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 Quicklinks: From the Root to the Fruit: An Article on Foundation, Opposite & Equal Action, Union as Empowerment, Poems
Spring Equinox~The light and the dark are in perfect balance this day. The light showing his fire and the dark showing her inward groundedness from which to grow. It is amazing how nature can show us our own innate balance with such wonder. In the concepts that I have learned in yoga about balance, I have most always heard that one must draw up on mula Bhanda (the root lock). I find this most disturbing in my body. Not only does it go against everything I have learned and experienced about being in the flow, but it seems tight. In my experience when one tightens their buttocks or more specifically their root, everything gets tight. You become tight in life, tight in your thoughts, tight with money, you basically become a tight ass! Have you ever seen the guy who dances as if his feet are in cement? Most likely he has a tight root. Then there is the guy that everybody is looking at, pointing the finger and laughing at because he is really moving and into it. He may not look so "cool" but he is into it and he doesn’t care? That is the guy with the open root. He really doesn’t care what he looks like, he is open and having fun! Now this idea comes from sober dancers of course, because those with a little liquid courage usually don’t care what they look like anyway. Roots In order to set a foundation one must ground down. We hear in the yoga/energy world all the time, "plant your roots" this is great! It may be a little bit of a cliché' term used now, but there is really meaning behind that if you think of a tree, our teacher from nature of opposite and equal energy~balance. The tree moves its roots down in search of nourishment (water) and it only grows up when that nourishment is reached. In our asana, in order to lengthen up we must ground down. If we are pulling our root up, what would happen to our tree, it would fall over, unless it was held up by a pole. We do not have the luxury of poles in yoga (yet anyway, although there is a pole dance workout that is very popular and definitely opening for the root!) Once we find our foundation by rooting (or expanding) down, not up, we can allow the expansion to take over. This expansion can be explained as space. By finding that solid foundation, it allows you the space to open up like a flower or like the leaves of the tree growing toward the heavens. So we look at the roots, the heaviness of the body, the physical body, (anna maya kosha). Then we look at the expansion up, the lightness, the breath that expands, the energy body (prana maya kosha). Then there is that space in between, the space between the breaths (kevala kumbaka) the space where nothing exists and bliss resides. Physically, there is the space between the root and the fruit, our center. Our “center", also a very over used term these days, but it actually does exist on the physical plane as well as the energetic plane. If you look at the art piece by Da Vinci, you will see that he discovered the center of a human being at the middle. If you open to this place, it is where we move from in our daily life. On the energetic plane this “center” is the 3rd chakra, manipura (bright jewel) the place where we shine, our personal power and the center of our being, our seed! Guru Prem Singh Khalsa, direct disciple of Yogi Bhajan says “You do not have to immediately master the complete geometry of a posture. The important part is to root yourself correctly.” In every posture there is a part of the body touching the floor. This grounding down is the "foundation" of the posture. Plant your roots with intention for foundation in all you do in your postures and your life. We can relate this theory to our life in the way in which we go about simple (or not so simple) tasks of our daily life. When we move into the tightness we begin to pull up, we lose our roots to mother earth and our foundation in what we are trying to accomplish. Tightness comes from fear. Once the fear is present then there is no boundlessness, no expansion, only tightness. One cannot expand into grace or integrity if not relaxed and bound by a box. back to top Opposite & Equal Action Life has been both full and lazy all at the same time. I took quite a bit of time to be responsibly irresponsible this summer. I have had more time on my hands than I ever have and felt as if I could only get less done each day. I spent the entire summer (so far) just lazy and empty but full beyond what I usually think my capacity is. Thank goodness for my practices that keep me empty. My spiritual path has gone in some wild directions showing me both chaos and balance at the same time. This is no surprise to me as I have spent my life rubbing the carbon together to see the shimmer of the diamond appear only when the sweat and tears have diminished. I have barely endured these tumultuous times and at the same time can only say that I have had nothing but excitement, joy and fun. How is it that one can feel on top of the world one moment and the next feel like mother earth sat on her. I suppose the easy answer would be a chemical imbalance, HAH! heard that one before. Thank goodness I do yoga or ya never know what your gonna get! How is it that one knows what to share if one never experiences it? I'll tell you, one doesnt! One must feel it, live it and taste it before one can even begin to play with the fire of change. This is why I sell my teacher training as "LIFE CHANGING". Anyone can go anywhere and pay someone who has more experience than them to learn a few postures an get a few techniques to teach a good yoga class, but that will soon end and the path will fall short of going over a cliff. When one enters my training I tell them that this is about opening up your heart and the skeletons in your closet at the same time and facing them. This is where the juice for them as a teacher lies. Who really gives a rats rear what postures we do, we have been doing them for 6,000 years. Don't get me wrong, the postures work! That is the canvas for the opening into the juice of what I am talking about, but it is the experience that comes from the postures that allows the teacher to share on a deeper level. A local studio owner, friend and associate of mine, Janice Gates (author of book: YOGINI) put it perfectly in our conversation today. She said "what people want is an experience. Anyone can offer great techniques, but we are all here for an experience." What I have been meditating on today is that she didn't say they all want a GOOD experience, she said they all want AN experience. It reminded me of my story and how intense it was as I was going through it and how no one in their right mind would EVER jump up, raise their hand and say "OH! pick me, I want to have a nervous breakdown!" Instead, one wants to heal. I could go into the whole "healing thing" but instead I will take you back to where I was going when I started in the first place, my responsible irresponsibility of summer 2008........ I have so many students and friends that are always questioning my theory of suffering. Perhaps they question it because they are trying to live in the fuzy feel good fairy world, or perhaps they just haven't hit the place of suffering that I have known to understand, it doesn't really matter. What matters is that we are all suffering and we don't have to, we have practices for that. But one doesn't always make a change when life is cozy. One only considers making a change when discomfort arises. It is in that discomfort that we choose to make a difference in our lives. Take the world for example. I know this is a bit bigger than the big picture, but think about it. Did we unplug the microwaves and stop using styrofoam in the 70's because it was convenient. NO! we continued to pollute our world and bodies because it was easy. When it was easy, we just kept keepin on. It wasn't until our bodies as a society started manifesting cancer and our planet suffered (which really translates to us suffering because mother earth would swallow us in 50 years flat if we stopped stopping her) that we decided to change our ways. So I allowed myself to be irresponsible in my days of lazy introspection. Really looking at my world I have created for myself, not always comfortable with it. Wondering why I have chosen the hardest path most times. Why didn't I just do what my mother begged me to do, get a job with benefits, start my 401K, blah, blah, blah. Not that it is all blah, just for me it was a path of ignorance compared to what I was shown of my potential. I was broken down by my own ignorance and shown that life was about growth and change. It was about using the suffering to become a better person and more importantly to use my own experiences of suffering to help others understand what it is to become empty which translates to being vulnerable. I love the term vulnerable because it gets so many peoples panties in a ruffle. We think of it as weak when it is an amazing state of openness to change and loving ourselves and others in PURE form. In order to know balance, one must fall. To feel the cool light of the moon, one must sweat from the heat of the sun. To know responsible, one must experience being irresponsible.This is opposite and equal action. To root down, one must lift up. So allow yourself to sink deep into the state you are in and find that opposite. Try it for size and see how it fits. Feel opposite and equal action in all that you do. It is from this place that you will make a change. If it is not where you want to be then move! ************************************************** Union as Empowerment My mother finally decided to commit me to the hospital. As I stood in the center of the warehouse of my failing business, I waited for them to arrive in the white van with the straight jacket and sedate me. I phoned the woman from whom I had bought my business, she later became my friend, mentor and teacher, and asked her to help run my business while I went away. She encouraged my mom to give us 3 hours at which time I would return and go to the hospital if it was still necessary. She took me to the beach where I stood 6 months earlier to take vows of marriage, which was now also failing along with my 3 businesses, and taught me to put my feet on the ground. In this "session" I experienced the returning of half my being. I had been functioning with only half the energies that a balanced being uses. I had left England to return home from my husband and in the process, left my masculine power behind. This may sound very woo-woo, but the session included a process of returning my energies to self, at which point I began to feel my body come together as if I was being fully dressed in a cloak of power. I was able to stand and walk away from that day in total being and never to see the white jacket or mind altering drugs! Through the last 11 years, with the help of my mentor and my asana practice, I have worked with these energies to find a balance in my body beyond any that I could have imagined. Through my asana practice, I have found the two energies shiva and shakti, that are in fact alive and flow through the channels that are awakened through the opening of the body in asana. It is getting well known in the "energy world" that the left side of the body is feminine and the right side is the masculine. We can go further and connect them to the brain but for now we will stay with energy. If you do not connect with energy, then allow your mind to wrap around the "freeway" of the breath and where it flows in your body keeping the possibility of energy open since science has proven we are made up of electrical currents. Ha-tha Yoga means Ha (Sun) Tha (Moon) Yoga (from the word yoke meaning Union) The word alone IS balance. The sun rises and the day is balanced by the setting of the moon. So is our practice. In this celebration of Ha-Tha, we begin our practice as our day begins, shining and expanding, heating~tapas, the friction of purification and end our practice with the moving inward cooling energy of the moon. Drawing from the energies of both to create union of power that resides deep within the memory of every cell in our body. Further than just the left and right, we move our attention to the front and back of the body. The back side of the body is the feminine, and the front side is the masculine. The female has the intuition, the knowing of what needs to happen, that is why we are the mothers. The male is the action, the ability to make things happen, that is why they have the muscles. This is not to say that the masculine has no intuition and that the feminine is helpless, but for the sake of union, these are the roles that these energies play to come together in power. My mentor used to tell me while we were working on the union within of the two energies, that "if we (women) didn't tell the men to build us a toilet, we would still be using the bushes". We had the knowing and the male took action. This is also not to say that you can go home and push your men around ladies! This is to be used for empowerment remember. Although this concept can be used in relationship, we will visit that at another time and remain with the energies of balance in our bodies. Experience this in your body: Come into the standing pose Virabadrasana 2 (warrior 2). Feel your backside of the body ground down. Notice the energy move down from the root. (the tailbone for a physical reference). Allow the body to relax, there is nowhere to go right now. As you allow the body to relax, feel your buttocks let go and soften into the pose. LOSE your posture for a moment, let gravity take over so you can really feel relaxed and grounded. Let the energy move down the backside and follow through the pelvic floor rounding through the perineum and up to the pelvic bone. From the pelvic bone, while staying relaxed, feel the front side of the body lift. This is not a muscling up, this is a LIGHTENING up, as though it were strictly the breath or prana lifting you. Like a mist hovering in a valley moving up the side of the mountain, expanding in the front side of the body! The back side of the body knows what to do, allow it to do it. Rooting down into the earth, solid and connected, the way a mother is to the womb. The front side of the body has the action, a lifting up like the glistening dew on the tree that experienced a fresh rain. Continue this flow of energy circling the body down the back through the root and up the front side. Notice the expansion naturally happening out each limb of your physical body. Allow it to come from your center at the belly and expand outward (vayana vayu) to your whole being. Repeat on the other side in a relaxed manner. Remember to allow the root to soften and the buttocks to follow the example as you practice this flow of continued energy down the back and up the front of the body Using this concept in all areas of your life and your body. Take those moments between tasks to check in with what really "feels" right and move from that place of knowing and allow the action to follow. The expansion comes from intuition, it is the action taken without the knowing that results in disempowerment and the end result, suffering. Allow the shakti, the feminine energy to be present guiding you in all that you know as you unite the shiva, the masculine, to carry out the vision of union resulting in a place of empowerment from within your whole body and life. November 16th, 2003 I search for you I finally find you Why in the darkness? You desire to be with me Come to me from the darkness We will live a life of unimaginable fire! Come to me form the darkness Out of the darkness Come to the light of our life together You no longer live below Show your grand essence to me and I will open for us to unite For together my Love, we belong in the light! ************************** March 6th, 2009 On the surface and deep within Sharing your rhythms one at a time With no judgment of how or when it appears My truest self and the sisterhood that proceeds me My intuition stimulated by the presence of your medicine The embodiment of grandmother I cherish The scarlet letter no longer exist
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