Day 19: Yoga Awareness
- By onthemat
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- 19 Dec, 2015
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I find myself adjusting my posture in the weirdest places – standing at my kitchen counter making tea, waiting in the post office line, standing at a cocktail party. It always begins with a subtle straightening of my spine, pulling out of my hips and reaching my sternum and the crown of my head to the ceiling. Then I try to stand on all four corners of my feet (very difficult for a bow-legged girl) and turn my legs inward to take the pressure out of my lower back. I have heard alignment instructions for many, many years from many, many gurus, and as such, my teachers’ words are fairly well ingrained in my mind. There’s a funny irony, however, in all of this self-imposed posture building. I remember back to the hundreds of times my mother told me to stand up straight. She would motion to me to pull my shoulders back and then poke me in the thoracic spine (of course, I had no idea it was my thoracic spine then). My reaction was the usual adolescent scoff, but now, years later, my mother is gone, and I am doing the same thing to my daughter. And what makes it worse (for her) is that I know a lot more about posture and alignment than my mother ever did. I guess I know why she doesn’t like yoga, but maybe if she learned it on her own….. ah, forget it. It’s enough work to take care of myself.
On The Mat Yoga Blog
“There is a light in the core of
our being that calls us home—one that can only be seen with closed eyes; We can
feel it as a radiance in the center of our chest. This light of loving
awareness is always here, regardless of our conditioning. It does not matter
how many dark paths we have traveled or how many wounds we have inflicted or
sustained as we have unknowingly stumbled toward this inner radiance. It does
not matter how long we have sleepwalked, seduced by our desires and fears. This
call persists until it is answered, until we surrender to who we really are.
When we do, we feel ourselves at home wherever we are. A hidden beauty reveals
itself in our ordinary life. As the true nature of our Deep Hear is unveiled,
we feel increasingly grateful for no reason—grateful to simply be.”
—John J. Prendergast, PHD, The Deep Heart
Seems like it’s been rainy,
windy, dreary for eons. Which may have helped us shelter inside a bit more. I
remember reading years and years ago in a Seth book that weather can be
influenced, and even created by mass human emotion. Why not? We are far more powerful
than we currently acknowledge, and science is beginning to validate many
phenomena that had seemed inconceivable before. Those seemingly endless days of
“bad” weather seemed congruent with the emotional tone of covid her in New
England. And now SUN! Glorious, warming, invigorating, hope-filled Sun! Today I
will be outside basking and gardening and thanking. And I’m sure the whole
neighborhood, and most of New England will go outside, stand with our faces to
the sun and breathe a huge healing breath of joy. And maybe the collective
energy of that will resonate out across the word as a promise of brighter days
to come.
