May 2021 Tidbits
ASANA (POSTURE)
UTTHITA PARSVAKONASANA B
Extended sideways angle pose
(aka PARIVRTTA PARSVAKOASANA)
(revolved side angle pose)
“…a challenging twisting pose that asks you to confront the impossible. Find the best way for your body to work this asana.”
The pose is unpacked on the mat in the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-A1KIbSVRHw
It is modified in a chair in the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcPJCJsTr3E
HEALTH
“Drawing on thousands of years of medical texts and recent cutting-edge studies in pulmonology, psychology, biochemistry, and human physiology, Breath turns the conventional wisdom of what we thought we knew about our most basic biological function on its head. You will never breathe the same again.”
If cultivating improved health, fitness and well-being is your priority, then truly Breath is a must read!
Named a Best Book of 2020 by NPR
WISE ACTION
Take a moment to look around you right now. Every person you see is lost in thought. Each is having a silent conversation with him or herself. And for most it’s an unhappy conversation. Everyone is in a kind of trance. And almost no one realizes that there’s an alternative to this and yet there is. Isn’t that amazing?
(https://dynamic.wakingup.com/moment/SMB6773D3)
QUOTE
“As we attempt to understand ourselves and our struggles with life’s endeavors, we may find peace in the observation of a flower. Ask yourself: At what point in a flower’s life, from seed to full bloom, does it reach perfection?”
― Thomas M. Sterner
STORY
Once in a tree there were two birds, one at the upper branch, serene, majestic and divine, and the other at a lower branch, restlessly pecking fruits, sometimes sweet sometimes bitter.
Every time, when the restless bird ate a bitter fruit, it looked at the upper bird and climbed a branch up. This occurred a number of times and eventually the bird reached the topmost branch.
There it was not able to differentiate itself from the divine bird, and then it learned that there was only one bird in the tree.
Mundaka Upanishad
POEM
Please Call Me By My True Names
by Thich Nhat Hahn
Don’t say that I will depart tomorrow—even today I am still arriving.
Look deeply: every second I am arriving to be a bud on a Spring branch, to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings, learning to sing in my new nest, to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower, to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.
I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry, to fear and to hope. The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death of all that is alive.
I am a mayfly metamorphosing on the surface of the river. And I am the bird that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.
I am a frog swimming happily in the clear water of a pond. And I am the grass-snake that silently feeds itself on the frog.
I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones, my legs as thin as bamboo sticks. And I am the arms merchant, selling deadly weapons to Uganda.
I am the twelve-year-old girl, refugee on a small boat, who throws herself into the ocean after being raped by a sea pirate.
And I am also the pirate, my heart not yet capable of seeing and loving.
I am a member of the politburo, with plenty of power in my hands. And I am the man who has to pay his “debt of blood” to my people dying slowly in a forced-labor camp.
My joy is like Spring, so warm it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth. My pain is like a river of tears, so vast it fills the four oceans.
Please call me by my true names, so I can hear all my cries and laughter at once, so I can see that my joy and pain are one.
Please call me by my true names, so I can wake up and the door of my heart could be left open, the door of compassion.
ADDITIONAL TIDBIT
Practice and Process: Conversations with Yoga Teachers
Listen in as CSC's Ashtanga Yoga Program Manager, John Bultman, speaks intimately with yoga experts from around the world on a variety of topics with a focus on ashtanga yoga. In these four Friday sessions, John will converse with a yoga teacher from India, Norway, Sweden, and the United States, respectively. These virtual discussions will be insightful to anyone interested in yoga process and practice.
Four virtual sessions:
9:00–10:00am (ET)
via Zoom
May 28: A conversation with Lakshmisha Bhat
June 11: A conversation with Alexander Medin
July 2: A conversation with Laruga Glaser
August 6: A conversation with Zoë Slatoff
Free and open to the public.
Registration required
TO REGISTER*