer who profoundly changed the medium and has left echos all over dance.  I think she was a yogini, although she never identified as such.  In a letter, she wrote:"There is a vitality, a life force, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time,

this expression is unique.

If you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost. The world will not have it. It is not your business to determine how good it is; nor how valuable it is; nor how it compares with other expressions. It is your business to keep it yours, clearly and directly, to keep the channel open.

You do not even have to believe in yourself or your work. You have to keep open and aware directly of the urges that motivate you.

Keep the channel open. No artist is pleased. There is no satisfaction whatever at any time. There is only a queer, divine dissatisfaction; a blessed unrest that keeps us marching and makes us more alive...."