The above is a quote I shortened to this succinct statement. The full synopsis was written by Douglas Brooks in his Tantric interpretation of the Bhagavad Ghita. I'm not going to type out the complete quote because I think the shortened statement says it all.
The idea being that a pot is always the same pot it was even when you paint it blue. The blue is irrelevant because its the same clay pot underneath it. Meaning we are all the same underneath. Looking at it from a physical perspective we're all red blood, muscle tissue, veins, nerves and bones, no matter what color or how hairy or smooth or whatever the packaging looks like. I like to see it from a more metaphysical perspective, we're all casing for a soul. A soul, being a small piece of the larger divine, is always there floating around and commiserating with other souls until they decide to come into a body, then they are all just this physical ick and goo housing the soul. The soul being the animating factor to the physical body.
Since we're all the same, really, literally and figuratively why can't we all just get along. Yogi Bhajan is quoted as saying "if you can't see god in all, you can't see god at all." Sounds true to me, but it also sounds like a life of constant work. Most think of it as once you get enlightened or "get it," get the divine connection to our physicality, then the work is done. Not so, the work is never done as long as you are physical.
I imagine its why some yogis are known for just deciding their time is up and sitting down and leaving the body, which then passes on once it is no longer needed as housing for the spirit. They felt their message was spread as well as could be or they had taught as many as could hear them and they were no longer of use, so they left to continue their work in a non-physical form.
I like the idea of that. I have felt many times that I was uninspired at the time and how to get reinspired so that I could feel it necessary to keep teaching. Partly this is why I have sought out the teaching within the Kundalini Yoga tradition as taught by Yogi Bhajan. They connect me more to my spirit than any other thing I've ever found. Anusara comes close, but Anusara still feels too physically oriented to me. The philosophic teachings I've learned from John Friend, or Desiree or Douglas Brooks are amazing and I love and embrace them as my own but the breathwork and physical movements taught to me by thru my Kundalini practices complete make me know there is a spirit living in me and it is vital and wants to spread love and peace and joy, like nothing I've ever wanted before.
When you can feel as fucking awesome as I've been feeling lately, from a few moments of action and breath and from observing thought patterns and not allowing them to reach into that dark place they once felt so at home in, then you want to share it. Share it with anyone who will listen or try it or anyone who asks.
It also makes me want to embrace all forms of spiritual practice, whether I agree they feel spiritual or not, someone does and thats okay. Their connection is their connection and mine is mine, if they come to me for advice on how to connect I can show them my ideas of it, otherwise they follow their own path. Which is a new idea for me, once thinking the only way to find that yoking, or yoga, is the way I thought. So it may be a work in progress but it is one I'm now letting in. Let go and let god they say, right? lol
May the longtime sun shine upon you, all love surround you and the pure light within you guide your way on. Sat Nam!!!
Saturday, March 21, 2009
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
chakras . . .
So, I'm having lots of trouble around my throat chakra. My sinuses have been draining intensely for over a week, but mostly manifesting in my throat, causing my voice to be hoarse, froggy or completely gone! (Some would not think this a bad think, lol).
So, I've done lots of kundalini, which has freed up my sinuses, cleared out and cloggy nose stuff. I've done some asana, which I do with ujjayi breath and that clears me out a lot too, maybe moreso than the shallow nostril breathing used in kundalini. And I've looked into myself a lot to see why on earth I may be manifesting this.
Kundalini yoga looks at the arms as an extension of the heart chakra and we've done lots of arms in class lately, and consequentely my heart has opened up a lot, but its tightened my shoulders, traps mostly and created a lot of heat in that area, and the throat stuff. SO that bumps into the throat chakra, which is looked on (when there is a problem in that area) as being someone not connecting their heart chakra to their throat chakra, thereby not speaking from their heart or not speaking their truth. I do think I am guilty of this. Most wouldn't believe it because I'm so bluntly honest most of the time, but that blunt honesty can also be a defense mechanism!
So my truth is changing and I'm not knowing where it is right now, so it seems hard to connect to that and speak it, you know? So I'm embracing the not knowing, the not having my finger completely on what destination to which I'm headed. Or at least I'm trying to embrace that! lol.
Abraham, whose teachings I've been completely working into my life (www.abraham-hicks.com) says that every cell in our body is a chakra. The heavy level of cells it takes to make up a gland in our systems just makes those areas more intense and heavy energetically, and therefor the Eastern focus on those areas. So maybe I need to not focus so much on just the throat or thyroid and parathyroid glands, maybe I just need to focus on liberating each cell, on its own and think of the space between them, which when you look at cells from a quantum perspective there are millions of miles between each one, even in the clustered areas such as our glands and organs. Think of it freeing up on a subatomic level, make each and every cell feel the energy travelling through it and around it.
Kundalini yoga works on your body on a cellular level, changing it as you pass thru a tough challenge, works on your third chakra (solar plexus), your commitment or willpower chakra. Strengthens it and opens it up. That area used to be my biggest problem and as I stick with it, I'm moving past it as a problem and thru the Anusara and kundalini yogas have opened up my heart chakra and now have moved up to the throat. And through figuring my truth out will also move past that area and free up everything and make myself a conduit for truth and energy in all its forms, and hopefully be able to use that to help all my students do the same for themselves.
I've done one kundalini class this morning and I think I'll go to the other one tonight at 5:30, in hopes that I am digging deeper into my issues and freeing them up via physical bodywork and energetic work and letting go of them. Letting go really is the key! When I was on Maui in 2002 studying ashtanga with one of the first Americans to learn the system from Guruji, K. Pattabhi Jois; Nancy Gilgoff, a girl staying with her, Betsy I believe, said to me just let go and love--thats all you need to know, just let go and let love come thru. Letting go, quit holding on to anything, to whatever we cling to to trick ourselves into believing makes us feel better, really is the key to freedom. Freedom in our bodies, freedom in our lives, freedom in our minds, freedom in our relationships, to others, to god, to the world, to whatever. Let go and let god as they say . . .
Sat Nam
So, I've done lots of kundalini, which has freed up my sinuses, cleared out and cloggy nose stuff. I've done some asana, which I do with ujjayi breath and that clears me out a lot too, maybe moreso than the shallow nostril breathing used in kundalini. And I've looked into myself a lot to see why on earth I may be manifesting this.
Kundalini yoga looks at the arms as an extension of the heart chakra and we've done lots of arms in class lately, and consequentely my heart has opened up a lot, but its tightened my shoulders, traps mostly and created a lot of heat in that area, and the throat stuff. SO that bumps into the throat chakra, which is looked on (when there is a problem in that area) as being someone not connecting their heart chakra to their throat chakra, thereby not speaking from their heart or not speaking their truth. I do think I am guilty of this. Most wouldn't believe it because I'm so bluntly honest most of the time, but that blunt honesty can also be a defense mechanism!
So my truth is changing and I'm not knowing where it is right now, so it seems hard to connect to that and speak it, you know? So I'm embracing the not knowing, the not having my finger completely on what destination to which I'm headed. Or at least I'm trying to embrace that! lol.
Abraham, whose teachings I've been completely working into my life (www.abraham-hicks.com) says that every cell in our body is a chakra. The heavy level of cells it takes to make up a gland in our systems just makes those areas more intense and heavy energetically, and therefor the Eastern focus on those areas. So maybe I need to not focus so much on just the throat or thyroid and parathyroid glands, maybe I just need to focus on liberating each cell, on its own and think of the space between them, which when you look at cells from a quantum perspective there are millions of miles between each one, even in the clustered areas such as our glands and organs. Think of it freeing up on a subatomic level, make each and every cell feel the energy travelling through it and around it.
Kundalini yoga works on your body on a cellular level, changing it as you pass thru a tough challenge, works on your third chakra (solar plexus), your commitment or willpower chakra. Strengthens it and opens it up. That area used to be my biggest problem and as I stick with it, I'm moving past it as a problem and thru the Anusara and kundalini yogas have opened up my heart chakra and now have moved up to the throat. And through figuring my truth out will also move past that area and free up everything and make myself a conduit for truth and energy in all its forms, and hopefully be able to use that to help all my students do the same for themselves.
I've done one kundalini class this morning and I think I'll go to the other one tonight at 5:30, in hopes that I am digging deeper into my issues and freeing them up via physical bodywork and energetic work and letting go of them. Letting go really is the key! When I was on Maui in 2002 studying ashtanga with one of the first Americans to learn the system from Guruji, K. Pattabhi Jois; Nancy Gilgoff, a girl staying with her, Betsy I believe, said to me just let go and love--thats all you need to know, just let go and let love come thru. Letting go, quit holding on to anything, to whatever we cling to to trick ourselves into believing makes us feel better, really is the key to freedom. Freedom in our bodies, freedom in our lives, freedom in our minds, freedom in our relationships, to others, to god, to the world, to whatever. Let go and let god as they say . . .
Sat Nam
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Desiree Rumbaugh
The above mentioned is my Anusara teacher, my main Anusara teacher anyway. She is an amazing individual who has taught me how to figure myself out more than anyone else thus far.
She was in town this weekend and I got to spend the whole time learning more from her, discussing things at lunch and during class, demonstrating things for her in class and I feel inspired and completed, but also worn out. She is a tough one and you work hard in her classes to line up your body so that the spirit/energy, whichever or whatever you like to call it, can flow through the body with more ease.
The one thing I notice is that it builds up a lot of energy around my second chakra, the sexual center, which is fine and dandy but I am also doing a 40 day commitment to celibacy, no masturbation, nothing. That is for personal reasons, best explained at another time.
That said I don't need a lot of energy built up right there right now so I woke up this morning did my kundalini 11 minute 1000 day meditation then proceeded to do a kriya that is to balance the energy of the lower chakras with the upper chakras. So far, so good. It feels like its working and I feel better than I have in a long time!
I believe the Anusara has helped me learn how to open up my heart and let the energy and love both in and out, but the Kundalini is helping me to arrange the energy in my body where its most needed and when its most needed there. They are complimentary to one another for me and my life at this time. That may change but for now they are amazingly changing me for the better. I feel more love and am feeling that I am able to allow more love in, to receive it. Receiving it has always been a problem for me but hopefully not for much longer!
THIS is the year of change for me, I am embracing this as my life and using the tools that I've learned over the past 9 years to finally open myself up, my heart and my life. To experience everything more fully and more fully being to bring love into it and not just to emit the love but to also receive it from whomever is giving it.
If the age of Aquarius is truly in bloom and dawning at this very time and its all about love and releasing the habits or holdings on maybe(?) from the Piscean era, which was the me era, all about us, selfishness, to a selfless and loving existence count me in! I'm ready for it and am finally using the tools I've learned over the years to change and open up.
Sat Nam!
She was in town this weekend and I got to spend the whole time learning more from her, discussing things at lunch and during class, demonstrating things for her in class and I feel inspired and completed, but also worn out. She is a tough one and you work hard in her classes to line up your body so that the spirit/energy, whichever or whatever you like to call it, can flow through the body with more ease.
The one thing I notice is that it builds up a lot of energy around my second chakra, the sexual center, which is fine and dandy but I am also doing a 40 day commitment to celibacy, no masturbation, nothing. That is for personal reasons, best explained at another time.
That said I don't need a lot of energy built up right there right now so I woke up this morning did my kundalini 11 minute 1000 day meditation then proceeded to do a kriya that is to balance the energy of the lower chakras with the upper chakras. So far, so good. It feels like its working and I feel better than I have in a long time!
I believe the Anusara has helped me learn how to open up my heart and let the energy and love both in and out, but the Kundalini is helping me to arrange the energy in my body where its most needed and when its most needed there. They are complimentary to one another for me and my life at this time. That may change but for now they are amazingly changing me for the better. I feel more love and am feeling that I am able to allow more love in, to receive it. Receiving it has always been a problem for me but hopefully not for much longer!
THIS is the year of change for me, I am embracing this as my life and using the tools that I've learned over the past 9 years to finally open myself up, my heart and my life. To experience everything more fully and more fully being to bring love into it and not just to emit the love but to also receive it from whomever is giving it.
If the age of Aquarius is truly in bloom and dawning at this very time and its all about love and releasing the habits or holdings on maybe(?) from the Piscean era, which was the me era, all about us, selfishness, to a selfless and loving existence count me in! I'm ready for it and am finally using the tools I've learned over the years to change and open up.
Sat Nam!
Sunday, February 15, 2009
This year
So, I kept having feelings that this year would be a big deal. Just in the since that the manifestations and energy in my life are finally lining up and going to make my teaching more lucrative and send me on a life adventure that I can only imagine, right now anyway. I also keep feeling this is finally the year I'm going to move, don't know why, but everything is pointing that direction.
So I began my kundalini practice more regularly again and decided to ask for a spiritual name from the 3HO organization which is the hub of the kundalini yoga experienced in this country and they, going off my astrology and the path I lead in life granted me the name Sat Inder Singh. Sat meaning truth, Inder meaning divine consciousness and Singh (which all males get) meaning lion of god. So I'm the lion of god who lives in truth and divine consciousness. WOW, now thats a name right?
But the most interesting thing happened to me as I slept that night, the name swirling around in my consciousness, and I awoke with a purpose in life--to commit myself to living up to the expectations of that name. I want to deserve to be called that! So now I find myself planning deeper things, workshops, messages for a class, working towards feeling as if I've earned that name.
And I feel lighter and more connected to source than ever before. I feel more driven to practice, not just asana or kundalini at a set time of day, but all day long--doing the exact thing Ghandi is known for stating, being the change I wish to see in the world.
I'm amazed at how I feel inside, its most uncanny, especially for someone who sits in such a negative space normally. The yoga has finally begun to work its magic and the catalyst was a name telling me how powerful I am, things I thought I already knew about myself, but maybe I needed the little push to believe it. Its just amazing.
I fall more and more in love with life and the way it works as I get to understand it more and more each day. I fall more and more in love with people all around me as I see them more and more to be the manifestations of the divine that they really are. I see more and more and I do create my own reality and when I'm in that dumpy place I can get so easily that the money isn't there, the opportunities aren't there, hell the life isn't there! So I'm chosing to live my life so fully and intentionally that I'll never be able to head that direction again!
Sat Nam, Keith
So I began my kundalini practice more regularly again and decided to ask for a spiritual name from the 3HO organization which is the hub of the kundalini yoga experienced in this country and they, going off my astrology and the path I lead in life granted me the name Sat Inder Singh. Sat meaning truth, Inder meaning divine consciousness and Singh (which all males get) meaning lion of god. So I'm the lion of god who lives in truth and divine consciousness. WOW, now thats a name right?
But the most interesting thing happened to me as I slept that night, the name swirling around in my consciousness, and I awoke with a purpose in life--to commit myself to living up to the expectations of that name. I want to deserve to be called that! So now I find myself planning deeper things, workshops, messages for a class, working towards feeling as if I've earned that name.
And I feel lighter and more connected to source than ever before. I feel more driven to practice, not just asana or kundalini at a set time of day, but all day long--doing the exact thing Ghandi is known for stating, being the change I wish to see in the world.
I'm amazed at how I feel inside, its most uncanny, especially for someone who sits in such a negative space normally. The yoga has finally begun to work its magic and the catalyst was a name telling me how powerful I am, things I thought I already knew about myself, but maybe I needed the little push to believe it. Its just amazing.
I fall more and more in love with life and the way it works as I get to understand it more and more each day. I fall more and more in love with people all around me as I see them more and more to be the manifestations of the divine that they really are. I see more and more and I do create my own reality and when I'm in that dumpy place I can get so easily that the money isn't there, the opportunities aren't there, hell the life isn't there! So I'm chosing to live my life so fully and intentionally that I'll never be able to head that direction again!
Sat Nam, Keith
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
Change/evolution
Well, finally I'm back to writing again, hopefully regularly this time and after just watching inaugeration address and the following speeches I chose to call this entry change.
We all change, everything evolves. Human, beast, rock, river, air, absolutely everything moves forward. But how well do we embrace that growth? How often do we hold on so tightly to the past, even get attached to it in an unhealthy way? I think most of us do it most of the time.
I fancy myself someone who embraces change and growth and yet I've allowed an attachment to persist so much so that it was to my detriment. Trust me, there is probably more than this one thing but this one thing is what inspired me to write today.
I began, as most people know, my yoga career with ashtanga. Practiced it 6-7 days a week, sometimes twice a day and even taught only it for many years. It was my life and I loved it and loved sharing it with others, until ... I got invited to teach a power vinyasa class. This idea threw me for a loop, do I do the same sequencing? do I do this... or that? What the hell do I do?
So I just went in and got quiet inside and let the class come out of my mouth, never knowing the next move and when I got caught up and thought in the middle of the class I got lost and had to let go again and let it flow out of me and it was awesome!
That one event is what changed my idea that ashtanga was the end all be all of my existence. Now I kept practicing it another 4 years, up until last July, but my mind opened to other possibilities which led me to a weekend workshop with Mitchel Bleier in which I was introduced to Anusara. What an eye opening that was for me? You mean I can open up my body with these alignments and I dont' have to hurt anymore?!? What?!?
So that started a process and as of last July, after attending a workshop at Kripalu Yoga Center with Desiree Rumbaugh I have not practicing the ashtanga sequencing with its fast pacedness and have embraced a bigger teaching. I still teach vinyasa (flow between postures), I just do it now with alignment pointers throughout and stopping periodically to workshop a pose and how to do it, get it to where everyone can attempt it.
The thing I mentioned earlier was that I still had one ashtanga class left, in Collinsville, at the same place I taught my first class. They loved it so I held onto it, but as my passion for it waned they could tell and slowly attendance dropped off and eventually completely failed most of the time. So I came to a decision last week to let go of it, and now the river of life is flowing through me again and pushing me forward and bringing me more opportunities and students. It was like that one rock left from my past blocked the flow of the whole goddamn river!
I feel so inspired to teach, every time I teach now and feel love and acceptance from students towards my teachings and even though I have two more weeks to teach that class, the old students have contacted me and are coming back to attend the class one or two last times just for posterities sake.
Its cool to observe this happening and feel it happening. Opening my life up to the change and to the new things that can be coming my way, opening my mind up to that change, embracing the new direction and letting go to follow it happily. It reminds me of the teachings of Abraham, from Esther Hicks, you have to make peace with where you are and then allow the things you want in. They call it the Art of Allowing, and if you put out there what you want but hold onto it so tightly it will never have the space to get to you, but if you put it out there and then step out of the way and live your life as if its already yours then it will become yours, does become yours.
I foresee great things for myself, and for those all around me and hope I can inspire others to embrace the letting go and allowing the good into their lives. Including anyone who reads this!!!
Namaste,
Keith
We all change, everything evolves. Human, beast, rock, river, air, absolutely everything moves forward. But how well do we embrace that growth? How often do we hold on so tightly to the past, even get attached to it in an unhealthy way? I think most of us do it most of the time.
I fancy myself someone who embraces change and growth and yet I've allowed an attachment to persist so much so that it was to my detriment. Trust me, there is probably more than this one thing but this one thing is what inspired me to write today.
I began, as most people know, my yoga career with ashtanga. Practiced it 6-7 days a week, sometimes twice a day and even taught only it for many years. It was my life and I loved it and loved sharing it with others, until ... I got invited to teach a power vinyasa class. This idea threw me for a loop, do I do the same sequencing? do I do this... or that? What the hell do I do?
So I just went in and got quiet inside and let the class come out of my mouth, never knowing the next move and when I got caught up and thought in the middle of the class I got lost and had to let go again and let it flow out of me and it was awesome!
That one event is what changed my idea that ashtanga was the end all be all of my existence. Now I kept practicing it another 4 years, up until last July, but my mind opened to other possibilities which led me to a weekend workshop with Mitchel Bleier in which I was introduced to Anusara. What an eye opening that was for me? You mean I can open up my body with these alignments and I dont' have to hurt anymore?!? What?!?
So that started a process and as of last July, after attending a workshop at Kripalu Yoga Center with Desiree Rumbaugh I have not practicing the ashtanga sequencing with its fast pacedness and have embraced a bigger teaching. I still teach vinyasa (flow between postures), I just do it now with alignment pointers throughout and stopping periodically to workshop a pose and how to do it, get it to where everyone can attempt it.
The thing I mentioned earlier was that I still had one ashtanga class left, in Collinsville, at the same place I taught my first class. They loved it so I held onto it, but as my passion for it waned they could tell and slowly attendance dropped off and eventually completely failed most of the time. So I came to a decision last week to let go of it, and now the river of life is flowing through me again and pushing me forward and bringing me more opportunities and students. It was like that one rock left from my past blocked the flow of the whole goddamn river!
I feel so inspired to teach, every time I teach now and feel love and acceptance from students towards my teachings and even though I have two more weeks to teach that class, the old students have contacted me and are coming back to attend the class one or two last times just for posterities sake.
Its cool to observe this happening and feel it happening. Opening my life up to the change and to the new things that can be coming my way, opening my mind up to that change, embracing the new direction and letting go to follow it happily. It reminds me of the teachings of Abraham, from Esther Hicks, you have to make peace with where you are and then allow the things you want in. They call it the Art of Allowing, and if you put out there what you want but hold onto it so tightly it will never have the space to get to you, but if you put it out there and then step out of the way and live your life as if its already yours then it will become yours, does become yours.
I foresee great things for myself, and for those all around me and hope I can inspire others to embrace the letting go and allowing the good into their lives. Including anyone who reads this!!!
Namaste,
Keith
Monday, October 20, 2008
Autumn/Transformation
It seems like this time every year I start to set myself up for hibernation, as if I were a bear or a reptile of some sort. I've always been affected strongly by the moon, full or new, and the seasons. I often am quoted as saying what a delicate flower I am, and then everyone around me laughs, if they know me at all! But I am affected, not sure why so strongly and not sure that it matters, other than that I know that I am and I use the tools that I've learned over the years from my yoga practices to help in the balancing out of these states of being when they come into play.
This year is especially different for me because in years past I was living alone and dug deeper into my ashtanga practice to get me through the cold and lonely nights (yes I've always been mostly alone!) and that strong and sometimes exasperating practice always grounded me so strongly that if I skipped a day I would almost land in a depression of sorts and have to drag myself back out of the pit I'd allowed myself to fall into. So Sundays were a bitch, since Saturday was a rest day for the practice. The moon days never bothered me so much because I was always having strong bizarre effects from the moon anyway.
Now this year, after spending either 5 weekends or full weeks with Desiree Rumbaugh over the past 11 months, have converted my practice to an Anusara practice, working with the principles of alignment layed down by John Friend, opening up my heart to allow the powerful energy stored there out and make it accessible to myself and others, trying to stay "open to grace" feeling my "inner body bright" which basically means letting this love and light stored deep down in my core out to help make me a more loving and happy and all-around feeling person. And for the most part its worked, but since I'm doing a more lovey-dovey practice, be it as strong a practice as it is, it still opens me up to those emotions that I believe the ashtanga practice, with its rigor, shoved deep down inside and covered up with dirt, and now I'm digging it up and unearthing it and having to deal with those emotions, and they are tiresome, troublesome things sometimes. They are not bad, but just not having to deal with them so much over the past 8 years it is a bit of work that I was not expecting, at all!
That said, I must say I love this practice though, and have learned tools, mentally and physically, even psychically, that have helped me further myself to places I never knew I could get to, and have helped me help my students to deeper places in their lives as well.
I remember years ago reading Yogi Bare, which is a book with interviews of all sorts of yoga teachers from around the world, one of which, Patricia Walden, stated she did 108 backbends once a week to keep herself from getting depressed because she is prone to that. My colder, unfeeling self thought, well hell she's doing the wrong practice then if she has to do that because I don't have to deal with depression at all with my ashtanga, but now that I find it was burying the emotions I feel that maybe I've missed out on these feelings and the dealing with them I could have already done and I would be this big happy person who loves unconditionally already, and just be drawing peace and love and light all around me. But I know ashtangis who are that way, and still do that practice, but the more advanced series', and it makes me know that all yoga is just that, yoga, and can work for each person differently.
The way it works for me, is just the way it works for me, so I can't be judgmental about it and just let yoga be yoga. Whatever asana sequence, sitting practice, pranayama, workout of any sort that brings one to that place of equanimity and peace and equipose be that beings yoga and not judge them on it, or judge the yoga for not being the way I practice.
What do you know? Maybe, finally, after almost 9 years of practice I am getting the idea of non-duality? Hmm, sounds like it to me. And hopefully it will keep growing and going in a direction that leads me down my path, not yours, nor his, nor hers, but mine and open me up in ways that will benefit me and my students and my teachers for the rest of the life this body has. Thats what we're here for anyway right, to grow and expand from the inside out!
Namaste, Keith
This year is especially different for me because in years past I was living alone and dug deeper into my ashtanga practice to get me through the cold and lonely nights (yes I've always been mostly alone!) and that strong and sometimes exasperating practice always grounded me so strongly that if I skipped a day I would almost land in a depression of sorts and have to drag myself back out of the pit I'd allowed myself to fall into. So Sundays were a bitch, since Saturday was a rest day for the practice. The moon days never bothered me so much because I was always having strong bizarre effects from the moon anyway.
Now this year, after spending either 5 weekends or full weeks with Desiree Rumbaugh over the past 11 months, have converted my practice to an Anusara practice, working with the principles of alignment layed down by John Friend, opening up my heart to allow the powerful energy stored there out and make it accessible to myself and others, trying to stay "open to grace" feeling my "inner body bright" which basically means letting this love and light stored deep down in my core out to help make me a more loving and happy and all-around feeling person. And for the most part its worked, but since I'm doing a more lovey-dovey practice, be it as strong a practice as it is, it still opens me up to those emotions that I believe the ashtanga practice, with its rigor, shoved deep down inside and covered up with dirt, and now I'm digging it up and unearthing it and having to deal with those emotions, and they are tiresome, troublesome things sometimes. They are not bad, but just not having to deal with them so much over the past 8 years it is a bit of work that I was not expecting, at all!
That said, I must say I love this practice though, and have learned tools, mentally and physically, even psychically, that have helped me further myself to places I never knew I could get to, and have helped me help my students to deeper places in their lives as well.
I remember years ago reading Yogi Bare, which is a book with interviews of all sorts of yoga teachers from around the world, one of which, Patricia Walden, stated she did 108 backbends once a week to keep herself from getting depressed because she is prone to that. My colder, unfeeling self thought, well hell she's doing the wrong practice then if she has to do that because I don't have to deal with depression at all with my ashtanga, but now that I find it was burying the emotions I feel that maybe I've missed out on these feelings and the dealing with them I could have already done and I would be this big happy person who loves unconditionally already, and just be drawing peace and love and light all around me. But I know ashtangis who are that way, and still do that practice, but the more advanced series', and it makes me know that all yoga is just that, yoga, and can work for each person differently.
The way it works for me, is just the way it works for me, so I can't be judgmental about it and just let yoga be yoga. Whatever asana sequence, sitting practice, pranayama, workout of any sort that brings one to that place of equanimity and peace and equipose be that beings yoga and not judge them on it, or judge the yoga for not being the way I practice.
What do you know? Maybe, finally, after almost 9 years of practice I am getting the idea of non-duality? Hmm, sounds like it to me. And hopefully it will keep growing and going in a direction that leads me down my path, not yours, nor his, nor hers, but mine and open me up in ways that will benefit me and my students and my teachers for the rest of the life this body has. Thats what we're here for anyway right, to grow and expand from the inside out!
Namaste, Keith
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
why that title?
Well, I was discussing the yoga in the city of St Louis and was also discussing that I read somewhere that we are below sea level here, I believe so anyway. And it seems to be true at least figuratively, if not literally.
Most people in this areas mentality seems to be stuck deep in the mud, and may even be how the term Mississippi Mud was coined, LOL. But unlikely.
I think thats why I stay here, to help to the greatest degree possible, raise the mentality out of the mud and even higher if I can. And since I set that as an intention for myself, to raise my mentality and vibration level as high as I can, that within doing that can hopefully inspire others in the same direction and offer anything I have to offer to help them achieve said goal.
I know a lot of people whom have given up and moved to places where its easier and you don't have to struggle so hard to get through to your yoga students, or for that matter, through to the general population, including family and friends. And I myself have contemplated that a million times and have almost followed through with it. And still may, Boulder CO keeps looming in my mind (love that fucking place!!!), but I don't and stay here to fight the good fight. Which sometimes means going with the flow of life within my intentions more so than anything, and I am learning that!
So thats the short and simple of the why I chose that title for my blog, and I may change it as I feel less stuck in the mud, but it starts there and can only go up right?!?
Thanks for checking me out and watch for future musings from my bizarre and warped mind!
Namaste,
Keithy
Most people in this areas mentality seems to be stuck deep in the mud, and may even be how the term Mississippi Mud was coined, LOL. But unlikely.
I think thats why I stay here, to help to the greatest degree possible, raise the mentality out of the mud and even higher if I can. And since I set that as an intention for myself, to raise my mentality and vibration level as high as I can, that within doing that can hopefully inspire others in the same direction and offer anything I have to offer to help them achieve said goal.
I know a lot of people whom have given up and moved to places where its easier and you don't have to struggle so hard to get through to your yoga students, or for that matter, through to the general population, including family and friends. And I myself have contemplated that a million times and have almost followed through with it. And still may, Boulder CO keeps looming in my mind (love that fucking place!!!), but I don't and stay here to fight the good fight. Which sometimes means going with the flow of life within my intentions more so than anything, and I am learning that!
So thats the short and simple of the why I chose that title for my blog, and I may change it as I feel less stuck in the mud, but it starts there and can only go up right?!?
Thanks for checking me out and watch for future musings from my bizarre and warped mind!
Namaste,
Keithy
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