What does the Sacrament of Extreme Unction (Last Rites), change and the song "Closing Time" by Semisonic have to do with your seventh chakra?

Last Rites are traditionally given to someone who is preparing to die.  It’s symbolizes the sick person’s acceptance of leaving behind the possessions of his or her life, both physical and emotional.  Extreme Unction is traditionally administered just once, but from a symbolic perspective, in the realm of our own thoughts and feelings, it can be administered once a day, because it signifies our desire to release the unnecessary baggage we carry with us.  It represents the release of all that is dead in our lives, and our conscious choice not to use our life-force to keep alive that which has passed from us.  This sacrament offers us a discipline through which we can live in the present moment.

While you may not have thought as the past as “dead”, this is actually an apt description of the place we call “yesterday”.  Breathing our life-force into keeping the past alive is like choosing to live in a mausoleum.  It is cold and dark, and the dead do not speak to us.

We are not meant to carry the past within us as if it were still alive.  What is over is over, and using our energy to fuel events or relationships long gone is like breathing life into a corpse in hopes of a resurrection. The cost of such actions to both the body and spirit is enormous.

According to Caroline Myss, the sacrament of Extreme Unction is related to the seventh chakra, which represents our connection to eternity and the divine.  The divine truth of the seventh chakra is to “Live in the Present Moment”.  To live in the present moment, we need to surrender and let go.

This was brought home very powerfully for me this week as two major changes were unfolding in my life.  One event was the closing of the old Cornerstone, New Hope location and with it the beautiful yoga space at The Treehouse.  Change is always difficult, even if it is just your yoga studio changing locations.  While I was excited about the change, I could see that a lot of the students were not.  You could hear sadness and reluctance in their voices.  The new space is beautiful in its own way, but it’s different.  There will be some things we love about the new space and some things we are not too happy about.  But, regardless, on Monday morning, April 10th, we will be in the new location.  We need to let go of the old space and move on with enthusiasm for that which lies in front of us.

The other event was the fact that my mother was moved into Hospice care last week.  I have to contemplate her passing in a much more concrete way.  I actually had to have a conversation with a priest about administering last rites.  While my mother left her home and her possessions long ago, it is now my turn to learn to let go. I need to perform my own ceremony of last rites, of letting go of who I was and that part of my routine which revolved around her.

The inherent energy of Extreme Unction combined with the energy of the seventh chakra, celebrates that all that was good about our past remains alive within us and around us, and that which is dead needs to be dead.  We cannot feel the grace that assures us of our own immortality if we continue to fear and fight the passage of years.

There is a correlation between the two homonyms weight and wait.  The more of the past we carry with us, the heavier our load and the slower our mental, emotional and spiritual evolution.  The lesson of the seventh chakra and the ritual of last rites teach us to dump the contents of our emotional suitcases on the floor as a symbolic release of everything we no longer want to carry with us. 

A healing ritual of Extreme Unction

Begin by asking yourself:  How much energy is draining from me?  How much of the dead am I carrying with me in my daily life?  On a piece of paper, write down whatever dead weight of the past you feel like you are lugging around with you.  Put the paper into a pyrex or earthenware bowl  (on your altar, if you have one) and put a match to it.  As it goes up in flames, visualize yourself dissolving the bonds that have tied you to the incident or incidents and allow your energy to return to you.  Say a prayer in which you release your energy from the event saying, “I don’t want this in my life anymore.”  As you feel your energy returning, say a brief prayer of thanksgiving.

If you have a song or some music that helps you feel the energy of releasing, play it as you perform your ritual.  The song that always comes to my mind when I feel a chapter in my life ending is the song “Closing Time” by Semisonic.  This song was written by Dan Wilson about the birth of his first child and how that event was going to change his life as a rock and roller.

Closing time
Open all the doors and let you out into the world
Closing time
Turn all of the lights on over every boy and every girl
Closing time
One last call for alcohol so finish your whiskey or beer
Closing time
You don't have to go home but you can't stay here

[Chorus:]
I know who I want to take me home
I know who I want to take me home
I know who I want to take me home
Take me home

Closing time
Time for you to go out to the places you will be from
Closing time
This room won't be open till your brothers or your sisters come
So gather up your jackets, move it to the exits
I hope you have found a friend
Closing time
Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end

[Chorus:]
I know who I want to take me home
I know who I want to take me home
I know who I want to take me home
Take me home

Closing time
Time for you to go out to the places you will be from

[Chorus:]
I know who I want to take me home
I know who I want to take me home
I know who I want to take me home
Take me home

Closing time
Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end

Letting go of the past is one way we can heal ourselves.   What do you need to let go of?

Pose of the Month - One Arm Handstand

Anna in One Arm Handstand

Practicing Inversions.
Developing Equanimity.

One of the things that makes yoga different from any other form of exercise is the practice of going upside down. Inversions are not for everyone and there are precautions to follow to be safe.  The body has to be trained by the other poses and the student has to develop the awareness and sensitivity to know where the body is in space and what it is doing.   But, inversions are very internalizing postures and they powerfully focus the mind.

Balancing postures, in general, develop poise.  Hand balancing poses such as handstand build confidence and strength.  Because our upper limbs metaphorically connect us to each other, arm balances can strengthen these connections as well as help us maintain healthy boundaries.  Hand balances can be very empowering postures, but they can also be very intimidating to new students.  It is important to practice patience and proceed with caution.

While there is a certain amount of upper body strength required to move into Handstand.  The posture is not as much about hard work and pushing, as much as it is about moving toward ease.  The first thing to learn is to let go of fear and anxiety and begin to learn to find balance in the center of the skeleton.  Think of stacking your bones like so many building blocks.  In Handstand, you line up your forearms right under your upper arms so that your elbows are articulating in full extension and straightness.  When your upper arms are in line with your torso and your torso is in line with your legs, your skeleton maximizes your ability to support your weight.  This articulation takes some time to reach since your joints need to open up and your muscular body needs to support you.  It is important to master this basic skill before moving into the pose variations.  The flexibility to extend the arms in line with the torso is developed in the various positions of the arms in the standing poses.

While the pose of the month is one arm Handstand, it is important to work up to it progressively.  The action of the arms starts in Child’s Pose, progresses to Downward Facing Dog and moves into two arm Handstand.  As a rule of thumb, it is a good idea to be able to hold regular Handstand for a full minute with your arms completely straight, stacking the bones for stability and ease before you think about trying to balance on one arm.  Other benchmark skills are one minute Side Plank and the ability to do pushups.

Last month when we were working on Astavakrasana, one student finally got into the pose after 15 years of practice.  When I was searching up one arm Handstand online, I read one person’s story about how it took him 14 weeks of practicing four to six hours a day, six days a week.  Results are faster the more you practice, but this is just to remind you not to expect results in one day.  Whether your goal is to get into Handstand or one arm Handstand, patience and perseverance are important.  And, achieving the pose is not important.  As Krishna says to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita:

You have the right to your actions,
But never to your action’s fruits.
Act for the action’s sake.
And do not be attached to inaction.

Self possessed, resolute act
Without any thought of results
Open to success or failure.
This equanimity is yoga.
BG 2.47-48

Lessons of the 2nd Chakra

The lessons of the 2nd chakra have to do with the power of relationships. The sacred truth associated with this chakra is “Honor One Another”.  The Swadhisthana chakra can also be called the Partnership chakra.  This is where we receive the power to act with integrity and honor within all of our relationships, from marriage to friendships to professional bonds.  This energy is particularly active because it resonates in all financial and creative activity.  Integrity and honor are necessary for health.  When we violate our honor or compromise it in anyway, we contaminate our spirits and our physical bodies.

1. Meaning

   1. Swadhisthana - One’s Own Place

2. Location

   1. Sacral area

3. Principle

   1. Water

4. Properties

   1. Liquid, flowing, feeling, changeable, yielding, pleasureable

5. Body Parts

   1. Hips, sacrum, abdomen, sexual organs, large intestine, lower vertebraeinner thighs, knees

6. Mental and Emotional Issues

   1. Intimacy/emotions

   2. Blame and guilt

   3. Money and sex

   4. Power and control

   5. Ethics and honor in relationships

7. Physical Dysfunctions

   1. Chronic lower back pain

   2. Sciatica

   3. Ob/gyn problems

   4. Pelvic and hip pain

   5. Sexual potency

   6. Urinary problems

8. Divine Truth

   1. Honor one another

9. Affirmations:

   1. I deserve and experience pleasure in my life

   2. I absorb information from my feelings

   3. I embrace and celebrate my sexuality

   4. I move and change easily and effortlessly

Questions for working with the 2nd Chakra

1. Do you have a lot of creative ideas?

2. Do you act upon them or deny them?

3. List your personal creative strengths:

4. List ways in which you use/express your creativity:

5. List ways in which you use/express your negativity:

6. How comfortable are you with your sexuality?

7. What do you need to do or be willing to do to be sexually well-balanced and to honor your sexuality?

8. Have you been abused sexually?

9. Have you abused others sexually?

10. What is your personal code of honor?

11. When do you not keep your word?

12. Do circumstances determine your ethical behavior?

13. Do you feel that Divine justice influences your life?

14. How much do you control others:

    1. Sexually?

    2. Financially?

    3. In power plays?

15. How much power does money have over you?

16. Do you violate your values for financial security?

17. How much of your life is dominated by fears of:

    1. Financial security?

    2. Physical security?

    3. Sexual security?

18. What do you need to do or be willing to do to resolve your fears of:

    1. Financial security?

    2. Physical security?

    3. Sexual security?

19. What do you need to do or be willing to do to use your creativity optimally?

On a scale of 0 to 10—in which 10 means absolute health with no deficit whatsoever and no lack of full expression of this chakra—how healthy and well-balanced is your second chakra?

8 Poses to Astavakrasana

Here are 8 poses to help you get to Astavakrasana, or Eight Crooked Places Pose.

Astavakrasana

This is a sequence you can practice at home, or if you are a teacher, you can try it out on your classes.  You can always add poses to make the sequence fill the time slot you have to teach.

Take a Sun Salute or three, or any other warm up of your choosing and as you come into each pose, stay for at least 5 breaths.

1. Side Angle Pose - take a vinyasa in-between and end in Down Dog.  From there come into:

2. Lizard Lunge - back leg straight.  Jump or step switch.  Move back into Down Dog and take a vinyasa if you wish.  Come into:

3. Revolved Side Angle Pose.  Do both sides and then transition to sitting.

4. Boat Pose.  Do three times and hold for 5 breaths each time.  Try to lift your self off the floor, balancing on your hands in between.

5. Revolved Boat.  I also call this seated Astavakrasana.  Right ankle crossed over left, left arm between legs as you twist to the right.  Do other side. Hold 5 breaths.

6. Baby Cradle.  Take as much time stirring the pot, or rocking your leg back and forth as you need.

7. One-Arm Leg Pose.  This is where you lift off with one leg bent over your shoulder and the other leg stretched out straight.

8. Astavakrasna!

If it doesn't work the first time you try this, be patient and keep practicing!

I'll see you in class!

Karin

Side Angle

Lizard Lunge

Revolved Side Angle Pose

Boat Pose

Revolved Boat or Seated Astavakrasana

Baby Cradle

One Arm Leg Pose

Astavakrasana!

The Symbolic Power of the Chakras

According to Caroline Myss:

Eastern religions teach us that the human body contains seven energy centers.  Each of these energy centers contains a universal spiritual life lesson that we must learn as we evolve into higher consciousness.

These seven spiritual life-lessons direct us toward greater consciousness.  If we ignore our responsibility and need to address consciously these seven spiritual lessons, however, their energy can manifest in illness.  Many spiritual Eastern traditions understand illness to be a depletion of one’s internal power or spirit.  The congruencies among major spiritual traditions underscore the universal human experience of the connection between the spirit and body, illness and healing.

Each of the seven levels of power in our biological system contains a single sacred truth.  This truth continually pulsates within us, directing us to live according to the right use of its power.  We are born with an inherent knowledge of these seven truths woven into our energy system.  Violating these truths weakens both our spirit and our physical body, while honoring them enhances the strength of our spirit and our physical body.

Energy is power and our bodies require energy; therefore, our bodies require power.  When we work with the chakras we are interacting with power and gradually we take control of our own power in successively more intense processes.  At the level of the first chakra, we learn to handle having a group identity and the power that comes within the family; at later levels we individualize and mange power as adults.  Gradually we learn to manage our minds, our thoughts and our spirits.  Every choice we make, motivated by either faith or fear, directs our spirit.  If a person’s spirit is impelled by fear, then fear returns to her energy field and to her body.  If she directs her spirit in faith, however, then grace returns to her energy system and her biological system thrives.

The major spiritual traditions hold that releasing one’s spirit into the physical world through fear or negativity is a faithless act of choosing personal will over the will of the heavens.  In Eastern spiritual terms, every action creates karma.  Acts of awareness create good karma; acts of fear or negativity create bad karma, in which case one must “retrieve” one’s spirit from negative places in order to enter heaven “complete”.

We are simultaneously matter and spirit.  In order to understand ourselves and be healthy in both body and spirit, we have to understand how matter and spirit interact, what draws the spirit of life force out of our bodies, and how we can retrieve our spirits from the false gods of fear, anger and attachments to the past.  Every attachment we hold on to out of fear commands a circuit of our spirit to leave our energy field.  What drains your spirit drains your body.  What fuels your spirit fuels your body.  The power that fuels our bodies, minds and hearts does not originate in our DNA.  Rather, it has roots in divinity itself.

Three truths that are common to the major spiritual traditions are:

1. Misdirecting the power of one’s spirit will generate consequences in one’s body and life.

2. Every human being will encounter a series of challenges that test his allegiance to heave. These tests will come in the form of the disintegration of one’s physical power base: the inevitable loss of wealth, family, health or worldly power.  This loss will activate a crisis of faith, forcing one to ask, “What is it, or who is it that I have faith in?”

3. To heal from the misdirection of one’s spirit, one has to be willing to act to release the past, cleanse one’s spirit and return to the present moment.

In the major spiritual traditions, the physical world serves the learning of our spirits, and the “tests’ we encounter there follow a well ordained pattern.  In the chakra system, each energy center warehouses a particular power.  These powers ascend from the densest physical power to the most etheric or spiritual power.  Remarkably, the challenges we face in our lives tend to follow this alignment as well.

The Lessons of the First Chakra

The lessons of the first chakra are related to the material world.  The first chakra is also called your tribal chakra.  The sacred truth at this level is All is One.  We are interconnected with all of life and to one another.  The tribal chakra resonates to our need to honor familial bonds and to have a code of honor within ourselves.  We first encounter this truth within our biological family, learning to respect the bonds of blood.  This connection can spread to others who are like you as members of a church, temple or synagogue.  However, your bond to your biological family is symbolic to everyone and to all that is life.  As Thich Nhat Hanh says we “inter-are”.   Violating this energy bond by considering those wqho are different than us to be less than us creates a conflict within our spirit and therefore within our physical body.   Accepting and acting according to the basic truth All is One is a universal spiritual challenge.

The First Chakra

Location:  Base of the spine at the coccyx.

Organs:  Spinal column and physical body support, legs, bones, feet, rectum and immune system

Emotional and mental issues: Emotional and mental health, physical family, group safety and security, ability to provide for life’s necessities, ability to stand up for one’s self, feeling at home, social and familial law and order.

Physical dysfunctions: Chronic lower back pain, sciatica, varicose veins, rectal tumors/cancer, depression, immune related disorders.

Questions to ask yourself in regard to the health of the first chakra:

1. What beliefs and values do you share with your family?

2. What beliefs and values do you not share with your family?

3. What beliefs and values, when shared with your family, create anger, guilt, anxiety, or depression?

4. What beliefs and values, when shared with your family, create joy and acceptance?

5. Identify and list any superstitions that you hold.

   1. Which of these superstitions create fear?

   2. Which of these superstitions create pleasure?

6. Can you define your personal code of honor?

7. List situations where you did not live up to your code of honor.

   1. List situations where you have resolved the issues listed in the previous question.

8. List unfinished business (anger, guilt, anxiety, depression) with:

   1. Your mother

   2. Your father

   3. One or more of your siblings

   4. Other family members

   5. What are you willing to do to heal any of these relationships?

9. List all the blessings you received from:

   1. Your mother

   2. Your father

   3. One or more of your siblings

   4. Other family members

10. What are the major values you would wish to instill in your children if you had/have any?

11. What tribal rituals/traditions do you wish to honor and continue?

12. List tribal values you wish or need to strengthen.

On a scale of 0 to 10—in which 10 means absolute health with no deficit whatsoever and no lack of full expression of this chakra—how healthy and how well-balanced is your first chakra?

Continuing Education for Yoga Teachers - Assisting

ASSISTING - PRECISION & COMPASSION - STANDING POSES

Assisting your students is one of the benefits of being in a live class. Often a compassionate and skillful assist can help a student immediately understand something that might take a long time to learn on their own. However, an aggressive assist can be harmful to a student.  This course will help you help your students understand postures better through manual adjustments while honoring where they are.  Topics will include:

• Asking permission

• Students who have experienced trauma

• Verbal versus manual cues

• The difference between adjusting and assisting

• Understanding alignment

• The precision of touch

  • Approach

  • Direction

  • Duration

  • Releasing

• Foundation and stability

  • Where to stand and where not to stand

• The importance of breath

• Neutral energy

• The use of props

Continuing Education for Teachers - Sequencing

SEQUENCING - ORDER MATTERS

As a yoga teacher, you direct energy.  When you are clear and precise with where you are going, you can lead your students through an energetic experience that takes them inward while opening their bodies, hearts and minds.  Building sequences is a skill with many parts that once learned can be used to take your students deep. In this course, we will study:

• The energy of the poses

• The energy of a class

• Langhana and Brahmana - How to create a smooth arc of energy and why that is important

• Posture progressions

• How to breakdown postures into their component parts

• How to use neutral and counter poses

• The difference between sequencing for beginners, intermediate and advanced students

• How to create different outlines for different poses

• Pacing and timing

Thursdays from 1:00 to 4:00 pm, May 4th and May 11th
Attend one or both days.
Registered Yoga Instructors receive CEU's

The Benefits of Astavakrasana

Why should we do this pose and what should you do if you can't do it?

If you look in Light on Yoga, Mr. Iyengar says that this pose strengthens the wrists, arms and tones the abdomen.  Surely there are other easier exercises that we can do to get those same results.  But, there is something empowering about the ability to support your body weight on your hands.  You don’t have to do Astavakrasana at all.  Ever.  But, take a look at the poses under each of the individual skills that build up to making this pose and see what you can work on.  Who knows, one day you may surprise yourself!

There are no poses that are absolutely mandatory to do.  But a lot of poses are just progressions of what is possible in strength and flexibility.  Yoga tests our limits, the edges of our comfort zones and where we are stuck.  One of my teachers always says, "In an ever expanding universe, there is always more."  For some that can be overwhelming, but it is not meant to be.  Can you just take a peak around the next bend?  Can you take the next step towards something?  We all know the concept that a business has to grow in order to continue.  How about ourselves?  What happens to us if we don’t continue to grow?  The Bhagavad Gita teaches us to take the actions for the sake of being alive but to let go of the fruits of our actions. There is no pressure to perform, you just show up and do the next thing.

Like any large task that is overwhelming, you can break it down into its smaller components.  Let’s take Astavakrasana  apart and look at each piece.  Work on each component without any thought of the next step until you get there.

Hip flexibility: Getting your leg over your shoulder.

If you can do Side Angle Pose, can you do Bound Side Angle Pose?  If you can't do Bound Side Angle Pose, try Lizard Lunge.  After Lizard Lunge, can you now approach Bound Side Angle Pose better?  What would happen if you were to try Lizard Lunge every time you practiced?  In Lizard Lunge we are working the hip flexibility to be able to get the shoulder under the thigh; this is the flexibility you need to bind in Side Angle Pose.  The ability to bind in Side Angle Pose is the same flexibility to get the leg over the shoulder in Astavakrasana.  Notice in this picture that you can see my right knee above my back.

Shoulder Flexibility: The ability to bind the arms.

One of the poses I like to do in almost every class is a forward fold with the hands clasped behind the back.  Because everything is our lives is usually oriented in front of us, we tend to constantly be reaching forward.  This and poor posture causes our shoulders to round forward.  Stretching the arms behind the back stretches the front of the shoulder.   This is the first step in the flexibility to bind.  Practicing Marichyasana I is a good pose to work on your bind.

Twisting: the ability to connect your opposite elbow and knee together.

A twist is defined as the hips and shoulders rotating 90 degrees from each other.  Usually one part of the body stays still while the other part rotates.  One of the aspects of a lot of twists in yoga is the ability to connect your knee with your opposite elbow.   Think of the ab exercise we call bicycling, where you are lying on your back and your curl your head and shoulders of the ground with your fingers interlaced behind your head and you try to touch your elbow to your opposite knee: your hips stay stationary and your upper body curls and rotates your shoulders.  You will see this same action in Revolved Side Angle Pose, Side Crow and Seated Twists.

Upper body strength: the ability to do a Low Push Up.

In Vinyasa classes, this is a pose appears a lot, but very few students do it correctly.  It forms the foundation of most arm balances.  I think most yoga students look for the flexibility in their yoga poses and are not as interested in the strength part.  Strength without flexibility is rigidity.  Flexibility without strength is instability. In yoga, as in life, we need both.  As we work on a Low Push up, we will also work on a High Push up, Side Planks and Reverse Planks.  Reverse Plank works on both shoulder strength and flexibility

Core strength: The ability to lift your lower body of the ground.

As I teach my students in anatomy training: Our arms connect us to each other and our legs connect us to the earth.  Our core integrates the upper body and lower body together.  If  we are lacking a strong core, we risk injuring ourselves.  Boat pose is a great core strengthening posture.  If you add a twist to Boat Pose, you basically have the seated version of Astavakrasana.

The strength of the inner thighs; the ability to squeeze your legs to the midline.

Drawing into yourself is a challenging thing to do.  Ask most people if they meditate.  While they want to, it is not easy to do.  We are so outwardly directed.  Hugging to the midline is the physical action of drawing inward, of trusting our own instincts.  Being able to draw your legs in towards the midline is the key to balancing your legs on your bent elbow in Astavakrasana.  When things get difficult in a yoga pose, rather than turning inward to their own strength, they let go and move outward away from their core.  This is the same reason why it is difficult to sit in meditation, the lure of the outer world seems more important and better than the inner world.  Being able to hug your legs together  as you tip your head and torso forward in this pose is scary.

Your legs should hug towards the midline in almost every yoga pose that you do.  Try doing Warrior II with your front foot on a sticky mat and your back foot on a blanket.  Start with your feet together, front foot turned out 90 degrees and back foot perpendicular to the front foot.  Let your back foot slide back a few inches and then draw it in.  Don’t go too far at first, or you may strain yourself.  Go progressively further as you get stronger making sure that your back toes don’t turn out.  If your back toes turn out you will use your glutes and in this case you want to use your inner thigh muscles.

As one of my teachers in art school used to quote Mies van der Rohe all the time:  "Develop an infallible technique and put yourself at the mercy of Inspiration."   Keep practicing.  I'll see you in class!

Karin

The Gayatri Mantra

This month we will be chanting the Gayatri Mantra in class:

Om bhur bhuvah suvaha

Tat savitur vareniyam

bhargo devasya dhimahi

Dhiyo yo nah prachodayat

-Rig Veda 3.62

Translation:

Om, we meditate on the glory of that being who has produced this universe, may he/she enlighten our minds.

Listen here to a classical version of the chant.  Listen here to a Deva Premal version.

The Gayatri mantra is a beautiful and ancient chant from the the Rig Veda, an ancient Indian collection of Sacred Sanskrit hymns.  This mantra is dedicated to the Savitur, the sun deity.  "Om bhur bhuva suvah" is the opening incantation of the Gayatri Mantra to pay homage to the interconnectedness of the earth (bhur), the atmosphere (bhuvah) and the heavens (suvah).

Some people are uncomfortable when I bring up the spiritual aspects of yoga.  Especially when there is an indication of a deity as mentioned in the translation of the Gayatri mantra above:  "We meditate on the glory of that being, who has produced the universe, may he/she enlighten our minds."    I often talk about surrendering our will to a Divine Will or to a higher power.  Who or what produced the universe?  I don't really think that there is a he or a she that can enlighten our minds.  But what is that power?

It is how Krishna describes himself to Arjuna in the Bhagavad Gita:

I am the taste in water,

the light in the moon and sun

The sacred syllable Om

in the Vedas, the sound in air.

I am the fragrance in the earth,

the manliness in men, the brilliance

in fire, the life in the living,

and the abstinence in ascetics.

I am the primal seed

within all beings, Arjuna.  -BG 7. 8 - 10

These don't describe a god as a he or a she, but the forces, wonders and beauty of the natural world and the mysteries that surround us. There is a wonderful description of the idea of a higher power  in the book of Job, when Job is crumbling under all of the bad things that have happened to him and he questions Divine Will.  God's response to Job is, "Where were you when I laid the earth's foundations?  Have you ever given orders to the morning or sent the dawn to its post?"

To me, this is what chanting the Gayatri means: celebrating whatever force it is that causes flowers to bloom, the sun to rise an for me to be alive.

March Pose of the Month - Astavakrasana

Astavakra is the name of a sage.  While still in his mother’s womb, he heard his father make several mistakes while reciting the sacred Vedas.  Hearing these, the unborn sage laughed.  The father became enraged and cursed his son to be born deformed, or crooked in eight places – Asta means eight and vakra means a crook, or a kink - literally eight crooks.  Astavakra’s father had been defeated in a philosophical debate by a scholar named Vandi.  When Astavakra became a sage and a great scholar he defeated Vandi avenging his father’s defeat.  Astavakra’s father then blessed him and he lost his deformity.

Astavakrasana was the first arm balance I learned, after Headstand, Handstand, Shoulderstand and Forearm Balance.  Perhaps that is the correct order of poses to learn before trying this arm balance.  I could do Astavakrasana way before I could do Crow.  I found it easy.  I wasn’t afraid of it the way I was of Crow, where I could fall on my face.  If I fell in Astavakrasana it seemed I just crumpled to the floor.  I was more confident in Astavakrasana.  This makes me think of what other qualities you need to bring to your poses besides strength and flexibility.  To do this pose of the month you do need the strength of a good, solid Caturanga, you also need the flexibility to twist – so you will see a lot of that in classes this month.  But, in order to attempt a posture like Astavakrasana you need courage to try.  You need the fearlessness of not being afraid to fall – and of putting a blanket down as a crash pad to help you overcome that fear.  You also need the confidence in yourself.   Those are the yang, or masculine qualities you need for this arm balance.  You also need some yin, or feminine qualities such as enthusiasm, playfulness and yielding.  While you need to bring these qualities to your practice of  Astavakrasana, this arm balance will also bring out these qualities in you.  Are you ready for a month of working playfully?  I’ll see you in class!    Karin