January 2022 Tidbits
ASANA (POSTURE)
Salamba Sarvangasana (Shoulderstand)
Vertically stack your ankles, knees, hips and shoulders.
Broaden your chest and project your spine and pelvis forward to the vertical plumb line.
Push your hands forward into your back and project your torso back into your hands while continuing to open the chest.
Perform Jalandhara Bandha; lift your chest to meet your chin; release your throat.
from Teaching Yoga With Verbal Cues by David Garrigues
(https://davidgarrigues.com/shop/teaching-yoga-with-verbal-cues)
HEALTH
An Ayurvedic Guide to Balanced Sleep
What Science Says
We spend roughly a third of our lives asleep, and while scientists have been studying the functions of sleep extensively for years, some of our most basic questions about why we sleep have been difficult to answer. What is clear is that balanced sleep is a staple of optimal health.
For the rest of the article click on the link below:
WISE ACTION
Meditation is the practice of breaking one’s identification with thought and allowing experience whether pleasant or unpleasant to simply be as it is. So meditation is not something you’re doing really; it’s something you’re ceasing to do. You’re ceasing to be distracted by thought. Therefore real meditation is not a form of inwardness; it’s a form of openness. You are simply open to the world and granting it your full attention. Right now, pick up your head, brighten your gaze and simply look at the world as if this was the first moment of creation – because it is.
~ Sam Harris ~
QUOTE
“I asked the leaf whether it was afraid to fall, since it was autumn and the other leaves were falling. The leaf told me, “No. During the whole spring and summer I was very alive. I worked very hard and helped nourish the tree, and much of me is in the tree. Please do not think that I am just this form, because this leaf form is only a tiny part of me. I am the whole tree. I know that I am already inside the tree, and when I go back to the soil, I will continue to nourish the tree. That is why I do not worry. As I drop from the branch and float down to the ground, I will wave to the tree and tell her, “I will see you again very soon.”
Suddenly I had a kind of insight very much like the insight contained in the Heart Sutra. You have to see life. You shouldn’t say, life of the leaf, but life in the leaf, and life in the tree. My life is just Life, and you can see it in me and in the tree. I saw the leaf leave the branch and float down to the soil, dancing joyfully, because as it floated it saw itself already there in the tree. It was so happy. I bowed my head, and I knew that we have a lot to learn from the leaf because it was not afraid; it knew that nothing can be born and nothing can die.”
Thich Nhat Hanh in The Other Shore
STORY
A man who took great pride in his lawn found himself with a large crop of dandelions. He tried every method he knew to get rid of them. Still they plagued him.
Finally, he wrote to the Department of Agriculture. He enumerated all the things he had tried and closed his letter with the question: "What shall I do now?"
In due course, the reply came: "We suggest you learn to love them."
Author Unknown
(10/18/21 Story of the Week from https://philosophyworks.org/)
POEM
The Sun Never Says from the Gift by Hafiz
Even after all this time
the sun never says to the earth,
“You owe Me.”
Look what happens with
a Love like that,
it lights the Whole Sky.
Hafiz