Monday, November 30, 2009

Sour, Bitter and Pungent

I am not in a good mood at all, so if you are reading this be forewarned. On my list of bad little boys and girls who will never ever get even one slice of my banana bread are traffic cops, child molesters, and anyone else who pisses me off. I WAS in a good mood, until a cop pulled me over, after teaching my 6:15 am class for what amounts to be $16 of pay, to write me two citations primarily to meet his quota. He knew it was...he couldn't even look me in the face. He was embarrased. I have nothing on my record and he could have just issued a warning for recently expired plates and an insurance that simply didn't make it from the coffee table to the glove box last week. He can kiss a certain part of my anatomy along with the female cop years ago who stole my prescription Xanax for panic attacks off my kitchen counter, the two male cops who rested their hands on my thigh while issuing speeding tickets in their police vehicles, the one who kept trying to intimidate me while he lived in my building, and the ones who ignored me when I neede help with a stalker. No sugar-coating here. I think it is pretty clear how I feel about cops, including the ones that I see speeding to nowhere because they think they can. I'd like to meet a cop who is not a schmuck and is a decent human being. I have yet to do so. So much for my yogic attitude.

As for child molesters, well, someone I used to know fairly well has seriously abused people I love and he'll never see the inside of a jail cell for it. Not only that, but the bastard has a new family to abuse. I'd have compassion if he wanted some help, but he wants none, and a Buddha or all-forgiving person I am not. If there is a hell, well... Sorry, I'm pissed. I could pretend to have Tourets and fill up the whole blog with what I think of that man. Hatred. Rage. I'd like to tie him in a knot rather than get into Bound Lotus today, and I'm exhausted to boot.

I'm finally getting ready to sit for Bound Lotus and I hope I find some peace there, and a place where I can find some compassion for people I dislike intensely for very different reasons. I'm disgusted with cops. I feel anger, rage and almost pure hatred for child molesters. Funny that I can talk about them both in the same breath. I make no apologies. This is how I feel today...so truly angry, bitter, sour (as well as pungent for other far more humorous reasons), that I could spit. I haven't felt this angry in years. May today's Bound Lotus bring me peace. I go to sit.

Sunday, November 29, 2009

Another dopeless hope fiend

I saw this bumper sticker the other day on a car, and it sums up the way I feel this morning for 3 reasons: (1) I'm not much on drugs of any kind these days, so I really hope whatever was flushing itself out of my digestive system last night is done, (2) I feel like I'm hallucinating when I think about going to Kundalini Winter Solstice in Florida, and (3) I hope that in commiting to 1'000 days of Bound Lotus I don't - literally - go through some of the 'crap' that Gopi Krishna describes in his book on Kundalini, which I was reading on the toilet last night.

I think of searing fire up the spine, and lo and behold, while holding Bound Lotus my shoulders burn as if someone put Red Tiger Balm on them. I don't know what I'd do without the Ray Man Shabd.

Why did I put off doing Bound Lotus until 10:31 pm? Hm? I could have worked on knitting my lovely little gold cap with flowers tomorrow...why am I risking sabotaging this practice more than halfway through the first 40 days of a 1'000 day practice? I must have some inner problem with the changes it will bring. That particular little personal demon needs to take a nap.

Saturday, November 28, 2009

Pain is a great motivator...

I've had plenty of opportunity all day long to go into Bound Lotus. Did I? Nooooooo... I taught this morning, bought bacon chocolate for my frustratred friend and delivered it to her, worked on crocheting a shawl and some beanies for the Kundalini Winter Solstice Celebration, walked in the park on this fabulous 67 degree day, ate and did laundry. THEN, at 8:38 pm I finally sat down to Bound Lotus.

For the last week I've had relatively no pain in my neck, and so the primary motivator to do Bound Lotus as a reduction in pain is not there. However, Bound Lotus also reduces anxiety and tension, and after coming out of it I feel at peace. I also feel full of energy...so it would be better to do it earlier in the day, not right before I go to bed. Also, my neck itched quite a bit while in Bound Lotus, though once I chose to ignore it, the itching very quickly disappeared. That isn't always the case.

Friday, November 27, 2009

Oona, Bound Lotus and Shamanic Healing

My day began with an incredible amount of energy, and then the awareness once again that my monthly cycle is upon me again. This is the second month that I had no typical warnings of cramping, bloating, fatigue or intense irritability. I do not have the periomenopausal symptoms I was getting either: no night sweats, no insomnia, no severe mood swings. All thanks to Oona. I love it! It is a specific formulation of Chaste tree berry and Black Cohosh. I have taken these herbs before, but they've never had this effect. It must be the way the herbs work synergistically, as well as the fact that this company is very particular about using all of the parts of the plant. They also are picky about when and where they pick the plants. These are things that so-called rational minds tend not to understand the necessity of...

I felt so fabulous sitting in Bound Lotus! It actually felt good for most of the time. Usually there is some discomfort. I even tried coming into full Lotus on each side for a minute, but that proved to be rather taxing for my left knee, so I came out. I can sit in full Lotus on each side, but not, apparently after half Bound Lotus for 10-12 minutes. I wonder I'll be able to hold Full Bound Lotus at the end of 1'0000 days?

I went to see the movie "The Horse Boy", about a six-year-old boy named Rowan with autism. He is so socially disabled and exhausting to care for that his parents decide, of all things, to take him to Outer Mongolia to be healed by shamans. This isn't as far fetched as it might seem, and in my opinion from watching the movie, the shamans actually heal the boy. Only an idiot or a stubborn mule of a person wouldn't be able to see that (hmm, there's my judgemental side). The shamans heal him. They don't cure him. He still has the gifted traits of autism, but not the debilitating ones. And there are advantages to being autistic, such as astoundingly one-pointed concentration, organizational skills beyond compare, and a vast reservoir of creativity. I've often thought that both my father and myself were dysfunctionally autistic on the mild spectrum, having learned through modeling how dispense with some of the aversive traits and keep the others. My dad can memorize poetry at the drop of a hat, and I have an amazingly photographic memory. I can recall information from books along with the page numbers. I should have been a spy. Phoenix Lei - Agent 88.

Thursday, November 26, 2009

Namaste and Thank You...

I did the Kundalini warm-ups for the Neck & Shoulders, some of which help to break up calcium deposits, and then the exercises for Circulation. These are repetitive and tough, just like the Kundalini Yoga Sets I did so many years ago in 2001. They were called "Let the Liver Live" and "To Relieve Inner Anger", and I did Them both for 40 days, and then made it to 72 before quitting. During the in which I did it for 40 days, I made sure I lay in Savasana for at least 10 min., and did a meditation for "Removing Fear of the Future" for 31 min. While doing this, many people commented on how pleasant I was to be around; they literally buzzed around me. Then I continued the set for healing the liver and did not do the meditation. I found myself so full of rage and anger it was unbearable! Instead of going back to the meditation...I quit.

I don't want to have that happen with Bound Lotus. I feel the Ray Man Shabd coming to mind sometimes during the day when I get anxious. It's mostly irritation and anxiety this time around - not anger. I meditate daily, but I wonder if I should be doing the meditation "Developing Human Kindness" after Bound Lotus?

Wednesday, November 25, 2009

My pain in the neck is gone!!!

Well...pretty much. The doc says I'm astoundingly better. Bound Lotus rocks! I love chiropractors! Yoga rules! Saul David Raye is the bomb!

But anyway, my neck is better, and it looks like I might be taking a well-timed Winter road trip to Florida for the Kundalini Winter Solstice Sadhana Celebration with a friend who has a Yoda on his dashboard. Since my Dad is kinda like Obi Wan-Kenobi, I guess I'll be Lucia Skywalker slipping on over to the light side and crocheting myself some fabulous white and pastel beanies for the occasion. Don't get me wrong, I still do Yoga to Led Zeppelin and wear my Jimmy Page & Robert Plant 'Walking Into Everywhere' T-shirt, but Ammachi likes popular music too. When I went to see her in 2006 they said her chauffeurs went to turn off the radio and she asked them to leave it on. She was bouncing her head to the music. So, Snatam Kaur, Deva Premal, B-Tribe, Led Zep, Bjork, Procul Harum, lemonjelly, Krishna Das...they all co-exist on my shelf.

Bound Lotus tweaked my shoulders a little this evening, but it was fairly blissful to finish it as my Dad knocked on my door. I'd just finished lying in Savasana when he knocked. I felt a difference in the way we spoke. I thought of how every time I've gone to see Ammachi with some friends of mine I've felt so energetic and fulfilled while there, and so exhausted and sick when I came back from the drive with them. They are good people, but they suck the life out of me - literally. I went to visit one of those friends last week, and BOOM! I got sick.

What they do to me I used to do to people all the time, and I didn't realize how bad I was anymore than they do. Good people like I said, but very draining. So there are people who wear a lot of white and pastel who can wear you out, and people who wear whatever who don't, and vice versa. Clothing choices, musical choices... I went to see the movie "Pirate Radio", and I loved it as much as "It Might Get Loud". I love Rock and Pop. I love Sanskrit Chanting and Moroccan Trance and New Age Flute music, just not much into groups like, oh say, Ministry. I'm not interested in feeding my anger. But I do love loud rock n' roll.

I think life is fabulous with all it's variety. I love life. I hope with the practice of Bound Lotus I'll be able to experience more of it without draining people like I still can at times, much less the horendous way I did years ago. It's funny in a way when I see people behave like energy vampires now...you can't fool me. I know what it looks like, and just because people listen to 'spiritual music' doesn't mean they don't do it.

We all do it to a certain extent. Everyone shares each other's energy. We just need to plug into the Source more often. Yoga helps us do that, and so does music. After all, the naad, the Sound Current is what it is all about!

Tuesday, November 24, 2009

My demons in their cloaks, Alexandra David-Neel style...

I don't like these parts of myself that I'm seeing. I feel better than those bitches from last night because I feel like I'm doing "real" Yoga, and they aren't. I guess I'm arrogant as well. I am.

Last night I did my practice at 10:07 pm. Kinda pushin' it. My right hip was so mellowly open, especially after the therapist worked on the 'knot' around the sciatic nerve of my right leg. I'd wanted to scream while she did this, and as I thought this to myself, she responded as if I'd spoken. She said, "Yes you did want to tell me about it." It's not the first time she's read my mind.

Amazingly, my left hip opened for the first time in my life in full or half-lotus. There was pain, but not much. Overall, the practice was soothing my little "wild things". I think of how much I loved the movie version of Maurice Sendak's "Where the Wild Things Are". I'm on the island with my demons, smashing huts, igloos...and yurts...just the Czar's soldiers when he massacred the Russians from the steppes with their dark hair for real in the last century, and in the Russian film: "Song from the Southern Seas".

Back in the 30s, before the Tibetan exile, a western woman snuck into the holy city of Lhasa, and studied the practice of 'The Ritual of the Chod' with the lamas. There she succeeded in bringing a personal demon into personified form, at first as a shadow in a cloak that grew, over time, to have piercing eyes and sharp teeth. This conjuration was to be able to fight it. She'd only studied for a year with the lama before trying this, not the traditional 5 or 7. There are stories of people being killed by their personified demons. I surmise that the problem might believing in them too much as the great sage Milarepa discovered.

Demons. Ha! Making peace with the personal ones is all good and well, because we create them ourselves, but what about those that are other people's creations? Take for instance the three forms of Tantra according to Yogi Bhajan: White for healing and spiritual growth; Black for manipulating the energy to control another human being as my former wanna-be cultleader friend practiced; and Red solely for sexual purposes. Of course...the reality is also it is never really that Black and White, so to speak.

For years the Dalai Lama has been patiently stating that most of us should not even attempt most tantric practices until we have mastered the Three Principle Paths of renunciation, bodhicitta and correct view. To wield that kind of power...with a grasping hand full of ego? And yet I'm trying to get to Florida for 3HO Winter Solstice Celebration and White Tantric Yoga. Am I ready? Once, I gazed for 10 minutes into the eyes of a manipulative lover whom I thought was as harmless as a spoiled little child, and what I saw in his eyes was truly frightening. Is he not my mirror?

At the chiropractor's office I did a new exercise called 'Wall Angel', but as therapist commented it felt more like a 'Wall Demon'! Only yesterday while doing my yoga stretches for Bound Lotus, I felt moved to lie on my back and make Carpet Angels. And yet demons posing as hapless humans were in my dreams...one who lured my friends and I from a bar-hopping stint into a living room far from safe. Another, who loomed like my old nemesis, and tried to get me to climb up a towering yellow stilted house with only slice of apple for food. My instinct told me I'd starve to death up there with whomever else he had trapped; mud wasp that he is...paralyzing the caterpillars to store as future food sources. Such vivid dreams in technicolor...

In this waking reality, I sit again for Bound Lotus and it is a soft surrender into the pillows with so little pain that I almost slumber. I should not leave the practice to be done so late in the day. Too risky. I might fall into a dream and forget...

Monday, November 23, 2009

"Music for 1001 Nights"...

Quite exhausted last night, I didn't know how I'd finish both Bound Lotus and a mantra practice I've undertaken for 40 days that ends today...so I thought instrumental music to accompany my chanting would at least make it easier, just as it does for Bound Lotus. I had been looking for fresh new music to teach by on iTunes, and had purchased several pieces that I listened to last night including Moroccan Spirit's "Dervishe" and "Music for 1001 Nights". Hm. Seems as if I might listen to the latter for savasana after Bound Lotus...ha, ha!

But the following pieces were also music to soothe the savage beast in me:

Raga Bairagi Bhairav: Alap by Debashish Bhattacharya from the album "Rainbow"
Raag Bhairavi (Meera Bhajan Pt 1) - "Nectar" by Kala Ramnath
Raga Rageshri Alap - "Nectar" by Kala Ramnath
Prabhati (based on Raga Gunkali) - Ravi Shankar with Yehudi Menuhin
Pangkur from "Java: The Jasmine Isle: Gamelan Music

I felt so rejuvinated! I'll play them again today to finish the practice of 10 full malas of a Sun Mantra, 5 full malas of a Saturn Mantra, and 1 full mala of a Moon Mantra. I undertook them for health reasons, and they seem to be clearing out my body.

My dreams are strange and alarmingly vivid lately. For a long while I did not remember my dreams. For the past few weeks since beginning the practice of Bound Lotus...they are life-like. Two nights ago I dreamed I was back in Jamaica on the cliffs of Negril riding a bicycle bound for 'Amrita'ville. Last night I dreamed of phallic symbols.

Sexual energy is the same energy as spiritual energy, and sometimes, in both instances, it is a little raw. I feel a little raw and angry. I'm nice to people, but that doesn't mean they should mistake my kindness for weakness. I taught a beautiful class tonight and my student were smiling and laughing when they left, but these two arrogant "seasoned yogis", as they call themselves, in the following chose to be 'catty' toward us because I ended the class five minutes late, even though there was still plenty of time for them to come in. They stuck up their noses at me, and said "Excuse me," in that snotty way women will. I've heard them judge my teaching before and say that it is not hard enough, as if Yoga were only about 'getting a yoga butt'. The sort of women who say things like, "Ah, you know I'm Level 3 now." They are just missing the whole damn boat, I think. But what do I know.

Honestly, I wanted to be snotty right back. I wonder what Bound Lotus will bring up for me today? Should I have done the practice earlier in the day? Would I have been less likely to want to flip those women off? Honestly, speaking from my throat chakra after finishing an arduous 40-day mantra practice, there are quite a few people I'd like to flip off. But I won't.

As I prepare to sit for Bound Lotus, I am aware that my sex drive is being sublimated upwards through the practice of moola bhanda at the end of the practice. This includes the wild, unrestrained energy I've been feeling. A calmness and a sense of peace come over me like never before with this practice, and I am grateful for this practice. It is healing me in so many ways, though it is sometimes very, very hard to take.

Sunday, November 22, 2009

Mmmm...Pomegranate Raita

I made Pomegranate Raita yesterday to soothe my throat. Yogurt, those little ruby gems of pomegranate seeds peeled out of the shells like crystals from a vein in the earth, fresh mint, dry roasted and ground cumin, coriander, clove, pepper and salt to taste. Yum! Easy on the throat. Then, I went to see the French film 'Mia and the Magoo'. It is an animated film with a little girl trying to find her father, and these magickal creatures called Magoos who have holes in their heads, and then in their stomachs, and can't think straight until the damage is repaired. Makes you think about damage to the energy body in a new way.

Later, when I got home, I opened Mick Wall's book on Led Zeppelin to a discussion of the album "Presence" and the 'object' on the cover, the little obelisk with a hole in it. Jimmy jokingly called it 'the present' because there was nothing present. I think I have a hole in my belly that needs to be filled, and this movie about the Magoos guarding the Tree of Life filled some of the hole in the strange way...

Today I saw "Song From the Southern Seas" by Pesn' Juzhnykn Morej in Russian. A beautiful meditation on race hatred and it's resolution through love. A shadow theatre character kept asking to be released from his grief and memories so that he could be free to be like a child again. I find myself wishing for this too. The practice of Bound Lotus is bringing up so much painful stuff that I thought I'd already laid to rest; the layers of pain are so very deep. I had no idea how far down the roots ran...

And this movie, a fitting end to my experience of the St. Louis Film Festival, made me feel a longing to visit the Russian steppes. I've been mistaken for being Russian before, so who knows. My maternal grandfather's family was supposedly either Moorish or Russian, which upset my racist Danish grandmother when she found out. So much meanness over race and religion. She didn't like the fact that he was a Mason either.

I walked in the park with a good friend, who truly is the love of my life, and we stood under the pavilion in Forest Park gazing at the night sky. We talked about our parents. His father is Palestinian and moved to the U.S. to get away from the war and the rich grape vineyards that were taken from his family after 100 years, because he wasn't Jewish - basically. A spade is a spade is a spade. How do you right the injustices toward the Jewish nation by hurting the Palestinian Muslims? Is there an answer? I get so tired of hearing the rationalizations...

Sitting for Bound Lotus brought a calm peacefulness while opening the right side of my body; mind-numbing, almost agonizing pain as I opened the left side. I was crying the words to the Ray Man. How can both sides of the body be so different when they are the same? How can people be so different when they are the same?

As I sat for my mantra practice as a practicing Hindu, I listened to several ragas I found on iTunes, and a song by Moroccan Spirit. Lo and behold, my pain in both my neck and my throat dissappeared!

Saturday, November 21, 2009

"That's the Way"

As in the lyrics of the Led Zep song: "I don't know how I'm gonna tell you I can't play with you no more..." At least for now I can't ask the shadow emotion of grief to come out to play...I need to balance it with the human talent of Radiance. I need a few timeless moments of bliss. I awoke with what appears to be a mild case of Strep throat. My upper palate is swollen and a little blistered, the back of my throat raw and veiny. It is slightly difficult to swallow. I'm coughing a little for the first time in a while. Last night I watched my abdomen go completely flat from all of my trips to the bathroom. Something is clearing out, to put it bluntly. All these crazy attempts of the body to thwart the healing energy of this practice. No matter. I'm STILL going to do Bound Lotus. So ha ha ha!

I feel really tired. Ugh. Really tired. I called a friend and asked them to send Reiki. Then my phone rang, and it was someone I hadn't seen in years! We talked about mutual friends and past experiences. I told her about my little episode with the flies last fall, and we laughed. I'd been doing an intense mantra practice with the planetary mantras, much like the ones Saul gave in his workshop, but these were mantras with the seed syllables that intensify the practice. Also, each planetary mantra has a specific number that is chanted, and is begun on a specific day connected to the planet, and in a new moon phase. So the Saturn mantra for Shani is begun on a Saturday. You can chant these mantras anytime, but to do the strict yogic practice is much, much more potent.

The example of Saturn is not by accident. Saturnian energy is a taskmaster, giving life lessons with no sugar-coating. My personal lessons I was given were no exception. Just before the end of the practice, three flies awoke me one morning with incessant buzzing in the window. Eventually I killed them. Then I felt bad. I'm no Jain Buddhist nun, but still. Over the next two weeks exactly 50 more flies came to the window like something out of "Amityville Horror", or so I hear, having never seen the movie. Until the last few, I killed them all quickly. Then, one, and only one, came beyond the windowframe and into the room. It attacked me, and bit my neck, leaving a hickey-like mark. I was pissed.

The next few, I was rather savage and brutal about killing, going so far as to stab a few with a dagger, since the rolled-up newspaper wasn't doing the job. And there were exactly 54 total, as many as the number of beads on a half-mala. I know because I'm a tad OCD about stuff, and I kept count after the first three. The last one came in three weeks later after the rest, on a sunny November day in 2008. This one, unlike all the others which only came into the bedroom, was in the living room. I was sitting on the floor reading when I heard the tell-tale buzzing, and I got up and found the old rolled-up newspaper, strolling casually and calmly toward the fly. I heard myself say out loud, "You know you're gonna die, it's just a matter of how quickly you want to go." Ick!!! But...I killed him quickly, and I once again felt bad for doing so.

It made me think that, in my small apartment classroom with flies as the vehicle for the lesson, I was learning how easy it is to get into a murderous mindset, even if it is just flies. I mean they are just flies right? But what if each of those flies repesented someone in a concentration camp, and I were a Nazi? To get stuck in the mindset of killing is easier than most of us would allow given the right circumstances to create the impulse. If, for instance, my evil Phantom of the Opera had succceeded in destroying me by helping me to kill myself, as he periodically tried to goad me into doing, and if it could be proven that he did, would my family try to have him murdered by the state? My father, I know, would not. But he would also be honest with himself and say that he would have fleeting impulses of seeing the man go to the electric chair. My point is that we all have impulses toward destruction. Maybe mine are only toward flies, for the time being, but who is to say that if I ever have to sit through a jury trial for a multiple rapist that I'll be able to vote an unequivocal 'No' for the death penalty. These aren't questions that are easy to wrestle with, but sitting in Bound Lotus everyday seems to leave me with nowhere to run to but myself and my Self, which sometimes has a rather wild energy. This is, after all, the most difficult Kundalini Yoga practice there is...and, over-achiever that I am, I chose it. Or did it chose me?


A friend told me, upon hearing the story later, that I sounded like Dexter. Since I don't watch TV I had to be filled in on who that was... Needless to say, I was mortified to find that I have the capacity to be a serial fly-killer. It was a hard lesson in accepting that there is some form of unrestrained darkness in each of us, and I'm no exception. I told my friend who called me day that last November was rough in many ways, and I never thought I would ever hurt a fly. She laughed and said, "You could make a list and start it with: Number 1: I never thought I'd hurt a fly...and then I killed 54." Ew. But it's true. We all have parts of us that are dark and cruel, whether we want to admit it or not. I'm not better than that man who hurt me so many years ago, I just choose, most of the time, to ignore the impulses to cause pain and suffering, to lash out and attack back. It is a choice, and I think of this as I sit for Bound Lotus and squirm in my seat at the realization that I am not always compassionate.

Friday, November 20, 2009

Figure 8 Neck Rolls...

On p.126 of Gurmukh's "The Eight Human Talents" is an exercise called 'Figure-Eight Neck Rolls'. She states that:

It helps release muscle tension in the neck, which then takes more newly oxygenated blood to your brain, eyes, and ears. Your thyroid gets massaged and balanced; it brilliance brings a more youthful glow to your face.

I've added these to my warm-ups that I now use according to Saul's system. But my neck is really hurting since the massage. It keeps going into spasms. Maybe the massage was too deep? Holding Bound Lotus today felt a little tighter in my shoulders even though I warmed up with Saul's Ritam Kriyas. I fell asleep for an hour in savasana I was so exhausted! I woke up and did Bound Lotus straight away, felt some anxiety just before the end, and then did mulha bhanda and forward fold as suggested. In Forward Fold I began to cry. It was intense grief with so many images and I missed my mother so much...so much.

When I really needed to grieve her death back in 1996, I was too busy being the sexual slave of my boyfriend and living in fear of when he would get angry. I'd been a very shy reclusive person very attached to my mother before her death, and had only recently begun exploring my sexuality prior to her death in 1996. I was so very lonely at a time when the few friends I had abandoned me, unable to handle my grief over my mother's death from cancer and ultimately suicide.

This new boyfriend had an amazing hold on me due to his own frightening level of charisma, and my intense grief and loneliness. I didn't want to lose him and be alone with my pain, so I did whatever he asked, including allowing myself to be repeatedly sodomized and bent over tombstones in dark graveyards for more than a year, while he told me stories of how some forms of yoga involved meditating in graveyards. But this was not meditation it was torture - mental and physical. He was always careful to punctuate these sorts of 'sessions' with deeply intellectual discussions of how my obedience to him was helping me to become a much more humble and kind person to others; that my obedience and ultimate surrender to his will was equivalent to that of surrendering to God. His ability to twist the truth of Tantra - of seeing the 'other' as a manifestation of the Divine - was criminal; verging on the twisted and extreme intelligence of people like Charles Manson with his 'family'. I was considered to be a part of his 'family', which I initially saw as kindness, but grew to see was bondage. He still has a 'family' of women devoted to him, not all of whom live with him - some whose glossy 8 x 10s with their devoted signatures on them grace his walls in a sort of shrine to him. As far as I know, I'm the only one who saw him for what he was...

All his stories of how my mother was living in Hell because of her suicide from the pain of Stage IV cancer, and his assertions that she came to him in dreams and visions to advise him how to deal with me were hideously cruel. I wonder how many people on earth are the victim of such cruelty, and talk of duality and the necessity for ever action and thought to exist in creation does little to assuage my lingering grief and anger at the loss of my mother and the mental and emotional mutilation I endured at the hands of this monster of a human being. His stories of his own rape and abuse don't ring true, so theories of how that behaviour gets passed along... I don't know.

On one of the few occassions when he was honest about his ulterior motives he said that there were some people like himself on earth who were just evil because it was their nature. He told the story of the turtle crossing the river on the scorpion's back. The scorpion assures the turtle that he will get him safely across and not sting him, but halfway across he stings the turtle and they both begin to sink. When the turtle asks why the scorpion says: "It's in my nature."

No amount of intellectualizing the behaviour of people such as him, taking advantage of those in deep emotional pain and grief will lay the compounded grief to rest. I know that. I'm not quite sure why I wrote this, other than to be able to do so... I have every right to talk publicly about what happened, as long as I don't mention his name. Sometimes I wonder if in a past life I was a gypsy at Auschwitz and he was my tormentor. Was this lifetime to learn to forgive him? And to forgive people like him for the endless evil they do? All I know is wrestling with the issues takes me deeper into the places in my body that are blocked and need healing.

The experience of being in Bound Lotus is not a closing of my heart as the physical therapist suggested; it is a learning to sit patiently with my pain and grief as they leave my body a little bit at a time. This sort of 'bondage' to my Self IS connection to the Divine and a deepening of trust in the ultimate goodness of the universe that transcends human cruelty and atrocity. My journey down the path of Yoga has introduced me to people and situations full of human frailty, but predominantly peppered with human kindness.

For all that man's assertions that it is in man's nature to be evil, and his tendency to regard William Golding's "Lord of the Flies" as a sort of Bible, he is wrong. People are both little angels and little demons. We have free will to choose if we will stumble through the darkness to find the warmth of the darkness and light co-existing in such a way as to render the light as real and not sappy, the dark as warm and comforting, not angry at being abandoned. It would be rude to be exclusive and only invite one guest and not the other. The acceptance of both heals the difficulties of each seperately. Maybe someday I will be able to hug this man and not feel the bile rising in my throat and the urge to spit. Who knows? He talked often of how forgiveness is really to heal the person doing the forgiving because you can't change the other. You can't change the other. Acceptance of the co-existance of light and dark, or "light and shade" as Jimmy Page would put it -- this is the essence of Tantra. Non-exclusivity. Hmm. Hum.

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Turning on a Dime

The deep tissue massages I'm getting on my back, neck and right arm leave me feeling refreshed for several hours, but each time, within a few hours the relief turns into intensified pain. I know this is because the muscles are trying to tighten the way they were before and having difficulty, as well as a release of lactic acid and toxins, but it's painful! I'm in pain half the time anyway, so I will undergo this treatment to ultimately realign my cervical curve, but had I not fallen on my head I think I'd be hard-pressed to talk myself into these adjustments. I miss the flexibilty that allowed me hold Eka Pada Rajakapotasana with my head almost to my foot as well. Getting back to that and headstand is what I think of as I breathe through the pain. That and that I could have died or shattered my spine and been paralyzed like someone whom I used to work with who fell on her head at a pool party. I can't even imagine. She only lived another ten years after that, and here I am bitching about a little pain.

This morning I laughed when I got up. Saul told us to do that every day. Then I went into my meditation room to spread the rose petals from last Friday's Vaishnodevi Puja, and as I walked away from the windowsill I stepped on a dime. I didn't see it before, and the room is small with a Persian rug in the center and only an altar and a few bookcases filled with crystals. I would have seen the dime, I think, if it had been there. I was filled with an inexplicable calm, remembering how my Dad said he'll find lots of dimes whenever he is missing my mom, and how some people say that is how the dead communicate with their loved ones who are alive. I miss her so much 13 years later, and it is my baptismal anniversary: November 19th. Once, many years ago, I used a Ouija board to contact her, and I asked her if she was ever near me... She spelled out the words with a planchette my friends were able to see: "I am with you in your Yoga." Though I'd never use a Ouija board again, I wish that she were with me now. I guess I'll have to do more Yoga. I know my mother would have loved Saul David Raye's workshop.

My practice of Bound Lotus today was easy because I did my practice of Saul's Kriyas first. My neck feels much better than yesterday when it spasmed up while watching Faouzi Bensaidi's "What a Wonderful World". This work seems like Rolfing. It hurts to get my spine adjusted and manipulated, and the practice of Bound Lotus eases it. Saul's style of Yoga eases it.

When I taught this evening I taught his style, and everyone loved it except for the dancing. Oh well. I like it, so I'll do it myself. I taught a student how to come into headstand without physically demonstrating. It's the first time I've taught the pose since I can no longer do it, and was amazed to find that I didn't mind and I wasn't jealous. I only wanted her to find the beauty of the pose herself. Before the head injury, before Bound Lotus, before Saul's workshop I would have wanted to show off. I'm much more humble and concerned for my students. Yoga works....if you do it.

Wednesday, November 18, 2009

If anxiety is refusing to open the heart, then grief is a crack in the shell


The pose came relatively easy today while I was doing it, and then as I drove to my chiropractic appointment I broke down crying in the rain in waves of gut-wrenching grief. Grief that brought with it, of all things, images of my Uncle Paul's funeral when I was four. I really loved him and the little red purse he gave me. I found myself grieving for my father's loss of his twin brother, and my mother's loss of a friend. I felt their grief.

At the chiropractor's office they said the swelling around my spine is going down and that the curve is coming back. I felt it this morning as I lay in Bridge Pose - there is space behind my neck that just wasn't there before. JenTara showed me how to lie down in a preparation for Bridge the way Desiree Rumbaugh did in the Anusara tradition to get her cervical curve back. She also did bregma headstand, but I'm not safe to go back to doing headstands yet.

When I kick up into Feathered Peacock, I realize just how much my spine is realigning itself because I can't find the balance point. Inner and Outer Spiral I can't feel anymore. But it is much like driving a new car I think. At any rate, I'm feeling deeply blessed again, because I know just how close I really came to being paralyzed.

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Smell the leaves, look at the sky!

In my head are T.S.Eliot's words made into the song 'Memory' from "Cats":

"Burnt out ends of smoky days, the stale cold smell of morning. Street lamps die, another night is over ..."

And I think of Shakespeare:

"Out, out brief candle. Life is but a walking shadow that struts and frets it's hour upon the stage and then is heard no more."

As Jimmy Page said in "It Might Get Loud": "weaving the light and the shade."

Only the heart that knows true suffering can feel the mighty joy... or something like that. Julian of Norwicki? I can't remember. I am grateful for the misery, the depression, the anger, the suicidal impulses, the murderous and rageful impulses.... If they lead to such as this. Joy, wonder, surprise, laughter, tears of deep grief and of joy, of stretched emotions, the phantom scent of roses, redemption in my heart for my own personal Phantom of the Opera, conjured up into being from my impromptu 'Dance of the Chod' so many years ago. The Chaos Dance? Bhuja Tandava? Is that what Saul called it? The counterpart to Ananda Tandava in Tantra? In the loving of my demons they are transformed... And if see my hairy, fat, bloated Turkish and Kurdish demon on the street, I will love him. I will love and squeeze all the hate out of him, the war and nastiness out of him. And me. I'll yodel, cackle and chuckle and chortle until he succumbs to a bone-crushing hug and all his tears hardened like Hagga's diamonds from "The Thirteen Clocks" melt into water - emotions - feeling.

In my dreams last night, I was in a jazz bar, a sort of restaurant at the end of the universe, a la whatever his name is, and I was mouthing the words to a song: learning it. Some asshole told me to sing, and I said, "I'm listening! I'm listening! I'm listening to the words you asshole!" Then I flipped him off, and the bartender stared at me. The middle finger represents the throat chakra and how you use it: to heal or to harm. Go figure.

Then someone else, looking like an extremely sleazy version of the composite of two T'ai Chi instructors I used to have came up and thrust his hips towards me. I closed my eyes and said I wasn't interested. He moved closer and kept talking. I felt indignant and I told him to fuck off. Then I woke up and my heart sunk. Where I'd been was a testing ground, and I did not do what I had planned I did not snort, chuckle and guffaw. I did not laugh these creeps out of my awareness. I reverted to old behaviour. Just like my spine. No wonder they call it practice/ sadhana. Like my mother's father said as his first words in English: "If at first you don't succeed, try, try again."

It's not the goal, it's the journey. As I sit again for Bound Lotus, for the first time I find myself looking forward to it for the actual 'presence' of being in it, not just the release from the pain of the pose and the pain of neck and back that comes afterwards. Child's Pose and Garland Pose don't bring the feeling of going into the pain and the lair of the internal demons and just loving them and hugging them in all their messiness and misery. At the bottom of the deep well of pain, the Haruki Murakami-like well of pain, my demons rest their foreheads on the ground with me. Thank you, thank you, thank you, I love you, I love you, I love you, peace, peace, peace my fellow travelers, my little demons, little angels. I love you. I love you all. Right now. Today. Who knows about tomorrow... I'll have to try again.

Monday, November 16, 2009

Rising from the ashes of a blazing fire!

Yesterday was the 13th day. I've made it past day 2 and 3 and now 12. It seems that the numbers were arbitrarily set by me, and yet Day 13, the next day, was pivotal. The last day of Saul's workshop and the burning coal left from his teaching to fan into my own fire. As I hugged him goodbye, he said: "Phoenix rising!" I rose today in laughter. Ecstatic and ready to be intoxicated by life. This is it. This is all....there is. Right now. I want it to be about compassion for myself and everyone else, even when I slip from being present... And they are part of this life too.

Sitting in Bound Lotus yesterday was both a blessing and very difficult. A blessing in the sense that I found it easier not to be sad that Saul was gone, anymore than being sad that anyone is gone - because Saul's gifts are still with me. Just as my mother's and father's are. The gift is showing us all how to fly on our own. In Bound Lotus I felt the opening I gained from Saul and also the resistance in the form of intense physical resistance in the hips and stomach upset, pelvic cramping unrelated to menstruation. I could not get comfortable for even a minute. It was, in a word: excruciating.

And then expansion afterwards. It was like being stuck in the womb, waiting to get out, and then getting out and living. My breath came in so much more deeply...

Today, as I sit I am full of tremendous anxiety...I feel a raging panic attack coming on. My head hurts. I miss Saul. Yes, I woke up laughing and I taught from that space too. I went to Debra's class and she brought in elements of Saul's teaching. I was back with some of the people I spent the week with - The Sanga. Then I talked to people who were hurting and in pain, and like I do sometimes as an empath, I absorbed some of their pain and anxiety. So, Bound Lotus becomes about releasing. And I sing the Ray Man with all my heart to get past feeling as if I am locked in a box..."with a window and a clock" as Milla Jovovich's lyrics go.

At the chiropractor's later, Bridget tells me that some of the discomfort and cramping I feel in the pelvis is my lumbar spine and sacrum readjusting as my cervical curve comes back slowly. Wendy thinks this chiropractic stuff is all a racket, but I felt intense relief from day 1, and I can feel my cervical spine kind of running away from the change. The body has a wisdom of it's own, and my muscles have been used to holding me up; they are 'reluctant' to let my spine do it. But slowly, carefully...like Sue Luke used to say to me when I wad anorexic:

"Habit is not a kitten to be thrown out of the window, but a tiger to be led down the stairs and safely out of the house."

I think of how Saul had us roaring like lions, and growling like monsters. It was like the little girl in "Little Miss Sunshine" and Max in "Where the Wild Things Are", and the Maori warrior greeting of 'sniffing'. It lets the frustration out, so you can be nice to people afterwards. Funny that earlier today, just before sitting in Bound Lotus, I felt that release when I slammed my water bottle down on the counter in response to ANOTHER call for the lady who used to have my phone number 3 years ago. The calls have started up again recently, and they think I know her because I know her name so well. In a way I kind of do, but I can't connect them with her. So when I slammed the water bottle, I felt a dramatic opening in my back, neck and shoulders. The lock jammed in the back of my heart opened, and air came rushing in, it felt like doves flew in and settled on the rafters of my ribs to "sing the body electric". And when I spoke, I spoke not out of anger, but firmness: "I don't know her. I can't connect you with her. You need to look elsewhere and stop calling me," I said into my phone.

With my arms bound at the juncture of T12 and L1, I felt the anxiety begin to slip away, and the sound of wings rustling in my heart. The bird in the cage, molten and covered with ashes and dead flowers sees the gilt door is open. There is a spiral stairway to Heaven, and there's no gravity playing favorites.

Sunday, November 15, 2009

"Love which gives a halo around the face of the person..."

I fell asleep on the couch last night chanting and holding my mala. I awoke from the lingering bliss of Ananda Tandava to feel stiff and sore from the waist down. Yesterday I was stiff in the hips and sacrum. Very sore. The dancing took that away! The day before I was stiff in the thoracic spine. Dancing took that away. Wednesday and Thursday I was stiff in my cervical spine and shoulders from the compression injury. Either dancing or Saul took that away... Last night, awakening stiff from the dancing, or so I thought, I was too tired to soak in the tub, too tired to take Arnica or rub in some linament. I went to bed planning to sit in the tub in the morning so I could move, figuring I'd be stiff as a board. When I woke up at 6:30 I didn't even notice any pain. I looked in the mirror and my face glowed like a million suns!!!!!!

feel radiant, alive, like a bird finally able to fly again after his wing was clipped. So grateful. So in love with God. Someone asked me last night if I still spoke to someone in particular that I used to date. My answer was that I've tried, but he knows how to push all my buttons and I let him. But I've basically got a problem with getting into relationships with men who don't see that the bliss is to love the other person as if they were God. Lust gets in the way. I get wiped out. I don't want to have sex 80 bazillion times a day. As a celibate for reasons of healing myself from sexual exhaustion, I miss having mind-expanding sex. Not sex every day, coerced from me when I don't want it. Quality. Not quantity. I've consistently dated men, with only one exception ten years ago, who want sex ALL the time. It's damned draining. I don't want that. It's lust.

Last night was like sex with God. Dancing for God. And unlike most sex I've had, it did not deplete me ultimately, or make me feel like Cinderella at the ball with her dress turning to rags. I woke up this morning and felt again, after the healing of the night, as radiant as I did dancing. All the years I've danced I tried to get into that same space, closing my eyes dancingforGod in clubs and bars. It really was all for God, not for lust. I closed my eyes to dance alone with God all those years, ignoring the eyes of others. Last night I kept my eyes closed mostly - to be with God - but opened them ocassionally to dance with others bent on Love. Real love. Where the other person is the Divine manifestation of God and you would never dream of trying to own them.


Then I opened again this morning the December 2006 issue of Aquarian Times to read this quote of Yogi Bhajans:

"Man has to live in love - love which is not lust. Love where there is no posession, no slavery of another person. Love which is a giving. Love which is for the sake of love. Love which lasts forever. Love which is a total sacrifice. Love which is more than the grace of God itself. Love which gives a halo around the face of the person. Love through which one can see God in the eyes of the person. Love with which the body shines, the words become sweet, and the communication is absolutely beautiful. That love for which one sacrifices his own life to save a little bit of injury to another person. That love with which one pleasantly and peacefully takes all the pain in his heart to redeem another fellow human being. That love can only flow when one knows how to tune into that universal God."

As I read this I am crying. Where is the man who who will let me see him as the Divine manifestation of God, and see me as the Divine Mother to be honored and loved with respect? Seeing my expression of sensuality as being in love with the world and not as an enticement for sex based on lust? If I wiggle my hips it is to feel their energy. If I put on makeup and fix my hair it is to honor life and show life how much I love it. If I wear sexy underwear it is because it makes me feel beautiful. And God is the only seeing that underwear right now. I give my love to God as Krishna these days because no earthly man I've found can let me be me the way God can. More than anything I love life and God. Life and God come first. Any man I might be with in the future will only be one who does not seek to breathe through me but WITH me. I am no one's source of energy. I want to say: "Stop trying to use me as an extension cord you idiots! I'm SHOWING you that there is a wall socket right next to mine. Plug into it. Share life with me. Don't take it from me."

I want to say to people: "Do you this energy I have? It comes from worshipping the earth, the trees the flowers and grass. It comes from practising Yoga, union with God. From chanting to God. Singing to God. Bowing to God in Bound Lotus and other ways every day. Every day. Jealousy won't give you this energy, only devotion. Trying to make me cut down on how much I chant, sing and walk in the park alone will only leave me in rags and tatters looking like a Cindergirl. Find your own connection to God and let our lamps burn beside each other. Don' t feed off me. I'm not the Source. God is."

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Day 12 and Ananda Tandava Sacred Dancing

This blog, on the surface, is about Bound Lotus. On a deeper level, it is about healing and growing: mySelf, the Earth, other people and other living beings. I talked to a friend last night who at first found Saul's techniques to be "a little too hippy-dippy", but decided to give it another go. For myself, a bumper sticker I saw sums it up best: "Tree-hugging, dirt-worshipper." Saul is teaching sacred movement from deep within the heart of India, and all shamanic traditions. A sensual, ecstatic movement. Not static. Circular. The circling movements I spontaneously do when perfrorming Aarti for Devi are the same. The same as traditional warm-ups for Thai massage. Shamans in Mongolia performing healings. Quakers quaking. "Shaking medecine" is ancient. It's not new. It's ancient. I'm doing it even in Bound Lotus now. I'm "bound", but bound to God and the Earth. As in Spanda, I'm still moving within the pose - breathing, wriggling a little as I settle deeper in. What began as torture, through acceptance has become bliss.

I found this quote last night in Tsultrim Allione's "Feeding Your Demons":

"Evil in the human psyche comes from a failure to bring together, to reconcile the pieces of our experience. When we embrace all that we are, even the evil, the evil is transformed. " - Andrew Bard Schmookler

I think of the poem from St. Suniti and the Dragon and also "Where the Wild Things Are" and the light and shade of Led Zeppelin. As far as music, Death Metal is too far one way, Sappy Pop the other. Evil comes about when we refuse to acknowledge the inevitability AND beauty of death. The grace in death, and the cycle to life again. Each day that I sit in Bound Lotus, I die a little into living more deeply. I honor pain in my body, go into it, be with it, literally hug myself into peacefulness.

Friday, November 13, 2009

Bound Lotus at 7:30 am is different than at 7:30 pm

I was worried I wouldn't get the practice done today, so I did it first thing, and didn't have as much time to stretch out. Even so, it was easier.

My forehead is almost to the ground, which just blows my mind! Grasping my toes is getting easier, and after coming out of the pose, the soreness in my neck and back have lessened. I feel at ease. At Saul's Immersion we went through his special blend of asana again with the shaking. I thought of an old article I read about "shaking medecine" and the native Americans and Quakers. He keeps saying: "The body knows how to heal itself," and it does.

At the chiropractor's they tell me that my muscles are considerably looser, and my spine easier to adjust. I love my chiropractor! I love Saul! I love it all! Meeting this beautiful Indian woman, Barbara, who suggested driving to the Himalayan Yoga Institute out of nowhere (somewhere I've dreamed of going), and Lisa and Lindsey, and then Renee and Yvonne again makes me so happy. Whirling like a Sufi at the end of the day makes me happy...even when my ego gets in the way and starts judging some yuppies at the grocery store trying to look streetwise. I just went into my meditation room and did the Middle Pillar exercise and all the energy of the day came rushing back as my ego settled back down.

I finished the puja for Vaishnodevi that I do every Friday, and my neck is fine, unlike last Friday. Was it Saul's dancing, spinning and Yoga? Was it my chiropractor Bridget? Was it Bound Lotus? Maybe it was just the Yoga/the 'Union' of it all.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Led Zeppelin, Saul David Raye, and the bees buzzing in my head...

At today's workshop, Saul talked about the chakras in ways I'd never heard before... he's been bringing up things that I've been reading over the past few weeks, and also mentioned Led Zeppelin and Jimmy Page (whom I have a crush on...) in the same breath as the Sahasrara chakra, talking about the chakras being a 'Stairway to Heaven' and how Led Zeppelin's music has inner and outer meanings. Funny that I've spent all my spare time in the last four weeks researching eveything Led Zep. Including the symbol 'Zoso'. Funny that when I fell on my head, I was in the process of trying to get all of my Zeppelin CD's on iPod. Funny that I've been doing my Yoga practice to Led Zep.

My head is buzzing! So much fabulous stuff! My neck is healing from Saul's teaching: let the body move the way it needs to... The body knows how to heal itself. I love the way he teaches! I love the conversations I'm having.... talking with Georgia about mantras, with Tung about cupping and TCM. I'm so fired up! "How will I sit for Bound Lotus?" I think. But I do.

As I sit listening to the Ray Man I think briefly of the 'So Purkh' Mantra that Saul was playing when we came back from lunch. It was fascinating to find him absorbed in a Kundalini Yoga chant! I know for sure I want to study with him. So I sit. My forehead has sunk so deeply into the pillows that it is almost on the floor. I feel twinges in my spine like bee stings, then it's gone and there is no pain. My nose itches unbearably instead. Then, at 10:01 p.m. I'm done. I must have started at 9:30. It's been a long day, tomorrow will be even longer: singing Lalita Sahasranama ( everday), Saul's workshop, the chiropractor, this practice, my regular mantra practice, and Puja for Vaishnodevi (Sola Shukravar which I will finish on January 2nd, 2010).

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

Twisting myself into a pretzel after Saul's Ecstatic Dancing!!!

Weeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!!! I hurt like a mofo earlier, now I feel so Fab-U-Lous after Saul David Raye's 1st day of his workshop and Ecstatic Dancing...spinning like the Tasmanian Devil, a Whirling Dervish. Shrooms were never this much fun! Acid wasn't. Dancing rocks! I keep thinking: "Why so serious?" Saul was saying not to get so serious that you lose the spirit. Don't let your practice become mechanical. I'm so high on God, I can't sit still, but I better, or I'll have to start this practice all over! Now for Bound Lotus!

Okay, so that was 'grounding'. Ouch. Not as easy as yesterday. I was irritable, anxious, panicky, more than seriously annoyed with my right leg for not doing what I wanted it to do, my forehead itched, I missed the bliss I felt from dancing, I was cussing out the wanna-be cultleader I used to "know" ( I haven't wasted my time thinking about his stupid ass in a while), and I was annoyed at the variation in speed with which Snatam Kaur sings the Ray Man Shabd.

In other words, I have been ALL OVER the map emotionally today...just as Saul was describing earlier as a feature of the emotional make-up of children. Children are honest about their feelings and able to be "present" at extremes of emotion. Of course, our culture considers that capacity to be dysfunctional in adults. I'm sorry. I think I'd rather be like a child. Isn't that what Jesus said we needed to do? He wasn't wrong. I think a healthy and emotionally honest individual is able to be peaceful at times, but not always; sometimes there are moments of anger, sometimes of bliss. Mahan Kirn talks about this. I'm not alone.

I want to throw Paul Simon's "Rhythm of the Saints" in the CD player and dance around my living room. I used to do that. My fluffy ragdoll cat would sit on the coffee table and bob his head in time, while I spun like a Sufi, and dipped and swirled. Today at Saul's I did this for the first time in public, and I loved it! The bliss was fun even though it didn't last... the anger I felt later was not fun, and thankfully, it didn't last; but I could be present for both. Everything has it's season...

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Day 8! Turn it on its side, and its the symbol of Infinity!

I had a chiropractic adjustment yesterday, and today when I woke up I was so sooo stiff. Apparently, for 23 years my muscles have been holding up my entire cervical spine, and they don't want to let go. Doc suggested that I get a massage to release the muscles, so today I did just that. While the therapist was working on my back, she suggested that if I felt resistance in my spine to mentally direct my breath to the cervical spine and the sacrum, particularly toward the multifidus muscles. Interesting that I just read an article last night that discussed the multifidus muscles in the context of a better way to perform backbends without 'scooping' or 'tucking' the tailbone.

The article recommended engaging moola bhanda (contracting the pelvic floor at the perineum), engaging the transverse abdominals, and expanding the multifidus muscles that run along the sacrum. Even while I was in Physical Therapy school I never even heard of the multifidus muscles, but I can feel them. I feel them releasing, as I lengthen my spine. This practice is hard. As an aside to the ridiculousness of the recent Missouri legislation to "tax" Yoga classes, tell me that Yoga isn't a spiritual practice. It soooo is. To breath, to inspire, is to breathe in the spirit. This breath feeds my little personal demons, who don't want my body to change even it means it will be more healthy, with what they really need to let go. It heals. Breathing does. Its 'inspirational'. The word "inspire" comes from the Latin 'spiritas', the same root word for the word spiritual. As I say in many of my Yoga classes: "Everything in Yoga is optional, except breathing. You have to breathe." And when you breathe, you draw in spirit.

After stretching out, a friend took my picture in Bound Lotus. Pretty soon I'll post it here.

When I sat today my chest was considerably closer to the floor, and therefore my head as well. I was able to grasp my right big toe. My head felt considerably more in alignment, my hips much more deeply open. The change was dramatic from yesterday! I don't know whether it was the massage or the opportunity to forgive someone who stopped by my apartment building today and asked to be forgiven. I was angry at first, over something that happened last Winter, and contributed to the loss of a 12 year friendship with someone else...but even as I felt the anger rising, I felt it dissipate just as quickly. Was it purely coincidence that this person came by, asking for me only by first name and I just happened to be downstairs in the lobby? If I hadn't been, the doorman probably would have turned him away...they are very protective of me, and other residents, and I am grateful for that. I think the shift to forgiveness physically opened my heart, and therefore the pose deepened, and it felt like a breath of fresh air since I started this practice. It was a taste of what it might be like to luxuriate in Bound Lotus someday when my shoulders, hips and heart are more open.

Monday, November 9, 2009

Day 7

My hips screamed through the first side with my left foot up first. The left hip is so tight, and there's been a catch in the hip for decades. It's excruciating and kind of nauseating each time my hips open to get past that catch. It's like squeezing through a mousehole, and then I'm on the other side. I wonder if Rolfing would help? Keith said it was very helpful for him.

The anxiety came up again, and intense irritability. For instance, I want to scream out "Fuck! Piss and Shit!" M-F-er comes to mind too...

At the chiropractor I'm told that my cervical curve is not just 'almost' gone, it is completely non-existant. I don't have one. Apparently I was so dizzy from pain last week, I missed that little tidbit of info... I heard what I wanted to hear. It didn't register that it's pretty wacked. Also, I missed her instruction to re-create my cervical curve while lying down with the ice pack on my neck. Fortunately, I inadvertently did just that in Savasana last night. But I also need new pillows...

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Today Is a Good Day to Tie Myself Into a Pretzel

I was exhausted by the time I sat down to do Bound Lotus, but I managed to stretch first with the Spine Series stretches, and then sit as I have been for 10 min. in half lotus with opposite elbows clasped, forehead on two pillows, then 5 minutes in half bound lotus sitting up. Then the same on the second side. I felt very anxious for the last five minutes, and then just zoned out and actually fell asleep for a minute or two.

At the end of the practice I sit in seated forward fold, and then Savasana for 10 minutes. This time I fell asleep in Savasana for an hour, with a folded blanket under my thoracic spine, and my cervical spine arched. I felt fabulous!

Saturday, November 7, 2009

A Late Start

At about 6:30 pm I sat down to begin the stretches and warm-ups for Bound Lotus. My back and neck hurt a lot. I feel again like a turtle shoved in its shell. I taught this morning at Lululemon and I really enjoyed it, then I did something stupid. I sat at the computer to place a Vistaprint order and work on this blog. My neck got stiff again. Then I walked in the park on this gorgeous 78 degree day. Neither of these things were the problem, though, it appears that before I can do anything else besides Yoga, I need to do Bound Lotus. This practice takes the pain away.

So, I sat the same way I did yesterday, but I felt a little tighter. Each day is different. I can now sing the Ray Man Shabd from memory, and believe me I sing! It's the only way to distract myself. I finished with a lot of the pain I'd endured for the day gone. If this practice removes the pain, and it is 6 days since the injury, what would the pain have been like if I had not done it? I doubt I would have been able to function without pain killers as I have...

Friday, November 6, 2009

It Gets Easier

After my second chiropractic adjustment since the injury, I feel as if my shoulders are opening in a way they never could before...what my chiropractor is doing for me is amazing! And the gifts of Bound Lotus are equally amazing! As I stretched earlier today, I began to cry as I moved deep into opening the hips in Rajakapotasana, expanding on the opening from my private lesson with Keith on the 28th of October. My upper back is gradually beginning to gain back some of the feeling of openess I received from that lesson, that got cut short by the injury. It's as if my ego didn't like the new higher vibration...

While stretching my hips, I cried. Once in Bound Lotus, I felt my lumbar vertebrae release, and my forehead sunk into the pillows such that I wondered if this practice is seriously helping to re-create my cervical curve? I felt my neck lengthening. I sang enthusiastically along with the Ray Man Shabd for 10 minutes, and then sat up and took half Bound Lotus on the left big toe. That was tough. My fingers kept slipping. My left shoulder is pretty tight. Then I switched sides. Back resting my forehead on the pillows, I clasped opposite elbows in half-Bound Lotus. After another 10 minutes, I sat up for the next five to grasp my left big toe. I felt like my heart was right over my hips in a way it had not been yesterday. The change feels dramatic! I'm blown away by the feeling of expansiveness, and how every time I complete the day's practice I feel rejuvinated and free of pain for hours.

Thursday, November 5, 2009

Day 3 and the virtues of 'Golden Milk'

At 9 a.m. I did the same set of calisthenics I'd done on the first day, prior to this practice; essentially the floorwork and stretching I used to do when I learned to teach aerobics in the 80's from someone who so obviously must have done some form of Kundalini Yoga. Then I drank some 'Golden Milk', a recipe from Mahan Kirn Kaur Khalsa's "Bound Lotus: An Instructional Manual". The book can be purchased by accessing the site: www.boundlotus.com, as well as www.spiritvoyage.com. The recipe is as follows:

Golden Milk

1 cup milk (I use lactose-free skim)
1 cup water
1/2 - 1 teaspoon turmeric
1 teaspoon ghee and raw cane sugar to sweeten

Cook the turmeric for 8 minutes in water. Bring the milk to boil. Add a tablespoon of the turmeric water, which can be kept fresh for up to one month in the refrigerator. Remove from heat and add oil and sweetener.

After drinking this I followed the stretches for the shoulders, hamstrings, hips, spine and thighs which Mahan Kirn gives in her book, along with The Basic Spinal Energy Series. As I did so I listened to Deva Premal singing the Mool Mantra.

Then, this time, as I prepared to sit in Bound Lotus for 31 minutes, I started with the left leg up first and my head bowed on two pillows, so I could continue to stimulate the pineal gland while not compressing my cervical spine. The left hip hurts so much that I thought it would be easier to do first. Not so. After 10 minutes, my original half-lotus with opposite elbows grasped and forehead bowed was simply excruciating to my hips beyond belief. I sat up and sat for the remaining 5 minutes on that side in half-bound lotus, grasping my right big toe. It is viable to move into variations of the pose, so I did. On the other side I followed the same pattern, but towards the last 3 minutes, my hand kept slipping, my face, back and nose itched like crazy, and I had to continually tell my rebellious mind "No!" as I sang along with the Ray Man Shabd to be able to finish. As I sat up, my spine felt free again, after being very stiff this morning. I listened again to the Mool Mantra in Shavasana, then had a other cup of Golden Milk to soothe my soul and loosen my joints, as turmeric is supposed to do. It made the whole practice seem almost as delicious as the milk! Almost.

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

2 Days In...

It was relatively easy yesterday, whereas today my mind and mental body have been fighting like crazy to avoid this practice. I finally sat down to do it at 3:45 p.m., and, all of a sudden out of nowhere, I became very, very stiff in my hips. I thought: "This is crazy!" It immediately disappeared. But then I felt as if I had a horrible sinus infection. Earlier, at the chiropractor's office, the nurse practitioner had noted a slight sinus infection where I had not felt anything. My mind raced telling me to walk in the park instead or I'd miss the beautiful day...then I became ravenously hungry and allowed myself to eat a package of Sahale almonds with dried apples. Then, like telling a small child "no more" , I prepared to sit. Unlike yesterday, it was physically excruciating through the hips and groin. My shoulders ached and I could not breathe well. I felt a bout of anxiety welling up and opted to sing out the Ray Man Shabd along with the recording of Snatam Kaur.

The first side for 15 minutes was difficult, but the second side was worse. My left thigh shook and I wanted to scream as if I were trapped inside some kind of Chinese puzzle box. Then, it was over. As the last strains of Snatam's voice washed over me, I smiled, raised my head, and found that my neck has more mobility than before. Imagine that.

Tuesday, November 3, 2009

The very first day...


I have loved Yoga since the first day I was introduced to it by an aerobics instructor in Chattanooga, Tennessee, who had apparently studied Kundalini Yoga, as taught by Yogi Bhajan. That was more than 25 years ago, and now I have studied many different forms of yoga, and become certified to teach it at the 200-hour level with Yoga Alliance. Unfortunately I have had to swear off inversions, particularly headstand (my favorite) due to a severe compression injury to my spine. This trauma came within two hours of the decision I made on November 1st, All Soul's Day, to begin a 1,000 day practice of "Bound Lotus" on November 2nd, All Saint's Day and also Dias de Los Muertos. Apparently, my ego got in the way and did not want to begin this practice. I could have almost died from the compression injury, had I not caught myself with one hand and attempted a back walkover to exctricate myself from the dangerous position of falling onto my head while balancing on a friend's feet in a backbend. Like an idiot, I talked my acrobatically naive friend into doing this genius move without a spotter. I think I may have had a death wish. I fell from a height of 1 foot, directly onto my head! The head is the symbol of the ego, and I fell on it. The practice I intended to do seemed to be out of the question.

However, I began it today, November 3rd. Interestingly, eight years ago today I became very ill with strep and mononucleosis. I was so ill I was hospitalized for several days. I could barely move for months. I was told I would never regain all of my strength back. I have and more. But as a result of this 'accident', I now have a compression injury at C7 and T1, which has humbled me considerably and also been a blessing in disguise, as I have been told by my chiropractor that I already had a reversed cervical curve due to a serious, near-fatal injury to my spine in 1986, 23 years ago. While undergoing treatment to get back my cervical curve, I will be doing a modified version of "Bound Lotus" pose from Yogi Bhajan's Kundalini Yoga tradition. Today was the first day...


It was difficult to get myself to begin to say the least, but I did! At 11 a.m. I sat down with my hips resting on a light blanket, my legs in half-bound lotus, and clasping my opposite elbows, I bowed my head to the Divine while resting on two pillows. Before this spinal injury, I would have been able to sit in full lotus with one arm bound. Now, I do what I am able. While listening to Snatam Kaur's 31- minute version of the Ray Man Shabd, a mantra that Mahan Kirn Kaur Khalsa found useful when she began her practice of Bound Lotus in 2001, I sat in my version of Bound Lotus for the prescribed time. Midway through, I switched legs, as instructed to do. At about 29 minutes through the pose, every fiber of my being was screaming to get out of the pose, though it was not that painful. I listened more attentively to the Ray Man Shabd and persevered. As I lifted up out of the pose on the last sounds of the mantra playing in the background, tears streamed down my face, and I was overcome with joy, and a feeling as if my spine had lengthened considerably. I continued to cry, as I found myself sitting up straighter than before the injury.

I made my way to the chiropractor, who proceeded to show me the x-rays of my neck, and inform me that considering the trauma from 23 years ago, and the new trauma, it was amazing I that I have any cervical disk space, and that I had been able to be as mobile as I have been for all these years and now. I feel deeply blessed, and very, very, very grateful.

1,000 Days of Bound Lotus

I meant to start yesterday, but, oh well. I meant to start the day before yesterday, but I fell on my head from a foot in the air. Who knew it could knock some sense into me? I think today is a good day to tie myself into a pretzel, to truss myself like a chicken.