MAKES ME TRY

YTT is on a break so that I don’t have 8 hours of training this coming weekend. Of course, there is plenty to do as we should be deep into practice teaching, studying, and learning other stuff. I thought perhaps I would get to some other time consuming, put-off chores but we shall see. At this point, I am behind on laundry by a least a week, only now getting things out of the dryer and washing that have been sitting around. My practice in this regard is to breathe and to work on the patience to complete tasks. This will be a challenge in itself.

After weeks of not attending in-studio classes, I plan to try to get myself to a slightly more physically challenging flow class, although it would be plenty easy to just hang around, laze in bed, and read. We will see how this goes.

Well, it is a week later. I have not done any classes. And I didn't do any writing either. I had hoped to for a refreshing break, to come back with energy, perspective, and verve.

Not so much.

I did get some things accomplished. For instance, I am writing this from my desk that has been inaccessible due to too many things piled on top and under. There is still organization of some of that stuff, but here I sit. I need to work on sequencing some yoga classes and I wanted to sit up on a chair and not on the bed, my usual writing place of late. Had to get my bitchen vintage desk chair fixed and that happened as well.

The bike got repaired and new lights so that I can ride at night a bit. Of course, now I have to find the helmet that is lost in the morass of unpacking on the patio.

I spent a day cleaning up the organizational project in the living room and figuring out how to connect the laptop to the new tv so that Janet could take Teri Ann's yoga class. It was some kind of moment to see her In front of the TV where it started with Richard Hittleman in around 1963. When I was in high school, my friends and I would troop in and there she would be doing some kind of pretzel-pose with her feet nearly behind her head. Vera Paris was quite drawn to the props and took a long savansana.

Now onto the second cup of Major Dickason's and having broken a 1950's Japanese deco design vase, I am here again. I am listening to a cd I found in the pile, John Martyn's Solid Air Revisited. It has been maligned as soft rock, and I see that, but it makes for great Saturday-morning-during-the-apocalypse music. I see the point with the Quiet Storm orchestration, but I think John's near-Van-Morrison mysticism comes through.

I am just not sure I have so much to say. I appreciate hearing from those of you who missed my meanderings this week.

Staying with teacher training at all has been an extra challenge this week. I knew that confrontation of deeper self and construction of personal reality would be part of the practice. Well, now I am in the river and swimming hard, even if there is not much outward appearance of that.

One of the topics in this week's philosophy round-up is Daya, or compassion. (This stupid autocorrect changed daya to data. Somehow that is discouraging.) Self-compassion and self-appreciation do not come easily to me, particularly when I am isolated, depressed, and hot. Somewhere between my solar plexus and my heart there is a weighted line, taut and frayed (not to be confused with Torn and Frayed. I find it hard to listen to The Rolling Stones these days, as much as I love their music.).

I just picked up Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry to place it near the desk where I hope to be working more. It's damn oracle for me. Although, again, this is talking about poetry, I think it has a lot to add to meditation on yoga

Not for poetry the head-on meeting of inquiry and object found in the essay, the debate, the letter to the editor. A poem circles its content, calls to it from afar, looks for the hidden, tangential approach, the truth that only grows apparent by means of an exile's wandering., cunning's imagination, and a wide-cast, attentive silence. Poems do not make appointments with their subjects — they stalk them, keeping their distance, looking slightly off to one side. And when at last the leap comes, it is most often from the side, the rear, an overhead perch, some kind of  word-blind woven of brush or shadow or fire.  — Jane Hirschfield

Finding the depth of asana practice is much like this. You may need to approach the asana from many different directions, with subtle changes in other poses as well as the one you think you are focussed on. The all-hand-on-deck-forcing-yourself-to-look-like-the-picture method rarely succeeds, even if you do succeed in looking like the picture. The internal, the intention, the magic, and the joy are likely lost. 

Perhaps finding self-compassion is like this as well. It's not just an item on my endless-and-ever-growing to do list, but something I that does not need head on address. Maybe I need to look for the subtleties of mercy for myself.

It's all a sweet little mystery.

SWEET LITTLE MYSTERY

Just that sweet little mystery that breaks my heart

Just that sweet little mystery makes me cry

O that sweet little mystery that's in your heart

It's just that sweet little mystery that makes me try

My friends all tell me that I look so sad

They don't need to ask me why

They know the reason that I feel so bad

Since the night you said goodbye

It's not the letters that you just don't write

It's not the arms of some new friend

It's not the crying in the dead of the night

That keeps me hanging on, waiting for the end

Just that sweet little mystery that's in your heart

Just that sweet little mystery makes me cry

Oh that sweet little mystery that's in your heart

It's just that sweet little mystery that makes me try

I watch the street, I watch the radio

I don't need to turn it on

Another friend comes by and tries to say hello

Another weekend's almost gone

It's not the letters that you just don't write

It's not the arms of some new friend

It's not the crying in the depth of the night

That keeps me hanging on, just waiting for the end

It's that sweet little mystery that's in your heart

It's just that sweet little mystery that makes me cry

Oh that sweet little mystery that's in your heart

It's just that sweet little mystery that makes me try

The time is flying fast, and I don't care

To spend another night alone

I want to see you, but I don't know where

Till then I'm walking on my own

It's not the letters that you just don't write

It's not the arms of some new friend

It's not the crying in the depth of the night

That keeps me hanging on, just waiting for the end

It's that sweet little mystery that's in your heart

It's just that sweet little mystery that makes me cry

Oh that sweet little mystery that's in your heart

It's just that sweet little mystery that makes me try

That sweet little mystery that's in your heart

It's just that sweet little mystery that makes me cry

Oh that sweet little mystery that's in your heart

It's just that sweet little mystery that makes me try

Sweet mystery, sweet mystery

Sweet mystery, sweet mystery, sweet mystery

Sweet mystery, sweet mystery, sweet mystery

Sweet mystery, sweet mystery, sweet mystery