Here Comes the Sun

When I first started doing yoga, I really despised the sun salutations. I saw no benefit in it-which is exactly why I needed them so much. Fast forward 26 years, and I can’t start my day without them. I do them as soon as I get out of bed, and it’s how I set the tone for the entire day. I’m not going to lie, there are days I skip, and those are days that everything is off kilter and out of sorts. For me, sun salutations serve two purposes. One, they are really great stretches that make my body feel great. Two, there is something about the ritual of doing them every morning. I love the grounding aspect of it, and the fact that it connects me to yogis past, present and future. As time has gone on, I have also added meditation and chant to them, to add a spiritual element for myself.

 

Sun salutations are great place to start if you are new to yoga. It consists of a series of poses or asanas that are relatively basic.

 

You start in:

Mountain pose.

 Chant Praise to Him who loves us all OR Our father, who art in Heaven

 

Back bend

Chant: Praise to Him who is cause for change OR hallowed be Your name

 

Forward fold

Chant: praise to Him who encourages me to move OR Thy kingdom come

 

Lunge

Chant: praise to Him who creates light OR Thy will be done

 

Downward Dog

Chant: Praise to Him who creates the sky Or On earth, as it is in heaven

 

Plank

Chant: Praise to Him who nourishes all Or Give us this day our daily bread

 

Cobra

Chant: Praise to Him who made everything Or forgive us our trespasses

 

Downward Dog

Chant: Praise to Him  Or as we forgive those who trespass against us

 

Lunge (opposite leg)

Chant: Praise to Him, lord of lords Or lead us not into temptation

 

Forward fold

Chant: praise to Him who is the king of kings Or Deliver us from evil

 

Back bend

Chant: praise to Him, Messiah Or for thy kingdom, power and glory

 

Mountain pose

Chant: praise to the Lord, who has made heaven and earth Or now and forever, Amen

 

It’s a great way to start the morning, clear my head and be connected to the universe (sorry to sound a little new age, but its how I feel). Try it for 21 days and see if it not only changes your body, but also your mind and soul.

 

Shipping up to Boston

Yesterday the unthinkable happened. Twin bombings went off at the Boston Marathon finish line, killing three and injuring over a hundred (as of this morning). It was a sucker punch to the gut on so many levels.
I went to college in New Hampshire, about an hour north of Boston. Many of my friends were from the Boston area, and as a result I spent a lot of time in the city. This is in addition to vacationing at both Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard (and some fond foodie memories here http://mommydomchronicles.blogspot.com/2011/10/fishing-in-dark.html) I had my purse stolen in Faneuil Hall when I was a college freshman. St Patrick's Day in that city was always an amazing time. I've seen a lot of great shows there too. One of my favorite radio stations, WFNX, recently ended a multi decade run (see my love letter to them here: http://mommydomchronicles.blogspot.com/2012/07/the-impression-that-i-get.html). I've also been in Boston for marathon Monday in the past, cheering on the runners. It's a party atmosphere, especially since its held on Patriots Day (a holiday commemorating the start of the Revolution).
I'm also a runner. I've been running since high school. It's been a big part if both my life and my exercise routine (http://mommydomchronicles.blogspot.com/2011/10/keep-on-running.html). Over the years, ive run various parts of the boston marathon course, including the notorious heartbreak hill. Runners are a crazy bunch, and we tend to stick together. When you meet a fellow runner, there's an instant bond. No matter what the differences you may have, you have that commonality of running. To think one of the highlights of the running calendar was targeted is heartbreaking. As a 5k participant, one of the greatest joys at a race is hugging your family at the finish line. I was sickened over the senseless death of an 8 year old boy hugging his dad who just finished the race.
I've spent time helping my son understand the tragedy. He's upset over a child dying-rightfully so-and afraid of being hurt himself. I can't force him to feel secure, which I wish I could. Instead, as we watched the horrific coverage, I pointed out the heroes helping others. We talked about the good they were doing in the midst of such tragedy. We talked about what we can do to help those suffering. We came up with a pretty great list-send cards, donate blood, pray. I held him for a long time, just hoping that this doesn't destroy his childlike innocence.
Pray for Boston.

Bring the Rain

Psalm 30[a]

A psalm. A song. For the dedication of the temple.[b] Of David.

1 I will exalt you, Lord,
for you lifted me out of the depths
and did not let my enemies gloat over me.
2 Lord my God, I called to you for help,
and you healed me.
3 You, Lord, brought me up from the realm of the dead;
you spared me from going down to the pit.

4 Sing the praises of the Lord, you his faithful people;
praise his holy name.
5 For his anger lasts only a moment,
but his favor lasts a lifetime;
weeping may stay for the night,
but rejoicing comes in the morning.

6 When I felt secure, I said,
“I will never be shaken.”
7 Lord, when you favored me,
you made my royal mountain[c] stand firm;
but when you hid your face,
I was dismayed.

8 To you, Lord, I called;
to the Lord I cried for mercy:
9 “What is gained if I am silenced,
if I go down to the pit?
Will the dust praise you?
Will it proclaim your faithfulness?
10 Hear, Lord, and be merciful to me;
Lord, be my help.”

11 You turned my wailing into dancing;
you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy,
12 that my heart may sing your praises and not be silent.
Lord my God, I will praise you forever

In the last two or so weeks, my whole life has turned itself upside down. Its been a struggle to get motivated to do anything due to the stress I have been feeling. I have been surrounded by negative people, who like the Greek choruses, are whispering in my ear all the things I do wrong and nothing about what I do right. I was shocked at the fact I am currently weighing the most ever, despite attempts to work out and eat healthy. My son has pink eye. My mother fell, wound up hospitalized and is now doing inpatient rehab to rebuild her strength. My house and family are obviously being neglected, not by choice, but happenstance. Something HAD to give.
Despite all the ugliness I have been facing, I have tried to look at the positives. If anything all the stress and suffering I have been enduring has made me put things in perspective. What are my priorities? What brings me joy? I have discovered who my friends are, and some of them were not who I would have thought were. Friends brought me coffee when I was at my mother’s bedside, because I complained about the lack of the good stuff on her floor. Another friend brought me breakfast. Meals were given. Child care offered. Others just listened as I poured my heart out. Many, many prayers raised up.
My faith was shaken to its very core, and I had to do a lot of soul searching. It caused me to make a prayer smash book, which is a form of journaling. I felt abandoned. I was in that figurative pit. I was living Psalm 30, whether I wanted to or not. The question was-do I let my circumstances make me bitter or better? I know that these situations are temporary. I know that my God is greater than all of this. My pit is temporary. If God brought me to it, He will certainly bring me through it. Like the psalmist, I was weeping in the night. Overwhelmed, broken, in need of healing desperately mind, body, and soul I cried out. I walked around in my sackcloth, flogging myself. Mea culpa, mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.
Despite my current situation, I know that there are greater things to come. Realizing that I needed to make changes in my life, these mini-crises have allowed me to reflect on what I want and what I am willing to do to get it. My walk with God has taken on a new perspective. I am reading Scripture with different eyes. I am looking for the good in everything, like the yin and yang. No matter how difficult things are, there is something positive in it. It has caused me re-examine my eating and exercise habits. I am changing things up both in the gym and the kitchen. I am slowly deleting people from my life who bring me down. Negativity does nothing to build you up, it only destroys you. There’s a meme with a cat strutting, inscribed “haters are going to hate”. I can’t change peoples’ opinions of me. I am confident in who I am, so I can’t let their poor attitudes affect mine. I want to be clothed in joy, have beauty traded for ashes.

Silent Lucidity

I'm still reeling from the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, CT on Friday. As a mom, I could not even imagine the grief and pain those families must be feeling. Instead of planning holiday festivities, they are planning funerals. Cariann from Oh Sweet Basil was the catalyst behind silent Monday. Tomorrow, the Mommydom Chronicles will be silent, as we remember and honor the innocents slaughtered and the teachers and administrators who sacrificed their lives to save others.

I Surrender All

I have been practicing yoga for over 25 years now. As time marches on, my practice has evolved, devolved and reinvented itself. That’s part of the beauty of yoga, there isn’t one right path. People come to yoga for different reasons and to receive different gifts. One main reason why I tried it in the first place was because it was exotic. Back in the late 1980’s, yoga wasn’t common place like it is today. You didn’t have a choice in studios-if you could find one. I was fortunate my local community school offered a class in yoga-not hatha or yin or vinyassa or Bikram or anasura or any of the different varieties. It was down and dirty yoga, in the school gym. Not a studio, not anything special. It was the instructor and the students.


I gained more than just poses from that class, I learned to connect my mind and body and develop awareness. For a very long time, I was completely disconnected. My brain did one thing, my body did something else and ego got in the middle all the time. As a result of savasana, I began to long for a spiritual discipline. I began to pray the Rosary (and yes, Episcopalians do). I chanted and om’ed my way through life. There were some pretty profound changes. I still wasn’t ready for complete surrender, however. Making that complete correlation between mind-body-spirit is hard work and I wasn’t ready for ishvara-pradnidhana yet. I didn’t look to what I was eating (or not eating) as part of my practice. In other words, I dealt with a lot of disordered eating: binge and starvation, yo-yo dieting, crazy diets, and never once did things stick. It was about appearance and physicality. I looked at my yoga as the physical (asanas) and the spiritual but not the intertwining of everything-mind, body, spirit.

I wasn’t ready to surrender all. Yoga, Christ, anything.

The events of this past year have led me on a path where I needed to get down to the basics of surrender. I needed to be broken down to be made whole again. The concept of ishvara-pradnidhana defined by guru Shyam Mehta is:



the final act of surrender when you say to God: "From now on, I give You my body, my mind and my heart, to do with as you please. Let me not influence what they do."It is also every action that you do in order to prepare your mind for giving away your body, mind and heart to Him.



It’s the same as when someone accepts Christ into their hearts-you are giving your power to a higher being.

I surrender all.

I have been dealing with terrible back pain off and on for years. Its musco-skeletal, and its centered in my upper back. For the past six weeks, it has been excruciating. Every night I lay on the sofa, stretching out to try to relieve it. Nothing worked-in spite of using a heating pad, my massage cushion…everything. I visited a chiropractor who advised me that I had the tightest upper back she had ever seen, despite being a practicing yogi. The adjustment helped, but she suggested that I seek out other treatments because this was muscle based, and she couldn’t adjust it away. I talked to my friend who is a holistic healer, and she suggested that I invest in myself.

Huh?

She reminded me of the old adage-garbage in = garbage out. When you fill yourself with garbage-food, thoughts, activities-you will produce garbage. I have been filling myself with garbage, as a way to avoid surrender. This all came to a head with the back pain. I couldn’t do anything on my own to relieve it, so I had to surrender and trust that God would heal it.

And you know what? It kinda worked. I’m not saying that the pain is entirely gone, but there is a level of comfort. If its psychosomatic, that’s ok because I can do more now than I was able to a few weeks ago. I began to look at what else I was stuffing away in my life, and made a list. All those emotions that I tried to hide instead of surrendering them to my Higher Power have created garbage. I had been polluting myself.

By making poor choices to fuel my body, I gained extra weight. I surrender.

By not filling my cup, I suffer from burnout. I surrender.

By not exercising and moving more, my muscles are tight. I surrender.

By not keeping up with the housework, I spend all weekend cleaning. I surrender.

By not practicing my spiritual disciple, I am stressed. I surrender.

By not resting when I needed to, I am tired. I surrender.

By not focusing on my priorities, I lost sight of them. I surrender.

By not listening to my body, mind and soul, I hurt. I surrender.

I surrender all.

Hanging On

My name is Dee and I'm a caffeine addict. It's a long running problem that has culminated in a several soda/coffees/teas a day habit. I am 9 days soda free, as well as limiting my coffee consumption to the early morning, and its been extremely difficult. Beyond comparison.
It started as a yoga discipline. My instructor (yes, yoga teachers also take classes) had a discussion about what is holding you back and keeping you chained-negative thoughts, bad habits, whatnot-and you have become enslaved to it.
It must have been divine intervention because my caffeine love affair immediately popped into my head. During Lent, most years, I give up soda but go right back after Easter. Yes that's a discipline, but it's not a Discipline with a capital D.

I really like this definition of a spiritual discipline by Robert Longman:

Disciplines and practices are tools that are a part of cooperating with the Spirit on the task of remaking us into what God wants us to be. Tools, not magic, not willpower. Tools of surrender and remanufacture. Tools that are used with Scripture, not in its stead. Powerful tools, but only because of the powerful One we're working with. And you are not the foreman on this job.


Food (and drinks) are such a major part of my life, I tend to look at fasting as a discipline. For many years, I literally fasted on both Ash Wednesday and Good Friday, doing juices both of those days from sun up to sun down. It wasn't like in Matthew 6:16

And when you fast, don’t make it obvious, as the hypocrites do, for they try to look miserable and disheveled so people will admire them for their fasting. I tell you the truth, that is the only reward they will ever get.

Either...at least I didn't think it was.

As time marches on, and life has gotten busier, my daily disciplines have faded away. In addition, I have become reliant on caffeine to get through the day. Now that I'm limiting myself to a couple of cups of coffee in the morning, it's a struggle at night now. There have been nights that I collapse on the sofa and fall into a deep, deep sleep. Other nights I find myself sleeping for 10-12 hours (if I could). The artificial energy given to me by that 3 pm venti latte has proven my hypothesis: caffeine has controlled my life and interrupted my sleep cycle.
The downside is the serious lack of energy at night. I'm rediscovering my natural circadian rhythm for the first time in about 25 years. It's not pretty either.
Ive pretty much cured my insomnia. Right now, I can't get enough sleep it seems! I'm just tired. Its as if all those years of chugging coffee and soda are being purged out of me at once. My body is totally rebelling against me too. In addition to the absolute exhaustion, I have all sorts of aches and pains. An online friend mentioned the same thing happened to her, and she was told it was the same as heroin withdrawal!
It eventually goes away, I've been told....in the meantime I'm going to continue resetting my rhythm and finding new energy reserves.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U9X-dFCIv6w&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Venite Exultamus

A group of young adults are journeying from Sioux Falls to Chicago for a chance to study, learn and pray with the brothers of Taize, France this weekend. Taize is an amazing community of faith. The brothers come from a variety of faith backgrounds and have created an ecumenical faith community. The brothers call their monastic style a parable of community. What I find fascinating is they don't accept donations-they live off their work. The monastery was formed about 70 years ago, and one of their guiding principals is reconciliation.
Their style of worship has spread throughout the world. The founder, Brother Rodger, thought that there was too much speaking in worship, so he changed that up. The service focuses on singing, chants, scripture readings and silence.
Since the 1960's, young adults have gone to Taize to study, pray and meditate with the brothers. Today, thousands still flock to Taize, and the brothers have begun to hold events elsewhere in the world. This weekend, one is being held in Chicago (http://www.taize.fr/en_article12737.html) and an amazing group of young people from my diocese are attending. It bestills my heart seeing college age kids deepening their faith, when so many of their peers choose to walk away.
To send them off proper, Little Man and I attended a prayer service in the style of Taize last night. The church was beautiful, filled with candlelight and incense. There is something mystical about group silence and song for me. The you tube video is from a Taize style service in Fukashima, Japan following the earthquake and gives a great example of what the service is like:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wSb0pkTuUbs&feature=youtube_gdata_player
Little Man made a card to send off the pilgrims and we made blueberry flax muffins for their journey.
May they go in peace and return in peace.


Update: the Washington Post interviewed some of the group we sent off last night!
http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/on-faith/taize-movement-brings-throwback-appeal-to-us/2012/05/24/gJQAUygvnU_story.html