Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Internal Power

A wonderful image and article found at Yoga International. Thank you YI for your amazing resources.


Tuesday, January 20, 2015

Making the Uncomfortable Loveable

We are forever striving and rarely resting.
A friend just completed an amazing feat of climbing arguably the hardest long multi-pitch free climb in the world. It was covered in the news because it is such an amazing feat. The practice and preparation took 7 years. The actual ascent took 19 days of sleeping on the side of a rock face hundreds and thousands of feet above the ground. Eating, sleeping in a hammock like tent. Yet, this is one of many ascents he has done, all of which have required some level of discomfort. And it will not be long before he will be planning the next ascent. The next unclimbed project to try.

Phot credit - Nick Sagar collection
This is how we are as humans. We long to accomplish great things and we also long for security, safety, comfort and ease. When we achieve the success we work so hard for, the comfort and ease, we can enjoy it only briefly before we long for something else. It is the longing itself that makes us uncomfortable.

Swami Rama said, "Know your dharma (purpose) and learn to love it." This is one of the key teachings of the Bhagavad Gita. Tommy Caldwell, a lifetime climber certainly is living his dharma... to climb the next impossible line. And he has certainly learned to love the parts of us that most of us could not tolerate.

What is the think that you must do above all others, despite the discomfort? And can you learn to love the discomfort?

Wednesday, January 14, 2015

Just Rest


sukham = comfortable, ease filled; sthira = steady, stable, motionless
These two ideas are the goal of Yoga practice, these are the practice. Ease filled comes first. Moving into a pose with ease and steadiness, as if these words cannot be separate.

Yoga off the mat... moving through life, all positions, actions with this same ease filled steadiness.
This can only be achieved, on or off the mat, by letting go of the fruits of our actions. It is our striving for something that puts tension around. It is our resistance that makes it awkward and uncomfortable.

Just rest.

Tuesday, January 6, 2015

Love; a luxury or a necessity

The experience of love is either a necessity or a luxury. If it be a luxury, it is expendable; if it be necessity, then to deny it is to perish. So simple is the reality, and so terrifying.
Ultimately there is only one place of refuge on this planet for any person -- that is another person's heart. To love is to make of one's heart a swinging door. ~ Howard Thurman