Singing in the Dark

One thing I've learned from life and from sages is that on the journey toward self-understanding, we must inevitably experience darkness, grief, and loss to some degree or other. Part of our understanding is to see the whole picture, not only the parts which are peachy. We evolve from our naive understanding of God or the Universe as something which is only beneficent to the ability to hold the fact that to understand the whole picture means that we have to hold both of life's pleasures and life's losses. That to truly fall in love with this life we must somehow embrace the darkness. And I guess the true lesson, that lesson that ultimately will apprentice ourselves to experience the greatest joy, is the lesson of how to sing when you are in the midst of great loss and sorrow, when you feel the most abandoned.  I guess we learn that it's not about that shallow definition of "success," but what "success" really means is defined by who can speak to whatever place they find themselves, who can stand at the end of the battle, when your house is burned down, your life feels like it's in ruins and stand with your integrity and honor and sing into the darkness. Or at least hum a little, even if it's interrupted by tears.

The Winter Solstice is on the 21st of December. This is when the sun is at its lowest point on the horizon, the days are the shortest and the nights are the longest. Solstice means "sun stands still."

    

Yoga, of course, is a mirror for our life. Our practice of every-day living finds expression and offers us understanding through the ancient wisdom of yoga. So join me this week as we sing to the darkness, as we learn to hold both light and dark and therefore celebrate what it means to be fully alive.  

Scott 

Seeking Wisdom

It’s cold outside. It’s time to come inside. The Medicine Wheel in Native American spirituality uses the direction north and the season of the winter to invite us to hibernate, draw inward, and reflect on our deeper and true wisdom. One way to think of this true wisdom is the instinctual knowing that is beyond rational thought. It’s instinct. In the yoga philosophy of subtle body (energy), the part of the body associated with this connection to our inner knowing is Ajna chakra, or the 6^th chakra located on the forehead between the eyes. This energy center is often referred to as the 3^rd eye, the one that looks inward instead of those which look outward.

Consider the idea of using this time of cold to come inside, hibernate in a way I suppose, and further develop this inner knowing by the deep work of looking inward through the practice yoga and meditation.

Try a simple meditation technique I call the “There Is” practice. First, sit. Close your eyes. Start to listen and pay attention to everything you can experience, both inside and out. You could become aware of sounds, smells, textures, thoughts, emotions, images, anything. Without any judgment, simply notice everything and point to it with the phrase, “there is.” For example, “There is cold. There is the sound of cars passing. There are thoughts of work. There is a cat licking my toes.” Try not using personal pronouns (I, me, and my) and let things just be. Before you react to anything, just sit with it and try to be an observer. Allow your mind and thoughts to do what they will, but remain the observer that notices your thoughts, sensations, etc. This practice may help discover that who you are is deeper than your thoughts, experiences and emotions. Those are an important part of who we are but in themselves do not make up our true identity, an identity that is based in awareness, an identity that is this inner knowing.

Come to yoga this week where we will practice the inner knowing as we feel our bodies move and breath in yoga and devote some of our time sit in meditation. If you’re looking for more meditation opportunities, you are welcome to drop in to our 3^rd session of our Yoga Nidra series we are hosting at Prana Yoga Wednedsay nights from 7:15-8:45 pm.

Here’s one of my favorite winter poems that speaks to this practice of listening.

The Winter of Listening

No one but me by the fire,
my hands burning
red in the palms while
the night wind carries
everything away outside.

All this petty worry
while the great cloak
of the sky grows dark
and intense
round every living thing.

What is precious
inside us does not
care to be known
by the mind
in ways that diminish
its presence.

What we strive for
in perfection
is not what turns us
into the lit angel
we desire,

what disturbs
and then nourishes
has everything
we need.

What we hate
in ourselves
is what we cannot know
in ourselves but
what is true to the pattern
does not need
to be explained.

Inside everyone
is a great shout of joy
waiting to be born.

Even with the summer
so far off
I feel it grown in me
now and ready
to arrive in the world.

All those years
listening to those
who had
nothing to say.

All those years
forgetting
how everything
has its own voice
to make
itself heard.

All those years
forgetting
how easily
you can belong
to everything
simply by listening.

And the slow
difficulty
of remembering
how everything
is born from
an opposite
and miraculous
otherness.
Silence and winter
has led me to that
otherness.

So let this winter
of listening
be enough
for the new life
I must call my own.

~  David Whyte  ~

Yoga Emergency

I’m traveling home from Lander Wyoming, a weekend of teaching some fantastic workshops. Traveling over the pass toward Rock Spring, we just hit a full-assault blizzard with 65 mph winds which trying its best to blow us off the road. We decided to call this stretch 32 miles of hell, especially after we saw the trailer that had just flipped. White knuckled at the wheel, my friend and ride share tries to calm her nerves by singing along to The Grateful Dead (irony isn’t lost on me). She breathes sighs of relief between choruses with big sigh after we reach the summit and start to head down the other side of the hill; the worst part is over.

Whether it’s a tricky spot in winter driving or something else in life, sooner or later we are bound to run into a tricky sitch. When these inevitable crises do occur, what do you have in your yoga first-aid kit? Here are a few suggestions of things you might want to have as a quick go-to that could help in tricky times to keep you going in the clutch moments when you’ve got to be on or when life’s throws you a curve.

First, off: presence. Open your eyes. Times like this make you wake up from that anesthetized state. There is no cruise control, here. If you’ve practice presence in your meditation or yoga practice, it will be easier to really be on when you need to be. If not, no time like the present (I have a pun permit, so back off). Notice what’s going on around you. Even when things are really tough, notice what’s going on in your body. Take a moment, close your eyes (unless you’re driving through a blizzard) and allow yourself to actually feel all of your body’s sensation, all your, emotions, thoughts, etc. without the need to change it. It’s always surprising to me how readily this practice of seeing things objectively, even for a brief moment, helps me develop a clearer perspective of my problems.

Breathe! Ujjaiyi breath, the whisper breath we practice in yoga, is done by breathing in and out through the nostrils and slightly constricting the breath in the throat to feel and hear a whisper. It is one of the most effective things I know to lower anxiety levels and oxygenate the body to perform optimally.

Grounding poses like forward folds and seated or lying-down twists ground the nervous system and reduce tension from the body. Any poses that reduce muscular tension (stretches) would be great to reduce stress and make you feel good. These poses send endorphins running through your body and give you a dose of Feel Good when life is crazy.

This leads perfectly to the next question: What are you doing to take care of yourself? Even if you feel like you don’t have time for anything superfluous, keeping yourself emotionally, mentally, and physically well is not superfluous. Too much relies on you being on and therefore, keep things happy. This might mean taking the morning off and strolling through Red Butte Gardens or take a jaunt into Hatch Family Chocolates (8^th Ave between D and E St.) for a Peanut Butter Truffle. Eat well, simple and nourishing meals (with occasional chocolate). Get enough sleep. Especially in times of crisis, doing something for yourself to replenish the source so you have something to give back to everything that needs you. Otherwise, they will have to take care of you. Do it for yourself.

Simplify. Kindly say no to that extra social engagement. Stop trying to be perfect. Minimize and simplify. That’s why this email is going out on Tuesday morning instead of Monday. I had to simplify on Monday after a weekend away. Ha!

Finally, The House Martins help. If you don’t know this band, check them out here. When I feel like life has slapped me down, this band has always helped me get back up.

What is in your yoga first-aid kit? Respond to this email by finding this post on my Facebook page and commenting on what’s in your first-aid kit. See what others are saying.

Take care of yourself! See you in class.

Scott

Remembering with Food

Several years ago I studied meditation in Korea. After my very first meditation class, my Korean friend and fellow meditation student, Jin-soon, led a small group of us us down the street to the most unsuspecting little concrete building containing a church on the top floor, a karaoke lounge on the bottom, and something called Purin Nuri ("green-blue world") in the middle. We climbed the stairs, slipped off our shoes, and entered through the door into a different world, leaving the garish and abrasive city behind. Inside, we were embraced by the comforting smell of freshly baked bread, aromatic rice porridge, and steaming soup. Soft Korean music floated through the air as we followed Jin-soon to pick up a simple wooden bowl, spoon, and chopsticks, and began to sift contentedly through the Buddhist buffet, containing fresh lettuce leaves, glass noodles with mushrooms, tofu and veggie dishes, and a traditional cinnamon drink made with jujube berries and new pine needles. This style of food is called monk's cuisine in Korea and attempts to be as close to the earth as possible. In fact, much of the food would be harvested from the wild that day by the owner, Moon-kyung, and her friend and helper, Sun-hee: bitter wild dandelion leaves, sharp-tasting new pine needles, and fragrant and edible flowers. These two were the only people running this intimate culinary temple. Once we filled our bowls, we sat on the floor on a cushion, our legs crossed under a low wooden table. We paused for a moment of gratitude for this feast and for our lives, and then began the long, happy process of mindfully eating. Like tea, our meditation extended through lunch. This, too, became part of our daily ritual. Especially after this wonderful Thanksgiving holiday, I’ve been thinking that eating is the sacred ritual of cycling life through our bodies as we ask the life of other beings, plants and animals, to become a sacred part of our own life. We re-member ourselves and make ourselves whole from a dismembered state by consuming other life and making it a part of us. Eating is like many of the old stories and myths from ancient cultures (stories like Isis and Osiris, Rama and Sita, Tristan and Isolde, even the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ) where gods, creatures, and people are re-membered, are brought back together and made whole again, after the refining and learning process of death and dismemberment. And like these ancient stories, so are we re-membered, or placed back into a greater wholeness (the whole of creation), as we stop the process of hunger and death, and assimilate other life by eating. We are gathered and re-membered into an even greater whole during the sacred sacrament of sitting at supper with friends and family, laughing, sharing, eating, drinking. This reverential ritual deserves mindfulness. With mindfulness, even a humble meal of rice and beans becomes a banquet. With mindfulness, we may sense the love that went into preparing the meal or envision the farm where the food was raised or grown. We may also sense the financial benefit to our community when we choose to support local sources. This heart and soul of eating can be gone in a flash: a fine nine-course French meal may as well be fast food if it's mindlessly gulped down and barely chewed between commercial breaks, newspaper headlines, or text messages. Regardless of your spiritual beliefs, a way of practicing mindfulness is to pause for a moment of gratitude before your meal. If you don't pray, you may be creative in your expression of thankfulness by reading a poem about food or gratitude, offering thanks to the elements that are sustaining your life, or telling your dining partner(s) what you appreciate about them or the meal. I'll never forget the Thanksgiving I spent in Zion National Park, under the afternoon shadows of the red cliffs of Angels Landing, where my small family shared a meal with a wonderful friend and her daughters. For their gratitude for the meal, these friends sang a simple song together, smiling and giggling. After, we all clapped, laughed, expressed how we appreciated one another as well as the meal, and then dug into our cold turkey, green beans, and potatoes, lovingly hauled down to Southern Utah in a couple of giant coolers. At the end of the day, ordinary or extravagant food becomes exquisite with mindfulness. Without mindfulness, anything can become as bland as a chalky protein bar. But with the right mindfulness, even a naked bowl of oatmeal could prove to be very provocative! Here is a quote from one of my favorite poets, Wendell Berry. Post it next to your dinner table, perhaps, as we have: Eating with the fullest pleasure-pleasure, that is, that does not depend on ignorance-is perhaps the profoundest enactment of our connection with the world. In this pleasure we experience and celebrate our dependence and our gratitude, for we are living from mystery, from creatures we did not make and powers we cannot comprehend. (from his essay "What Are People For?") I know this is the week after Thanksgiving, but if you had any sort of wonderful culinary extravagance as I did, you might be interested in continuing the feast of mindfulness with these simple practices. Scott

Freaky Twin Connection

I’m a twin. We are identical meaning we came from the same egg and therefore have the exact same chromosomes. We’ve done time together: 9 months in the womb listening to that same momma’s heartbeat, sharing the same pulse. All this made us feel more at home when we were together than when we were apart. My parents would place us at opposite ends of the crib and by morning time they would find us entwined together, just like we were used to in the womb. We learned to speak late in development, probably because we already had our own twin language that suited us just fine, why would we need to speak anything else? We’d stand up at the ends of our butted cribs jibber jabbering for hours like two neighbors gossiping over the picket fence. There’s a connection there, clearly. And it still continues even today. A couple of months ago, a friend loaned me a fantastic book called Fargo Rock City, by Chuck Klosterman. It’s a great read, hilarious writing about a great topic: Heavy Metal. You gotta know, I’m not much of rocker. Growing up, my twin and I shared a music collection of bands like the Cure, The Smiths, and the Pixies. So a few weeks ago, I’m reading a fascinating chapter in Fargo Rock City about the very important distinction between the different types of Metal bands, i.e. glam metal vs. speed metal vs. death metal, etc. and which band should be qualified by which metal prefix and what not. That same day, I get an email from my brother who doesn’t know I’m reading this book and who has a billion other things to reference but who chooses to ask my opinion on the very important philosophical questions regarding metal bands and which type of band qualifies with which metal prefix. It was like he’d read the very same book. Hadn’t even heard of it. Yeah. Freaky twin connection. So then I’m writing this, or at least a draft of it, and my brother calls and having not mentioned Metal philosophy since our last conversation months ago, and brings it up again. At first I thought it was because he’d read my newsletter, but then it dawned on me that NOONE had read my newsletter ‘cuz I hadn’t sent it, I was drafting it. Metal was on my mind and therefore somehow on his. Yeah. Freaky twin connection. And even if we aren’t all twins, we’ve all had this experience to some degree or other, right? Who hasn’t been thinking of that friend that you haven’t seen in a couple of months or weeks and suddenly that minute received a phone call or a text or email from them? What is that? It’s freaky Friday is what it is! Or is it? What is that connection that seems to transmit like a frequency across distance so readily and timely? I don’t know but I like the question. I know the human experience is a complex system and network of everything from bones and blood to neurons and nerves. Then there are emotions and thoughts and the soul, whatever that is. I guess our work as humans, and therefore in our yoga practice, is to practice and experience the process that unveils how it all works and is connected, not so much to answer the question of “how” but “who” or “what.” Who am I and what is this all about? Clues to these bedrock questions are found right at my fingertips, I suppose, as I practice yoga and inquire. One thing that all the parts of human beings and everything else in the universe have in common is energy, vibration, and frequency. I mean every particle and atom in the universe has movement to it. That seems to be the constant, that everything is quickened by some force, right? Energy. In yoga that energy is called Prana (hey, great name for a yoga studio. I’ll keep that in mind). Energy is simply the potential to do work. In yoga, the system of energy channels networked together and converging at particular points is called the chakra system. These seven principle energy centers align at different points along our spine. And when one thing that is conditioned, or designed, or just happens to be aligned with something else, those things resonate. Like twins. This coinciding vibration reminds me of this concept called sympathetic vibration. It goes like this: Notes represent sound waves which travel at a certain frequency. Different frequencies, faster or slower, plays different notes. I’ll be practicing my saxophone in my living room with my guitar hanging on the wall and when I play a note, an E for example, on the sax, the E string on the guitar, tuned to play at the same frequency, starts to vibrate. I’ll take the sax out of my mouth and hear a “ghost note” the residual vibration of the guitar string. Freaky cool. I think we work much in this same way. When people say things that resonate with us, it’s like we are predisposed, operating under the same frequency, to feel that same way. Thus we listen to politicians, see a great piece of art, watch a dance, hear a sermon, and something resonates with us; we vibrate at the same frequency. These vibrations gotta be different than light, different than sound, but something nonetheless sends a message. What is it?! Yoga is where we get to both feel and understand better this idea of prana, vibration, and resonance. In yoga, we refine our listening skills, we clear the energetic channels, and set the conditions for our bodies to ring more clearly. Again, what is this vibration that connects us all? I don’t know. But I’d be very interested in hearing your take on it. Click over to my Facebook page and let me know your thoughts on the subject. See what others have written. Please share your stories about being connected or on the same wavelength as someone or something else. In the meantime, I’ll see you in Yoga. Join me this Thanksgiving from 10 am-12pm for a special practice where we vibrate together to the frequency of gratitude. See you there!

I Don't Know the Name of This Bird

White-Eyes by Mary Oliver In winter all the singing is in the tops of the trees where the wind-bird with its white eyes shoves and pushes among the branches. Like any of us he wants to go to sleep, but he's restless— he has an idea, and slowly it unfolds from under his beating wings as long as he stays awake But his big, round music, after all, is too breathy to last. So, it's over. In the pine-crown he makes his nest, he's done all he can. I don't know the name of this bird, I only imagine his glittering beak tucked in a white wing while the clouds— which he has summoned from the north— which he has taught to be mild, and silent— thicken, and begin to fall into the world below like stars, or the feathers of some unimaginable bird that loves us, that is asleep now, and silent— that has turned itself into snow. I read this poem and imagine this bird wrestling with its idea in the tops of the trees manifesting in the brilliant winter storm we have experienced over the weekend. I think of something large and definitive, a creator or director or maybe simply a grand observer, who puffs and blows the turbulence we all sense in the storms of our lives. I imagine this being as blustery at times, yes, but one who ultimately reaches me softly, a real touch, by sending gentle, delicate, and cold kisses floating through the air, landing silently on my face and shoulders and eyes. Something as simple as the snow falling silently around me manifesting the Divine’s love for me. “I don’t know the name of this bird. . .” but I can feel it. It stops my stomping in my tracks, ankle deep in dark and cold, my brow furrowed and mind brimming with business, and lifts my gaze for a moment to watch the dazzling show of fat, silent flakes, filter through the streetlight. The beauty of it all! “I don’t know the name of this bird,” but I can feel it move through me in yoga. It breathes me and makes my body move and sway, undulate and reach. It arrests my busy mind and opens my eyes. Come and listen and watch your deeper self this week in the warm studio as the Divine, who has turned itself into snow, sifts softly down and touches and blesses the ground around us.

Faces in a Crowd

IN A STATION OF THE METRO The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet black bough. –Ezra Pound Written in 1913 in a Parisian metro station, for me this poem suggests the transience and beauty of human experience. It is the anonymous crowd but highlights the faces of individuals, key part of a person’s identity. It speaks to that question of uniqueness vs. sameness. Speaking of uniqueness, I’m just now discovering Nirvana and Pearl Jam and Guns N Roses. When I was in high school and junior high those bands were popular. Really popular. That kind of popular precluded my interest. Cuz my merry band identified with being different. We were unique. Those other bands were the clarion of a different crowd, in my mind musical and cultural lemmings that could all run off a cliff with their Teen Spirit or Appetite for Destruction and what would I care because I enjoyed a smug uniqueness that they wouldn’t appreciate let alone understand. Or at least I thought so. Stupid I know because in my quest to be unique, I missed out on some great music. I mean really, Slash’s solo on Sweet Child O’ Mine has to be one of the greatest guitar solos in Rock history. It’s an institution. Decades later, I rock to those bands like everybody else. So what is it about the need to be unique? Are we really as individual as we think or hope we are? In this social media age it’s so easy to project the image of how you want to be seen and identified as special and unique. The irony here is that as poet and speaker David Whyte says, to be constantly explaining who you are is a gospel of despair. But to simply BE yourself, that is more like what it is to experience a real existence. Like the guy who parked next to me at the trailhead the other day. I came off a run and was stretching next to my car and looking at someone’s ride. This thing was a piece of work, like an election billboard but less subtle. It was a hummer with all the super rugged equipment on it: lift, tinted windows, gnarly hitch, exhaust snorkel, front wench, industrial jacks, extra gas tanks on top, mauls, hammers and axes hanging on like he was on a fire squad (maybe was and wanted everybody to know) cuz who knows what kind of trouble you might run into on the way to Dan’s, you know? This dude was prepared to forge his own trail across Africa. And by the stickers plastered over his car I could easily read that the driver was a proud whiskey drinkin’, apple computer using, Black Widdow bike shop sportin’, Alta Skiin’, Hummer Drivin’, Back Country shoppin’, outdoor lovin’, The Front climbin’, adventure seekin’, Patigonioa wearin’ . . .person. Ego in the most pure way, a misidentification with what we think we are. A real mountaineer just is without needing to broadcast it. Like nature is just nature. A horse doesn’t prance around all day shouting, “I’m a horse, people!” It just does its thing and in so doing shows its regal majesty. And who isn’t like this this Hummer dude in some way? I know I am. We all want to be known and seen, right? We all want to be unique. Does that make us all the same? When you step back we are like Ezra Pound says in his poem, just “faces in the crowd.” We are all part of the masses trying to make our way home. But when you zoom in and look at the individual, there is something special about each person. I believe that our individuality and therefore identity isn’t based on what we do as much as how we are uniquely paying attention to the world. There was only one person in all of existence who paid attention to the world the way Monet did. Or Dali. Or Miles Davis. Or Mary Oliver. No one else in history will ever see the world the way that YOU do. So how are you paying attention? What do you see? For me, I notice movement, jazz, kindness in people, the smell of a chocolate shop. Ah, but there I go, just like Hummer Guy, broadcasting my identity. Maybe not. Maybe it’s different because I can like those things regardless if anybody else is watching. Maybe that’s the test. So if we are all unique by how we are paying attention to the world what is this malarkey we hear in yoga about us all being one? I have tried my whole life (at least through high school) to be singled out from the crowd, to find a unique identity that could be distinguished from the faceless crowd. The truth is that we are both. We are the unique person who likes the music and sees the world just as we do, but we are also all made of the same matter. We are individual members of a larger organism. You are part of a being which has 2400 eyes that is reading this newsletter. We belong to the yoga community. And yes we are all part of that large thing too, made from the same star dust, the same basic elements but we express those elements differently. The hostas and the hibiscus might be in the same garden but they need different things to flourish. And when you step back it is all one garden. So yeah, we’re unique expressions of the same thing. Would you agree? For me, that’s how we contribute to the larger organism is by watching the world exactly the way we do and sharing those gifts of perception with each other. This way the whole organism grows. If you are happy, healthy, and well, you are contributing to the wellness of the greater being. That’s what’s so wonderful about the many souls in a yoga class, everybody is so different but all part of the same thing. This week, I invite you to contemplate sameness vs. uniqueness and notice the way you are paying attention to the world. Come practice paying close attention to body, mind, and heart in yoga class. I’ll be there. And you can bet that this week when I’m not teaching yoga I’ll be paying attention Guns N Roses, particularly to Slash’s face-melting guitar solo. By the way, I’m going as Slash for Halloween.