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 

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. 

Indie Pop Flow Playlist

My friends and students are WAY cooler than me. Seriously, I can speak most asana names in Sanskrit and a few mantra and prayers but they have endless knowledge of bands, solo acts and symphonic experiments that might as well be a foreign language to me. So a few of my super cool yogis have given me music to check out over the years and this is the playlist that has finally been born from it.

Lozenge of Love- Raidiohead
Manha- Thievery Corporation
Wilhem Scream- James Blake
Nude- Radiohead
City Middle- The NAtional
Islands- the xx
How Low- Jose Gonzalez
Fog- Radiohead
Heart and Lungs- Beach House
Home and Somewhere Else- Mimicking Birds
Don't Let It Pass- Junip
All Things Must Pass- Yim Yames
With Lightening In Your Hands- Damien Jurado
Beloved- (Thievory Corporation remixed) Anoushka Shankar

See WAY cooler than me. Download and give it a listen and if you are super cool too then leave me a few suggestions as a comment and I'll plug your awesomeness.

Reading the Gita

You think asana is hard, have you ever tried to read the Bhagavad Gita? I’ve been trying for years, and that’s not an overstatement. I bought my first copy the year I got out of yoga school that was 2007! Now, 3 years later I’m find myself trudging through it once again. This time armed with 3 different versions I ordered from the library hoping I’d find a translation that, for lack of a better term, speaks to me. The thing about reading spiritual text…well there are a few so I’ll list some of my spiritual speed bumps for your consideration.

#1 For this one I’d go so far as to say this is across the board for any religion/spiritual way of life is that the texts were written thousands of years ago in languages no one speaks anymore. They are dead languages and they are ridiculously hard to comprehend. I just know the very, and I mean VERY, basics of Sanskrit and I get boggled by how many variations there are on ways to pronounce and spell just then names of the Deities. The big ones like Siva and Ganesh! And that’s in the actual Sanskrit. Once you get and translator involved all bets are off as far as I’m concerned. Most books I’ve read, even recent books by the Dalai Lama and translated into English, come out so dry or with obvious lack of knowledge of everyday English. Or worse you get them translated in “new age!” Now I come as granola as the next pagan/massage therapist/yoga teach as the next but even I draw the line sometimes. Maybe it’s my love of post modern fiction by the likes of Tom Robbins and Jeanette Winterson that I just can’t handle poorly constructed, wispy, un-engaging sentences. So there’s that problem.

#2 It’s not all in nuggets. At the end of every yoga class I sum up the meaning of the class or offer up and inspiration in the form of a quote. I call them yoga nuggets, they are short and clear and usually elicit a smile or giggle or thoughtful sigh, they make you think, or at least I like to think they make my students think. But when you are reading text like the Bhagavad Gita, it’s not all 20 word quips. No, no, no there are pages of things to wade through; sometimes they’re pages full of so much profundity that you are mired down and your brain can’t absorb it all or it’s setting or the 3^rd time something is being expounded on. Sometimes that extra explanation of a point is needed but maybe you got it the first or second time and are now day dreaming about what you’re going have for lunch.

#3 This one may just be my own personal problem but it’s a difficult one for me. I don’t soak up knowledge from the page I need more than that. I need discussion, experiments daily interaction with the theories and teachings. But I live in a tiny town and am the only yoga teacher here, somewhere lurking out there are more teachers and even some Buddhist but I haven’t connected with them yet. Which is frustrating when you are on a spiritual path and would like, if not a teacher, then someone to walk with you for while?

So those are the challenges I am faced with when all I’m trying, in essence, to do is sit down and read a book. What’s the answer? Well the same answer as when you come up on a challenge in your asana class; practice. Practice. Dedication. Self surrender. All the same principles as with our physical expression of yoga. Even if it means I read the same 3 pages over and over again for days, we do the same asanas over and over again until we “master” them and the you know what we still do them over and over again every day. Because yoga IS the journey not the destination and the Bhagvad Gita is a very important (and challenging) step on that journey.