Autumn Lotus Yoga

There is a new blogger sending thoughts into the world these days.  My friend Tara is working on the 21-5-800 project (5 days a week, 800 words, 21 days) and I really love her writing.

http://tarainlimbo.blogspot.com/

In other blogger world connections, I have named my little trouble tweaky spots in emulation of Kai over at Reluctant Ashtangi and her gremlin Nitara.  (http://reluctantashtangi.blogspot.com/)  These aren’t injuries (Ganesha willing but just places I watch & work on during practice alot.  The right shoulder tendency is Frank, low back is Ethel, left hip flexor is Murray.  Moving lower, my knees are Lion & Tiger & the left ankle is Bear.  (Lions & Tigers & Bears, oh MY!  

This is making my relationship with these areas much kinder, lighter & more nurturing rather than just me getting p’oed at what I have seen as the weak links in my physical chain.  Naw.  Turns out Fred, Ethel, Murray & the Lions/Tigers/Bears are my friends and teachers!!  Thank you, Kai!!

The blog is back & active again — wow,  I’ve missed the time spent here.

But I have a bit of a new intent for it.  Rather than focusing so much on my daily practice, I’d like to use this space to work more directly with the material I’m studying.  It’d help me by keeping me on track & maybe be interesting to others as well. 

The daily practice is going quite nicely really too — it’s settled into a space that is far more right-brained than left.  I’m way inspired on the mat right now by what is happening that I can’t put into words yet. That probably doesn’t make sense, hence the whole not being able to put it into words.  Hopefully the time spent feeling & investigating will yield some good stuff that I can articulate later on. 

Also been enjoying the return to personal pen & paper journaling for my daily writing so I’m not committing to a daily blog online.  It might happen, just cause I am verbose that way, but we’ll see.

So come on in to the revamped site, take off yer shoes, grab some tea & stay awhile!

It’s a good question.  I’ve been asked a number of times why I try to write almost every day.  Like why practice (almost) every day.  How to make each time a discovery rather than an act of force. 

Wrote about it first from the perspective of blogging & yoga sutras here:

http://autumnlotusyoga.omblogger.com/2009/12/13/the-yoga-of-blogging/

I make no pretensions about having something profound to say each day, heaven knows!    But I do my best to say Something –  whatever shows up, with certain boundaries around my & Beloved Husband’s personal lives — even if it’s “yeah, today sucked, ready to move on to tomorrow.”

At the most basic level, it’s because life happens everyday.  Good, bad, indifferent, we wake up & go about the business of walking around in our skins (or trying to), being human.  Every.  Freaking.  Day.  It’s not something reserved for special occasions or profound revelation days.   Every day is not Christmas.

But thing is, if you don’t show up, if you don’t practice or write or get into your skin on each ordinary day, you miss most of the extraordinary ones.  To stretch the previous metaphor a little further, Christmas in July happens randomly quite often, usually when you least expect it.

Today’s practice had no likelihood of being “good.”  I had a rough day yesterday that I’m still processing & will share if & when it’s appropriate (not huge externally, more an internal thing — all is well truly in Chez Lotus .  Didn’t sleep much.  Woke up exhausted & tight & a little sore & mid-process.  By all rights I had every reason to give myself a pass, stay home, do an easy self-practice.  Went to class though, showed up on the mat for something a bit more structured.  And it brought some peace & release & a strong sense of getting a glimpse at a deeper level of healing.  Oh, & a random, rather loud & awesome hip/sacrum shift that just happened at the end of class during supine easy twists. 

It’s no coincidence I committed to a near-daily practice at about the same time I was ready to get married.  Practice, and  any chosen concurrent ceremony (including writing about practice), is like a marriage: you are there for it each day.  Gifts, challenges, breakthroughs, blahs, whatever, you are there.

It’s been a busy week, physical & emotional practice-wise, & I am Wicked sore.  (That’s an official Bostonianism for ya.  Having lived here almost six months, we were granted dispensation to use Wicked without irony by the city government.  

Did 30 minutes of back releases & now the blog post & then going off to cavort in Epsom Salts.

The link between blogging & yoga is something that doesn’t seem to cause a whole lot of examination these days.  I missed the nascent & even pubescent days of blogging.  Now, we all blog about everything.  Got an interest?  Pet peeve?  Obsession?  Blog about it.  There’s an academic/spiritual/obscene/all-of-the-above (yahooooo!!!) blog for you & if there isn’t one out there, start one!

But I really do think of blogging as a part of my yoga practice, right up there with asana, pranayama, neti, seva, blah blah blah. 

(That was just a warm-up.  I am about to quote the Sutras, in Sanskrit, to illustrate my point.  Really, mostly to demonstrate that I can, in fact, do something other than curse & neurose.

Patanjali, Section II on Practice, Verse 1:  Tapah svadhyayesvara pranidhanani kriya yogah.

According to the translation I own, (not being a Sanskrit scholar, quoting really is just for show , ” Accepting pain as help for purification, study of spiritual books, and surrender to the Supreme Being constitute Yoga in practice.” 

(Thank you Sri Swami Satchidananda.  BTW, I like your beard.

Acccording to my interpretation of this (different thing than quoting or translation, please note), blogging fits kinda like this.

1) Tapas —  a form of discipline or burning out to create purification.   Writing is a part of daily discipline.  Somedays good/bad/ indifferent but always a form of creating space, clearing out the pus & puke to which flesh is heir.  And, also, sometimes a form of self-mortification along the lines of  public flagellation (so many possible bad typos with those two words… pause to think about it…

2) Svadhaya — study.  Can be looked at in different circumstances as study of Self or Self-Studying-Spiritual-Stuff.  Swami definitely leans to the latter, but he is a Swami, not a mere navel-gazing mortal.    In this case, blogging I feel works as both. The self-study (narcissism is the Freudian vs. Sanskrit term is obvious.  The self-studying-spiritual-stuff is partly I think from trying to encapsulate & interpret/think out loud & put out there the spiritual bits absorbed along the way.  Like reading back your study notes.  And it’s also from reading other people’s blogs.  Seriously.  I don’t presume my ramblings are anywhere up there, but I do know that I’ve learned much from others in the cybershala.  How can the study of another human’s heartfelt soulsearching self-practice be anything other than sacred?

4) And the Surrender to the Supreme Being… that must mean the Internet.  Or WordPress.  Obviously.  

The other level of Sanskrit I can throw out there in relation to blogging is Sangha.  The creation of community. 

On the Forrest level — here’s my personal Sanskrit-to-Forrest translation.  (Note that it is much shorter & uses plain Anglo-Saxon.

Blogging: A commitment to investigate, articulate & communicate your process opens you up to yourself, others & the mysteries of the earth.  Asking your Spirit “What the Fuck?” is a tool to use on & off the mat. 

But that’s just based on my perspective/motivations for participation in this phenomenom.  I’d be very interested to hear from others in some form (email, post, comment, energetic transmission on how their blog fits with their yoga practice overall.