Here's an opportunity to explore the practice of non-violence over the course of 64 days.  This practice was begun to celebrate the work of Martin Luther King and Gandhi.  The first page will give you information on the group that started this practice, events, other links and the like.  But if you click on 64 days you'll find a list of practices for each day.  What is nice is that on each day you can choose a practice that is suitable for adults, teens, or children.

 

 

Today, January 30th, is the first day of the practice.  And here's the suggestion for honoring and exploring non-violence today...

Kira Ryder, a great yoga teacher and studio owner I know in California wrote a piece on her blog called "Crisis of an Easy Yoga Teacher". 

 

I too have evolved into an "easy" yoga teacher.  I have plenty of friends and colleagues who do and/or teach challenging vinyasa style classes.  I've done them myself and think they are great.  But in the past few years my desire to do those spectacular (and very beautiful) asanas and sweat buckets has waned.  I love long slow practices...moving into the deeper places in my body at a leisurely pace.  I love meditation and using mudras, those energy seals that the hands make, to enhance a deeper more subtle awareness of balance and imbalance.  I like my teaching to be more of a whisper than a shout so that you have to lean in, listen more carefully to the body/mind to hear what it has to tell you.  Shhhhh...what is it telling you right now?

Here's a recent blog entry from my friend Daron.

Let this whet your appetite then read the rest of his blog "Learning to Stay".

 

When someone asks if you believe in God, they want you to describe the specific concepts you use to approximate your current perception of the big picture. However, a gulf looms between language and the aggregate of our memories, plans, hopes, fears, comforts, challenges, and preferences. It is not unlike the contrast between the cheeseburger pictured on the menu board and the one served to you in wax paper or what separates the glowing movie review from the two hours squandered watching a stranger’s thinly realized dream. So much of the trouble in our lives (personal, social, local, national, global) falls apart in this apparently insignificant space.

 

The question, which actually reveals more about the person asking than it can possibly reveal about the person who is trying to answer, boils the ineffable down in order to separate us into our neat, familiar tribes. It reduces the conundrums of the ages down to the equivalent of asking which football team you think will win the championship, which operating software you are running, or which discount retail store brand you embrace.

The inquirer is usually fishing for a simple yes or no response. Based on your answer, you might find yourself being guided down a simple decision tree to drill down to one of the traditional belief systems and possibly down to specific subcategories to determine where you fit. But all these distinctions seem to be factors of our capacity for language specificity. Being creatures and therefore created in some mysterious manner (isn’t sexual reproduction mysterious enough), it seems there would exist serious limitations for our minds to ever comprehend the big picture fully – not that we are incapable of getting hints of it. Isn’t this why we have poetry, literature, music, science, and math? But attempting to communicate these hints – even trying to pass them on with noble intentions – generates sparks from the friction of words grinding against one another.

Does a leaf need to have clear concepts of twigs, branches, trunks, and roots in order to have a complete and satisfying experience of its brief life? Maybe it is enough to just enjoy the pull of the sun, the comfort of the breeze and the other leaves swaying with you, the unexpected drama of dusk, and perhaps even the lilting descent to the cold ground.

 

In former lives you were a tree, a rock, a cloud, a rabbit, a deer. All these things are still in you and you can touch them. They belong in your home. Go back and touch these elements and you will see that your Dharma body is huge and your home is vast.
— Thich Nhat Hanh in Going Home

 

 

Matthieu Ricard

A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill: Happiness

There was an interesting article in the New York Times the other day on the effects of stress on the number of injuries athletes sustain.

Interestingly the athletes they are looking at are from a high school in Columbus Ohio.  Even though the focus in this piece is on athletes, it applies to all of us.

 

The article, Free the Mind and Fewer Injuries Will Follow, might require that you sign in to the NYTimes but its free.

Wow you guys!  The Harmony House Yoga for Food benefit for the Mid-Ohio Food Bank this year brought in 275 pounds of food and $525 in donations!!!!  That is sooo wonderful.  Thanks to everyone who came and did a little yoga and fed a lot of people.

 

 

Much love

Kit