Tag Archives: Meditation

Strong and Soft

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Maple leaves in Chautauqua county NY
(c) 2012 barefootphotos

6AM: woke up and since I had done supta padanghustasana 1 before falling asleep,I drew up both legs for urdhva pascimottanasa for 3 minutes,  then Happy Baby. Thought about the relationship of HB and Supta 2 with the outer rotation of the leg in the hip socket.

Then a series of twists: supine cross- legged, crocodile, revolved belly, half supine virasana, gentle bridge 3.

Was going down to the studio at 7:30, but then S. skyped me from Poland. People first. Karma yoga in action. LOVE. Asana Practice could happen later.

After our call, I cleaned the studio and picked, prepping for the 10 AM class.

I’ve been reading student meditation journals most of the afternoon, so still have not returned to an asana practice.

This evening, though, I took a break and meditated with one of Susan Piver’s 20 minute guided practices. susanpiver.com If you haven’t yet, I highly recommend you subscribe to this very accessible meditation teacher’s online OPEN HEART PROJECT. Susan’s got me thinking about the soft front body and the strong back body in meditation posture. How there is no boundary. How they exist simultaneously. How awareness shifts from one to the other. How difficult it is to hold them BOTH in awareness. But in a strange way, it’s comforting to know they are both there. Both.

10 PM In the studio for a two hour session. Pigeon (still difficult on left side as it activates the sciatica), Half handstand,  Wide angled seated forward fold with twists, cobbler pose, Downward facing dog pose,sphinx, bow, camel. Really paid close attention to camel as I looked up several articles online regarding alignment. Kept repeating as I played with alignment.Headstand for 4.5 minutes, Child pose with close attention to maintaining hips resting on heels and releasing spine into front of body.   Shoulderstand and a quiet Legs Up The Wall, hips on the shoulderstand stack of blankets. Connecting the soft front of the body with the strong back body.Comforted, I was satisfied and went to bed.

Carolyn’s Tonglen Video

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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.

Meditation Journal, breath

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Snow Shadows (barefoot photos)

A rambling excerpt of a practice journal entry that I thought might be of some use . . .  .

December 15, 2010, Wednesday morning, 9:10 AM

Just meditated with soft ujjayi breath for an hour. Shocked when I opened my eyes and realized how much time had passed. That happens so often. The timeless place opens and I enter.

Mind wandered. Thinking about the blog and books. But kept coming back to Breath.

Disengaging from the heaviness of the body, even the entanglement of the mind.

Breath is so light and free. It is always here, always available, as much as I want it. A gift I need to be present to.

A tool for growth rest healing love.

Breath teaches me to love my essential self, my core, my self dis-embodied and de-minded, essential, free, perfect, and imperfect.

Breath is eternal and brings me into eternity.

Breath is who I want to Be.

Breath is who I am.

sutra 1.39, choosing meditation

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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?

Breath, a Pleasurable Path to Mindfulness

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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.

Slow breath. Slow thoughts.

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Xi'an dragon (NKG photo)


Slow breath

Slow thoughts



Are they the

same?

early spring meditation, birdsong

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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.

Niyama 3, Tapas, Heart Fire

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Yoga sutra 2.43: kayendriyasiddhirasuddhiksayattaapasah

Kaya; the body. Indriya: the eleven sense organs, including thought. Siddih: power, perfection. Asuddhi: impurity. Ksayat: by the destruction, elimination. Tapasah: discipline, asceticism, austerity.

By eliminating impurity, a disciplined life brings perfection and mastery to the body and the eleven sense organs. (trans. Bernard Bouanchaud, The Essence of Yoga)

White Starburst (carolyn grady photo)

Tapas, the third yogic niyama, or code for living well, is another means for personal evolution. We don’t embark upon these practices for the sake of austerity or novelty or egoic gratification. T.K.V. Desikachar (The Heart of Yoga) stresses that Tapas must not cause suffering, “everything about tapas must help you move forward.”

Tapas is the inner fire or discipline which keeps the yogin practicing. Lethargy would be its opposite. One of the definitions of the word YOGA is “discipline,” so it’s easy to see how  Tapas is related to daily practice.

What is it that draws me to my mat day after day, year after year? It’s the fire that burns in my heart center, awakening a sense of embodiment that yearns for asana to express itself.

Yoga Scholar, Bernard Bouanchaud, asks us to consider the relationship between contentment, santosha which implies acceptance and Tapas, the fire that burns impurities. I’d ask, how then does Shauca, or purity itself affect or deepen the Tapasic experience?

A tidbit of trivia I learned from Wikipedia: One who undertakes tapas is a Tapasvin.

A primary purpose of yoga is to become aware of, to channel, and to utilize energy. Yoga can be considered a form of Tapas. Certainly it is integral to the yogin’s life. In Yoga Mind Body & Spirit, the popular teacher and New Zealand yogini, Donna Farhi says that, “Far from being a kind of medicinal punishment, tapas allows us to direct our energy toward a fulfilled life of meaning and one that is exciting and pleasurable.”

The other elements of the ashtanga yoga are inter-related practices. Pranayama and Asana help to stoke the fire. Pratyahara assists the Tapasvin in focusing the energy. Brahmacharya, the moderation of one’s vital energy, is a natural extension of Tapas. Its practice helps keep the heart fire bright and pure.

Pink Explosion (carolyn grady photo)

Farhi quotes Buddhist teacher, Pema Chodron,  “What we discipline is any form of potential escape from reality.”

It’s Tapas that helps me put some ooomph into a daily pranayama, so the practice does not become dull and listless. Tapas propels me and holds me on my dietary regiment. I pray for Tapas to light the flame of my teaching, service, and for inspiration for this blog!

Is it time to stop running?

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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.

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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.

Yoga Sutra 1.13, an emotional life

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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.