Robert MacFarlane - Dec 17, Iyengar I & II
In defense of the natural, in the English language! If you don’t know the story of The Lost Words, google! This is one of my favorites, perfect for planting seeds ahead of the solstice and New Year.
acorn
As flake is to blizzard, as
Curve is to sphere, as knot is to net, as
One is to many, as coin is to money, as
bird is to flock, as
Rock is to mountain, as drop is to fountain, as
spring is to river, as glint is to glitter, as
Near is to far, as wind, is to weather, as
feather is to flight, as light is to star, as
kindness is to good, so acorn is to wood.
Jane Hirshfield - Dec 15, Iyengar II & I
Went looking for optimism (this piece is from Ms. Hirshfield’s collection On Beauty), instead I found patience!
MY SPECIES
even
a small purple artichoke
boiled
in its own bittered
and darkening
waters
grows tender,
grows tender and sweet
patience, I think,
my species
keep testing the spiny leaves
the spiny heart
Wendell Berry - Dec 10, Iyengar II
This piece has a slightly “childish” tone (it’s the rhyming), and a profound message. Wraps up a good bit of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra’s in a very digestible package…read for Kurmasana, the tortoise.
The Terrapin
The terrapin and his house are one.
Though he may go, he's never gone.
He's housed within, from nose to toe:
A door. a floor, and no window.
There's little room; the light is dim;
His furniture is only him.
He sits alone, says naught aloud;
Where no guest comes, a thought’s a shout.
He pokes along; he’s in no haste;
He has no map and no suitcase;
He has no worries, and no woes,
For where he is is where he goes.
Ponder this wonder under his dome.
Who, wandering, is always home.
Paul Celan - Dec 8, Iyengar I
A brilliant poet, often tackling very difficult subject matter, notably about the Holocaust. Not the Holocaust, but this piece describes a little of hoe 2020 feels….
WELL-DIGGER in the wind:
someone will play the viola, downday, at the pub,
someone will stand on his head in the word Enough,
someone will hang crosslegged in the gateway, next to the bindweed.
This year
does not roar across,
it hurls back December, November,
it turns the soil of its wounds, it opens to you,
young grave-
well,
twelvemouthed.
Mei Yao-ch’en (1002-1060ce) Dec 6, Fun with Chairs
Ancient China? Last weekend? Pretty similar…We might be doing a different version of banging on mirrors, but an eclispse is still a mix of wonder and chaos.
Lunar Eclipse
A maid comes running into the house
talking about things beyond belief,
about the sky all turned to blue glass,
the moon to a crystal of black quartz.
It rose a full ten parts round tonight,
but now it's just a bare sliver of light.
My wife hurries off to fry roundcakes,
and my son starts banging on mirrors:
it's awfully shallow thinking, I know,
but that urge to restore is beautiful.
The night deepens. The moon emerges,
then goes on shepherding stars west.
Rengetsu - Dec 3, Iyengar II & I
A gift from my beloved teacher Ja Soon Kim, Rengetsu (Lotus Moon 1891-1875) made me love poetry! Seems like we might have winter after all…
COLD RAIN AT THE SEASHORE
Looking out over the bay,
I see clouds of cold rain
Summoning winter,
And hear the wind in the pines
Whisper its name.
Nayyirah Waheed - Dec 1, Iyengar II
Sources say, “The most famous poet on Instagram…” I’m just glad there is poetry on Instagram!
where
you are.
is not
who
you are.
— circumstances
Pandemic-Proof Your Habits
A doctor friend sent me the link to this article . I thought it was so helpful, I had to share! Such a great explanation for our baseline anxiety about our changed circumstances. Also a great explanation for some students and teachers’ instinctive adoption of online Yoga classes, despite the technical challenges; thank goodness!
NEWS ANALYSIS
Pandemic-Proof Your Habits
Too many people are still longing for their old routines. Get some new ones instead.
By Kate Murphy
Ms. Murphy is a journalist.
Nov. 28, 2020
I attended a Thanksgiving dinner several years ago where the hostess, without warning family and friends, broke with tradition and served salmon instead of turkey, roasted potatoes instead of mashed, raspberry coulis instead of cranberry sauce and … you get the idea.
While a few guests mustered the politesse to say the meal was “something else,” most reacted with undisguised dismay. Some seethed. Others sulked. One young guest actually cried. No one had seconds.
It wasn’t that the meal itself was bad. In fact, the meal was outstanding. The problem was that it wasn’t the meal everyone was expecting.
When there are discrepancies between expectations and reality, all kinds of distress signals go off in the brain. It doesn’t matter if it’s a holiday ritual or more mundane habit like how you tie your shoes; if you can’t do it the way you normally do it, you’re biologically engineered to get upset.
This in part explains people’s grief and longing for the routines that were the background melodies of their lives before the pandemic — and also their sense of unease as we enter a holiday season unlike any other. The good news is that much of what we miss about our routines and customs, and what makes them beneficial to us as a species, has more to do with their comforting regularity than the actual behaviors. The key to coping during this, or any, time of upheaval is to quickly establish new routines so that, even if the world is uncertain, there are still things you can count on.
First, a little background on why we are such creatures of habit. Psychologists, anthropologists, neuroscientists and neurobiologists have written countless books and research papers on the topic but it all boils down to this: Human beings are prediction machines.
“Our brains are statistical organs that are built simply to predict what will happen next,” said Karl Friston, a professor of neuroscience at University College London. In other words, we have evolved to minimize surprise.
This makes sense because, in prehistoric times, faulty predictions could lead to some very unpleasant surprises — like a tiger eating you or sinking in quicksand. So-called prediction errors (like finding salmon instead of turkey on your plate on Thanksgiving) send us into a tizzy because our brains interpret them as a potential threat. Routines, rituals and habits arise from the primitive part of our brains telling us, “Keep doing what you’ve been doing, because you did it before, and you didn’t die.”
So the unvarying way you shower and shave in the morning, how you always queue up for a latte before work and put your latte to the left of your laptop before checking your email are all essentially subconscious efforts to make your world more predictable, orderly and safe.
Same goes for Tuesday yoga class, Friday date night, Sunday church services, monthly book clubs and annual holidays. We may associate these activities with achieving a goal — health, friendship, education, spiritual growth — but the unwavering regularity and ritualized way with which we go about them, even down to our tendency to stake out the same spot in yoga class or sit in the same pew at church, speak to our need to minimize surprise and exert control.
Routines and rituals also conserve precious brainpower. It turns out our brains are incredibly greedy when it comes to energy consumption, sucking up 20 percent of calories while accounting for only 2 percent of overall body weight. When our routines are disrupted, we have to make new predictions about the world — gather information, consider options and make choices. And that has a significant metabolic cost.
Dr. Friston said that our brains, when uncertain, can become like overheated computers: “The amount of updating you have to do in the face of new evidence scores the complexity of your processing, and that can be measured in joules or blood flow or temperature of your brain.” That exertion, combined with the primordial sense of threat, produces negative emotions like fear, anxiety, hopelessness, apprehension, anger, irritability and stress. Hello, Covid-19.
Our brains are literally overburdened with all the uncertainty caused by the pandemic. Not only is there the seeming capriciousness of the virus, but we no longer have the routines that served as the familiar scaffolding of our lives. Things we had already figured out and relegated to the brain’s autopilot function — going to work, visiting the gym, taking the kids to school, meeting friends for dinner, grocery shopping — now require serious thought and risk analysis.
As a result, we have less bandwidth available for higher order thinking: recognizing subtleties, resolving contradictions, developing creative ideas and even finding joy and meaning in life.
“It’s counterintuitive because we think of meaning in life as coming from these grandiose experiences,” said Samantha Heintzelman, an assistant professor of psychology at Rutgers University in Newark who studies the connection between routine behavior and happiness. “But it’s mundane routines that give us structure to help us pare things down and better navigate the world, which helps us make sense of things and feel that life has meaning.”
Of course, you can always take routines and rituals too far, such as the extremely controlled and repetitive behaviors indicative of addiction, obsessive-compulsive disorder and various eating disorders. In the coronavirus era, people may resort to obsessive cleaning, hoarding toilet paper, stockpiling food or neurotically wearing masks when driving alone in their cars. On the other end of the spectrum are those who stubbornly adhere to their old routines because stopping feels more threatening than the virus.
And then there all those hunkered down in a kind of stasis, waiting until they can go back to living their lives as they did before. But that, too, is maladaptive.
“You’re much better off establishing a new routine within the limited environment that we find ourselves in,” said Dr. Regina Pally, a psychiatrist in Los Angeles who focuses on how subconscious prediction errors drive dysfunctional behavior. “People get so stuck in how they want it to be that they fail to adapt and be fluid to what is. It’s not just Covid, it’s around everything in life.”
Luckily, there is a vast repertoire of habits you can adopt and routines you can establish to structure your days no matter what crises are unfolding around you. Winston Churchill took baths twice a day during World War II, often dictating to his aides from the tub. While in the White House, Barack Obama spent four to five hours alone every night writing speeches, going through briefing papers, watching ESPN, reading novels and eating seven lightly salted almonds.
The point is to find what works for you. It just needs to be regular and help you achieve your goals, whether intellectually, emotionally, socially or professionally. The best habits not only provide structure and order but also give you a sense of pleasure, accomplishment or confidence upon completion. It could be as simple as making your bed as soon as you get up in the morning or committing to working the same hours in the same spot.
Pandemic-proof routines might include weekly phone or video calls with friends, Taco Tuesdays with the family, hiking with your spouse on weekends, regularly filling a bird feeder, set times for prayer or meditation, front yard happy hours with the neighbors or listening to an audiobook every night before bed.
The truth is that you cannot control what happens in life. But you can create a routine that gives your life a predictable rhythm and secure mooring. This frees your brain to develop perspective so you’re better able to take life’s surprises in stride. You might even be OK with salmon instead of turkey for Thanksgiving — as long as there’s still pie for dessert.
Kate Murphy, a frequent contributor to The New York Times, is the author of “Youʼre Not Listening: What Youʼre Missing and Why It Matters.”
Leslie Marmon Silko- Nov 24, Iyengar II & I
Shared by the famous “Storyteller”, from Laguna Pueblo, true sacrifice and gratitude! Happy Thanksgiving all!
In the fall, the Laguna hunters go to the hills and mountains around Laguna Pueblo to bring back the deer. The people think of the deer as coming to give themselves to the hunters so that the people will have meat through the winter. Late in the winter the Deer Dance is performed to honor and pay thanks to the deer spirits who have come home with the hunters that year. Only when this has been properly done will the spirits be able to return to the mountain and be reborn into more deer who will, remembering the reverence and appreciation of the people, once more come home with the hunters.
Simon Ortiz - Nov 23, Iyengar III
A genius poet from Acoma Pueblo, sharing his light to kickoff this holiday season. We need his wisdom more than ever these days!
A GIFT TO GIVE AND RECEIVE -excerpted
Let your hands fall open.
Let light fall upon your palms.
Hold the light in your hands:
You are holding light in the palms of your hands.
…
Hold your hand open.
It is the light you hold.
Hold your heart open.
It is the world you hold.
…
Hold out your hand then and into it let the light fall.
Accept this, this simple gift.
And then into the palm of another's hand
let this light, this same light, fall.
…
Feel the light given and the light received.
Feel the light received and feel the light given.
This is the gift.
This is the gift.
It is yours to receive and give.
It is ours to give and receive.
Ardha Matsyendrasana(Half Lord of the Fishes Pose) - Bulldog variation
A friend sent me a picture of her dog today in a variation of an asana we were practicing in class. Compare it to BKS Iyengar and me (ignore my worried expression). I think the bulldog wins, hands down. Look at his feet!
Inuit - Nov.19, Iyengar II & I
I love this piece. The magic, the message that transformation is possible and most importantly, the reminder that word are important. Words have consequences!
MAGIC WORDS
In the very earliest time,
when both people and animals lived on earth,
a person could become an animal if he wanted to
and an animal could become a human being.
Sometimes they were people
and sometimes animals
and there was no difference.
All spoke the same language.
That was the time when words were like magic.
The human mind had mysterious powers.
A word spoken by chance
might have strange consequences.
It would suddenly come alive
and what people wanted to happen could happen—
all you had to do was say it.
Nobody could explain this:
That's the way it was.
-Inuit People, collected by Jerome Rothenberg
Campbell McGrath - Nov 16, Iyengar III
For my one true evening class, stars caught my eye. When I saw “diacritical marks”, not a common reference in poetry, I was hooked. Read for my friend the talented Chant teacher, Linda Spackman, who uses diacritical marks all the time.
STARS
They possess an aspect as of gravity, as of the void
to fill which our hearts offer themselves
upon altars of moonlight.
The vastness and tinyness of existence
is like a holy text writ upon a grain of rice, or a star.
The way attention skitters from light on wineglasses
table to table resembles them, as too
a bossa nova symphony of bassoons and slide guitar.
The loneliness of atoms is astonishing,
like the sight of stars from a vessel at sea.
The night retains textures and empathies
that might be signals from angels or distant stars,
and the trees assume dream-shapes
we do not recognize and can never truly know.
Stars are but diacritical marks
upon the night's cosmological syntax.
We are human, and our form is a corruption of starlight
poured like heavy syrup into soft-skinned molds,
like decorative soaps, or candles.
Like the stars we burn fiercely, reluctantly,
as a dragon consumes its golden hoard.
Of my eyes, of my skin, the stars shall know nothing.
-Campbell McGrath
Maya Angelou - Nov 8, Iyengar All Levels
After finally hearing a result in the election, I was reminded of Maya Angelou’s beautiful inaugural poem for Bill Clinton. The whole thing is spectacular, here’s one of my favorite bits.
ON THE PULSE OF THE MORNING
…
Here, root yourselves beside me.
I aM that Tree planted by the River,
Which will not be moved.
I, the Rock, I, the River, I, the Tree
I am yours—your passages have been paid.
Lift up your faces, you have a piercing need
For this bright morning dawning for you.
History, despite its wrenching pain,
Cannot be unlived, but if faced
With courage, need not be lived again.
Lift up your eyes
Upon this day breaking for you.
Give birth again
To the dream.
…
Hafiz - Nov 5, Iyengar II & I
When I’m stuck, really stuck, this is where I turn. He’s always right, and so timely for the 14th century. So great! I particularly like “A Year with Hafiz” compiled and arranged by Daniel Ladinsky, translated by Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Cast All Your Votes for Dancing
…my ears wish my head was missing
so they could finally kiss each other
and applaud all your nourishing wisdom!
O keep squeezing drops of the Sun from
your prayers and work and music
and from your companions' beautiful
laughter, and from the most insignificant
movements of your own holy body. Now,
sweet one, be wise.
Cast all your votes for dancing!
Izumi Shikibu
Shaking things up in the Heian court of Imperial Japan one thousand years ago; still fabulous today! Love this woman.
Nothing
in the world
is usual today.
This is
the first morning.
Edgar Allan Poe - Oct 29, Iyengar II & I
Some inspiration for Halloween…The opening paragraphs really set the tone for the whole story. Gorgeous, creepy writing. Maybe some will dig out the whole story to read.
THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER
DURING the whole of a dull, dark, and soundless day in the autumn of the year, when the clouds hung oppressively low in the heavens, I had been passing alone, on horseback, through a singularly dreary tract of country; and at length found myself, as the shades of the evening drew on, within view of the melancholy House of Usher. I know not how it was—but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; or the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me—upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain—upon the bleak walls—upon the vacant eye-like windows—upon a few rank sedges—and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees --with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium—the bitter lapse into everyday life—the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart —an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime. What was it—I paused to think—what was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher?
Eileen Myles - Iyengar II & I, Oct 22
“Nice” - still overrated! Also, I confess, sometimes I read about the weather in my classes, the way you might bring up the weather at a cocktail party…This is not that.
WEATHER
I had already begun
being a woman who lived
mostly alone, going huh
and piping, shuffling
through the rest
of her time. I contain
a running kid, a
green elf. I am
entirely alone. I desire
a certain sports car
a drippy night. Making
hairpin turns
in rome your
face beams
up like a million
jiggling suns.
Do you get it? Go.
what you
know is
true. I am so
long gone
down my
road.
Anne Sexton - Iyengar III, Oct 19th
I was so excited about Louise Glück’s Nobel win, and then a student let me know there had been a Twitter backlash against he win because she is not “nice”? This sent my into an emotional tailspin, talking to myself out loud and everything. Honestly, I went from annoyed - to offended - to angry! What does “nice” have to do with being a supremely talented writer? I know there is chatter about every Nobel lit winner, but really “nice”?! Would a man be criticized for not being “nice” in this context? I love “kind”. We should strive to be kind, but “nice”? We are called “not nice”, when we stand up for ourselves, or others, or our ideals. Don’t buy into “nice”. Be kind. You’ll be in good company.
Reading other poets this week who have been accused of not being “nice”…
YOUNG
A thousand doors ago
when I was a lonely kid
in a big house with four
garages and it was summer
as long as I could remember,
I lay on the lawn at night,
clover wrinkling under me,
the wise stars bedding over me,
my mother's window a funnel
of yellow heat running out,
my father's window, half shut,
an eye where sleepers pass,
and the boards of the house
were smooth and white as wax
and probably a million leaves
sailed on their strange stalks
as the crickets ticked together
and I, in my brand new body, which was not a woman's yet,
told the stars my questions
and thought God could really see
the heat and the painted light,
elbows, knees, dreams, goodnight.