YOGA
“If you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will also gaze into you.”
Enjoy These Musings and Insights on Yoga and Life
Releasing and Refocusing
As we end 2020 and look to 2021, our minds naturally start to move towards the future.
However, we can’t successfully move forward until we release the past.
Have you taken time to stop and recognize all of the myriad of things you’ve accomplished this year?
Have you made time to celebrate your successes and reflect back on how far you’ve come?
Here are two videos to help you refocus your mind and thoughts to help you release the past and embrace what is to come in the year ahead!
Gratitude is the Heart of Love
Gratitude and appreciation is entwined with numerous health benefits including enhanced mood and self-esteem. We can develop gratitude by reflecting on the gifts that are already ours and by celebrating great and small things every day.
Research has demonstrated that a regular practice of gratitude releases toxic emotions, reduces bodily aches and pains, helps to improve sleep quality, aids in stress regulation, and helps to decrease feelings of anxiety and depression. Gratitude has psychological, physical, and social benefits, and is the foundation of any spiritual path.
Here are some simple ways that you can practice gratitude every day…
The Nine Nights of the Goddess
At this time of year we turn our attention to this goddess energy and celebrate the principle of Divine Feminine during the Hindu festival of Navaratri meaning “Nine-Nights.” The Sri Yantra consists of nine interlocking triangles, and it represents the Supreme Shakti, or cosmic energy, which is portrayed as a magnificent goddess. This goddess symbolizes the transcendent principle of the Mother as the source of all energy, power, prosperity and creativity and is especially revered during this festival.
A Conversation on Yoga and Motherhood
Are you are passionate about practicing yoga, but struggling to balance the demands of “Seventh Series” (having a family) with your desire to create or maintain time for yourself and your yoga practice?
Recently, I had a conversation about this struggle and especially the understanding that, wow, things will never be the same again.
Self Care Tips While Doing The Work
Finding the right balance of self-care practices are important during times of stress or deep inner work. If you have been feeling a lot of different emotions coming to the surface these past weeks, or feeling overwhelmed or just plain old stressed out, you need to be sure you are making time to take care of yourself.
The Upward Facing Dharma Dog
In the great Indian epic the Mahabharata, the Indian Pariah Dog features prominently, as possibly one of the first domesticated dogs in history…
he Pandava brothers decide it is also time for them to renounce their kingdom, and set out on their final journey to the top of Mount Kailash - the gateway for their ascension into heaven. Their shared wife, Draupadi, decides to go with them, along with Yudhisthira’s faithful dog…
Matsya - A Fish Will Guide Us
The “Fish” in all three of these postures is referring to the first avatar of Lord Vishnu. This myth first appears in the Shatapatha Brahmana (700-300 BCE). This story is one that we might be more familiar with than we realize…
Matsya keeps growing and growing, and Satyavrata continues moving him from one jar into another, always needing larger and larger containers, until he has no choice but to move him into the ocean…
This is possibly where we get the progressions of these postures. Each referring to a different period of Vishnu's transformation from a simple little fish, to the size of a 'half-king-fish' and finally into the form of a 'full-King' fish!
Matsyendra warns Satyavrata about the coming dissolution of the world…
Kapilasana - Mind Your Manners!
The name Kapila appears in many texts prior to the conception of Samkhya. In fact, Kapila is mentioned as one Vishnu’s names.
There is a story in the Brahma Purana where King Sagara commands his 60,000 sons to go searching for his sacrificial horse that he believes was stolen, as he can not complete the vedic ritual without it…
All is coming... All is going...
Somewhere along the way, I realized that “All is coming” meant ALL of it: the good, the bad, the ugly, the miserable, the beautiful, the exquisite, the pain unbearable, the joy insurmountable, the laughter and tears, new friendships and the loss of others, children, lovers, enemies, sickness, hours of being stuck in traffic, the feeling of lightness and oppressive heaviness, unbelievably good fortune as well as terrible hardships... ALL of it.
South Africa LOVE
We practice Yoga so that we can cultivate the strength and courage to gradually, step-by-step, day-by-day, walk our own long road to freedom...
Guru Purnima
There was power in his look and at the same time a sense of penetrating peace. Most of all I miss the all-encompassing sense of surrender I experienced when in his presence. Not only surrender to him as a guide, but more then that, it was a sense of letting go into God, something greater then any one individual. He was like the finger pointing at the moon.