From Preface to Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman:

Love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to everyone that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul and your very flesh shall be a great poem.

This is from a book called Teaching with Fire: Poetry that Sustains the Courage to Teach, edited by Sam M. Intrator and Megan Scribner. The book was a gift from a student, and it sits in a stack of books beside the chair where I do my chant and meditation practice.

I've been trying, each day after I complete my meditation and chant practice, to randomly open the book to a poem. Then I read the comment on the page opposite from the poem, where a teacher talks about how this poem informs her teaching, or gives her something to sustain her. This was today's, and it was perfect.

I've made Sutra II.1 of the Yoga Sutra-s a guide for this year: tapah: show up, make an effort, practice; svadhyaya: do some self-reflection; and isvara pranidhanani: let go of the outcome.

As such, I am trying, every day, to do my practice. It may sound little, but it's not. 

Some days I do just my physical practice. It takes about an hour to an hour and a quarter, and includes standing poses, poses on my back, and some seated poses. It is concrete, very breath-focused, and helps me to stay physically and mentally more comfortable. It has a meditative effect as well, because there is so much focus on moving to the pattern of my inhalations and exhalations.

Other days, I do only my chant and pranayama practice. This takes anywhere from a quick version of 20 minutes up to an hour or so. For this, I chant an opening chant; then the two chants assigned by my mentor for meditative reasons, or on other days, practice the chant or chants that I am working on with my chant teacher. Then I do my breathing practice, and on some days, stay with the pranayama for several more breaths. I finish with two closing chants, and then make some very brief notes in a calendar I keep beside the chair where I chant. I am not journaling so much as noting the weather, my mood, and when and what I practiced.

Lately, I've added in reading a poem from a book given to me by a student. The first day that I opened it up, I came to Mary Oliver's The Journey.

And on some days, I do both practices. The chant practice in the morning, to prepare for the day, and the physical practice in the afternoon, to reset the system and reduce (as we do with physical counterposes) the strains of the day.

My goal is to try to keep showing up for some yoga of my own, every day. And I find that it makes a huge difference compared to how I feel when I'm not practicing. That late afternoon practice, especially, gives me a sense of internal quiet and refocus that is both relief and nourishment.

I remember one of my teachers telling a story of a student in elementary or junior high who contacted her to do an interview for a school project. He asked her what kind of equipment was needed to do yoga. He had in mind, probably, things like mats or blocks or clothing. Her answer was "time." One of the biggest challenges to practicing yoga is finding and making the time. It is easy to let the day get away from you, and so many lovely distractions. But taking a little time each day, even for 5 or 10 minutes, creates some space, physically and mentally, for something new to come in..

My teacher, Kate Holcombe, has written a wonderful column about this sutra, which advises us to connect with the light within each of us, as a way to reduce agitation and improve our clarity. Here's the link: http://www.yogajournal.com/wisdom/2618

It's well worth reading, especially as we enter the dark time of the year.

I'm reading a wonderful, interesting book called How to Live, or, A Life of Montaigne: In One Question and Twenty Attempts at an Answer, by Sarah Bakewell.
 
Like a book I mentioned earlier this summer (The Paper Garden), How to Live is a fusion of my favorite genres: literary history, biography, cultural history, and autobiography. Oh, and illustrations and photos, including the room at the top of a circular tower where Montaigne did his writing; a photograph of a wine label from the vineyard descended from ontaigne's family's winery; and pen-and-ink drawings of Montaigne as a boy, being gently awakened by a lute player as his father wanted him to gently transition from sleep to wakefulness. (His father also required him to speak only Latin at a very early age, when no one other than his tutor could converse with him, but that's another story.)

In twenty discursive chapters, the author, Sarah Bakewell, entertains a range of different answers floated by Montaigne to this important question: how should one live? And what I like, so far, most about the book is the range and practicality of the answers, which are more suggestions than dictates.

Here's an example of some of the chapter headings:
Chapter 9. Q. How to live? A. Wake from the sleep of habit.
Chapter 2. Q. How to live? A. Pay attention.

As you can see, some of these answers are very yogic. Be born. Slow down and notice what's around you. Break up accustomed patterns that no longer serve a positive purpose.

But some are more amusing but just as helpful. Like:
Chapter 8. Q. How to live? A. Keep a private room behind the shop. (Bakewell notes Montaigne's influence on Virginia Woolf and stream-of-consciousness technique. Maybe also the room thing; I'm not to that chapter yet.)
and
Chapter 6. Q. How to live? Read a lot, forget most of what you read, and be slow-witted. (Please remember that Montaigne, and the biographer, have a sense of humor!)

And my favorite, so far:
Chapter 19 Q. How to live? A. Be ordinary and imperfect
We talk about this a lot at the knitting shop: that line between putting in a good effort and the going over the line to perfectionism. Sometimes imperfect is more beautiful, inside and externally.

The book is very readable as well as well-written. There's tons of scholarship at the end, but if you want to just pick it up and read a chapter here and there without following sources, you'll get much out of it. Here's a  sample quote from Chapter 2 (Q. How to live? A. Pay attention), with Bakewell describing Montaigne's effort to live "with full attention to the present moment":

The trick is to maintain a kind of naive amazement at each instant of experience - but, as Montaigne learned, one of the best techniques for doing this is to write about everything. Simply describing an object on your table, or the view from your window, opens your eyes to how marvelous such ordinary things are. To look inside yourself is to open up an even more fantastical realm. (p. 37)

I wonder if Montaigne read Indian writings? So

"Faith and regular practice will give relief - and faith is secondary. With regular practice, we can take care of the problem."

I came across this quote scrawled on the margin of a yoga therapy case from training. The speaker was a medical doctor who served for several years at the yoga therapy clinic in India, and he was answering a question from a student regarding a case study. The student asked how it was possible that the patient responded so quickly to yoga therapy.

Regular practice: how simple, yet how difficult. And, as the sutra-s state, faith is important: according to Patanjali, spiritual belief is a powerful tool for reducing our agitation. But what I like about this quote is that it reminds me that showing up, sticking with something, being consistent are also incredibly influential on the success of any venture.

And I would be the first to state that the challenge of consistently doing a yoga practice every day is huge. I know this very well: every day, I struggle to fit my practice in. It is so easy to let other things get in the way. Some are mandated - putting food on the table, going to work, doing something outside for fresh air and exercise. Some are less so: reading a good book, knitting, watching a movie. Every day, at some point, I say to myself: time to do your practice. And then I go upstairs, do either my physical practice of posescor my chant and breathing practice, or maybe even both.

The key is "regular"; length is less significant. I regularly remind my students that I would rather have them do their practice every day - but keep the practice short - than to have a long, unmanageable practice that never gets done. The analogy I use is flossing our teeth: much better to do a little every day, than to only do it once a month, for a long session!

So, give yourself the job of spending at least five minutes a day doing yoga. And if you're able to find a teacher, ask that person to help design the right practice for you, so that you get the most out of what you are putting in. And it should be fun as well as good for you.

And once you have a taste of how you feel on the days that you practice, versus the days that you do not, you will be much more motivated to make time for that Regular Practice.

There is nothing like the beach. Pure space and light.

I will be teaching a very important and timely 6-class series on Yoga for Anxiety, starting Monday, September 26th, 6- 7:15 pm at Yoga Among Friends.

We will focus on the concrete tools that yoga provides for reducing anxiety and managing its symptoms. The class is suitable both for students new to yoga as well as those who have practiced before.

According to the Yoga Sutra-s, we know we are out of balance when we feel sad, have negative thoughts, feel aches and pain in the body, and our breath is short and uneven. (Sutra I.31).

In this 6-week series, you will learn ways to shift from these negative patterns to more positive, healing states through the practice of yoga. Each class includes physical, breathing, and meditative practices as well as a final relaxation period.

Please contact me at jbyogatherapy@att.net or through the Contact page on this website to register or ask any questions. Pre-registration is requested, and because we will be using the Small Studio, class size is limited.

This is a photo of me getting a henna tattoo while in Inda a few years ago.

I was musing about how getting a tattoo is a metaphor for the dance our mind does all the time: I want that. I have that, but it is not what I expected. Eeek! Now what do I do. And then, with some yoga or some reflection or some time, ahh, it's okay. Not what I thought it would be, but so much better.

My friend Amy's blog about India says it much more thoughtfully.

Reading the post reminded me of my tattoo adventure. We were at a place called Dakshincitra - sort of an Indian Williamsburg, with old buildings and historical information and local and traditional craftspeople.

I had been intrigued by the beauty of henna tattoos for a long time. So when I came to the small building where a woman was doing henna tattoos, I was in. But as Amy so humorously explains, it ain't what you might expect.

Before you get to the end result - the beautiful, decorative work of art - you sit for a long time, while someone applies what looks like cake icing from a tube onto your fingers. All of them. And the palm of your hand. And your wrist. And your forearm. Repeat, until you run out of arm, or, in my case, get squirrelish and somehow communicate that because you chose the lower priced tattoo, that you really want it to stop around your elbow.

Then, you wait, gingerly holding an arm covered with thick, impasto-like, very dark dye, in swirls and curlicues and shapes away from your clothes, your body, your companions. The paste begins to dry. The skin feels a little tingly and a little warm. You begin, or at least I did, to wonder if anything is wrong. You want to wash it off, but your companion supports you and urges you not to. You want to wash it off - what will they say at work? - and again are urged to be patient.

In my case, I caved after about one hour. And as Amy notes, the experience results in something unbelievably beautiful, special, a work of art right there with you. 

Lesson learned: Sutra I.6 The five activities of the mind including memory - thinking in the past - and imagination - thinking in the future. What if, instead, we were patient, willing to wait for an actual outcome, and then respond to that? Here's a picture of the outcome. Very nice! And many compliments from teachers and colleagues at work in Chennai.

Jody Kurilla, my colleague from KHYF yoga therapy training, will be in town to do a great workshop on the breath.

The title is Exploring the Anatomy of the Breath. Logistics are Sept. 17th, 2-5 pm, at Yoga Among Friends in Downers Grove.

Jody is an amazing teacher. She is warm, smart, and really knows her stuff. She has a yoga studio in Portland, Oregon; teaches at Nike; and has a wonderful way of transmitting subtle material such as pranayama.

For more information, here's the link to the YAF website and the workshop: http://www.yogaamongfriends.com/anatomyofbreath.html.

Jody has studied for several years with Lesley Kaminoff, and i

The cicadas are buzzing. The sound starts quietly, and then builds to a low roar, like the sound of an airplane engine. The light is turning from the white sun of July to the golden color of autumn. The air, suddenly, is fresher, cooler.

It must be August, and time to think about going back to school. Even if you're not actually going back to school.

At this time of year, I have an urge to start something new. Buy fresh new notebooks and a new box of pencils. Sign up for something. Learn something. , Be a student as well as a teacher.

I recently read an amazing book called The Paper Garden: Mrs. Delany Begins Her Life's Work at 72, by the poet Molly Peacock. The book meets my First Sentence Rule: by which you can judge an entire book's promise by the opening sentence. This one (I'm quoting from memory) begins: "Imagine starting your life's work at the age of 72." Pretty captivating.

The book tells the story of Mary Delany, who began making her art in her eighth decade. She lived a vibrant and often challenging life, married twice (once unwillingly and very young and once willingly and later in life), knew King and Queen, and wrote over six volumes of letters. Peacock instersperses this story both with her own life and that of what I found to be the most interesting figure: Ruth Hayden, the many-times great niece of Mrs. Delany, who herself started a writing life in her fifties.

The book is lusciously written, inspiring, and down-to-earth. And being a weaver and a knitter, I appreciated the serious respect for an art that is also a craft. Most of all, though, it had me thinking about the constant opportunity to try something new, create something, learn something, no matter our age.

As a result, with the helpful advice of a friend (another wonderful thing about The Paper Garden is Peacock's description of Delany's female friendships and their significance in supporting her creativity), I've signed up for a writing course this fall. It's a bit daunting - writing is really tough work. But I'm also excited, and with my birthday coming up in September, I'm pleased to be going back to school and learning something new.

Sutra I.12: abhyasa vairagyam tannirodhah. We move toward a state of yoga - the experience of a focused, calm mind - by adding in something new and letting what is not working fall to the side. The examples of the women in this book, artists as well as author, remind me that it's important to keep adding in the new, whether we are marching off to kindergarten or post-post-post-graduate school.

If you would like to add something new to your schedule, I'll be teaching Chanting 101 again, starting in September. Sunday morning, 10:30-11:30 am, at Yoga Among Friends in Downers Grove.

Chanting is fun. And it has therapeutic and meditative benefits, including improving communication and listening skills, lengthening the breath, and reducing agitation. The class is suitable for beginners as well as more experienced chanters. We'll start each class with sounds and scales, and then work on a specific Vedic chant, ending the hour with a short practice incorporating the day's chant.