the brain, the breath and the bird

I love neuroscience. If I could audit a college course just for pure fascination value, it would be a neuroscience class. I'm not sure where this fascination came from but it stretches to every part of my life, most notably Yoga. Over the past decades science has been proving, or rather catching up, to what yogis and Buddhist have known for years; that meditation has profound found effects on the brain. Such effects are not localized to the brain because well we all know that the brain is the command center of the body, so the effects we create by calming the brain and resetting g our neuro pathways reach to every cell of our body.

A few years ago I read the book, My Stroke Of Insight by Jill Bolte Taylor, she is a neuroscientist who had a stroke. I read the book and thought it was good but I didn't put it down thinking "wow!" like you hope to when you are reading about something you are enthusiastic about. And maybe that was simply because the experience she had doesn’t translate to written word. You have to see her, hear the emotion swell in her voice, watch her body revert to stroke like status and the lift to the light she found within her own battered and bruised brain. So here watch for yourself:

 

Right?! Wow! Pretty amazing. She got to see witness her own brain deteriorate, surrender, and then decide that the reason she came back was to share the peace she found. It was almost too much for me. Actually it was too much for me because I know how hard accessing that right side of the brain is. I've been trying to meditate for years and the discipline it takes is astounding. But having a stroke seems a very drastic way of skipping the practice. So what is the trick, well there's not one, there's just practice. Practice and the willingness to never stop learning. So that's what I’ve been doing.

I’ve been going to yoga school and studying Ayurveda and working towards living a more disciplined yogic life. This weekend while I was in a training session I had when some of the information I’ve been learning in school as well as other studies, including this video from TED talks, all came together in one moment of awareness. It happened of course during a meditation.

It was during a session on Pranayama, the yoga of breath. We were lead through a series of breathing exercises for about an hour then we sat in meditation for about 15 minutes. As I began my meditation letting go of the breathing techniques we’d been working with and simply observing my breath I began to feel a sort of swirling sensation in my head and I thought "right, I’m trying to access the right part of my brain." So I sent a little more breath there and the swirling sensation increased. Then the sensation moved to the left side of my head and I thought,”ok, this is ok because I want balance." Then I realized I was doing a lot of thinking for a meditation so I took a calming breath and let my thoughts go. Then it came, that moment of inspiration that gives you the clarity to keep up with your practice.

As I let my thoughts go the swirling sensation in my brain increased then as though the bones in my head evaporated the sensation spread apart. I saw in my mind the two sides of my brain becoming the walls of a canyon, a great and beautiful calm between them; orange and yellow and red in color. And without "thinking" it was more like a feeling I thought "how do I cross this canyon" and I saw/felt a blue bird soar over from my right brain to my left and back again and then floating on the breeze sort of danced between them. Like a barn swallow swooping through the air and as he flew the canyon walls started moving back together. And then I startled.

it couldn't have taken more than a few seconds like the way dreams stretch on for hours when only a few minutes has passed between alarms. But it was so cool! I knew without having to question my experience that what I was seeing was the tool I needed to balance my brain to be able to access both parts of my brain and have better control over which side I  function in and when. That key is my breath. After spending an hour learning the tools to control the breath and the good fortune of have watched Ms. Bolte and the physical and scientific knowledge of the brain, something about that combination allowed me to stop trying to learn how to meditate and just do it. Almost like an athlete who has trained for years before that one race in the Olympics or an actor rehearsing for weeks before opening night, at some point you just have to have faith that you have learned what you need and then let it go and just do it. Except for me I had to let everything go and just be. Yeah it was pretty cool.

Sunday Funnies.

In Dreams, On Mat

For whatever reason last night I was dreaming about back bends. I couldn't shake the feeling in my spine that I had been doing a back bending practice all night. So I taught a back bending class today inspired by some of the bends I dreamed about. Like these:

 

So if that doesn't inspire you to do some back bends here is a video about gentle back bends. This is a video of a podcast I listen to a lot when I'm traveling or can't get to a class and don't want to do a self guided practice. The instructor if Jason Crandell of Yoga Journal. Enjoy. 

What a Yogi Eats...

on Harvest Day.

Veggie Stir Fry

 

I love having a kitchen garden! I love food right out of the ground and this morning I harvested:

Carrots
Rainbow Chard
Swiss Kale
Green Beans
Paprika Peppers (ok just one pepper, but its early still)

Perfect for summer stir fry. Here's how I did it...

1st Get some water boiling for your rice, noodles or anything else you might like to serve your stir fry over, or if you are Paleo or Low Carb or just don't have anything you can eat the veggies on their own.

2nd toss a little oil in your skillet while it heats chop the Carrots into your desired shape, toss those into the heated skillet. Next, chop the Green Beans, toss them in. Next, slice the pepper and in with it.

Usually between the Beans and the Peppers the rice water is boiling, so add your rice, noodles, etc...Cover and get back to the veggies.

While those veggies are cooking, stem and chop your Kale and Chard. When the Carrots are just shy of soft toss in the greens.

CHEATER STEP (because I'm not good at Asian sauces), over the greens drizzle some of your favorite stir fry sauce. Instant flavor, no effort!

Optional Step: I like to pour about 1/4-1/2 a cup of water over the green and sauce before giving it a stir. I do this because it helps my greens to wilt and spreads the sauce more evenly, it also helps to soften the harder veggies if they aren't done all the way yet. I cook it back down so the sauce doesn't lose any umph.

Optional Step #2: Protein: Now I’m not a vegetarian but my Ayurvedic Consultant told me I should limit my meat intake, really I'm supposed to just eat chicken and fish but I'm terrible at cooking chicken in a skillet and I don't like fish in stir fry. So instead I used TVP, Textured Vegetable Protein, it has a great texture and no taste so you can season it however you want. It is a dehydrated product so I pour about 3/4 a cup into a bowl, sprinkle it with seasoning (for this I used a little turmeric and a 5 pepper blend) and let it sit, I do this before I even put the water on to boil, so by this point in the recipe it's fully rehydrated/marinated and ready to go. SO into the skillet with it!

Cook down till all the extra water is absorbed and serve over your rice, which should magically finish right when your veggies do.

I garnished mine with a few fresh cucumbers with dill which is very cooling for my Pitta digestion, just in case the sauce had too much spice in it, and sesame seeds which you don't see here because I forgot them. 

ENJOY!

Sunday Funnies. DRAFT

Sunday Funnies

 Caption This...

Come on, it'll be just like the New Yorker comic caption contest, except in stead of getting published you get, well nothing. There is absolutely no prize! But be clever because your internet bragging right depend on it. Here I'll get us started with a very very lame attempt...

Drought

I think this drought is getting to me. I feel as inspirational-ly depleted as the earth. I'm going to do a little...

 

and meditate on...

 

Joy and Abundance.

And then I'll come back with a much better blog.

Gratitudes

It's been a few weeks since I was grateful. Not really I've actually been very grateful I just haven't blogged about it. So were are my 5 Gratitudes for this week:


1. My amazing Mother came to help me (ok she really did all) paint the apartment I just moved into. After all that time working on the studio the thought of picking up yet another paint brush or do anything that resembles renovation gave me the shakes. So Mom swooped in from Alabama and is currently spray painting the gnarliest kitchen hardware ever!


2. THE HEAT BROKE! It actually feels like Wisconsin again.



3. Happier about the weather than I am, my dog! She is even feeling a little frisky and instigating play with other dogs, you have to kow how stoic my dog is to be grateful for this so just take my word.


4. I am reading a great book. The Four Desires by Rob Stryker. Its really helping me keep perceptive during all this transition. I highly recommend it to anyone seeking more clarity about their life's future.


5. Prayer. No, no, no don't worry I'm not going to get all weird on you! It's My sanskrit teacher's fault really, she gave us an challenge to chant everyday for 10 days. I had completely forgotten how much I love this practice. I've been reciting mantras on walks, when I'm cooking, at the studio, before I go to bed, I've prayed more in the past 4 weeks than I ever did growing up in Catholic school.


Some of the prayers I've been reciting as mantra:

 The Gayatri Mantra:
OM BHOOR BHUWAH SWAHA,
TAT SAVITUR VARENYAM
BHARGO DEVASAYA DHEEMAHI
DHIYO YO NAHA PRACHODAYAT.

This Mantra has many translations here is one:
Oh God! Thou art the Giver of Life,
Remover of pain and sorrow,
The Bestower of happiness,
Oh! Creator of the Universe,
May we receive thy supreme sin-destroying light,
May Thou guide our intellect in the right direction.

The Santi Mantra (This is the one I painted in the studio)

 

The Serenity Prayer

Dear God, 

Grant me the Serenity to accept the things I cannot change

The Courage to change the things I can

And the Wisdom to know the difference 

Blessing.

Just as I was posting this blog the other day a gentleman stopped by the studio. I met him at the General Store in town the day I closed the studio, he seemed genuinely upset but very understanding. A few days ago was the first cool morning we've had in weeks so I had the studio door open as I worked on the computer (blogging) and this gentleman pulls up and starts to walk in, I don't remember his name but he hands me an envelope and says, "keep the dream alive." Then he turns to go so I stop him and say thank you as graciously as I can and I give him a hug.

Inside the envelope was this article about yoga.

And this note.

Inside the note were 2 hundred dollar bills. I cried. At this point I couldn't squeeze $200 out of my bank account if I had the World Arm Wrestling Champion helping me! So that seems like quite a gift to me, the article and the hug would have been enough of a gift to me but to for this gentleman to make an offer like that, well it was almost too much for me.

Here's the thing, this man will never do yoga. He has some disabilities that will forever keep him off the mat but he believes in me and in what I am trying to create even if he can't reap the benifts himself.

I am humbled by such a gift and this gentleman is a blessing to me.

Could It Be Honey

New banner, freshly painted ceiling and honey line.

I had to close my Studio, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done. It had repercussions that reverberated through my life and my tiny town. It hurt me, it hurt my friends but I had to do it. The stakes were too high that I could feel my old gypsy ways creeping back in telling me there are no such things as roots, just pull camp and go. But I didn’t want to, though it was (and sometimes still is) a tempting idea. So I did what I had to do to survive, I close the doors to Second Star Studio and I hermited up for a while, trying to figure out what the hell was going on in my life, what I could change, what I had to walk away from and more importantly really look at the places where I had made mistakes and figure out what there was to be learned.

It took two weeks before I was even able to walk back into the studio, to sit in silence there and beg the universe from some guiding light. And you know what, it never came. It never became because asking for answers isn’t practice, it isn’t yoga. Doing the work is yoga! So I decided while I figured all this out I might as well move forward on some much needed renovations to the space. And with a small army of volunteers that’s just what we did.

As it turns out I have some really deep roots in this community and more importantly some people have developed deep roots in their own yoga practice, they needed their yoga studio back and they needed their teacher. They needed me. So they and I got to work.

The biggest project we tackled was removing the drop ceiling that was in the space (go ahead, cringe, I did). Once it was out it was like the studio had a face lift, but instead of younger more inviting face we found a tired, smoke damaged, pealing face. We also found a line of holes drilled into the wall that were once used to blast insulation into the walls (though I doubt its lasting effectiveness) and were left with the question if to patch or not to patch until one of the volunteers said, “why don’t you just make a banner to cover it all and paint some sanskrit on it?” Brilliant! And I instantly knew what prayer should be there! 

This is my very first teaching notebook, this prayer has been inside the front cover for years and is the template for the sanksrit banner now in the studio.

And so it began the scraping, cleaning, and painting of 1,000 square feet of sooty ceiling and the cutting, priming, transferring, and painting of 50 feet of sanskrit. It was a long haul, amid other projects those 2 things took nearly 2 weeks on their own but they really do change the space entirely and create a warm and openness to the studio that there wasn’t before. Towards the end of the 2 weeks precisely as we were hanging the banner, piece by piece, something started oozing from the walls. An amber goo trickled down from the ceiling just as we were mounting a piece of the banner right on that spot. Me and the 2 volunteers who were in command of hanging the banner investigated the mystery goo. They touched it, smeared it between their fingers and smelled it but it had no distinguishing scent, so I took a finger tip full said a quick prayer that it wasn’t pesticide and tasted it. It was honey. It was weak and full of debris but it was honey and my next thought was, “please dear god don’t let me have a bee hive in the wall.” So out I went and on to the roof of the adjoining building to search for an entrance to a hive. Nothing. The mystery continued. Until the building owner stopped in.    

 

Like most of the country Wisconsin has been suffering a heat wave. Well it turns out that a few years back the building did in fact have a bee infestation. The bees had found a hole in the brick exterior and decided between the walls was a great place for a hive. The owner was unclear as to whether he poisoned the bees or just blocked up the hive entrance or what really, but what he didn’t do was tear the brick wall open and remove them. So after a week of over 100 degree weather what probably happened was that the wax combs holding the honey started to melt and the honey seeped out, finding a tiny hole in the studio ceiling where it meets the wall and started flowing. 

I’ve cleaned the honey line up a few times now but it’s still flowing. I guess like some things it just needs to run its course. Then I’ll wash up the line, touch up the paint and get back to running mine. Whatever course that is… of course.