You are Perfect! (December 2018 Newsletter)
As the new and last month of the year rolls around, amidst the flurry of cleaning and decorating and getting ready for whatever we celebrate, at the back of our minds is the thought: How did I do this year and where am I headed?
You did fine. You did what you did, so it must be fine. If not, why did you do it? If we are aligned with our spirit/soul/SELF or Universal Energy/God/Tao/Buddha Self, we did fine. Otherwise we are simply what everyone else has made us. We become molded by our environment rather than by the all-knowing dictates of the soul within. We are out of balance and feel stress. When we are at one with who we truly are, there is no self-doubt or fear or wondering. It IS, because it is meant to be. Listen intently to yourself, in silence. What should I do, where should I go? Find out what drives you, what thrills you, what moves you. YOU ARE THAT! You are TRULY That. Tat tvam asi!
Namaste,
sipra
Illumination (November 2018 Newsletter)
Happy Diwali! This year the five day Indian festival of lights started on Wednesday, November 7.
Image credit: Khokarahman (CC BY-SA 4.0), from Wikimedia Commons
Now is a good time to renew our focus on what really matters in our lives as we move into a long season of traditions and rituals, holidays and celebrations. With the oncoming rush of activity there is no time to think, and we are driven in various directions, sometimes getting off track. It is worth seriously considering what the Yoga Sutras of Patanjali tells us to do in such times of stress. This ancient book is still relevant today as when it was written close to 500 years BCE. It is a brief volume of precepts that prescribes how to become better beings and free ourselves from crippling self-defeating viewpoints and behaviors. At some point of consistently observing ourselves and disciplining our behavior we can aspire to an energy that is strong and pure and connects us to our soul, the Self, making the distinction between body and soul indiscernible, known in yoga as Samadhi.
Starting with the basics – at the first of the seven steps to attaining Samadhi (a state of pure being) we need to become that 'Being' who is not driven by artificial and external conditioning. Patanjali encourages us to control our behavior in the community within which we live our lives. Live ethically! Live in non-violence (ahimsa) and so create an aura of peace (shanti); be truthful; don’t steal; observe temperance in sexual activity; abstain from greed.
Be your own unique self. Become Self (soulful). Be the true one you are meant to be. Don’t follow the crowd. Who wants to follow the unthinking crowd? Not me! How about you?
Namaste,
sipra
Yoga-Well-Being moves! (October 2018 Newsletter)
Yoga-Well-Being starts classes at our new location, 296 W. 4th Ave, 3rd Floor, on Monday, October 1.
Our new studio is upstairs at Fourth Avenue Christian Church, at the corner of 4th and Neil Avenues. The space has been extensively remodeled. There may still be a few finishing touches left to do after we move in, but that shouldn't interrupt classes. We're excited by the additional flexibility this space will provide.
Enter through the door off the parking lot on the Neil Ave. side. (The door on the right in this picture.)
Discipline (March 2018 Newsletter)
If you read last month's newsletter, you will remember that yoga is not about the physical practice of going to a class and working out physically. There are all-encompassing changes in the yoga practitioner who is open to allowing the subtle work to play out through all body/mind and emotional systems. But REGULARITY is key. If you only show up now and again, it remains just fitness training.
Show up whether you want to or not, whether you are in the mood to work out or not, whether you are happy or sad, whether your friend's coming or not. Execute that intention to be there. Be there! Expect nothing once you are there. Be like putty - soft and malleable. It is the one time where you don't have to think, or make a decision, or succeed or display anything to anyone.
What does one need to get to this point of childlike simplicity? Discipline! It is simply doing, being without expectation of reward or gain or success. Doing the practice regularly and without question, over and over and over yet again. Once you break the cycle of regularity you take several steps back in the mental confidence and strength you had developed through the self imposed discipline. Called Tapas (meaning heat, self-discipline, spiritual austerity or effort) in yoga, discipline is necessary in life, which is full of choices, contradictions and apparently arbitrary outcomes.
Patanjali's Yoga Sutra, Chapter 2, Aphorism 43, says: 'Kaya indriya siddhih ashuddhi kshayat tapasah' which means, 'Self-discipline destroys imperfection and purifies the body and the senses.'
Keep your gaze fixed on the prize of peace and tranquility through discipline. It doesn't happen in a day, in a month or a year. It is a lifetime's practice, making both life and death both easy and expected.
Namaste,
sipra
Well-Being: Talking about the weather (March 2018 Newsletter)
'Oh no! It's raining again.'
Or it's too cold or too hot; too bright or too dark. It's rare when the weather is just perfect for each of us. It's not something we can control or change, but we can change our attitude and how we react to the changing weather each day. Just because the weather is not pleasant doesn't mean we can stay in bed and ignore it. We get up, get dressed and head out the door. Or we don't even open the front door. Instead we go out to the garage, get in the car and drive off with the heating or air-conditioning controlling our immediate environment. Sometimes we don't really need to experience the weather at all, but we still complain. Let's stop making 'weather' the topic of inane conversation, and let's start experiencing nature and each day in the raw. (How are you interpreting that last sentence? It's up to you!) Make it a point to step outside each day walking on your own two feet. There's something amazing in all kinds of weather and the power and grandeur of nature that stirs something deep inside. Let's start to wake up the sleeping soul within.
Yoga! Is it a religion? (February 2018 Newsletter)
Approximately one in ten people practices yoga in the USA today. They are not necessarily practicing regularly and often do a workout that is offered at their gym club or community center. It is simply an hour of exercise. No more, no less.
Many of the practitioners as they start to practice regularly notice some subtle changes in their psyche and physique. They are calmer, more resilient following times of stress and grief, and body muscles start to become lean and long. Many illnesses appear to disappear! Surprising qualities of intuition and synchrony start to happen. To many students of this art deeper questions of life and death, beginning and ending, and whereto/wherefrom start to arise, often based on suggestions from their instructors. It is a good thing.
Is Yoga a religion? Originally, yes. Many thousands of years ago. But what is religion? Hinduism, on which yoga is based, is not really a religion in the Western sense of the word. It is not an 'ism', since it is not theistic, therefore there is no identifiable one or many God/Gods. The thousands of 'Gods' in Hinduism simply try to make comprehensible to our little minds the awesome Energy that is 'Godness'. These are the thousands of qualities of Goodness/Godness that cannot be portrayed in one Being or non-Being. Hinduism is monistic, or everything/all is one/everything... I am the bird, I am the sea, I am the tree! I am everything, everything is me.
Does this conflict with your religion or lack of it? It shouldn't, and if you can step outside of any biases you may come to class with, you will see for yourself yoga's deep and powerful impact on your life and being. It is a secular practice, but on the other hand, it can enrich your own faith.
The other important aspect of yoga is discipline, but more on that next month. Meanwhile, be disciplined enough to schedule your classes for the entire month and show up without question.
Namaste,
sipra
Well-Being: Hara Hachi Bu (February 2018 Newsletter)
Okinawan couple, 1880s-1890s. "Photography was first successfully practiced on Okinawa before it was in Mainland Japan."
I don't watch much TV, and it's mostly news when I do. But it appears that on the one hand, the TV commercials are constantly promoting the worst of foods by displaying them as healthy, energy-creating, aesthetic, and ultimately seeming to be homemade - the true test of good food. Nothing wrong in that!
On the other hand, many of the other commercials are about meds, some to settle the stomach enough to enjoy the good life, the best life - full of community and fun. Nothing wrong with that either. However, many of these sicknesses are often of self generated. Guess how? It's due to the food that is being presented as picture perfect but is not belly perfect.
Be discerning... what looks good is deceptive. Those luscious doughnuts will come back to haunt you tomorrow with a rock hard stomach, fatigue, constipation and much worse in the long term.
Eat right and eat less: The residents of Okinawa in Japan are very healthy with unusually low BMI (body mass index), and often live active lives well over 100 years of age. They practice what is known as 'Hara hachi bun me' or 'hara hachi bu' which suggests that you should eat till you are 8/10 full. The idea is that you don't eat till you have a feeling of fullness. The connection between the two is thought to be the delay in the stomach stretch receptors that help signal fullness or satiety. The result of not practicing hara hachi bun me is a constant stretching of the stomach which in turn increases the amount of food needed to feel full.
Think hara hachi bun me, for every meal. 'Doggie bag' a quarter of your meal before you start eating, when you eat out. AND drink lots of water. Pop/soda may appear to satisfy your thirst but it doesn't really do so, and you need more, since it has all those additives to make it delicious and addictive. Who wants those?
To YOU! Create a year of peace and happiness! (January 2018 Newsletter)
We are always told that life is hard work. But simply working hard becomes relentless and reward-less. New Year Resolutions often just add to this senseless treadmill. Do you have the same resolutions as last year and the year before, but expect different and better results now? If you didn't succeed last year, what makes you think you will this year?
Even if there is only one resolution you are making this year, reconsider! You don't need to add anything more to your stressed mind and busy life. 'Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated.' -Confucius. We are always in a state of urgently completing one task after another. Often these urgent tasks are mindless and not important. At the end of each day, there is still so much more left to do and then tomorrow has its own to-do list. Isn't that what we did all last year? Somehow with the start of a new year, we expect life to become better by working harder, looking skinnier and better, and having more, so we will be happy and at peace with ourselves. Instead try making the goal your starting point. Know that you have enough! Know that you look good (with a better more balanced diet and lots of fresh water, you WILL shed the pounds and feel/look better). "Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away."- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. Know what you really love to do and do it, even if in monetary terms it earns you less. Find the happiness and peace that is inherent within you by connecting to the Universal Energy. This is the Energy that moves you, breathes you and animates everything around you. Connect with IT! Go slow! Go steady! You will succeed.
Happiness and Peace are already within each one of us. Practice regularly, and through perseverance learn to steady the mind. How simple it can be. How easy to succeed.
Namaste,
sipra
Well-Being: Commitment (January 2018 Newsletter)
Wellness is hard work. But it should not be senseless hard work, just imitating the latest trends. Try instead to focus on the focus. Where is the mind at each step of the workout? To create an obedient mind focus on what your body is doing. How is it affecting your body and mind? How do you breathe - before, during and after workouts? Yoga is meditation in movement. Instead of the workout, focus on the work within. For this silence to occur in the mind, for the silence to break the stress patterns in your life commit to a regular, simple yoga practice this year.
If you would like to set not a resolution, but a long-term realizable goal, YWB would like to help. We have several tools to help you on your path. in the coming weeks, we'll be handing out notebooks along with tips on how to use journaling to record and promote your progress. We've extended our auto-pay discount of 25%/month for one more month to make a long-term committed yoga practice more affordable for you (see below). If you would like more one-on-one help, sipra offers private sadhana appointments to help with setting and achieving your goals. Reiki Energy Healing appointments are also available throughout the year.
Joy (December 2017 Newsletter)
Many traditional celebrations take place at this time of year, and as they come closer they dredge up mixed feelings, some often intense. This season brings on sudden, overwhelming tidal waves of emotions that we bury somewhere in our deepest recesses through the year. We feel we cannot face the world getting ready to celebrate, and need to turn inwards into ourselves for just a bit. Let those emotions surface, and celebrate the gladness and the sadness with little ceremonies of hello and goodbye, sending fall leaves full of thoughts sailing down the river, or down the neighborhood creek. Make little prayer flags, hang them up in the breeze, and let your thoughts go flying in the wind. Burn incense, candles and healing herbs.
And then turn outwards: Be like a child seeing everything for the first time. Turn your thoughts away from yourself to everything that IS around you.
"When you do things from your soul, you feel a river moving in you, a joy." (Rumi) Turn your thoughts outwards making it your mission today and everyday to focus beyond this little individual ego that constantly needs indulgence and pulls you into a joyless sinkhole of worry. Joy is in everything and it is free of worry. Joy is that subtle sense where the breath is suddenly free and you KNOW you can fly and touch the heavens. This gladness within ourselves touches everything outside ourselves, and suddenly we are spreading that feeling. Go out into nature everyday no matter how busy or cold. Feel joy. Do charity works, smile at everyone, greet everyone. Spread joy!
"I slept and dreamt that life was joy. I awoke and saw that life was service. I acted and behold, service was joy." Rabindranath Tagore
Joy this month and all through the year. Step out joyously and lightly. Fly!
Namaste,
sipra