late afternoon echo
tea leaves
afloat in hot water
china cups
a slate-topped table
on worn-down ground
white feather
like a word murmured
slowly lonely
floats
onto the gray slate
no more daylight
rolling over the green mountain
Frosted Oregano Flower (barefoot photos)
This delicious radish dish will stoke your potassium. They lose their “radishy pepperiness” as they roast, so even non-radish eaters may enjoy this one.
Fresh radishes are recommended for the fullest flavor.
I don’t care for the texture of radish greens, so I added some also weathered freshly picked beet greens chopped instead.
DIRECTIONS
Wash, peel and chop radishes. Toss in baking pan with balsamic vinegar, olive oil, and freshly ground pepper.
Bake at 350 degrees for about 15 minutes.
Add another dollop of vinegar and re-toss.
After another 15 minutes, add chopped beet greens and toss again.
Bake another 5-10 minutes or until greens wilt.
ENJOY.
Reclining Supported Cobbler's Pose (barefoot photos)
My yogic journey is a beautiful adventure into the Cave of The Heart.
When reclining, either in savasana or supine upon an angled bolster, I am most aware of relaxing and entering this sacred cave. My true home of holiness. The Silence within and without.
This is a most delicious time.
With the body completely supported and happy, I dis-attach from my physical self, the outer kosha called annanamaya kosha, and commence a journey inward. Though I have practiced for years, it doesn’t always happen. Sometimes the path is blocked, cluttered with Mind and Body chattering painfully, refusing to release my sweet Heart.
Ahhhh, but when it does happen, when I travel through Pranamaya (breath sheath), Manomaya (mind sheath), and Vijnanamaya (wisdom sheath), there is a synergy of Body Mind Heart Awareness opening and growing. I enter a deeper, wider place of no place and no time. I enter a lush cave of Anandamaya, the bliss sheath.
From the website of holistic healer and Catholic priest, Fr. Bill Whittier:
“Life is a journey to find ourselves, our God and our own wisdom. The beginning and end of our journey is the cave of the heart. The cave of the heart is the deepest psychological ground of one’s personality. It is the inner sanctuary where self-awareness goes beyond analytical reflection and opens out into metaphysical and theological confrontation with the Abyss of the unknown yet always present. This is the one who is more intimate to us than we are to ourselves. In Romans 5 in the Christian Scriptures this is the heart where God’s love is poured forth by the Holy Spirit. In the Hindu tradition the Upanishads speak of the spirit of the One who created the universe as dwelling in our heart. The same spirit is described as the One who in silence is loving us all.”
I invite you to venture into this cave during your next yoga practice. There is nothing to do or even to try to do. Just give yourself permission to release into your deepest being. Invite your self to delve into the cave of bliss.
Yogini-blogger, Donna Suguna Marguglio (Emotional Healing Through Yoga) commented on an earlier barefootandupsidedown asteya post that “Teaching and practicing yoga has lifted the burden of wanting “stuff”.”
Why is that?
Simply because yoga is an inner-directed journey. California-based yogini-writer, Judith Lasater on the Yoga Therapy Web teleconference The Art of Forward Bending, reminds us that the eight limbs of of yoga, beginning with the yamas, niyamas, asana, pranayama, and moving deeper into pratyhara, dhyana, dharana, and finally, samadhi, all take us deeper and deeper on this inward journey.
And guess what? This inward journey doesn’t require a lot of stuff!
All I need is to be present. Easier said than done, eh? I mean, really, between work, my grown kids, and my elderly parent, I have all I can do to eat three meals a day much less Be Present for my life. How can I possibly be HERE while I bounce from taking my Dad to the doctor, advising my kid on whether he should move or not, and writing up a proposal for a really cool new energy saving device my company – and the world – will profit from? Most of the day I feel as if I’m running on automatic. And now I’ve got to buy gifts, write holiday cards, prepare a special meal for the family, and decorate a tree. There’s no time or energy to be present.
Yoga happens once we let go. Let go of taking care of everyone’s else’s needs. Even let go of taking care of our own peripheral needs. Our deep longing is to connect with our core self. We need to listen to an often quiet inner voice that is only heard once we relax the walls built up during our daily “run.”
I have to let go of the grip my life and the grip everyone else’s life has on me in order to get to my mat in the first place. I make a conscious decision, knowing that this is the way to a more richer, deeper, more compassionate, and fulfilling life.
This is the way to take better care of myself. Of my family. My work. My neighbors. My pets. Garden. House. You name it. I will let go and I will practice.
Getting to my mat and my cushion is one way to practice. However, there are times when I am needed to be present for, say my father-in-law’s needs regarding his assisted living facility. Should I head to the mat for a much needed headstand practice and tell him “Later, ‘gator” OR should I turn being with him, LISTENING deeply and BEING PRESENT to him, into a yogic practice, say a compassionate practice of the third yogic YAMA: asteya, or generosity?
If I did that, I’d be practicing non-grasping or asteya toward my own yoga practice.
What’s so beautiful about this is that only you can really judge how important your “mat” practice is at that moment. Only you can decide if you would like to exercise your heart opening into generous listening and being present through yoga asana, meditation, or gifting your self to another person. It’s all one practice. It’s your life.
Whether or not you practice any of the other yogic limbs this holiday season, please join me in the practice of asteya. Grow awareness of how you can and do GIVE of yourself as well as to yourself over the next couple of weeks. Your heart will blossom and your generosity will grow deeper and deeper.If it suits you, reinforce your practice with a running log in your journal of a couple of ways you practiced asteya off your mat each day.
There is no limit to love! Being present is the greatest gift. Asteya is both an expression of love and a way to open ourselves into love. Hmmmm, how can I wrap that and put it under the tree?
I would love to give away some of my over-stocked yoga library, so please share your experiences in the comments.The best ideas for practicing asteya this season will receive a free yoga book.
(2010 barefoot photos)
As a person who makes up names for people, I thought I should flip the cart and look at my own names.
Recently someone asked if I preferred Carol over Carolyn and immediately I quipped about how my birth family never got that my name was Carolyn since they all still call me Carol. The truth is who cares?
I’ve been called worse, such as the childhood name used by my older siblings, CurlyBeaver. You can see in the photo that I am definitely not curly….more likely it was Curly from the Three Stooges TV show. Thanks guys. The beaver part came from the buck teeth they told me I’d have because I sucked my thumb for so long.
My Baptismal name comes from the holy day I was born near: a Christmas carol. And Carol is a beautiful name that means “song.” However, my second grade teacher was annoyed that I switched between the different spellings and said I had to decide; was my name Carol or Carolyn? I chose the latter, but it was too late; my fam continued to call me Carol.
My ancestry shows up, not only in the French version of the first name I chose, but also in my middle and confirmation names. My middle name is Ann, the name of my Bavarian grandmother. When I made my Confirmation, the sacrament of officially becoming a practicing Catholic, I chose Priscilla, the (Polish) name of my mother.
Since I was born into a traditional Roman Catholic family, I was also named for a saint. The saint that goes with Carol is St. Charles Borromeo. Now I really resented that! Named after a boy saint…ugh. To make matters worse, I was a bit of a tomboy. Lo and behold,one day long after I was grown and my kids were grown,I came across a couple of prints of my guy, Charles, at the Indiana University Art Center. He’s the patron saint of the plague! He was a healer who ventured into areas no one else dared to go. Hey, not a bad guy to be named after, I thought…smiling with pride, for a change.
Other names:I was named Sherebiah when I lived in the Atlantic City Children of God commune at 17. It means, Flame of the Lord, according to one source. He was a Levite priest, a “man of understanding” according to another source. …not a bad one to be named after either, I guess.
You probably know LaughingYogini…I gave that one up because I didn’t want my site here confused with laughter yoga, which sounds like a lot of fun therapy, but not what I practice….though I do enjoy laughing a lot and engage in comical endeavors whenever possible (on or off the mat).
Then there’s Kalyani, the Sanskrit name my meditation teacher gave when I was initiated into that lineage. Said it would be a good way to mark the changes I would undergo as I practiced. It means Beautiful; Auspicious; Blessed. It’s certainly the prettiest sounding of all my names. I’d like to think that I possess all of those attributes as well. I’m no longer a practicing member of that lineage, but I do like it the name! Feel free to use it whenever you like 
So what meaning do I gather from my names? A reminder that I am all of these and probably a good many other things that folks have called me. And I am none of these as well.
I can add “I am not my name” to the set of verses I often meditate upon. Or I can spend some more time with one of the names and invite the attributes it embodies to deepen my life. Can’t go wrong either way.
Your choice: call me whatever you like.
"Oklahoma" rosebud in October (barefoot photos)
One of my teachers offered a teleconference course on sacred self-care. Oh, I thought, this is pushing things a bit, I mean, really sacred self care?
Furthermore, why should I sign up, I already teach self-care. Certainly I know how important it is to devote some time everyday to the important task and pleasure of taking care of myself.
Well, it was time for me to wake up to the essence as well as the deep importance of self-care practice.
The journaling and meditations I did highlighted long held resistance to my own self-care. Could I be hard-wired to NOT take care of myself? I wondered. Was it a genetic trait? Am I simply and incorrigibly lazy?
As the class progressed week by week, I found a deep well of pleasure arose in my bodymind whenever I gave myself a gift of self-care. It’s possible to tap into that well as a means of motivating myself to continue developing self-care practices.
This week, our homework was to identify one self-care practice to focus on and try to develop it. A small step it would seem, but progress and transformation happens in small simple steps repeated time and again.
So, what am I working on? My negative self-talk. I’m growing my mindfulness around the times I call myself names or otherwise speak poorly to my beautiful self. It’s tough. Sometimes I catch myself disparaging the voice that catches, “Oh, there you go again, you idiot.” Yes, I can even use mindfulness against myself! So I’m continuing to practice softening and then softening again. I need a lot of practice. Unfortunately, it seems I’m giving myself plenty of opportunity. Grrr.
I do recognize how terribly important this is though. It forms the foundation of the spiritual path. Think about it. Better yet, conjure up the feelings in your body of an abundance of self-care. Then ask yourself what would happen if you had that available all the time….
Here’s hoping that you are floating in nirvana-land with me on this one. It’s just a little bit of self-care away!
If you are jazzed by the thought of floating on a cushion of wondrous self-care, READ MORE; visit LUMINOUS HEART.
Practicing yoga postures without breath awareness sustains physical benefits such as increased flexibility, deepening strength, improved balance.
Seeds at Watson Lake, Prescott AZ (barefoot photos)
When breath becomes an integral component of asana, the mind focuses and can achieve the single-pointed awareness so often mentioned by the ancient sages.
Breath awareness is key for deepening yoga practice because it links the mind-body into a unified being. As it anchors the mind to the physical movement (or non-movement), it awakens the body’s intelligence, as B.K.S. Iyengar says.
Mindful awareness then turns the practice from a purely physical level into meditation for the practitioner.
Breath awareness is also key to opening into more mindful awareness of life itself. When my thoughts or emotions start to spin out in their all too often merry escapades, I find that checking in on my breath can slow the wild energy down and I can more easily glimpse the reality I am experiencing sans whatever emotional or mental machinations surrounding said reality.
A simple practice for increasing your conscious awareness of your personal breath patterns is to simply notice the breath and then give it a short name, such as rushing breath, or lazy breath, or not-breathing (yes, breath holding is more common than you might think), or hyper-ventilating.
Checking in with the breath, once per day, will increase your mindful awareness of the moment. As a bonus, you may find, as I have, that breathing FEELS good. Through continued practice, I have found a beautiful relationship developing with my breath. It’s a marriage that gives me much pleasure.
Butterfly bush flower (barefoot photos)
For those of us in the northern hemisphere, the dog days of summer have settled in with a big ole lazy heat wave. Who wants to move when the air is so heavy? Yoga class today? No, thanks, set me in front of my fan with an icy latte and a spicy novel. It’s good to slow down in the heat, even if that means giving ourselves permission to laze around.
At some point though, the novel ends, and the body calls for movement, despite the sweltering weather. Recent research shows SITTING to be a major culprit in health decline. So I’m heading to the studio, no matter how strong the sun is today. No matter how lazy my mind tells me that I am.
I’ve been working on supta padanghusthasana (reclining leg lift) which is a foundation pose. It’s a forward bend that is practiced lying on the floor with the back of the body completely supported. Even if my back is achy or slightly injured, I find I enjoy the stretch and release of this particular pose.
With both knees bent, I reach for the big toe of my left foot with the second and third fingers of my left hand. Those are the “peace sign” fingers for all you lovers of hamstring release. Stretching the left leg, reaching the toe pads toward the ceiling, lengthening the inner ankle bone up and away, I soften my shoulders, my hips, my belly, my face and gaze gently up at my big toe. Maybe I curl my mouth into a half-smile. Just for the heck of it and because I need to remind myself that I am inviting my hamstrings to release with non-forceful effort.
Sometimes I practice with the foundation foot pressed into a wall. It’s amazing how that can ground the femur. Then I can invite the groins to release deep within. Sending my awareness into the places I tend to hold and then slowly breathing into that area. The lifted leg slides a bit closer toward my shoulder. Perhaps I’m able to grasp that ankle today. The lower back responds to the stretch by softening and dropping. I imagine my brain dropping onto the back of my skull as my thinking slows.
And then, for fun, sometimes I practice while in legs-up-the-wall pose.
There are the variations, beginning with supta padangusthasana two: Turning the leg out from the hip so that the knee begins to look toward the floor, I draw the raised leg away from the body and up towards the shoulder.
Supta Padangusthasana #2 (barefoot photos)
Or Supta padangusthasana three which is not an official pose but delivers a strong stretch all the way around the hip. I swing the lifted leg back to the center; switch the hand grasping my foot, and invite my body to roll onto the side as the foot drops onto the floor and I release the opposite arm away from me in a “T: position. With a strong exhale into the shoulder blades, I tuck the other shoulder under my body and release the upper hip away from the leg
MMMMMM, It’s all delicious.
Baby Wren (barefoot photos)
In Western New York, Spring, the mud-licked goddess of joy and rebirth, has floundered through the melting snows of March and found her way with the warmer, softer breezes, flowering snowdrops, and brilliant birdsong.
Neighbors are sweeping off salt-littered stoops and chatting in the street. All agree: it’s been a long, tough winter.
Mindfulness meditations can bring me right home into the season. I practice opening to what is happening during this, the most ephemeral of all seasons. Sometimes I sit with a palm outstretched and filled with sunflower seeds for the chickadees.
Whether they land or not doesn’t matter. I’m offering and watching.
Sometimes the garden bench is the most inviting place in the world. I practice listening and find it much harder than watching. Doesn’t matter though. I continue and begin to feel as if life itself has slowed its push and shove. I am no longer a tacit observer of the environment, perched on the bench, waiting for life to begin. I feel the vibration of the sounds move through me. A slight shimmer passes inside my arms and I breathe through the heart center. I am no longer an alien entity; I’m a living being in an alive environment. A sense arises from deep in my spine that I’m home again.
Early spring meditation: Open a window or door, or even better, sit outside in a garden or park, tune your ears to a specific bird call and listen as long and as carefully as you can. If Mind wanders about in that spring restlessness, gently bring it back to the song. Just as you would observe your breath, observe everything you can about this particular song.
The rise and fall of the melody,
the loudness,
the harshness or softness,
the pitch,
the duration of the notes,
the repetition.
Can you hear other birds responding?
Can you feel the sound entering your ears?
What happens when your consciousness is attuned to your hearing, does that affect what or how you hear?
Invite the song to permeate your being.
Allow your life to become this birdsong. Where do you feel it?
Breathe.
Facing myself IS the HARDEST lesson. I REALLY REALLY don’t wanna go there. BUT it’s the only way to wake up. And we (you, me, etc etc) REALLY REALLY do wanna wake up, which leaves us no choice. WE gotta do it. We gotta go there ~ into that scary horrible ugly part of ourselves. The part of me that my sweet EGO protects so coyly. After all, I IDENTIFY myself as NOT that. I am soooo different from OTHER people who do that. Yeah, right.
Just returned from hanging out with all 8 of my sibs, their “spice” as well as a handful of nieces and nephews. Our Mom died just before Valentine’s Day and we rented a big beach house. All of us. TOGETHER. In one house. Imagine. The noise of everyone talking was a lesson in patience itself. Now I really love these folks, BUT an hour or a couple of hours is ENOUGH. After several days covert strains in the relationships begin to manifest and growl….grrrrr. I begin to wish I had more patience, more humility, more generosity of spirit, more confidence, and above all, more kindness.
The hardest part of being with these folks I grew up with is that they really do know me. As much as I want to think that I’m somehow different and alienated from them, as much as I try to marginalize myself, in my core, I know that the parts of them that I don’t like or appreciate, their character flaws, their spiritual weaknesses, are, to some degree, also mine. Furthermore, their complaints or, in the case of my family, their jokes about my flaws are probably right on. There is no sense even to try to counter their accusations.
Ring-Billed Gull on Lake Erie (ckg photo)
That’s the problem with being a close family. We know one another perhaps more than we’d like to admit. When I look at one of them, it’s as if I am looking in a mirror. They reflect back to me who I am. Even if I don’t want to see that particular part of myself. Of course, it works the other way as well. Sometimes I can see such beauty and purity of spirit in one of my sibs that I immediately jump to claim as being a part of THAT family.
To continue to grow however,I need to push through the soft spots of ease and learn to soften the harder areas of dis-ease and un-comfort.