Holy Smokes. There’s been a huge shift and I have finally created a perfectly imperfect meditation video. My first ever. Oh such wonderful new areas for me to grow and improve upon.

Thank you to my sis (in law) who is bravely battling cancer. You have inspired me. And inspired healing in circles known and unknown.

Blessings to all of you who are still hanging out at BarefootandUpsideDown. Would love feedback regarding this new adventure.

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Do you wish you could live more fully present in your life? I sure do, so I am working on expanding my sensory awareness. There is so much that passes me by, that never registers in my consciousness every waking (sleeping!) moment

What is sensual living, but a life spent paying attention. It’s a physical life. A receptive awareness. It is presence. Experiencing all that is. Touching, feeling, seeing, smelling, moving (yes, the body has that kinesthetic sense), listening, tasting. Any and all of these modalities can become meditations if you ramp up your awareness and really open yourself to what you are experiencing. Yoga itself becomes a powerful tool for meditation this way.

I just finished reading A HOUSE BY THE SEA by poet, May Sarton. Sarton describes living a sensual life in on the coast of Maine. I feel as if I’ve lived at Wild Knoll and pulled goldenrod from her delightful garden and sipped chablis on the patio in her colorful tapestry of existence beside the sea.

Here is a video that I found inspiring and hope you will too. I can’t wait to make my own BOOK OF SENSES. I invite you to live sensually for one month. Maybe we can compare notes afterwards.

Cassie’s Workshop: Book of Senses from Cassie Oswald on Vimeo.

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(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.

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Apricot Petals (barefoot photos)

1:39 Patanjali: yathabhimatadhyanadva

Bouanchaud:Choosing meditation according to one’s affinities also brings mental stability.

Iyengar:Or, by meditating on any desired object conducive to steadiness of consciousness.

Fuerstein:  Or restriction is achieved through meditation (dhyana) as desired.

Desikachar:  Any inquiry of interest can calm the mind. Sometimes the most simple objects of inquiry, such as the first cry of an infant, can help relieve mental disturbances.  Sometimes complex inquiries, such as into mathematical hypothesis, will help.  But such inquiries should not replace the main goal, which remains to change our state of mind gradually from distraction to direction.

GRADY: Do we accept our own spiritual practice as a valid means to enlightenment just as we accept others’ paths?

Do we rely solely on the asanas for development of mental stability or Do we choose meditation as a means for mental stability?

Do we continuously strive to eliminate distraction and develop direction in our lives?

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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.

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Xi'an dragon (NKG photo)

Slow breath

Slow thoughts

Are they the

same?

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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.

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Full moon or Gibbous, Swansboro NC (Michael Grady photo)

slant of gibbous moon

poem composed in darkness

feverish heartbeat

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“Is It Time To Stop Running?” is excerpted from some journal entries where I speak to myself. Sort of a metta-journal, if that makes any sense.

queen anne's lace in snow (ckg photo)

I am creating a post so that I might explain the voice that is used.

This, and some other pieces I hope to post in the near future, are not meant as didactic pieces. As with the practice journal, they are not prescription, rather they are a description of my process.

They are self-talk that I do to lift myself up or give me a kick in the butt, or pats of encouragement to keep going.

It’s self talking to self.

Inspired by Henri J.M. Nouwen’s The Inner Voice of Love, which is a truly incredible work.  You should stop reading this and FLY to the library to pick up a copy to savor in your own meditation.

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

Stop running and running and running. Sit still. The universe is speaking. Are you listening?

Can you quiet the ceaseless chatter? The endless drone of nonsensical words in a stream so thick, it gives you the heebiejeebies when you finally take a break from doing doing doing and sit and watch what’s going on in your little patch of gray matter.

And then what happens is you decide to TURN THEM OFF: all those voices cramming your station. You realize the static confuses and throws you off balance. Everything, every thought, every feeling, every “accomplishment” belongs to someone else. You want to know your self, some call it the TRUTH. Like a starving beast, you hunger after your life, no matter what it tastes like.

As your practice grows, so do the small spaces, the little deaths, momentary breaks, the lapses between the thoughts crowding your grey matter. It’s quiet there. Deep within, in the ancient place, probably the amygdala or thereabouts, is a locale where you exist in a pre-civilized state. It’s a state of joy (you can agree or disagree as you wish), a place of primordial bliss.

When sitting in that sweet neighborhood, all sense of time, all direction drops away. This is entering the GREAT UNKNOWN. Funny thing about this place is that you’ve always known it. It’s familiar, no doubt about that. You don’t feel lost when you are there in momentary bliss. Nope, not at all. You feel, for once in your half-century of “living” that you are finally home. Home at last. Home free. And afterward, whenever you are not there, you will remain homesick, unconnected. Not lost anymore though, because now you know the way home.

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Yoga Sutra 1.13 : tatra sthitau yatno’bhyasah

Bernard Bouanchaud’s translation: Persevering practice is the effort to attain and maintain the state of mental peace.

Patanjali tells us here that practice IS the effort to maintain inner peace. I’ve often wondered how I could maintain anything when I am twirling off into anger, or joy, or sadness, or confusion, or any of the other myriad emotions that flit through my being from one moment to the next. Then I re-read this sutra. There is nothing here about annihilating emotions. The practice is the work of maintaining equilibrium of the Self.

I’ve been working a lot with my emotions lately, wondering how do they fit into an awakened life? When am I processing an emotion and when is an emotion taking over? How do the stories I spin in my mind, in reaction to events in my life (shenpa), stir up emotions and feed them? How much leeway can I or do I afford any given emotion on any given day? For years, I’ve sat with the meditation:

I am not my thoughts.

I am not my emotions.

I am not my body.

Though I sat and repeated these phrases, I knew that on many levels I really DID identify myself as any or all of these aspects of my Self and I had no clue HOW one could do otherwise. Really, I know that my body continually changes, ages, and grows tired, but isn’t that big hulking tired person my Self? It’s hard enough to IMAGINE my self with a different body, much less to de-identify with having a body at all!

Thank you meditation.

Thank you savasana.

Thank you restorative yoga.

When I do these practices, I am often able to disengage from identity, whether intellectual, physical, emotional, spiritual (yes, I get caught identifying myself in those trips too!). I can breathe into the larger Self, the connection of us all. It is a spacious place. It is a place of joy. Compassion. Expansion. Beauty. Rest. Stillness. Energy. Awareness. It is nowhere. And everywhere.I am no one. And every one.

In this TED video (yes,I’m becoming a TED junkie Eve Ensler speaks eloquently about the importance of maintaining an emotional life. And true to form, I was crying halfway through. Thank you Eve, for reminding us of our wholeness in this age of fracture.

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