class for my ailing friend

7/16

We start with our sitting alignment, 7 steps to being physically placed in the most stable position for closing our eyes without danger of tipping over and most open to encouraging the connection between our self, imagine a drop of seawater, and God, which would be the ocean.

Observe our body weight outside sitting on the floor, our skin feeling alive, tingling where we can bring our mental focus; and with our breath we feel our skin receiving and releasing. We try and observe the whole body on several levels at once. Without getting stuck on visualization, letting go of thoughts, we experience our body directly. Observe the interior structure by being aware of our bones, muscles, tissues, fluids and energetic pathways.

The conscious breath relaxes our body and mind. For another ten minutes we let the breath guide our attention from the mix of inbreath swirling coolness subtly into sinus cavities, stimulating an energetic acceptance along nasal passages, and watch the outbreath give the warmth out from our bodies. Watching the breath flow further thru bronchi into lungs, stretching the bottom of our lungs, mixing into our bloodstream. The entire process extends further, forth thru stimulation of our visceral organs and back with massage of heart and lungs pressed empty. This process of relaxation releases peptide molecules from our hindbrain which in turn encourages the regulation of breath which further helps unify all body systems. The conscious breath hooks us to the vital prana as if we have this permanent IV connection to life, which happens to be our respiratory apparatus.

We break from traveling our interior because I want to ask about prayer. I have limited experience with it thru my childhood faith.
Marie says prayer seems a natural connection we feel from an innate knowing, as when a parent worries about a child getting home safely.
Perhaps prayer can be our compassionate focus sent out with an energetic intention.
Our openess in today's yoga practice can be the conduit for a prayer for my friend as well as giving back to ourselves the healing energy we acknowledge saying "Namaste".

yoga for my ailing friend

7/15/06
Dear yoga friends,

Tommorrow, Sunday, is free yoga class at 10:30am. It will be focused on
what healing energy we can gather to send to my friend, who is having a
mastectomy on Monday. Please come and/or say a prayer for her recovery.

I think our focus together, will allow us to send the benefit of our
prayer out to her.

Thank you, )oh~

part 3 - living poem

7/10/06

thewords play in the space between meaning,
dancing back and forth across a line-------------
that separates our ----selves ----from the world.

relentless in the reach for light,
flower growing in the garden,
this poem breathes.

this moment of breath observes
where life arcs that g-a-p
between universal chi filling my lungs
and the eager, thirsty heart
pumping and panning my bloodstream.
life flows from open air to open water,
and scratches for soil inside my heart.

inside that space between alveoli and corpuscle
spins an imaginable particle
filled with the will to love.

poem breathes in the space betweenus,
out from alveoli into corpuscle.

:)oh~

part two (of three)- the ego self is illusion

7/6/06

funny,
writers think they employ the muse
inspired by curves of breasts and hips
but muse can find her outlet in the writer,
speaking out by way of writers' lips.
so i can't blame/credit myself for writing,
when this muse can launch a thousand ships.

)oh~

-so i'm not really in control. it's about
recognizing my own role in the larger scheme
of things. if i can figure out the right
alignment for myself then i will be receptive
to where i fit and will be able to hear the
muse clearly and write it all down.

part one (of three) and mary jane austin

7/5/06
Part One

ha,
farmers imagine they are working for their own benefit,
feeding their families and the community at large,
but nowadays, millions of acres of wheat
successfully maintaining their global presence
have farmers tending to them every season.
this dialectic relationship evolved from millenia ago,
for as long as there has been human civilization,
back when wheat had "become civilzed", learning
to domesticate the race of human hunter-gatherers.

-i'm not sure what this says about serious illness,
like my friend's breast cancer.
this part one mentions the relativity of how we see
ourselves by an example of how easily one's viewpoint
yields extremely different awareness. it is supposed to
build a case for enlarging our experience quite a bit,
when it comes to thinking about life and death, what is
really going on.
i need to share what's become a healing focus,
an energetic effort at various times during the day, when
my mind settles on the wish for my friend's health and
wanting to help in a compassionate way, by allowing stress
to leach out from this time of illness, by helping to
remain positive and open to love which is healing, and by
putting things in perspective.
next, part two and three try in some wandering way to find
that release, that beauty, that orientation of the larger
universal matrix as it sits over and around our own life.

(btw, mary jane austin, the herbal author, has written
a wonderful description of the change in people's
reaction to chemotherapy by some biochemical letting go.)


:)oh~

new dates in season - waiting for mastectomy

7/4/06
Writing helps me make sense of difficult circumstances,
altho my yoga practice entangles in the meaning of words.
In two weeks my friend, who is also a yoga teacher, is
scheduled for a bilateral mastectomy and she's courageous
enough to ask her family & folks to send their love and
support. After years in remission, cancer is here in a
serious way. Blog visitors can offer a prayer, send
positive energy to join my own healing intentions for
my friend.


in the same room with mortality,
how worried you've been...
loss can seem so small
when placed before something bigger,
face to unknown face.

hai ku has morphed into
different meter,
an odd squared and prime sequence,
9-5-5-9-5

the beats break apart...
yesterday's rain falling with tears, i am sad,
i shake my fist toward the window, out at the sky beyond


dearie,
i know your family is sitting with you,
as i am sitting here, holding your hand,
watching the clock tick into tomorrow.

love, )oh~