Why I Wake Early

I awake today and sit enjoying the silence of a Sunday morning. Even as I sit, I'm watching the bright morning sun dance its procession around my front room. It is playing with the crystal hung in my eastern window and splattering rainbow prisms across each wall. Even as I look, the color changes and fades, showing me that the earth is revolving around this sun. Things are changing. As I look out the window the sun is celebrating these autumn trees with its light, making the yellow leaves explode with color against a cloudless and pale-blue sky. I see a small bird sitting in a shadow who decides to leap up higher and rest in the bright sun's warmth. And then it begins to sing.

Aren't we all like this bird, eager for the creature comforts of warmth on our skin, eager to leave the shadows for the sun and the opportunity to feel life pulsing through our veins, eager to feel how we may reflect that same brightness and joy through our song?

And perhaps this is why in yoga we practice celebrating the sun with Surya Namaskar, or sun salutations. Surya means "sun" and Namaskar means "a deep honoring." You might notice the same root word Namas as the base of the word Namaste, another Sanskrit word meaning to honor the True Nature or heart of hearts, the most sacred element and potential of another. Surya Namaskar is like offering a Namaste to our source, the sun, as it brings life to us and everything on this planet and we're dependent on it for all aspects of our well-being. Sun salutations are also a physical practice, a ritual, for acknowledging and honoring anything else you feel is your source (God, Creation, the Universe, Buddha nature, or whatever). But just as important, this practice reveals that we are part of that source and reflect a bit of that same light within ourselves. By acknowledging this similarity between ourselves and our source we empower ourselves with the memory of our True Nature. We are not dark creatures in a dark world, and where there is shadow, we can choose to leave it for the sun or shine light into it. We are beings of light, filled with life and love. And we are here to celebrate that, to learn from it, and to shine our light everywhere. Mary Oliver says in her poem Why I Wake Early:

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who made the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and the crotchety -

best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light -
good morning, good morning, good morning.

Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.

Please join me this week as we practice Surya Namaskar and other poses to remind ourselves of this bigger picture. We show gratitude, rekindle our fire, and celebrate our own light.

Seeing Clearly

The Yoga Sutras is a book written by an ancient yoga scholar, Patanjali, (200 AD) which outlines much of the philosophy of the practice of yoga. A major principle in the Yoga Sutras is the principle of Avidya, or misapprehension. In Sanskrit, the word Vidya means to see clearly. Avidya is the opposite of clear seeing. Unfortunately our human experience is rife with Avidya, this unclear seeing. I believe that one of our major lessons in this earthly existence is to learn to recognize our Avidya and enlighten ourselves by learning to see clearly.

Seeing clearly precedes good judgment. The world exists. Things just are. We all translate what is and color it with judgment: good, bad; right, wrong. Often, our judgment of the world, our misapprehension, prevents us from seeing what is and makes us see only what we believe about what is. An old story goes like this: Once, a man was walking through the jungle at night and was very afraid of being eaten by a tiger. He heard something coming toward him and knew that it was a tiger so he pulled out his knife. When the animal stepped out onto the path in front of him, he immediately stabbed it and it fell dead. Only after he killed it did he realize that he had killed his best friend. His Avidya prevented him from seeing what truly was and caused death and suffering.

With the practice of yoga we can learn to place a little space between occurrence and judgment. With this space we reduce our Avidya by practicing seeing things as they are and not how we judge them. The principle of reducing our Avidya is not about being emotionless and dispassionate, but rather learning to stop our judgment for a moment and attempt to see things as they are before making a mindful next step.

A simple but effective way of practicing Vidya, clear seeing, is by doing a simple form of meditation which I learned from my teachers and which I call the There Is Practice. You can do this anywhere and while doing anything but one way to do it is by simply sitting comfortably with a cushion on the floor (a chair or couch works nice, too), close your eyes and acknowledge all the things you are currently experiencing with the phrase There Is. “There is the sound of traffic. There is apprehension. There is a 20-pound cat sitting in my lap and licking my big toe.” Anything you sense, feel, think, do, point to it with the phrase, “There Is. . .” Try to erase the personal pronoun “I, Me, or My” from what you perceive. This tends to change our apprehension of what is as something that is only in relationship to ourselves. The There Is practice is about seeing things just how they are without our own personal judgment getting in the way. It allows permission for the world to be the way it is and not just the way I think it should be. I like to set a timer and practice until the timer rings. Start with10 minutes and increase the time as you like.

I invite you to practice Vidya this week by coming to yoga and also practicing the There Is practice. With more accurate perception, we will be less reactive and more mindful in our decisions. With practices like yoga and the There Is practice we reduce our Avidya and begin to see the world and what really is.

To Whom Are We Beautiful as We Go?

I wish I knew the beauty of leaves falling.
To whom are we beautiful when we go?
David Ingnato

And to whom are we beautiful as we go? This poem seems to point to the fact that even in our failing, there is a part of creation and therefore a part of ourselves that can grant a magnificence to any loss. Such a beautiful concept. Such a bittersweet truth. And perhaps this is why Autumn is so colorful: it is the opulent funeral procession of the death of so much. It is the rush of fireworks before the quiet stillness of winter.

Open Heart Great SAlt LakeMany of the Hindu icons tell stories. The Dancing Shiva is a story-telling icon depicting Shiva, the creator of the universe, and illustrates the five acts of Shiva. The concept is the same whether you call the creator, Shiva, God, the Universe, or Krusty the Clown. In this statue, these 5 acts are depicted by his many arms, one of which is celebrating creation, another that is sustaining his creation, another is allowing death, and another that is not only inviting things back to life, but to live again with a higher consciousness than before. This statue reminds us that our job is to allow Shiva to lead in this dance of life, to follow along as we are slowly refined into greater beings. It reminds us that death is a part of life and with a broader perspective, we can, to some degree, appreciate it as a necessary part of the cycle.

Mary Oliver writes about learning to accept death and loss in her poem, Maker of All Things, Even Healings. I love the title of the poem because it suggests that the healing, the bringing back to life for a fuller measure of life as in the Dancing Shiva, comes only after accepting death which she does so humbly.

All night
under the pines
the fox
moves through the darkness
with a mouthful of teeth
and a reputation for death
which it deserves.
In the spicy
villages of the mice
he is famous,
his nose
in the grass
is like an earthquake,
his feet
on the path
is a message so absolute
that the mouse, hearing it,
makes himself
as small as he can
as he sits silent
or, trembling, goes on
hunting among the grasses
for the ripe seeds.

Maker of All Things,
including appetite,
including stealth,
including the fear that makes
all of us, sometime or other,
flee for the sake
of our small and precious lives,
let me abide in your shadow--
let me hold on
to the edge of your robe
as you determine
what you must let be lost
and what will be saved.

Mary Oliver

As we celebrate the panoply of fall colors, may we too remember the beauty of leaves falling, the beauty and magnificence of this amazing dance in which we are all twirling, living and dying.

When Life Gets Real.

Something happens when life slaps you in the face. You wake up from that doldrum dream of your tired routine and start to see what is really going on. Unfortunately, sometimes it takes tragedy to strike before we realize how far we had dozed off into a life of meaninglessness.

The spiritual teacher Pema Chodron says, "Before we can know what natural warmth really is, often we must experience loss. . . .The natural warmth that emerges when we experience pain includes all the heart qualities: love, compassion, gratitude, tenderness in any form. These feelings that we've become so accomplished at avoiding can soften us, transform us." (Shambala Sun Nov. 2009)

Years ago, my wife, Celeste said something similar when faced with the stark reality of a friends death: "When you prepare to die, or get close to death (perhaps someone you know), you might finally get awake enough to realize and experience the part of yourself that doesn't die. You are free in that moment. I am alive in that moment. I am experiencing everything in that moment. And I am grateful and I weep--thank you, Missy Barron for your presence and the reminder. You pass in to that place of the whole. You remind us to experience ourselves as whole and alive more often." (Please read the whole story: Destiny's Willing Student.)

Yoga helps us practice mindfulness so that we can live fully and appreciate life every day, and not only when tragedy knocks you about the head. Yoga is not an escape from life but a way to carve right into the heart of it, with presence, so that every day is beautiful, not only the ones after near misses.

May I suggest this week we practice experiencing this rich and colorful life, and let it open our hearts.

I'll Take "Inner Guru" for 500, Please.

All good teachers or interviewers know that the secret to evoking answers lies in asking the right questions.

As I was training to teach yoga, I would meet regularly with my teachers. We'd practice together. My teachers were available to answer questions I had. After several weeks of working together like this, I found that sometimes entire sessions would pass, their expertise readily available, and I hadn't so much as said hello to them. I really wanted to engage them; I wanted to be taught by them but didn't know what to ask. I came to understand that my teachers were willing to give me what I asked for. Judging by the type and quality of my questions, my teachers understood how much and what type of teaching I was ready to absorb. If I wasn't asking, they weren't teaching. In these sessions, they gave neither unsolicited information nor information I wasn't ready to absorb.

I started to formulate questions, often several days before our sessions. By searching and contemplating, I was amazed at how many of my questions were answered by experience and my own insight before I even proffered them to my teachers. The questions that did make it to my teachers were refined; they were specific, honed. With this specificity, my teachers and I were able to engage on the level I had craved.

After years of study, I approached one of my teachers and with wonder and confusion in my eyes I asked, "All of this knowledge is beautiful and inspiring, but what does it have to do with teaching a yoga class?" Wisely, my teacher smiled and without saying a word, she simply shook her head. Nothing else needed be said. I knew I was to find this out for myself. This question lit a flame inside me to find the answer. Years later, I'm still looking for this answer, pleased with each new discovery that seems to piece together the puzzle. Not long after, I asked my other teacher who was moving, "What else do I need to know? How will I be taught?" To which he looked at me solemnly and said, "You have everything you need. You have the answers."

And somewhere inside we do have the answers, or at very least something inside knows where to look. Yoga is in part understanding our place in this Universe and appreciating the conversation between us and it. It seems to me that our opportunity to participate in this conversation depends largely on the questions that we ask, by how much we search. If we aren't asking, our teachers aren't teaching. Searching for and asking the right questions refines the listening of our everyday lives and prepares us for the type of learning we hope for. Carrying these questions into our yoga practice, our meditations, prayers, work, and daily lives prepares us to receive answers, sometimes in the least likely of ways. It teaches us in the ways we crave for.

Sometimes it is just enough to ask the question. Let the answer come organically, when it's time for you to receive it. In the meantime, enjoy the game of watching the Universe respond. Enjoy the mindfulness of listening. Herein lies many of our answers. And maybe there are no answers. This is the answer.

Every part of you has a secret language.
Your hands and your feet say what you've done.
And every need brings in what's needed.
Pain bears its cure like a child
Having nothing produces provisions.
Ask a difficult question,
And the marvelous answer appears.

--Rumi

I encourage you to contemplate your big questions. Bring them to yoga class and listen, feel, experience the ways your practice, your inner-knowing, responds.
Scott

Coming Home

A really good friend of mine today bemoaned the fact she hasn't been to yoga in awhile. She said her body and heart and mind all missed it. She's been neglecting this important and basic way of taking care of herself, and now she's feeling it. At a time when she needs it most (school, kids, relationships, LIFE), she let it go.
Without yoga, her well was running dry. And even though she was hiking and biking, her body missed the consummate depth and body/mind/spirit connection of a yoga practice.
Now she's committed to coming back again and taking care of herself as a first priority, as a way of replenishing the source.

There really is something special about a yoga practice. The way it meets the needs of both body and soul is hard to replace. The way it gives such a focus to all the other aspects of life. The way it energizes you and provides deep relaxation. The way it makes everything make sense.

Does this situation sound familiar? We all go through this. And sometimes it can be difficult and overwhelming to come back. But, like my friend, you eventually reach the point of understanding that going to yoga practice is about honoring yourself. Taking care of yourself is taking care of all the other aspects of your life. Besides, it just feels so dad gum good.

Even if you can't make it to a practice, on your own do 5 minutes of something: a few favorite asanas, some deep breathing, some smiling. Try counting your breaths down from 50, focusing on LONG exhales.

So I invite you to come back. You'll be met with a smile. And it'll feel great.
Welcome back home,

Scott

A Holy Moment in Hell

It was my Folsom Prison moment. I stood there on stage with my sax around my neck, stunned like a trapped animal while 200 prison inmates wearing light-blue prison scrubs came walking single-file past guards wielding shotguns into the meeting room. The inmates quietly took their seats and looked up at the 4 of us with silent anticipation. We stood on the stage and met their stares in a speechless tremble.

Months previous, a relative asked if I knew anyone who could possibly tune the prison pianos where her uncle was incarcerated at the maximum security Central Utah Correctional Facility in Gunnison. The piano player in my band tunes piano as his day job and had agreed to tune the pianos and suggested we bring the whole band down for a concert. Brilliant!

Up to this point, the idea of playing in a prison had seemed pretty nostalgic, but I hadn't realized how proximal I'd be to these guys. . . you know, the criminals. As we were setting up, I kept looking over my shoulder. I couldn't help but be suspicious. I mean these guys were in here for doing really, really bad things, right? You don't arrive at a maximum security penitentiary for shoplifting candy from convenience stores

Once everyone was seated, the crowd turned very quiet and all eyes bored strait into us. The lights dimmed except a spotlight that shone directly into our eyes. I turned and faced the band as much to escape the probing glares of the criminals as to begin the concert. "Alright, everyone," I said to the band with counterfeit confidence, "Blue Skies," and began to snap in time, counting off the first tune. Our singer's voice came in with: "Blue Skies, smiling at me, nothing but blue skies, do I see." After the tune, I expected the audience to be silent, like they way they came in, and feared possibly worse, a snicker or a boo. And for a second or two there was nothing but silence. Then, almost like someone had cued them, suddenly the room erupted with applause and cheers.

With only slightly more confidence, we entered the next tune: It Don't Mean a Thing if it Ain't Got That Swing. We played the melody, and then I nodded to Brig, the piano player, to take a solo. He bowed his head in an act that seemed like reverence to the piano and began to play--or maybe he, too, was praying. He got right to work and pounded out a great solo, his fingers rippling along the keyboard like a small blur of falling water. After a couple of choruses, he nodded to me.

My turn. I closed my eyes and put my horn in my mouth. Then something magical happened. The feeling in the room turned completely electric. Even with my eyes closed, I became vividly aware of this impossibly perfect moment. Every eye and ear was riveted on me. I held everyone's complete and unflinching attention. We were their prison visitors who were bringing them Blue Skies and a chance to swing a little. Suddenly, I relaxed and my playing opened up. Something incredible was channeled inside me as I began to sing out the bell of my horn. Maybe I was channeling my great uncle, Lester, who had given me his horns when he died, the horns I was playing on then and still play now, the horns that I believe still hold a portion of him.

I played. And I played, and I played, and I played and let whatever grace my soul held at that moment find some sultry voice out the end of my saxophone. A sound came out that I'd never heard before. Notes like I'd never imagined flew off my fingers and out my horn into the ears and minds and hearts of 200 expectant people. I was in conversation with something inside that I didn't know, something that had never been tapped. And though I had never driven this thing before, whatever it was, I stomped the pedal to the floor. I'm convinced that I was not the only one that night to feel this pulse, this magic.

Eventually, I finished my solo, we played once more through the melody, and in unison, we stopped together after riffing on "Do wa, do wa, do wa, do wa, do wa, do wa, do WA!" Then, without even a fraction of a pause, out burst deafening cheers and whistles, an applause twice as loud and long as the previous. I couldn't control myself from laughing: it was a mixture of equal parts self-consciousness and pure amazement at what I'd found in my soul and had somehow translated through my saxophone. It was feeling the excitement and appreciation and somehow even the love of these people in the audience, these prisoners who for a moment were free. Brig leaned over and shouted above the applause, "Scottro! That was the best you have ever played!" It was the single most incredible musical experience I've had in my life. And I realized that for a moment we were all the same: we were all in prison and we were all free, groovin' on jazz and feeling something together.

The band played several more tunes, played a few encores, and then the lights came on. With a rush, I looked happily into the crowd and I saw smiles and happy faces. I didn't see criminals anymore. I saw people. They hadn't changed, of course. I had. I saw past the prison ID sewn on the chest down to the heart of these people that held a fundamental identity of goodness. I put my horn down and stepped off the stage and walked into the crowd and was welcomed with handshakes, slaps on the back, and congratulations and thank you's from these new friends, many of whom had an impressive knowledge of jazz music. "Hey, I used to play the trumpet!" one guy said. "My son plays the saxophone," another one interrupted. These were regular people.

As we were driving home, completely elated, I realized that if given the chance, I was capable of accessing something beautiful and amazing and unknown inside me. And if that magical part could be somehow liberated and expressed in me, then such was true for each person, even those doing time in prison, despite whatever sour notes they may have played in the past.

This is the essence of yoga. This is oneness.