Author: pmcrose

Yoga “poses” are not asanas.

Poses are static, attempts at ideal images in our head, on the mat next to us, airbrushed in Yoga Journal or the internet.

Asanas, however, are alive and organic, mind-body-breath adjusting in and to the moment… this foot needs more weight on the outside, more action in the quads, breathing too hard… back off a bit.  Attempting to keep balance, stability, and ease…

Yoga is alive, constantly teaching us adaptability and sustainability.

Breathe… adjust… monitor… breath… adjust…

The compassionate heart, like the still sky that hugs the earth, unconditionally accepts suffering with love.

Its soft smile does not judge, but tenderly holds our humanness with a gentle, warm nod.

It is all-welcoming and respectful and awesomely loves, so much that it can still the world.

In mediation, we take our seat to experience life in this moment in this body.  We take our asana, our “seat” as it originally meant in Sanskrit.

Today in yoga, we assume a myriad of different asanas or poses, not only this seated asana, experiencing life in our body in these poses.

Each asana, whether seated or not, is an opportunity to bring breath to mind and body, turning our senses inward–to experience life anew in the moment.

Take your asana, seated or not, and begin exploring and discovering!

If the present moment is the goal, to be here now, then you are already here… now.

There is no striving necessary to be here because you are already here.

Yoga and meditation involve and teach an unstriving–a being present and a presence to being.

You are already here!

Unstrive.  Use your effort not to get somewhere else.

Use your effort, every bit of it, to focus and realize the nature of and deepen our presence to being alive, here, now!

The Every Day Yogi has gone camping for Mother’s Day today and his birthday Tuesday.

See you Wednesday!

Namaste!

Embracing the mystery is like trying to grab water–it runs right through our open fingers and is gone.

But if we cup our fingers, we can feel the water and hold it for a while.

May we, like hands with cupped fingers, feel the mystery for a while.

Behold it!

At least as far as I know, a rosebud is not anxious about blooming into a rose,

nor about its petal arrangement, color, size, or scent.

And none of the other roses and buds, no matter how close to our bud, are anxious about what this bud will become.

In time, the mystery will be revealed!

I unwittingly wandered from you,

but you persistently stayed with me,

forever riding the breath

until I recognized you.

You’ve been here all along,

I find you in a shredded snake skin in the garden,

in the screech of the circling red-tailed hawk overhead,

in the roses among the thorns,

with a sweet inward smile,

forever riding the breath!

At points, we can find ourselves bombarded with an avalanche of “shoulds.”

I have a new measure for these shoulds to act on and those that are folly.

Does this benefit everyone involved?  And does it do no harm or attempt to minimize harm?

We shoulder a lot when we blindly accept and abide by so many shoulds–how we “should” feel , act, or be.  Likewise for things we “should not”….

To let them go and transform them, we need to recognize we took them on.  We have made them ours.

Nothing can weigh us down and cave us in on ourselves more than a mountain of shoulds and should nots.

What is mutually more beneficial and/or less harming to all involved?

This seems sustainable!

You really should try this!  Really you SHOULD!

It just might be beneficial to all involved.

In meditation and yoga, we can feel it.

It is both home, and our path to it…

a force that balances an incalculable variety and number of forces.  “Chaos” and “things out of control” may be the forces at work seeking balance.

Action brings about reaction.

Balance.

In yoga and meditation, we can feel it!