August 2021 Tidbits
ASANA (POSTURE)
How to Use Mula Bandha in Yoga Poses
Mula Bandha may be the most befuddling, under instructed technique in the world of yoga. Here, begin experimenting with how to integrate Mula Bandha into your asana practice.
The bandhas are mechanisms by which a yogi can direct the flow of prana, the universal life-force energy that animates and unites us all. With a few simple adjustments, you can learn to integrate Mula Bandha, one of four bandhas mentioned in the Hatha Yoga Pradipika and the Gheranda Samhita, into your daily asana practice. Continue reading How to Use Mula Bandha in Yoga Poses.
WISE ACTION
(from Meditations on Intention and Being by Rolf Gates)
The Practices of Intention
Write down your heart’s desire and reflect on them often.
Hold these intention in your heart steadily, undisturbed by life’s duality.
Choose faith and flow over fear and control.
The Practices of the Heart
Compassion: The felt experience of the desire that all beings be free from suffering.
Loving-kindness: The felt experience of the desire that all beings be safe, healthy, happy and free.
Equanimity: The felt experience of steadiness and composure that is undisturbed by life’s duality.
Joy: The felt experience of finding joy in others’ happiness and success.
The Practices of Being
Effortlessness: The subtle effort it takes to be here now.
The yamas: The ethical boundaries of yoga (nonviolence, truthfulness, non-stealing, moderation and non-hoarding).
The niyamas: The disciplines of yoga that create and sustain our freedom (purity, contentment, zeal or austerity, self-study and devotion to a higher power.
Mindfulness: The art of paying attention and the practice of living with an open heart and open mind, seeking only to know what is true here and now.
STORY
Awareness by Anthony De Mello
The student monk had spent seven years,
Learning how to comprehend awareness.
At the end of his study it was time for assessment,
To visit the master was his final assignment.
The master sat, at the young man he looked,
Was he ready to become a teacher monk?
The young monk, wet from his walk,
Had placed his umbrella in the hall
Master asked, “To the left or right of your clogs,
Did you place your umbrella to dry at rest?”
The monk was taken by surprise,
Why such simple thing, when so wise?
Try as he might he couldn't recall;
Had to admit, no idea at all.
“Go back to your teacher for seven more years,
To learn once more the secret of awareness.”
Too late the young monk remembered,
Awareness encompasses everything.
No chance of ever really seeing,
Unless every second has meaning.
POEM
Adrift by Mark Nepo
Everything is beautiful and I am so sad.
This is how the heart makes a duet of
wonder and grief. The light spraying
through the lace of the fern is as delicate
as the fibers of memory forming their web
around the knot in my throat. The breeze
makes the birds move from branch to branch
as this ache makes me look for those I’ve lost
in the next room, in the next song, in the laugh
of the next stranger. In the very center, under
it all, what we have that no one can take
away and all that we’ve lost face each other.
It is there that I’m adrift, feeling punctured
by a holiness that exists inside everything.
I am so sad and everything is beautiful.