Zoom link Mondays 7 am CST
Download workbook. This isn’t perfect as the double svaritas (m᳚) become a box…we’ll just have to learn and pay attention. I will constantly be adding new material here, recordings etc. The most recent will be on top. That is, if you are looking for the beginning, go to the bottom.
Monday May 1 - Beltane and May Day
Here is an audio of my teacher’s teachers reciting the mantra puṣpam (+ parts of another preceding mantra). The bits you know begins at around 3.40. Try singing along with them!
Monday April 24
Monday April 17
This week, practice 1-8 all the way thru and the new parts for 5 or 10 minutes (one or two times thru the audio clips) a day. Focus/idea of the week: you are water, going back to water. And: what is real wealth?
Monday April 10
Edit on your workbook: mantra 6, 3rd line I have a typo in your workbook. It should read ‘yo nakṣa॑trāṇāmā॒yata॑naṃ(v) veda॑”. Get the low underline under the ‘ma’. The audio recordings are correct. The mantra is perfect; my typing is imperfect:)
Practice tips: a little bit everyday is better than marathon sessions or doing everything in one sitting. Aim for 5-20 minutes a day. If you do more, fine. But aim for a little bit and learning how to ‘not do everything’. It is revolutionary to learn/experience I can just practice and it will still be imperfect by the end of the today’s practice; I’ll practice more tomorrow. Re vo freaking lutinary. Pick one recording and do that; not ALL THE RECORDINGS IN ONE GO. The next day, move on to the next recording. Only repeat if you are continuously getting stuck. Over 8 weeks, you will learn so much. But learn it in little bits, not marathons:). You do not have to repeat 1-8 every freaking day. Just one small learning part, more days than not. Trust me: it works.
Further hints: this is often difficult work, that requires a lot of attention. It is agitating, as Lori noted. So: you have to figure out how to dosage yourself with agitating stuff and how to balance your system with ‘feel goods’ or accomplishment or okayness sensations. Use an āsana practice and then finish with a teeny tiny mantra practice. Other folks like to do the mantra first in the classic ‘get the hard stuff over with first’ system. Point being: you know how to use āsana/go for a walk/do a little body or breath. Where does hard learning fit into that for you?
Send me recordings: use ‘Voice Memos’ on an iPhone, or a video (it doesn’t have to be of your face), whatever, to send me in an email. Please send me something every 2 weeks, not more often. I suggest just sending the ‘new part’. If you have never sent me a recording, I can a) promise you I totally empathize with how scary and uncomfortable it is and b) promise you that you get a lot out of it. I cannot emphasize enough how powerful it has been to learn my teacher loves my imperfection, that I can show up and squawk at her, that she supports me, that she is willing to correct me. I have never felt anything so intimate and active. Give it a try. It feels like the difference between reading a book and living an experience. You can show up to class, listen to me lecture for hours. But a different thing happens when you show up, as you, to me. (hint hint yoga IS relationship.)
Monday April 3
Monday March 27
Monday March 20
We will meet live for 8 consecutive weeks beginning on the Spring Equinox (March 20, 2023 to May 1, 2023) from 7-8:30 am CST. Recordings and text/audio support for learning the mantra will live on this page.
I will lead just enough movement and breath to prepare us to practice singing. I expect that you will a) be doing your own practice and b) practice the week’s song on your own between sessions. When I meet to sing with my teacher, I typically have done my āsana before we meet. Alternately, it’s okay to skip your āsana. Yoga is more than āsana.
Each week we will learn one mantra of the 8 mantra “Mantrapuṣpam” or song of the flowers. This is an enchanting, rhythmic, repetitive song often sung in temples and ceremonies at the end of a puja as flowers are offered. The song is said to be the ‘flower’ of the Vedas. The concept of flowering, blossoming, nourishing, feeding, tending and coming to bloom are spoken of beautifully.
This song is often offered or given to those who are trying to conceive, are pregnant, or have given birth, whether that birth be a child or a new creative project. The ‘waters’ are related to sensuality, gestation, amniotic fluid and childbirth. They speak of the nourishment and protective qualities of liquid in the world and in the human ecosystem. I was originally given this song as I dealt with the deep grief of child loss, taboo, and a question of my ‘motherhood’. It ‘channelled’ my emotions, gave me something to flow with. We have to feel our feels. Now, I tend to sing it every spring as the dirt starts to wake up and the trees tingle. I sing it as the snow and things that might have gone dormant and stiff begin to thaw. I also find myself singing it to myself as students begin to thaw and melt.
The song speaks of the source of the elements and heavenly bodies, the sun, moon, constellations, rain and time. Through melodious and repetive easy rhythm, we are drawn into an experiential understanding of the source of water/flow/experience/emotion. We come to understand that the source of water is the source of everything.
One phrase is continuously repeated in the mantra:
yo̍’pāmā̱yata̍na̱ṃ veda̍ | ā̱yata̍navān bhavati |
“The one who knows the source of Water,
becomes established in the source (Self).”
The song ends with us floating in the rivers and rains of the earth’s waters, knowing the source of nourishment and protection: “she who knows there is a raft becomes established in the raft.”
This particular text is from the “Āraṇyaka” portion of the Veda, meaning “Forest texts”, or those contemplations and teachings and practices that one can only get when they are in a context of retreat and contemplation, deep in the inner pilgrimage of seeking and being receptive.