Not Troubled

Yoga gives us a chance to start seeing our reactions: our aversion to suffering, and our clinging and attachment to pleasure andjoy . It gives us a breath, a pause, a chance to ALLOW for the world and our lives to play themselves out, even if it is uncomfortable or awkward or even painful sometimes. We can take lesson, as usual, from nature, of which we're a part...
The Buddha teaches his servant Rahula:
"Develop a state of mind like the EARTH, Rahula, for on the earth all manner of things are thrown, clean and unclean, dung and urine, spittle, pus and blood, and the earth is not troubled or repelled or disgusted...
"Develop a state of mind like WATER, for in the water many things are thrown, clean and unclean, and the water is not troubled or repelled or disgusted. And so too with FIRE, which burns all things, clean and unclean, and with AIR, which blows upon them all, and with SPACE, which is nowhere established."
(From "The Glass Palace," by Amitav Ghosh)

I Have a Dream

On that sweltering hot day of August 28th, 1963, Americans gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., to hear the social revolutionary Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. sing to the hearts of the world the song of his dream of racial equality. Even though racism isn't completely erased in America, who would have even dared to imagine that 45 years later we would be inaugurating our nation's first African American president?
Dr. King knew of the imperative for nonviolence as did his Open Heart Great SAlt Lakepredecessor of peace, Mahatma Gandhi. The principle of nonviolent revolutions and nonviolent living parallels the ancient yogic principle of nonviolence, Ahimsa. The ancient yoga scholar, Patanjali, lists Ahimsa as the first step toward finding Samadhi, our highest self. Yoga teaches that to truly know one's self, one must also extend this knowledge out to all others. Consider the idea of not only personal Samadhi but a Samadhi of community or collective.
Open Heart Great SAlt Lake If, as we learn from yoga, we originate from the same source, call it God, Universe, Creation, then to hate or harm someone else is ultimately to harm ourselves. This self infliction is therefore the autoimmunity of humanity, the failure of one part of the organism to recognize itself and therefore to fight against it.
But Ahimsa goes deeper than learning not to throw punches. The gate into the temple of peace is nonviolence; however, the true lesson of Ahimsa is to honestly and deeply love each other, even when your brother or sister holds radically different ideals, morals, or opinions than you. When the power of our conviction meets the peace of our compassion, we can sit together as brothers and sisters and build lasting solutions to differences and problems. These solutions last because they are built from the most durable and fundamental element common to all of us-- love. Dr. King said, "Nonviolence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him."
Ahimsa also means not harming YOU. Remember, you are a part of the universe and deserve to be here, to be happy, and to have abundance. I believe you cannot truly love someone else until you honestly love yourself. You deserve the pleasure of peace. I believe that Dr. King and Gandhi would both agree with this idea.
Let's practice peace in yoga this week. One of my teachers quotes her teacher who said, "Yoga is one of the most compassionate things we can do for others because suddenly we are not such a pain in the a## to be around anymore."
Please remember our brothers and sisters in Haiti. Meditate and pray for them. If you have the means, please contribute to one of their relief funds. One of the ways some organizations are collecting donations is through text message. You can text "HAITI" to 90999 to donate $10 to American Red Cross relief for Haiti, charged to your cell phone bill.

Inversions: If You Can't Beat 'Em, Join 'Em.

Most of the time, higher air temperature is cooler than lower air temperature. This is because the sun’s energy is converted to heat as it hits the ground and makes the temperature near the surface warm. Once this heat radiates off the earth, the air expands and rises, cooling it as it goes. Sometimes, especially in winter and at night, this process is reversed when with clear skies (classic Utah) the sun goes down and the ground gets cold, cooling the air close to the ground. The higher air is suddenly warmer than the new cold air on bottom, and voila! an inversion is born. The warm air on top acts like a lid and traps the cool air on bottom as well as all the pollution that is sitting in that cold air, pollution from cars, fireplaces, and industry, etc. Us creatures who live near the surface are left to stew in our own muck and breathe all the gunk we would otherwise hope to drift out of sight and out of mind. In the murky inversion, we see clearly just what kind of pollution we emit every day, and we are forced to breathe that pollution.

The Sanskrit term for inversions is Viprita Karani, meaning active reversal. The ancients knew the value of changing things up, flipping things on their head for a different perspective and a different way of operating. Physically, getting upside-down is great for strengthening the muscles in the shoulders and arms as well as abdominals. Inversions are also great for cultivating balance and activating sluggish digestion. Getting upside-down reminds us that when life gets turned in the opposite direction than you’d expected, not only can you deal but maybe even learn to thrive. Inversions bring a lot of blood and energy to your head, great for stimulating your brain. Plus, inversions (the yoga kind) are fun. The not-so-fun kind of inversion is great for keeping us mindful about what we are doing to our air.

This week, let’s practice turning things around. There are inversions for every body in every practice, ranging from simple, restorative poses to fun, intense poses. Let’s find a version that matches your practice.

Perhaps with this clarity of turning upside-down and putting all this new energy into our noggins, we can come up with some great solutions for the pollution we are forced to sit in during these temperature inversions. I’ve come up with a few. Please feel free to add to the list.

1) If we all work together using the breathing techniques of our pranayama practice, maybe we can blow out all the gunk and start out fresh.

2) Carpool to practice or take the bus, eliminating excess pollution; and don't idle your car longer than 10 to 15 seconds.

3) Turn off lights and other electrical devises that don’t need to be running. Much of our electricity comes from coal, which causes pollution.

4) Pretend that pollution doesn't exist and continue doing what we want until we all die of lung cancer from smokin' two packs of car exhaust a day.

5) Write yet another folk song about air pollution and add some more hot air to the atmosphere.

6) Skate, blade, run, bike, ski, dog sled, luge, skip, walk, pogo, moonwalk, saunter, strut, dance, lurk, creep, levitate, paddle, row, swim, climb, or fly to class.

Click comment below to add to the list.

Animate Your Intentions

We’ve made it! We’re here. It’s 2010. It’s been an incredible year full of struggle and happiness and amazement. I hope you’ve set some intentions as you prepare to let go of old stuff and I invite you to hope and expect new things to come, both joys and struggles. But with presence you are free, not free from problems, but free to be completely engaged in whatever this Universe throws at you. With presence you may find that deep part of you that can respond powerfully to whatever situation comes. And with presence you can feel and see these events that happen in a context of a larger perspective which gives meaning to all events as they sew themselves together into the tapestry of our lives.

Let’s put those New Year’s intentions into action—literally. Come to yoga and animate your intention. Watch your intentions, whatever they are, blossom and come alive through the practice of yoga. Give these hopes a form and breath—life. Let your yoga practice be a powerful tool to guide you through this winding path that is unfolding for you this year. You’ll be mesmerized at what comes, what is always and already there, as you practice paying attention, as you practice feeling mindful with a body that is healthy and strong.

Regular schedule this week for yoga. Yipee! See you there!

Scott

The Longest Night

Part of me feels like she’s already dead. I say “already” as if I know that somehow she’s not long on this earth. She has left and come back, you know.

The Winter Solstice is today, December 21st, the astronomical occurrence where the earth is the furthest point away from the sun. It makes me think about those times in life when life gets dark and warmth and brightness seem very far off.

I guess it was me thinking about Celeste’s accident on the 15th of January 2006 after a grueling, stripping day of terror and pain at the University Hospital after Celeste was crushed in a car accident. Her accident occurred at noon. I was in the hospital with her. It was now 2 am or something, I hadn’t eaten in 14 hours and searched for food. I walked alone along impossibly long hallways, down fields—miles—of, of fluorescent lights, millenniums, through the universe. I exited through the double doors that I was sure they’d told me to go through, only to find myself locked out and in the cold, no coat, in the dark, nighttime, winter—alone. I walked outside in the dark, hot clouds of steam rising from my mouth as I clamored around packed snow mounds and found my way back. Eventually I walked across a hallway that floated above the ground, connecting one part of the hospital with the other. I felt the hallway connected this world to the next. I found a cafeteria and bought some sorry excuse for a chicken sandwich and gobbled it down, eating in pity of myself and in fear that I would miss something if I didn’t hurry back. I fear that the doctors would come, something would happen, some complication would occur, something we’d not foreseen. We’d not foreseen any of this.

I swallowed and rushed back. I knew my way back up and when I entered into the small, impersonal, partitioned hospital room, I was greeted with an empty sheets and only a dim light above her bed. The machines that had tracked her heartbeat, that recorded the signal, the proof of her life, were extinguished. Where was she? It was like she was dead. Taken. They had only taken her for more tests. I didn’t know that. All I could do was sit in the dim light of that hospital room and steep in the dark, bitter tea of wonder and worry.

When she was hit, she blacked out. More serious, though, she went away. She told me later that she saw herself dancing barefoot upon a green field set on a cliff in Ireland overlooking the sea. The wind was tossing her hair, the air was sweet and perfect. The ocean rose in waves to greet her. She was content and felt she belonged there. She looked over and saw me a few steps away further from the edge on solid ground, a calm but focused look on my face. I simply reached out my hand and beckoned her to take my hand. She had a moment of choice. She paused then grabbed my hand.

Immediately she was back, conscious, in the cold, smashed car, forehead leaning on the steering wheel, shattered glass everywhere. She became aware of an emergency worker asking her probing questions through the shattered driver-side window. “Do you feel any pain?” he asked directly. “I think my sacrum is broken,” she proffered as equally direct. “Do you mean your tailbone?” he encouraged. “No, my sacrum,” she corrected.

16 hours later she lay in a hospital bed upon a multi-fractured pelvis, her head supported by a neck brace, life-support machines pumping oxygen into her lungs which were surrounded by several broken ribs. A menacing blue-grey bruise wiped a long swath across her left temple and forehead. It was the middle of the night. I sat in a chair next to her, worry and fear rattling my soul, exhausted and destitute. Two desperate souls alone in the dark with one borrowed iPod shuffle, a single ray of light. It’s a genius contraption; designed with two ear-pieces, one for each ear, mine and hers. Two voices in the dark singing together softly at almost a whisper, Dave Mathews, “Celebrate we will, ‘cuz life is short but sweet for certain.” These destitute moments of beautiful desperateness.

And it seems that we celebrate this longest night, this Winter Solstice because the light and warmth are on their way. We greet them upon their return.

Celeste has recovered fully from her car accident. She is working seriously with some other, pre-existing health issues. And despite all of it, we have seen the return of light and warmth after long nights of pain and frustration, some of which endures, but we look over the mountains and expect the sun to return.

The following is an excerpt of something I wrote for two dear friends who held their wedding ceremony at Dead Horse Point. It comes to mind and seems to fit here. It fits because by chance, circumstances, and destiny, I’ve learned a little about relationship and the deeper meaning of marriage.

As we stand on the edge and look over to the immense gulf below, look up toward the elevated mountains, what confirms the majesty of this scene in our hearts is not merely its beauty but more specifically our own vulnerability. As we see our own insignificance against the backdrop of such immensity, we are humbled and awestruck. . .So in this vulnerability, we stand on the edge and cling to each other in that fierce heat and embrace of deep pounding love. We hold tight, not knowing any other way, like two moths beating their wings furiously at the screen door, looking for the light and warmth beyond the threshold. This is our hope and our faith. And the rain and the hail, the snow and even stones rain from the sky and bring it on because, here we are, standing on this edge, willing to take anything that this enormous, loving universe can throw at us, and by God we will stand here all day and all night, this furiously long night, with death below us and heaven above us, and we will be here when the morning light creeps over that horizon, still clutching each other tightly. We will be here on this edge. We will be here with this one heart, not just beating but pounding. We will be here, still bleeding from this long night. And we will be here, weeping with joy at the divine privilege of standing on the edge of heaven and hell and earth combined, in the majesty of these mountains, in the wonder of this wind, at the hope of heaven for we have tasted heaven in this fierce embrace.

My Dog Thinks I'm Perfect

There is a fantastic bumper sticker that says something to the effect of, " May I be the type of person that my dog thinks I am."

For those of us who own dogs. . . who am I kidding, every person in this town owns a dog-you get one free when you buy your Subaru. Anyway, dogs know us better than we know ourselves. Our dog worships the ground we walk on, even though, ironically, we are the ones who pick up their poop, go figure. Back to dogs' undying love for us . . . yes, in our own mind we could be the most miserable wretch who ever climbed out of the pond, the dumbest thing to ever darken a doorway, but at the end of the day, we'd come home to sit on the porch and revel in our misery, only to have our best four-legged friend, come prancing up to us with nothing but profound love and worship for us.

Maybe dogs can see something about us that we can't see. The same way that a dog's sense of smell is dramatically more sophisticated than our own, perhaps the K-9 sense of goodness, the ability to sniff out the best parts of us (not just our crotch) is somehow innate in those creatures. They remind us that we, too, are lovable and amazing creatures.

In yoga, we are trying to see that our own inner-awesomeness, as one wise woman (my wife) puts it, is just beneath the surface. In part, yoga is finding focus, strengthening, and removing the physical obstacles of an unhealthy body. Yoga is also cultivating a relationship with both the numinous parts of ourselves as well as those ethereal parts of the world around us. Yoga carves away the crap that blinds us from that lovable person that our dog sees all the time. If our dog can see it all the time, then why can't we? Maybe it's because we forget. Yoga helps us to simultaneously discover and remember who we really are and perhaps see our selves the way our dog sees us: supercool.

Come to yoga and practice being the person your dog thinks you are.

Check out this video that illustrates this point.

Heavenly Distortion

A few years ago, I decided to run a marathon. I was ready. I’d trained for weeks. I’d even completed as much as a 13 mile run. All I had to do was essentially double the furthest distance I’d ever run in my life. Easy.

The race was like life. There were up-hills and down-hills. There were really joyful times, and really hard times. There were times when I had to run off the side of the road and pee on a tree. Miles 16-20 were the hardest for me. This is where my hamstrings began to cramp. My calves were aching. My lungs were burning. My lower-back held a vicious knot.

At mile 21 Celeste somehow found me on her bike. I felt like I had emerged from a battle, bruised, bleeding but strong and virile, pumping my way to the finish line. When she approached me I was in a surprisingly good mood. Her first words to me were, “Wow. You’re not running very fast.” I was happy to still be in the race and moving forward without the aid of a wheelchair. I suppose I was creeping along compared to how I normally ran.

At the last mile I stopped communicating. I really dug in and kept my mind on each footstep. I became very focused, very present. It so happened that there was a big gap between the runners in front and behind of me so I felt like I was running all by myself, like I was the only one in the race.

The last leg of the course took me down the long stretch of road that bisects the Gateway (shopping center). There were people everywhere, on each side of the road and on the second balcony level to the shopping center. The whole last partial mile was buzzing like a hive of cheers, encouragement, and excitement. As I rounded the corner, a burst of cheers hit me directly like an explosion and for a moment, it felt like everyone was there simply to cheer me on. At that same moment, the rockin’est blues band in the history of rockin' blues bands was positioned to greet me as I rounded the corner. They were playing ferociously. I could feel the music as much as hear it; the bass and the rhythm punched clear through me. Gathering my last drop of energy, I surged forward. As I limped past the band, the electric guitar player began to rip out a loud and nasty, bluesy solo. A grimace uncontrollably spread across my face, not because of the 26.1 miles I’d run, not because of the double hamstring cramp I was experiencing, not because my lungs felt as if I’d hacked them out somewhere around mile 19, but because the music was so right on, so dirty and so perfect that it evoked uncontrollable Blues Face, that face one gets when the music, the experience is rich with soul, rich with spirit. Blues face is what some musicians get when they enter the timeless. So good it hurts.

I believe that this is what heaven will be like some day when I get there. As I’m rounding the corner, finishing the race that has been hard, long, challenging, but beautiful and joyful, I’ll be greeted by a chorus of angles-friends cheering me -and a rockin’ blues band will be playing a song called, Welcome Home, Scottro P (my nickname). If any of you beat me to heaven, I hope to see you in my angelic chorus, even if you don’t think you have a very nice voice. And I hope that some of you will be wielding electric guitars.


Come to yoga and let's practice life in the form of yoga. Let's feel yoga; so good that it will give you blues face.