Monthly Archives: November 2008

halfmoon haiku

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Half-Moon over Ring Road (barefoot photos)

Here is an excerpt from Dr. Jay’s post on Yoga for Cynics.

A friend always tells me when I’m being Zen-like and irritating…particularly when, just after yoga class, I seem unable to form a solid opinion about where we should go for beer…wanting simply to flow along with others’ plans like a babbling brook…or something…and I appreciate that.


Meditating, I

become a pain in the ass

to all of my friends

**********************************************

My response: Half-Moon Haiku!

Old body flies through air,

stretches stiff limbs into joy —

Awakened freedom

Thanksgiving

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My mother’s mouth was always tight. I don’t know, but I guess that that was where she held on- for dear life I’d add. Really, so many kids, so many bills, a husband out of work, a huge house, readjusting to life as a nurse . . . I don’t think that I’d have any lips if I had that karma on my plate.

Priscilla Lasecki Kieber -Cape Carteret NC, March 2008

But not the Priscilla — she was strong. Like an ox strong. Like steel strong. Like Napolean strong — or Mother Theresa. My mother was/is amazing.

She’d use a pliers to pull out a stick wedged in my brother’s kneecap and the next minute she’d cart us to the beach for the afternoon. Before you knew it, she’d whip up a humongous pot of goulash for dinner.

There was always work to do in that mansion on top of the hill. And Mom led the pack.

I vowed to myself to never get lips like that, to never let my mouth harden against laughter, and joy. I wanted some of the softness and happiness of life. I really wanted big, full, voluptuous lips, but don’t you know, just my luck – I got thin lips. The only part of my big body that can be called skinny: my lips!

I work to soften them, but as years float by, tension mounts and creeps into the flesh.

So many patterns we acquire — most of them accrue unconsciously. Then BOOM — one day we wake up and discover that we have the same lips as our mother. Our mother!

Did we really need to turn on the world that way? Did rigidity set in while we were sleeping?

Yes, it’s true — it happens. I wake up and realize how full of tension my face is — a veritable scrunching of, hmmmm, what was that dream about anyway? Overnight, my face turned into a pug face — not that pugs aren’t kinda cute, mind you. It’s just that errrr, I’m not a dog and I thought I had some power — some control — over how much tension seeped into my cells. After all, I do all this practice — relaxation practice at that. So why am I beginning to look like a pug?

Ahhh, we’re back to the control thing, are we? We’re back to the itty bitty realization that life is not to be controlled. If you’d just soften up for a minute or two you’d know that.

Lay down your beloved title: Empress of the World. This is not a game — no one will play Civilization with you anymore because you always win. You take over.

It’s time to sit back a bit, honey. Let yourself be loved for who you are. Let yourself love yourself. Be grateful for who you are.

This is Thanksgiving, so let’s start right here: Grateful for the wonderful, glorious, messed-up toad-bunny, nuthead that you are.

With blessings to all of my thin-lipped readers (especially you, Mom), big mouth readers, and lovers of the blue sky. I wish you laughter, joy, and the gift of gratitude. Happy Thanksgiving.

zen center buddha

Rochester Zen Center little garden buddha with petunias

(ckg photo)

Winter yoga

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I’m looking at a scene of pure white splendor—that’s what snow does—it blankets the past in a blinding beauty. All the mud and crud: the leaves I never got around to raking, the straggling weeds I didn’t pull, the floppy detritus of hostas, tomatoes, daylillies that I never gathered and hauled to the compost bin—all lost beneath pristine glowing mounds.

Snowy Wren House in Mountain Ash Tree (ckg photo)It happens quickly. One morning autumn has high tailed it down south. Winter has arrived, obliterating the green shapes of my garden. The yard chores are out of my control—for six months I can forget the mower stored in the garage with the rakes and wheelbarrow. Breathing a sigh of relief, I question: Who cares anyway?

This life is not a race, nor even a job—we’re here to live. There’s important living to do, I remind myself.

There was my gorgeous friend crying on the phone yesterday afternoon — she needed an ear of comfort. Not sure I gave her much, but hey, I tried. I was there. I was not outside raking leaves.

Billowing gusts of Canadian air blow snow off the spruce bows. Handfuls of white, the size of snowballs are raining through my backyard. It’s all I see. Looks as if the earth and sky are dueling, and for now, the sky is winning. Heck, the sky team’s got endless ammo, right?

Where is all this going to lead?

All of this holiday cleaning and preparing. OK — really I wasn’t listening to my cuz ALL day. I also cleaned the fridge, taught yoga class, meditated…there is soooo MUCH TO DO. We have to make decisions, don’t we? Or else we’ll be obliterated.

I’m looking at the Mountain Ash Tree: Chinese red fruits dangle, each wearing a dunce cap of cold snow.

I’m thinking about how often I was wrong. How often I said what was so obviously the WRONG WORD, offered the WRONG advice, asked the WRONG request. Dear God, help me.

She hung up the phone, obviously unhappy with her self, her life, ME. I climbed into bed thinking of how I easy it is to contribute to another’s misery. It’s endemic to the species. The HUMAN species.

Why do I like snow? This is why — it’s fresh. It gives the earth a new face. It’s so obvious the sky has won. My efforts are so small. My disastrous conversations so minuscule in the grand scheme of seasons and earth turning, death and decay.

Besides, it’s too cold to go outside for long. Snow is a big fat arrow pointing inside. I follow that direction. I go deeper: it’s called yoga. When I practice, the past falls away. The future does not exist. I enter the arena of the heart. A place called LOVE, pure and simple. The words of the phone conversation don’t matter. The intention does. I really love my friend, even if we don’t always get it right.

Today I’m in a wintry mood, cleaning the house for the holidays and singing: Let it snow. Let it snow. Let it snow.

centering podcast

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Here it is~Laughing Yogini’s inaugural podcast : centering.

You can use it as a stand-alone, short relaxation or you can use it as a prelude to yoga asana practice. It is meant for practicing, so shut the door, turn off your cell phone and begin to breathe mindfully with me. What fun! If you’ve never ever experienced guided relaxation, hang on Cowgirl— you’re in for a change.

Emerald Isle NC: Warrior 3 (SPrusinski photo)

CENTO of LONGING

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A Cento of Longing after Neruda

 

To survive myself I forge you like a weapon.

Because of all that I was, I bear only these scars.

 

The memory of you emerges from the night around me—

such a passion of weeping tied to my body!

 

While light wraps you in its mortal flame,

everything bears me farther away, as though you were noon.

 

Cold flower heads raining over my heart,

loneliness sustained by a constant face,

 

a sea of longing slices my breast into pieces─

Oh let me remember you as you were before you existed,

 

I am like a scorched rock,

yes: seed-germs, and grief, and every thing that throbs,

 

the tormenting structure of that silence:

Will you come back? Will you leave me here, dying?

 

 

 

The night wind revolves in the sky and sings,

we had only to love one another.

 

No one sees the moon that bleeds in my mouth

but when I hold you, I hold everything.

 

There where the waves shatter on the restless rocks

I loved you without knowing I did; I searched to remember you,

 

in your eyes of mourning the land of dreams begin.

I go so far as to think that you own the universe,

 

in you the rivers sing and my soul flees in them,

you fill everything, you fill everything.

 

Like a bonfire of awe in which my thirst is burning,

I send out red signals across your absent eyes.

 

Ah your body, a frightened statue, naked

and charged to insanity with electric currents,

 

in that sadness of mine that you know

I live in a harbor from which I love you,

 

you are like the night, with its stillness and constellations,

the biggest stars look at me with your eyes.

 

Invade me with your hot mouth; interrogate me─

you are my dark familiar clay.

 

Get used to seeing the shadow behind me, accept

that sorrow rises and falls, comes near with its deep spoons.

 

They’re liars, those who say I lost the moon,

I sleep with the night,

 

I am born again: I am the owner of my own darkness

unsuspectingly, singing with the wind.

 

We are the only blind ones, endlessly alone,

What a world! What a deep parsley!

 

or have you gone away-?-(then I’d know the winter had begun)

and that, Love, is the shadow life has given me.

 

What rock, what smoke showed you where I live?

Silent and limping like a scarecrow with a bloody grin,

 

lost in the forest, I broke off a dark twig,

this wounded springtime was blessed.

 

The earth has known you for a long time now,

oh, may nothing touch you but the chilly salt!

 

Hunting through the leaves of the night for your hands,

kiss by kiss I travel your little infinity,

 

I want to eat your skin like a whole almond,

Love, I’ve made an inventory of your body.

 

Days hang like bridges between darknesses,

shimmer as orange and gasoline rainbows.

 

I love you as certain dark things are to be loved:

like a quick stream dropping from under the snow,

 

and yet beyond the earth, beyond its shadowy dark

there’s nothing but light, quantities, clusters,

nothing matters or has a name,

not even the shy mineral hands of the hills.

 

 

You have vines and stars in your hair,

conquering light, you blister with your white energy,

 

no withering autumn ever touched us

from the rugged landscapes of cold and earthquake.

 

Your eyes go out to the water and the waves rise,

but love was not like that: love was a lunatic city.

 

In the city we wander like country people, confused,

green blood dropping from the sky into memory.

 

The light arrives and opens like a rose garden

on its honeysuckle feet in your bedroom,

 

the transmigration of dream into salad─

lost syllables that were searching for your mouth.

 

O love, O crazy sunbeam and purple premonition

which builds an Eden with a few green leaves,

 

I see your image, a bonfire, burning in the water,

I love you in order to begin to love you.

 

Fly: electrify the natural names of things!

I want to look back and see you in the branches,

 

your laugh: it reminds me of a tree,

it accompanies me through the sky,

 

a man’s needs, a woman’s, and a life’s,

the mind and love live naked in this house.

 

 

You learned your holiness from flour:

the you of a kiss, the me of a secret bread,

 

I don’t have time enough to celebrate your hair

in this metallic homeland lifted by snow,

 

I need the light of your energy─

what I owe you is like a well in a wilderness

 

…and I will die of love because I love you,

you, compact and planetary, my dove, my globe.

 

Tomorrow will come on its green footsteps,

a single moon drop in the grass,

 

what was sleeping above your soul will rise─

the numberless heart of the wind.

 

The day weaves and unweaves its heavenly net

of time and water and waves and noise and rain,

 

suddenly your heart shows me my way

and through love I will be, you will be, we’ll be.


NOTES: This form of this poem is a cento – it is composed of lines “stolen” from another poet, in this case, the great Chilean activist, lover, and writer, Pablo Neruda. Traditionally, the cento was 100 lines in length, as is my piece. I wrote this after many ruminations and meditations upon “human longing” since I am so often overcome with a sense of longing. In the poem, LOVE DOGS, the SUFI poet Jelaluddin RUMI tells us this longing is GOD’s message:

He dreamed he saw Khidr, the guide of souls,

in a thick, green foliage,

“Why did you stop praising?”

“Because I’ve never heard anything back.”

“This longing

you express is the return message.”

 

What do you long for? How does longing play out in your asana practice? Does it turn into grasping (aparigraha)? Can you sit within that longing and accept it as an integral, even sacred part of your being? It’s a worthy practice for this life.

Shangri-La?

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Here I am: in a home heated comfortably in a community I’ve lived in for over twenty years, with running water, stocked pantry, computer with Internet access, walls lined with books, downstairs yoga studio, garden filled with flowers, vegetables, fruit trees, a running car, clothing that more than fills my needs, and all this within phone access of all my eight siblings and parents, whom I am free to call at any time.

One of the fruits of yoga, or any spiritual growth, for that matter, is the ability to look outward, to see all beings as an embodiment of the Light in us all. Through the practice of gratitude, we acknowledge our gifts, and in time, begin the journey of relieving the suffering of others.

Today, I would like to bring to your attention to the plight of refugees around the world. These are folks who’ve been displaced from their homeland. Their family ties broken; they are often penniless or otherwise existing in extreme poverty, and they are often in powerless situations that invite physical, emotional, or spiritual abuse. The Women’s Commission for Refugee Women and Children provides us with many documented studies and recommendations for action.

Through my association with BlogCatalog, I join with bloggers around the world today (Bloggers United – see badge) bringing to light the stories of worldwide refugees and the effort to link refugees with their families. Here is one story of a displaced people struggling to regain livelihood and rebuild lives in in the face of a ten year civil war, the plight of displaced populations in Nepal: Don’t Call it Shangri-La, Economic Programs for Displaced Populations in Nepal.

Won’t you join me by shedding the light of yoga in dark corners around the globe? Please share your stories with us.


carolyn’s rice pudding recipe

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A Yogini’s Recipes for Happiness

Here’s a basic outline of my rice pudding recipe that will easily serve a dozen hungry folks. Rebecca’s comment that follows shows a way of making a delicious vegan version.

Lowfat Rice pudding with Macintosh apple


Ingredients:

1 cup rice

(you can use any kind, brown, basmati, fancy wild, sticky white…whatever, I’ve tried most and they all seem to work with this method of long cooking)

1/2 gallon milk

(I prefer organic skim milk. In addition, you can add a can or two of evaporated milk, and/or a can or two of condensed milk, but if you don’t have any around, plain skim milk works too)

Sweetener to taste

(About one cup of homemade apple sauce works really well, if you have it; otherwise you can use honey, maple syrup, brown sugar, or another can of condensed milk. I haven’t tried agave yet in the pudding – let me know if it works for you)

Coconut

(Sometimes I use the finely shredded organic coconut, but I almost always use a can or two of nonfat coconut milk)

Currants

(I prefer to use about a half box of currants, but if I don’t have any in the house, I’ll use raisins. Sometimes I add other dried fruit: dates, apricots, papaya, even chopped dried mango bits add interest)

Walnuts

(At least one cup of chopped walnuts. Sometimes I use pistachios; In the past I have also used pecans, or hazelnuts, or any combination of nuts with good effects)

Cinnamon

(You can cook the rice with about six cinnamon sticks or add a tablespoon of ground cinnamon to the pudding as you add the milk and other ingredients.)

Directions:

1. Cook the rice using your favorite method.

2. Add the other ingredients to the rice in a large, heavy-bottom pot.

3. Cook on low for a long time (two hours or longer) until mixture thickens. It will continue to thicken as the rice absorbs the liquid even after it is done cooking.

4. Serve warm or cold. Dress it up with whipped cream or a dollop of yogurt.

eat pray love

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Though I stumbled upon Elizabeth Gilbert’s eat pray love by chance in the famous Portland bookstore, Powell’s City of Books, it had already been on the New York Times Bestseller list for over two years. I loved the story then and still do, so when I was asked to contribute to a discussion about meditation and the “India” chapter of the text at a local book group meeting, I was happy to comply and offer a bowl of my rice pudding for the dessert table. This book has already been reviewed and written about extensively, so I’ll simply add some quotations that were particularly noteworthy from the India chapter:

From section 38 ~ Why practice yoga?

Yoga, in Sanskrit, can be translated as “union.” It originally comes from the root word yuj, which means “to yoke,” to attach yourself to the task at hand with ox-like discipline. And the task at hand in Yoga is to find union—between mind and body, between the individual and her God, between our thoughts and the source of our thoughts, between teacher and student, and even between ourselves and our sometimes hard-to-bend neighbors.

From section 70 ~ regarding religion:

I think you are free to search for any metaphor whatsoever which will take you across the worldly divide whenever you need to be transported or comforted.

Your job, then, should you choose to accept it, is to keep searching for the metaphors, rituals and teachers that will help you move ever closer to divinity.

From section 68 ~ the effects of practice:

But it was pure, this love that I was feeling. It was godly. I looked around the darkened valley and I could see nothing that was not God. I felt so deeply, terribly happy. I thought to myself, “Whatever this feeling is — this is what I have been praying for. And this is also what I have been praying to.”

Here’s a wonderful section (64) where she comes to terms accepting her personality:

. . .if God wanted me to be a shy girl with thick, dark hair, He would have made me that way, but He didn’t. Useful, then, might be to accept how I was made and embody myself fully therein.

. . . that doesn’t mean I can’t take a serious look at y talking habits and alter some aspects for the better — working within my personality. Yes, I like talking, but perhaps I don’t have to curse so much, and perhaps I don’t always have to go for the cheap laugh, and maybe I don’t need to talk about myself quite so constantly.

And from section 58 on Prayer ~

Prayer is a relationship; half the job is mine. If I want transformation, but can’t even be bothered to articulate what, exactly, I’m aiming for, how will it ever occur?

From section 56 on types of meditation practice:

Now that I have my own personal issues with the very word detachment, having met spiritual seekers who already seem to live in a state of complete emotional disconnect from other human beings and who, when they talk about the sacred pursuit of detachment, make me want to shake them and holler, “Buddy, that is the last thing you need to practice!”

From section 49 – How to reach contentment:

Life, if you keep chasing it so hard, will drive you to death. Time — when pursued like a bandit—will behave like one; always remaining one county or one room ahead of you, changing its name and hair color to elude you, slipping out the back door of the motel just as you ‘re banging through the lobby with your newest search warrant, leaving only a burning cigarette in the ashtray to taunt you. At some point you have to stop because it won’t. You have to admit that you can’t catch it. That you’re not supposed to catch it. At some point, As Richard keeps telling me, you gotta let go and sit still and allow contentment to come to you.

If you’ve read the book, we’d love to hear the passages that spoke to you. If you haven’t read this funny, insightful, and moving memoir, here’s a link.