Part II: Practice

SPEAKING OF PRACTICE, there’s more to life than work, eat, drink, be merry, and sleep.  According to the World Health Organization’s 1948 definition, health is:  a state of complete physical, mental and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.  Ask yourself, on a scale from 1-10, how you measure up overall.  How do you truly feel about your health?  According to a favorite university professor, most people tend to place themselves somewhere near the middle.  I feel 8.2.  After you mark your number, ask yourself what you’re doing to improve on it.  Shouldn’t we all be trying to move forward?  We’re not getting younger.  This is life, it’s not a dress rehearsal or preparation for the future.  We should be enjoying it to the utmost, feeling our best.  We need money for survival, but what is more important… having a shitload of money… or feeling like a million bucks?  What do we practice to maintain what we perceive as being ourselves, our sanity, our senses of well-being?  Self-medication and psycho-therapy sessions?  Television, sports, eating sweets, eating fresh foods, crosswords, reading, and the arts?  Worship, meditation, and taking time out for breathing and awareness?  Meeting with a book club, a Mom’s group, or happy hour buddies?  So many things, so many ways.  How positive or beneficial are our practices?   What do we spend our moments, days, months, years, and lives doing? Living.  Now.  No judgments here, nor expectations, and no excuses.  Explore and contemplate.  Think about your practices… and in which directions they’re leading you.  

Yoga, Practice, and Peace

Part I of III:  YOGA

I’VE RECENTLY DISCOVERED the joys of yoga podcasts.  What an awesome invention!  It’s like having my own personal instructor right here.  Don’t get me wrong; nothing beats a live yoga class.  The podcast guy can’t straighten me out, nudge me, suggest a modification, or take me to the next level of a particular asana.  My options for live classes here are limited.  I reminisce to the time I lived in Augusta, just two blocks away from the yoga studio.  I would pay the monthly fee for unlimited classes, and attend religiously… probably 6-8 times a week when the early morning sessions were up and running.  The experience of those classes propelled me forward in many aspects of my life:  enhancing my body awareness, mind awareness, comfort in silence, outlook on life, relationship to others & the world, and benefitting me in so many ways, I could likely write a book about it.  After returning to Augusta in 2008,  (with ashram yoga training & several random classes spread out over 2 &1/2 years) I eventually found another great regular class.  Not as conveniently located, but cheaper, deeper, and well worth the drive.  Those sessions lifted me to higher realms, carrying me beyond places and spaces I once thought to be out of reach.  The instructor was female, and it was lovely to have some strong feminine energy gently guiding, yet pushing and challenging me.  Now, living in Korea, I’ve found yet another yoga class.  Though it’s in Korean, I can easily follow.  Attending classes is so beneficial to one’s practice.  There’s a beautiful flow of energy in a room where people are sharing a practice.  Individuals may have their own goals, but we’re all essentially, and literally, moving in the same directions.  All side effects aside (though all the side effects I can come up with happen to be positive), we’re moving toward that UNION of mind and body, self and God.  We’re joining Atman (one’s soul or Spiritual Self) and Paratman (God, the divine, the Energy of the Universe).  For anyone curious, practicing, or well seasoned, I highly recommend finding a local class to attend if possible.  If classes are out of reach, podcasts may be the next best thing.  To the attendance of classes and my own personal practice, the addition of podcasts has me flying higher… on that Blissful Cloud #9.    


http://www.yogajournal.com/podcast/
http://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/yoga-to-people-60-min-power/id171909056

Yoga of India in Korea

As we were about to enter a restaurant the other night, we spotted a yoga studio, Yoga of India. My new friend / co-worker, Donae, & I went up to check it out. Inside, we discovered a beautifully arranged space, dimly lit, comfortable, and adorned with Indian wall hangings. Sitting on a floor mat at a low table was the petite Korean yoga instructor, whose Indian name is Soma. She had studied yoga in India, spending time in Kerala and Pune. She welcomed us to join her classes at a very reasonable rate of 40,000 won ($) per month, for two classes each week. It’s about a ten-minute walk from our abode.

The next morning, we attended our first class. Behind the sheer, purple curtain, 18 or 19 mats were neatly arranged in the clean, quiet studio. We were a few minutes early, and the instructor welcomed us to choose our places for meditation. Though the sing-songy verbal cues were all in Korean, Donae and I had little difficulty following Soma’s sequence of asanas (postures). Her sun-salutations are almost precisely the same ten-step salutations that I do, and I could tell from the repetition when she was instructing us to inhale or exhale. Soma occasionally used the English or Sanskrit word for a posture, which was very helpful. There were about 6 or 8 other students that we were able to follow. For the next month, we’ll get two evenings a week of yoga: the perfect complement to another 40-day cycle of absolute sobriety and daily chanting of the mahamrityunjaya mantra. As the language of love is universal, so is the practice of yoga. Alhamdulillah!