How I accidentally found yoga

Maybe some of this will resonate with some of you. The short long, how I accidentally fell into yoga.

I found yoga casually in my late teens. I liked the way it sounded out loud to say I “did yoga” and had interests in fitness and being strong in my body. At that time, I’d leave before savasana. Number one, because it was boring to me (I was fiery). Number two, I wasn’t capable of holding the bouts of peace that would drift in sometimes. I thought I’d lose my mind, fall into the centre of the earth and primal scream in the middle of the Lethbridge Fitness Club. So I avoided savasana like a 1000 piece puzzle. Woof. In hindsight, giving myself to the path of yoga at that time was too big to touch and I wasn’t ready. The fruit wasn’t ripe for picking. One teacher of mine says, you’re never ready till you’re ready. And when you’re ready it’s perfect timing.

I found yoga with devotion & discipline when my beautiful son was 7 years old. For some mothers and certainly in my case, these pockets of time started to open up more and more like clouds in the sky as he got older. I found yoga seriously when my heart had been moulded into that of a mother. I woke up one day and realized I could choose to buy into the culture of drinking wine to cope with having a family or I could go against that lie I’d bought into and do something different. I thought maybe I could try this hot yoga thing that had been crescendo whispering my name for 18 months. (I even changed my passwords to yogini2012 in 2011). I tiptoed around their website waiting for the right day to get my intro package, combing through every excuse in my head as to why this practice was selfish and nuts. One August afternoon, I stepped onto that mat, and I was ready. My first discipline was Bikram Yoga, aka 26&2. It was revolutionary to be scripted and cued through 90 minutes where I didn’t have to make a decision in the world. As a mother and a householder, the world weight lifted of my obsessively controlling shoulders the first time. I burned through 300 classes my first year. I took my first yoga teacher training 9 months after my daily practice began.

In hindsight, I’m half certain and half wonder if deep down I knew the path would overtake that present definition of reality. Everything changed. Everything upended. It was perfect.

The ability to hold and sit with peace is one of my proudest superpowers because I vividly remember being that terrified, anxious, unlovable 19 year old ditching savasana. And I am absolutely positive that if I can find peace or benefit from this breath based movement, anyone can.

TL:DR Like all of the best things and miracles in my life, it happened by “accident”, happenstance, ignorance, t-boned. Shrouded in a veil of surprise, knowingness, truth, love.

A woman’s psyche and the apple tree

The psyche is a grinder of ideas; it masticates concepts and breaks them down into usable nourishment. It takes in raw material, in the form of ideas, feelings, thoughts, and perceptions, and breaks them open in a way that makes them usable for nourishment.

This psychic ability is often called processing. When we process, we sort through all the raw material in the psyche, all the things we've learned, heard, longed for, and felt during a period of time. We break these down into parts, asking, "How shall I use this best?" We use these processed ideas and energies to implement our most soulful tasks and to fund our various creative endeavors. In this way a woman remains both sturdy and lively.

When the creative mill, the grinder of the psyche is unemployed, this means nothing is being done with all the raw material that comes in our lives on a daily basis. And that no sense is being made of all the grains of knowing that blow into our faces from the world and the underworld. If the creative mill is stalled, that means the psyche has stopped nourishing itself in critically important ways.

A woman who feels this thusly senses she is no longer fragrant with ideas, that she is not fired with invention, that she is not grinding finely to find the pith of things. Her mill is silenced. Whether they are being too cool or too well-behaved, in neither state are they responsive to what goes on deep inside, and a sleep gradually covers over their bright-eyed, responsive natures.

Let us imagine that during this time we are offered something for nothing. That somehow we have twisted ourselves around to believe that if we will remain asleep something will accrue to us. Women know what this means.

When a woman surrenders her instincts that tell her the right time to say yes and when to say no, when she gives up her insight, intuition, and other wildish traits, then she finds herself in situations that promised gold but ultimately give grief. Some women relinquish their art for a grotesque financial marriage, or give up their life's dream in order to be a "too-good" wife, daughter or girl, or surrender their true calling in order to lead what they hope will be a more acceptable, fulfilling and especially more sanitary life.

The apple tree and the maiden are interchageable symbols of the feminine Self, and the fruit is a symbol of nourishment and maturation of our knowledge of that Self. if our knowledge about the ways of our own soul is immature, we cannot be nourished from it, for the knowing is not ripe. As with apples, it takes time for maturation, and the roots must find their ground and at least a season must pass, sometimes several. If the maiden soul sense remains untested, nothing more can occur in our lives. But if we can gain underworld roots, we can become mature, nourishing to soul, Self and psyche.

The flowering apple tree is a metaphor for fecundity, yes. But more so it signifies the densely sensual creative urge and the ripening of ideas. All these are the work of las curanderas, the root women, who live deep in the crags and mountains of the unconscious. They mine the deep unconscious there, and deliver up the work to us. We work the work they give to us, and as a result, a potent fire, shrewd instincts, and deep knowing springs to life, and we develop and grow in depth in both inner and outer worlds.

Now a woman's pain becomes conscious. When it is conscious, she can do something with it. She can use it to learn with, to grow strong with, to become a knowing woman. Over the long term, there will be even better news yet. That which has been given away can be reclaimed. It can be restored to its proper place in the psyche. You will see.

Women who Run with the Wolves, La Selva Subterranea, Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D

Prince & Krishnamurti

I was dreamin' when I wrote this
Forgive me if it goes astray
But when I woke up this mornin'
Could've sworn it was judgment day

The sky was all purple
There were people runnin' everywhere
Tryin' to run from the destruction
You know I didn't even care

Say say
Two-thousand-zero-zero party over
Oops out of time
So tonight I'm gonna party like it's 1999

War is all around us, my mind says prepare to fight
So if I gotta die I'm gonna listen to my body tonight

Yeah

Source: 1999 by Prince

"In other words, can you be instantaneously free? -- because that is the only way out of this misery. Perception can take place only in the present; but if you say, 'I will do it tomorrow', the wave of confusion overtakes you, and you are then always involved in the confusion.

Now is it possible to come to that state when you yourself perceive the truth instantaneously and therefore put an end to confusion? I say that it is, and that it is the only possible way. I say it can be done and must be done, not based on supposition or belief. To bring about this extraordinary revolution -- which is not the revolution to get rid of the capitalists and install another group -- to bring about this wonderful transformation, which is the only true revolution, is the problem. What is generally called revolution is merely the modification or the continuance of the right according to the ideas of the left. The left, after all, is the continuation of the right in a modified form. If the right is based on sensual values, the left is but a continuance of the same sensual values, different only in degree or expression. Therefore true revolution can take place only when you, the individual, become aware in your relationship to another. Surely, what your are in your relationship to another, to your wife, your child, your boss, your neighbour, is society. Society by itself is non-existence. Society is what you and I, in our relationship, have created; it is the outward projection of all our own inward psychological states. So if you and I do not understand ourselves, merely transforming the outer, which is the projection of the inner, has no significance whatsoever; that is there can be no significant alteration or modification in society so long as I do not understand myself in relationship to you. Being confused in my relationship, I create a society which is a replica, the outward expression of what I am. This is an obvious face, which we can discuss. We can discuss whether society, the outward expression, has produced me or whether I have produced society."

Source: p.9/10, The First and Last Freedom, J. Krishamurti, 1975.

When you arrive at too much curiosity, call me.

"...You shall never be fear-free. The best you could hope for is to befriend fear. Think of it as such, imagine if you can take the adrenaline of whatever hormones that fear makes the body produce and invest this as a stimulant, a drug, toward deeper and more radical living. How exciting it can be to feel your heart racing and you start to smell your sweat = alive!"

"Let me remind you of what Zizi declared cosmically some time ago or never: Everything Zizi says is possibly the truth and also probably a big lie. Zizi continuously as long as Zizi lives will remain true to changing her mind. Those who claim they know are full of BS gone bad. One can, at best, claim to know to the best of their knowledge. We seek. And continue to seek. Until it all goes silent."

How do we maintain our sense of wonder and curiosity without feeling exhausted? Why do we fear losing it? How do we separate greed from wonder?

"The end of curiosity is death. Be exhausted. Be tired. Be curious at any price. It is sometimes okay to take a break and float in the mainstream using a traditional structure. Tradition has lots of wild within it, can offer a parachute just in case you needed it, a foundation to rest on - but never ever make it your home. Start by never living in the same place for more than two years. Always have guests, turn a blind eye to the dishes, and always ask why a certain law is in place and break it."

What do you say to the unrelenting need to do the dishes as soon as I finish lunch or before I go to bed?

"You are a fool. That is what I would say. You are using the dishes as a distraction. Go for a walk and think carefully, what are you so afraid of?"

What if curiosity is a commodity and the need to always be in awe is a sort of addiction?

"Are you there yet? When you arrive at too much curiosity, call me. Curiosity is about listening to the answer when you ask a question. Curiosity involves sitting back, being quiet and listening and watching. And then curiosity is about falling asleep to a world of wonder; go for the rides in dreamland and tell your dreams (only the interesting ones) to a fellow curious. Curiosity is also about sitting back with your emotion and living it. If you get too excited with your curiosity, grab a drink, go out for a smoke, take a break, be lazy, be slow."

"We, on the other hand, are trying to practice humility, we want to become nothing, we believe that if humans reach a point where they know they are just a moment in time, then we can all just relax and just be and enjoy our cigarettes. We just want to reach the point where we know and believe that death and birth are the only guarantees, and love, for sure love. What if we pause and say that without humility one cannot love or maintain love? By love, we mean creating a safe and solid space for the people we care about to be themselves, to allow for a mutual growth for everyone involved, to be extremely sensitive."

A conversation between Adrianne Marie Brown, Zizi & the Rocca Family
Pleasure Activism, Pages 332 - 334

the wild and the holy

I've had these two poems on mind this week, playing with the paradox and harmony of wild and holy.

Sometimes I believe that some of the keys I drop are from the knowingness of specific intimacies of my wild, rowdy prisoner days. And hopefully I look back in 10 years and see I was a rowdy prisoner right now (thank you avidya).

And dropping keys is made possible because I've put down the knife and (sometimes conscious) choice to forge a key to hold and share. I sometimes think the keys regenerate themselves and we can produce more than we even know. It's a generous system.

I shared these poems with a friend and she asked me if we have different knives for ourselves and others. My answer today is it's one knife, but maybe one side is serrated and the other is smooth.

The small man
Builds cages for everyone
He
Knows.
While the sage,
Who has to duck his head
When the moon is low,
Keeps dropping keys all night long
For the
Beautiful
Rowdy
Prisoners.
~Hafiz

“Once a young woman said to me,
“Hafiz, what is the sign
of someone who knows God?”

I became very quiet,
and looked deep into her eyes,
then replied,

“My dear, they have dropped the knife.
Someone who knows God has dropped
the cruel knife that most so often use upon their tender self
and others.”
― Hāfiz

A love letter to choice

Intention, priorities, choices, pattern. Are these most often linear? Do they follow this order (always?) May be of the same family. Perhaps cousins because of the lofty though undeniable connection between each.

Perhaps:
Intention serving as the infrastructure behind each thought, word and action we produce.

Priority being an influencer of choice, based on desired outcome, current position, ties of binding.

Choice being the action resulting from both, which can be taken consciously or unconsciously

Pattern, the repetition of choice and intention, can be based on priorities. Can also be based on self sabotage, and feelings of unworthiness. Pattern, a way of acknowledging that the current repetition of choice (ours or others) is creating tension or space.

Boundaries. Invisible, subtle, can be exceptionably malleable, swayed or also of electric fence strength. Formed and executed based on priorities and choices.

A love note to the blessed days the eyes are clear to see that strife for giving away too much of oneself to others can be turned off with choice, with releasing it, with letting it go. To the days we know there is a difference between letting our strife go and going into denial. Can we let go but still be true to where boundaries lie?

What is the amount of spaciousness for us to have where we both are taking part in all the corners of our universe that we require/desire contact, nurturing and creativity with?

How we do anything is how we do everything. Including love others. Including love ourselves.

A love letter to the gift of a day where choice feels available, based on the amount of freedom we are willing to receive, or the trust we are willing to surrender into.

A love letter to the days where this is truth: Take any choice you want but be perfectly ok with it.

An honest acknowledgement that each individual’s day-to-day level of agency varies with lifestyle and a host of socio-economic factors, where at any given moment some people actually have less choice than others. And the privilege of having a life to contemplate these possibilities isn't freely available to everyone.

——————

“I no longer have patience for certain things, not because I’ve become arrogant, but simply because I reached a point in my life where I do not want to waste more time with what displeases me or hurts me. I have no patience for cynicism, excessive criticism and demands of any nature. I lost the will to please those who do not like me, to love those who do not love me and to smile at those who do not want to smile at me.

I no longer spend a single minute on those who lie or want to manipulate. I decided not to coexist anymore with pretense, hypocrisy, dishonesty and cheap praise. I do not tolerate selective erudition nor academic arrogance. I do not adjust either to popular gossiping.

I hate conflict and comparisons.

I believe in a world of opposites and that’s why I avoid people with rigid and inflexible personalities. In friendship I dislike the lack of loyalty and betrayal. I do not get along with those who do not know how to give a compliment or a word of encouragement. Exaggerations bore me and I have difficulty accepting those who do not like animals.

And on top of everything I have no patience for anyone who does not deserve my patience.”

~José Micard Teixeira

Krishnamurti & Paul McCartney

..the problems of the world are so colossal, so very complex, that to understand and so to resolve them, one must approach them in a very simple and direct manner. The problems of the world lie in the creator of the problem, in the creator of the mischief, the creator of these problems, in the individual, you and I, not the world as we think of it. The world is your relationship with another. The world is not something separate from you and me; the world, society, is the relationship that we establish or seek to establish between each other." - Jiddu Krishnamurti

"When two great saints meet, it is a humbling experience. The long battles to prove he was a Saint." - Paul McCartney (Quote from Sleeve of Unfinished Music Number 1: Two Virgins - John Lennon + Yoko Ono)

A Brave and Startling Truth

by Maya Angelou

We, this people, on a small and lonely planet
Traveling through casual space
Past aloof stars, across the way of indifferent suns
To a destination where all signs tell us
It is possible and imperative that we learn
A brave and startling truth

And when we come to it
To the day of peacemaking
When we release our fingers
From fists of hostility
And allow the pure air to cool our palms

When we come to it
When the curtain falls on the minstrel show of hate
And faces sooted with scorn are scrubbed clean
When battlefields and coliseum
No longer rake our unique and particular sons and daughters
Up with the bruised and bloody grass
To lie in identical plots in foreign soil

When the rapacious storming of the churches
The screaming racket in the temples have ceased
When the pennants are waving gaily
When the banners of the world tremble
Stoutly in the good, clean breeze

When we come to it
When we let the rifles fall from our shoulders
And children dress their dolls in flags of truce
When land mines of death have been removed
And the aged can walk into evenings of peace
When religious ritual is not perfumed
By the incense of burning flesh
And childhood dreams are not kicked awake
By nightmares of abuse

When we come to it
Then we will confess that not the Pyramids
With their stones set in mysterious perfection
Nor the Gardens of Babylon
Hanging as eternal beauty
In our collective memory
Not the Grand Canyon
Kindled into delicious color
By Western sunsets

Nor the Danube, flowing its blue soul into Europe
Not the sacred peak of Mount Fuji
Stretching to the Rising Sun
Neither Father Amazon nor Mother Mississippi who, without favor,
Nurture all creatures in the depths and on the shores
These are not the only wonders of the world

When we come to it
We, this people, on this minuscule and kithless globe
Who reach daily for the bomb, the blade and the dagger
Yet who petition in the dark for tokens of peace
We, this people on this mote of matter
In whose mouths abide cankerous words
Which challenge our very existence
Yet out of those same mouths
Come songs of such exquisite sweetness
That the heart falters in its labor
And the body is quieted into awe

We, this people, on this small and drifting planet
Whose hands can strike with such abandon
That in a twinkling, life is sapped from the living
Yet those same hands can touch with such healing, irresistible tenderness
That the haughty neck is happy to bow
And the proud back is glad to bend
Out of such chaos, of such contradiction
We learn that we are neither devils nor divines

When we come to it
We, this people, on this wayward, floating body
Created on this earth, of this earth
Have the power to fashion for this earth
A climate where every man and every woman
Can live freely without sanctimonious piety
Without crippling fear

When we come to it
We must confess that we are the possible
We are the miraculous, the true wonder of this world
That is when, and only when
We come to it.

gratitude - an / today’s articulation

”I have no way to pay them back. Their gift to me is far greater than i have ability to reciprocate…Perhaps all I can do is love them. All I know to do is to leave another gift, for them and for the future, those next unknowns who will live here…And so I plant Daffodils, hundreds of them, in sunny flocks beneath the Maples, in homage to their beauty and in reciprocity for their gift.”

Humour me. What if. I wonder what would happen if I adopted this mantra, this perspective, and poured it into as many interactions as one could remember to. To the humans, loved ones, strangers, neutrals, nature, art, sky, air, water, adversaries. Maybe it’s even possible for family. (winky face but also straight faced emoji). The daffodils being interactions and transactions I am a part of where I aim to leave things better than they found them or as undisturbed and neutral as I can. Or perhaps, even infused and dusted with love, gratitude, joy, reverence, levity.

I wonder, what is the relationship of gratitude to reciprocity? Where do gratitude and reciprocity intersect?

Full Excerpt, Braiding Sweetgrass, Robin Wall Kimmerer, page 70.
“Such a responsibility I have to these people and these trees, left to me, an unknown come to live under the guardianship of the twins, with a bond physical, emotional and spiritual. I have no way to pay them back. Their gift to me is far greater than i have ability to reciprocate. They’re so huge as to be nearly beyond my care, although I do scatter granuIes of fertilizer at their feet and turn the hose on them in summer drought. Perhaps all I can do is love them. All I know to do is to leave another gift, for them and for the future, those next unknowns who will live here. Iheard once that Maori people make beautiful wood sculptures that they carry long distances into the forest and leave there as a gift to the trees. And so I plant Daffodils, hundreds of them, in sunny flocks beneath the Maples, in homage to their beauty and in reciprocity for their gift.”

Song: Gratitude - Big Red Machine
https://youtu.be/UrO-nRIQn3o

End of the Line: The Traveling Wilbury’s and Mathew McConaughey

Time alone simplifies the heart.
Memory catches up.
Opinions form.
We meet truth again.
And it teaches us.
Landing on stable feet between our reaching out and retreat.
Letting us know we are not lonely in our state. Just alone.
Because our unconscious mind now has room to reveal itself, we see it again.
It dreams, perceives and thinks in pictures which we now can observe.
In this solitude we can then begin to think in pictures and actualize what we see.
Our Souls become anonymous again and we realize we are stuck with the one person we can never be rid of - ourselves.
The Socratic dialogue can be ugly, painful, lonesome, hard, guilt-ridden, a nightmare vicious enough to need a mouth guard not to gnaw our fangs into nubs while we sweat feverish panic.
We are forced to confront ourselves.
And this is good!
We more than deserve this suffrage. We've earned it.
An honest man's pillow is his peace of mind. (John Mellencamp). And no matter who's in our bed each night, we sleep with ourselves. We either forgive or get sick and tired of it. Herein, lies the evolution.
Now with nowhere to run and forced to deal with ourselves, our ugly every day suppressions break out of the zoo and monkey around.
Where we find ourself in the ring with him deciding: No more or let it slide.
Whatever the verdict, we grow. It's us and us. Our always and only company. We tend to ourselves and get in our good graces again.
Then we return to civilization once again to better tend to our tendencies.
Why?
Because we took a walkabout (pause, refuge)
Source: GreenLights by Mathew McConaughey

- - -
Well, it's alright, ridin' around in the breeze
Well, it's alright, if you live the life you please
Well, it's alright, doin' the best you can
Well, it's alright, as long as you lend a hand

You can sit around and wait for the phone to ring (at the end of the line)
Waiting for someone to tell you everything (at the end of the line)
Sit around and wonder what tomorrow will bring (at the end of the line)
Maybe a diamond ring

Well, it's alright, even if they say you're wrong
Well, it's alright, sometimes you gotta be strong
Well, it's alright, as long as you got somewhere to lay
Well, it's alright, everyday is judgment day

Maybe somewhere down the road a ways (at the end of the line)
You'll think of me and wonder where I am these days (at the end of the line)
Maybe somewhere down the road when somebody plays (at the end of the line)
Purple Haze

Well, it's alright, even when push comes to shove
Well, it's alright, if you got someone to love
Well, it's alright, everything'll work out fine
Well, it's alright, we're going to the end of the line

Don't have to be ashamed of the car I drive (at the end of the line)
I'm just glad to be here, happy to be alive (at the end of the line)
And it don't matter if you're by my side (at the end of the line)
I'm satisfied

Well, it's alright, even if you're old and grey
Well, it's alright, you still got something to say
Well, it's alright, remember to live and let live
Well, it's alright, the best you can do is forgive

Well, it's alright (alright), riding around on the breeze
Well, it's alright (alright), if you live the life you please
Well, it's alright, even if the sun don't shine
Well, it's alright (alright), we're going to the end of the line

- - -

The original Wilburys were a stationary people who, realizing that their civilization could not stand still forever, began to go for short walks — not the “traveling”, as we now know it, but certainly as far as the corner and back. They must have taken to motion, in much the same way as penguins were at that time taking to ledges, for the next we hear of them they were going out for the day (often taking lunch or a picnic). Later, we don’t as yet know how much later, some intrepid Wilburys began to go away for the weekend, leaving late Friday and coming back Sunday. It was they who evolved simple rhythmic forms to describe their adventures.

A remarkable sophisticated musical culture developed, considering there were no managers or agents, and the further the Wilburys traveled the more adventurous their music became, and the more it was revered by the elders of the tribe who believed it had the power to stave off madness, turn brunettes into blondes and increase the size of their ears.

As the Wilburys began to go further and further in their search for musical inspiration they found themselves the object of interest among many less developed species — nightclub owners, tour operators and recording executives. To the Wilburys, who had only just learnt to cope with wives, roadies and drummers, it was a blow from which many of them never recovered.

A tiny handful survived — the last of the Traveling Wilburys — and the songs gathered here represent the popular laments, the epic and heroic tales, which characterize the apotheosis of the elusive Wilbury sound. The message of the music travels, as indeed they traveled and as I myself must now travel for further treatment. Good listening, good night and let thy Wilbury be done . . .

Hugh Jampton, E.F. Norti-Bitz Reader in Applied Jacket, University of Krakatoa (East of Java)

Honourable mention You Tube comment (End of the Line video): Admittedly I'm pretty drunk, but this song is almost spiritual to me. We all go through the same types of shit in life, we're all human after all, but we're all riding until the the end of the line. "I'm just glad to be here, happy to be alive."

A STATIONARY PEOPLE (Source, http://www.travelingwilburys.com/history)
By Hugh Jampton