musica y Yoga

I am a fan of silence.  I can feel it’s space in my ear drums. I can feel when it peels off that hot caramel of samskaras off of my brain.

Bad memories from High School…gone.  Unpleasant experiences from childhood, scraped away.  My inner connection with negativity as a coping tool…still working on that one.  The feeling that all the choices I have made in the past have jinxed me in my current life……………. fading, at least less alarming.

I am in the moment of feelings, connection and experiences that can now stretch and sprawl in all this new found space inside.  I make time for the quiet.  It is my get out of jail free card-silence.

Adding Yoga to the quiet lets my body breath.  I can really slow down.  I am on no tempo, but my own tempo.  My inner rhythm feeds me the remedy of the day and allows my body to stand out and be itself.

There are also those moments when I am practicing in the quiet and I will hear a sound, muffled and distant where I feel timeless.  The noise, whether it’s a bird call, car motor, or human voice, brings me into a deep state of belonging.  I belong to that sound.

There are other days when my practice needs a lot of coaxing.  Times when I feel like a stale saltine, that just needs a hot bowl of minestrone and a little butter to become appealing again.  Music is the hot bowl of minestrone, and the right clothes (I kid  not, it has made the difference) is the butter.

Yoga music, wind chimes, wood flutes, and synthesizers are one route, but there is also the stuff sitting in my cd cases that I may not have thought would blend well with Yoga.  Depending on the choice, the music can land me right in the center of a mood or far removed from my existing mood.  Below is a list  that I use to practice yoga to on those stale saltine days, or those overwhelmingly emotional days.    The music can give this “stuff”  a place to go.

Atlas Sound-Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel.

Andrew Bird-Mysterious Production of Eggs/Noble Beast

Mammadou Diabate-W. African folk music.  chi rising!

Steven Halpern-Savasana/ Om

Leo Kotke-That’s What.  smooth guitar and spoken word.

Joni Mitchell-For the Roses/ Ladies of the Canyon

Morcheeba-Big Calm.

Beth Orton-Comfort of Strangers.

Ravi Shankar-Into the West.  A collaboration with U.S. composer Phillip Glass.

Elliot Smith-XO.

Cat Stevens-Teaser and the Firecat/or that other one with “Moonshadow” song.

Sufjan Stevens-Seven Swans.

Noe Veneble-Down Easy.

George Winston-Linus and Lucy: The Music of Vince Guaraldi

Yo La Tengo-Most anything they do.  New album just dropped.

Psychology/Spirituality

I was thinking today about a conversation I had with Laura on Friday, as we carpooled home from TT.  She was talking about how Yoga and Meditation in the West are being used as prescriptions for our emotionally damaged or confused psychological selves.  This idea fascinated me, as I had never pinpointed such a distinct connection.  Donna Farhi’s book “Bringing Yoga To Life” was my first exposure to this sort of specific application.  Using Yoga practically to explore, dissect, and even enhance or cure our behaviors and mindsets.  I can see this now.  At the time I read the book, I just knew I really liked it and felt it had touched the small corners of my life outside the studio walls more than any other book I had read about Yoga/Meditation/Spirituality.  I feel that the approach I am immersed in now at It’s All Yoga is similarly, wonderfully practical.  So, it brings to mind a question….Is Psychology-Spirituality?  Doesn’t Spirituality (now this is coming from a girl who attended 12 years of Catholic School) ask us to just bury those weak and spiritually endangered sides of ourselves, and move forward in faith? Just Askin.

essential action

This is my first blog.  I am at home, and Jeremiah is eating honey O’s cereal to my left…CRUNCH CRUNCH SSSLLUUURP.

This week at Yoga Teacher Training we talked and read about Brahmacharya.  Sexual restraint is no stranger to me as I have been single for the past five years.  That’s right…five years, raising a child with all of its frustrations, alone and throbbing in throes of my sexual peak.  There have been 2 short lived flings (I am talking two months maximum), but for the most part I have enjoyed other activities in bed…reading, listening to music, writing, eating cake and other yummy stuff, daydreaming, and need I say a fair amount of waiting…patiently.  To read and hear glowing reports of the wonders of celibacy, as I sit celibate through my sexual peak, was inspiring–but hardly comforting.

Despite this ongoing wrestle with my sexuality, sexual restraint is not what I found myself breaking through this week.  My sexual urge has been… quietly behaving.  The urge that I found came right to the surface is my NEGATIVITY URGE.  My go to place when I don’t want to deal with what’s happening, or when I face a tough choice that I don’t want to make.

Sunday afternoon was the climaxing surge of my negative side and there I was, drowning helplessly in my sea of dark responses, feeling blank, empty, and vacant.

The chattarunga work at this point was annoying.  The props (one block in my gut, and one smooshing my ribs) and strap (tight around my chest, arms and upper back) were literally physical manifestations of the tightness I felt in my body because of this negativity wave.  If only I had a rubber band strapped around my head covering my eyes, temples, and back skull—-my negativity armor would have been complete.  It is the armor that keeps me encased in my negativity, wrapped in my certainty of despair, unable to act toward a change.

With some kind words, and an encouraging adjustment from Michelle, I continued to acknowledge the negativity and surrender to it as best I could….IN CHATTARUNGA.   It became obvious that this heaviness was not going to just go away, and redirecting my mind was not an option.  As we moved through the discussion, I could say nothing.  I couldn’t even really hear what was going on because it took really all of my energy to just be with those inner feelings.  As the hours passed after training, dipping into the night, I felt better.  It seemed as though the negativity was slowly lifting.

I have always known myself to be a tinge on the negative side.  I used to call it strong and honest..but clearly it is a lot just negative and heavy.  What I am learning now is that the CAUSE of such mindsets are important to recognize.  For me the cause of my negativity is this underlying feeling that I am imprisoned by my life right now.  There are certain things that I see as obstacles to my “positive attitude” but the reality for me is that it wouldn’t be wise to just remove those obstacles.  It is like those chattarunga blocks and strap.  I could have just moved them out of the way-but that wasn’t the exercise.  How to allow these obstacles to somehow support and guide my pose was the lesson of the day.  How to muster a positive attitude to allow my  life obstacles to guide and support my choices and behaviors will be the essential action for me to foster.