Inspiring thoughts from Yoga Core
April 5, 2024 – Jo Temte
Walk Slowly
by Danna Faulds
It only takes a reminder to breathe,
a moment to be still, and just like that,
something in me settles, softens, makes
space for imperfection. The harsh voice
of judgment drops to a whisper and I
remember again that life isn’t a relay
race; that we will all cross the finish
line; that waking up to life is what we
were born for. As many times as I forget,
catch myself charging forward
without even knowing where I’m going,
that many times I can make the choice
to stop, to breathe, and be, and walk
slowly into the mystery
April 2, 2024 – Joan Herzing
Yoga and the Path of the Urban Mystic
by Darren Main
I often compare the practice of pratyahara to fly-fishing. In fishing, the angler casts the line out and then reels it back in calm as soon as it touches the water. This ongoing process of casting and reeling back is like the practice of pratyahara, in that the eg always casting the mind out and Spirit is always reeling it back ir Once we realize that allowing the mind to be distracted outside things is the way the ego keeps us in bondage, it’s tempt to get caught up in judgment. It’s the nature of the ego to cast mind out, just as the angler casts out his or her line. There is doubt that this will happen. Rather than judge the process, it’s far more useful to allow Spirit to reel the mind back in. Just as the angler understands that the process of casting out and reeling back in is an ongoing process that will continue until the fishing is over, the spiritual seeker needs to understand that the process of the ego’s distraction and the return to Spirit is a life-long process.
March 25, 2024 – Joan Herzing
Instructions on Not Giving Up
From The Carrying by Ada Limón
More than the fuchsia funnels breaking out
of the crabapple tree, more than the neighbor’s
almost obscene display of cherry limbs shoving
their cotton candy-colored blossoms to the slate
sky of Spring rains, it’s the greening of the trees
that really gets to me. When all the shock of white
and taffy, the world’s baubles and trinkets, leave
the pavement strewn with the confetti of aftermath,
the leaves come. Patient, plodding, a green skin
growing over whatever winter did to us, a return
to the strange idea of continuous living despite
the mess of us, the hurt, the empty. Fine then,
I’ll take it, the tree seems to say, a new slick leaf
unfurling like a fist to an open palm, I’ll take it all.
March 1, 2024 – Jo Temte
The Anatomy of Peace (formerly titled “How to Live With My Body”)
~ john roedel (johnroedel.com)
my brain and heart divorced a decade ago
over who was
to blame about how big of a mess I have become
eventually, they couldn’t be in the same room with each other
now my head and heart share custody of me
I stay with my brain during the week
and my heart
gets me on weekends
they never speak to one another – instead, they give me
the same note to pass
to each other every week
and their notes they
send to one another always says the same thing:
“This is all your fault”
on Sundays
my heart complains about how my
head has let me down in the past
and on Wednesdays my head lists all of the times my heart has screwed things up for me in the future
they blame each other for the state of my life
there’s been a lot
of yelling – and crying
so,
lately, I’ve been spending a lot of time with my gut
who serves as my unofficial therapist
most nights, I sneak out of the window in my ribcage
and slide down my spine
and collapse on my
gut’s plush leather chair that’s always open for me
~ and I just sit sit sit sit until the sun comes up
last evening,
my gut asked me
if I was having a hard time being caught between my heart
and my head
I nodded
I said I didn’t know
if I could live with either of them anymore
“my heart is always sad about
something that happened yesterday
while my head is always worried
about something that may happen tomorrow,” I lamented
my gut squeezed my hand
“I just can’t live with
my mistakes of the past
or my anxiety about the future,” I sighed
my gut smiled and said:
“in that case,
you should
go stay with your lungs for a while,”
I was confused
– the look on my face gave it away
“if you are exhausted about
your heart’s obsession with
the fixed past and your mind’s focus
on the uncertain future
your lungs are the perfect place for you
there is no yesterday in your lungs there is no tomorrow there either
there is only now
there is only inhale there is only exhale there is only this moment there is only breath
and in that breath
you can rest while your heart and head work their relationship out.”
this morning, while my brain was busy reading tea leaves
and while my
heart was staring at old photographs
I packed a little bag and walked to the door of
my lungs
before I could even knock she opened the door
with a smile and as
a gust of air embraced me she said
“what took you so long?”
February 27, 2024 – Joan Herzing
This is from
Enchantment:
AWAKENING WONDER IN AN ANXIOUS AGE
By Katherine May
Enchantment is small wonder magnified through meaning, fascination caught in the web of fable and memory. It relies on small doses of awe, almost homeopathic: those quiet traces of fascination that are found only when we look for them. It is the sense that we are joined together in one continuous thread of existence with the elements constituting this earth, and that there is a potency trapped in this interconnection, a tingle on the border of our perception. It is the forgotten seam in our geology, the elusive particle that binds our unstable matter: the ability to sense magic in the everyday, to channel it through our minds and bodies, to be sustained by it.
Without it, I feel I am lacking some essential nutrient, some vitamin found only when you go digging in your own soil.
February 9, 2024 – Jo Temte
Small Kindnesses
By Danusha Laméris
I’ve been thinking about the way, when you walk
down a crowded aisle, people pull in their legs
to let you by. Or how strangers still say “bless you”
when someone sneezes, a leftover
from the Bubonic plague. “Don’t die,” we are saying.
And sometimes, when you spill lemons
from your grocery bag, someone else will help you
pick them up. Mostly, we don’t want to harm each other.
We want to be handed our cup of coffee hot,
and to say thank you to the person handing it. To smile
at them and for them to smile back. For the waitress
to call us honey when she sets down the bowl of clam chowder,
and for the driver in the red pick-up truck to let us pass.
We have so little of each other, now. So far
from tribe and fire. Only these brief moments of exchange.
What if they are the true dwelling of the holy, these
fleeting temples we make together when we say, “Here,
have my seat,” “Go ahead — you first,” “I like your hat.”
February 6, 2024 – Joan Herzing
I have often wondered whether especially those days when we are forced to remain idle are not precisely the days spent in the most profound activity. Whether our actions themselves, even if they do not take place until later, are nothing more than the last reverberations of a vast movement that occurs within us during idle days.
In any case, it is very important to be idle with confidence, with devotion, possibly even with joy. The days when even our hands do not stir are so exceptionally quiet that it is hardly possible to raise them without hearing a whole lot.”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters on Life