Sunday, February 28, 2010

An Apple for my Teacher

The gratitude I feel toward my teacher, Sat Inder Singh, two of my students feel toward me...and yet I know it is not me who has changed their lives, nor Sat Inder who has changed mine...but the breath. The Prana. A "pranam" is a way of honoring the teacher, 'nam' being a sound or name, and 'prana' the breath behind the sound. The force which causes change is the breath behind the sound. Today I sang all day long, off and on. My voice resonates like it never has in my entire life! My lung volume is increasing. The Universe is playing me like a flute, and Sat Inder too. I laid an apple, a Pink Lady, on the CD player and pranamed to my soul. May my soul hear the request I have in my heart as I approach the 120th day of Bound Lotus: I want to take KRI Kundalini Yoga Teacher Training in Espanola, NM in August. I need $4,500 to do so...please lead me where I want to go. Help me on this path...from Mantra Yoga at my weakest when I vomited almost every day to Hatha Yoga to Kriya Yoga, which Kundalini Yoga is...I want to learn to teach this yoga that is changing my life so drastically.

Today as I spoke to my father, the room filled with light. A soft smile took the shape of my face. I am so happy, but not so I could burst...just a quiet happiness. Days like this, reading the book of yoga quotes a student bought for me, make the bad days bearable. Hearing my father's stories about Douglas Steer and Albert Schweitzer make me believe in a world made of pure love. I am walking, I am doing my yoga, because "I need time to adjust my spiritual garments".

As I did my laundry today, I found towels in the bottom of my suitcase, unwashed, from Solstice in December. The scent they gave off was sweet and filled me with bliss! I want to be in Espanola in August, learning this yoga. I want to go with Sat Inder. I need the money to come in the right way...the way of honoring my Self.

Saturday, February 27, 2010

Tolstoy and "The Last Station"

Love is what it is all about. Not power. I look at Pandit Rajmani Tigunait's book: "The Pursuit of Power and Freedom", and see his eyes on the cover filled with the hunger for power and shake my head. I look at the portrayal of Tolstoy in a movie, of a man whose most important task is to ask others about themselves, and to spread love, and I know as my body twists and contorts itself it is an opening of the heart I am looking for more than anything...

Friday, February 26, 2010

"Not I, not I, but the wind...

...that blows through me."

Today is a day of pure bliss and happiness.

Thursday, February 25, 2010

A Sword of Violet Flame!

When I think back to the time when I received my first Reiki attunement, I was also introduced to St. Germain and the Violet Flame. I see in my mind's eye, a sword of Violet Flame and fire. A Sword like the curved karpan of the Sikhs, who like many Pagans are not above physically defending their right to Truth. This Sword, this karpan, for me is a symbolic sword. It, along with an exercise from Amorah Quan Yin's "Pleidian Tantric Workbook" is what I will use to fight the demons in my mind, who drove me to accept ill-treatment by others. This Sword of Truth I am visualizing as I sing 'Jai Tegang', preparing for the 115th day of Bound Lotus. Next Tuesday will mark 120 days. A 'Victory of Saints'...I suppose (I say this with my tongue in my cheek).

Tonight, I'll be teaching my students to the strains of 'Jai Tegang' and a little GauraVani and their version of 'Krishna Murare' that makes me long to be in Ammachi's arms. Interesting that in a book on magickal names I find that 'Chi' is an African name for women meaning "helpful spirits". Much to my discomfort, because it affirms the Sikh name I don't like, if I succeed in forgiving the man who began our relationship with rape, it will be a victory of the saints, the helpful spirits of Ammachi and Yogi Bhajan, of St. Teresa of Avila, of Quan Yin, of St. Germain and the Angels of the Violet Flame...these beings I invoke every time I give Reiki or an attunement.

It feels wierd to own up to my intense devotion to spirit on the Bhakti singing path, that includes such New Agey concepts. Referring to works by Elizabeth Clare Prophet and Amorah Quan Yin, is, in my mind, tantamount to being a bit kooky. All I know is...their exercises work! Next thing you know, I'll be an American Sikh who ALSO loves the Hindu gods and goddesses, and meditates to align with her gallactic interconnection with the Pleiades. Well on my way to being perceived by some as extremely wierd if not crazy!

But as Ammachi responded once: "When you are drunk on God you do not know what you are doing!" Excuse me while I go enchant myself with some 'ecstatic dancing', some Ananda Tandava, a la ancient Hindu practices, hippie dancing styles, Gothic club moves, and Gabrielle Roth's 'Dancing Path'. While I'm dancing the dance of destruction too, I'll wave my metaphorical sword to slash the demons in my mind like Durga, Kali and St. Germain. My whole apartment will be ablaze with astral Violet Flame to erase negativity and guilt, to cut down the demons of the mind and body.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Healing Old Wounds

This morning was wonderful! I taught class to new music: GauraVani's "Ten Million Moons", and Nirinjan Kaur's "adhara", which has a version of 'Jai Tegang', a Sikh prayer which I love, I think, more than the Reman Shabd. It was what I heard coming from Sat Sunderta's car on the last day of Solstice, while her friends were packing to leave as she lay sleeping in the back. Everyone, including myself, wanted to know what that beautiful song was...it turns out it wasn't Simrat Kaur like everyone thought! It was Nirinjan. The same voice that sang the 'So Purkh' I heard at Saul David Raye's. The 'So Purkh' that maybe I should be singing for someone to make them a saint, and to heal them, for it is said to have that power if chanted by a woman for a man...But 'Jai Tegang' is different. It is healing me. It is, apparently, very healing for those that were present in my class this morning.This music, the warmth of the studio, and my students made for a most beautiful class!

Last night, I'd taught my first Power Vinyasa in the same studio. I had the chance to show my versatility as an instructor, and was still buzzing from the gift. I'd been asking the Universe why no one ever asked me to sub Power Vinyasa, and the response came as a phone call to sub a class. What is that about 'ask and ye shall receive?'

But by doing Kirtan Kriya to heal past sexual attachments, I've asked for some pain and grief too. After teaching this morning, and then doing my own practice with some ecstatic dancing and vinyasa with poses I haven't done in a while...I came home to gradually feel exhausted, confused and very tired. I lay down to do Reiki, awoke 24 minutes later with a start, thinking it was already Thursday, and that 24 hours had gone by. I felt sick. I checked my e-mail and my facebook page to calm myself, and found an abstract sent to me on an NPR broadcast about rape on college campuses.

The story told about a woman who was taken back to a house from a frat party by two male friends she trusted, was raped by both of them as she went in and out of consciousness. There was no struggling, because she was too drunk. She just kept waking up to find them having sex with her. She'd pass out again, and they were still at it. A great wave of recognition passed through me. Rape does not necessarily involve penetration. Rape can be oral.

People in relationships sometimes fantasize about having their lover awaken them from sleep by lovemaking, but to awaken on the sofa of someone you've never had sex with, and find that they have removed your clothes and are performing oral sex on you while you've been passed out in a drunken and drug-induced haze is...well, it IS rape. This happened to me in March of 2000. I'd been invited to a Bar-B-Q by someone whom I had a crush on, but who was dating and practically living with someone else. So I would have liked eventually to be with him, but not in that way.

I had passed out from too much Grand Marnier, beer AND wine coupled with a lot of really good weed. Everyone had left, including his girlfriend. I remember having wedged myself into the corner of the sofa as people chatted, only to awaken in a pitch dark room with my lower body now completely nude, and hanging off the sofa, which means he'd positioned it this way. Only a necrophiliac could possibly enjoy doing such a thing. When I awoke, I instinctively pulled away. I said, "What are you doing?" I remember his words: "Well you can come, can't you?" A taunt. A challenge to a very drunk and confused woman who had awoken to find her body violated by someone she trusted.

I remember now, I had wished in the months and years following when I went on to imagine I had fallen in love with this man, dated him and carried on a friendship that the first time had not been this way. I convinced myself it was okay, but inside I hated him for it. I hated his philandering too, but I did choose to put up with it. Often, over the years I've thought back to that night, wishing it were different, and telling myself what I know he'd say, that I wanted to be with him. Yes. But not that way. Not that way...

No wonder I've had a harder time forgiving him than my stalker, whom I'd dated prior to him. My stalker had coerced me into performing his lurid sexual fantasies in places such as abandoned buildings, the side of freeways, outside churches and over tombstones in cemeteries. But I was conscious each time. I allowed it. I was lonely. I chose to do what he asked so I wouldn't lose him...and when I finally left him, he stalked me. Then I met this new guy, and got invited to a Bar-B-Q, and got raped.

Quietly, with no struggling, by someone I trusted...just like the woman in the story. And it is interesting that just like the day I remembered how my grandfather violated me, the realization of this rape was precipitated by a wonderful morning filled with love and light, that helped to offset the painful realizations.

After I cried.. ALOT.. I found my way into my meditation room, skipping my day of laundry and cleaning, to sit in meditation with tears streaming down my face, trying to forgive him. As of yet, I have not. It is too soon, after coming to honor the truth of what happened. Right now, I hate the bastard for raping me, though he would never call it that. It was rape. That is exactly what it was. True, I'd dreamed of being with him, but I actually wanted to be present for it. Not awaken to find him chewing on me in the dark like a vampire.

Interesting that since we broke up in 2001, and until I became celibate in 2006, he would show up pretending there was some chance of a renewed relationship, only to drain me sexually and then make it implicitly understood each time afterwards that he didn't want me for more than sex, and was with someone else. He'd invite me places so I could hope we'd be getting back together, only so I could see him with someone else. I believe I'd convinced myself I was in love with him, so that I could turn the blame for all his cruelty onto myself, not wanting to demonize this man I thought I loved.

But in many ways, his antics and cruelty did more damage than my stalker ever did. If I was under anyone's spell for the last decade, it was a spell cast by this man who violated my trust, my innocent desire for him, and who raped me. I keep hearing it over and over in my head: our relationship began with rape. Violation. Vampirism of energy. And then it continued. And I got sick with mono, Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, constant respiratory problems worse than before I met him. No wonder that in past months I've felt ambivalent about talking to him or running into him. And in recent weeks I had developed an inexplicable (to me) distaste and outright dislike of him. Now it all makes sense.

Now, I just have to forgive him. It was easier to forgive my stalker. Easier to forgive my grandfather. And I've got to forgive myself for wasting almost ten years of my life pining after someone who raped me even before our first date. Someone who does not know how to love, and never loved me. Like the Zeppelin song: "Ten Years Gone". The day after he violated me, I saw him at work and tried to avoid him. He asked me if everything was okay, if I was upset by what happened...so he knew. The bastard. He knew in his heart of hearts he'd been wrong.

The whole relationship was tinged with violation of trust from the very start. Tinged with lies and manipulation for sex for all these years...I hope I won't forever, but right now I hate him, and I see why I've been chanting the 'Aakhan Jor'...to protect him from my hatred. The honest truth is I would like him to suffer, for all his twisting of the truth, manipulation, condescension, and attempts to keep from getting over alcohol, weed, and him. He was worse than my stalker. It was like sleeping with the enemy, never knowing that he was...

I had been very kind to him recently, trying to help him find his way out of the darkness, and eventually I will get back there. I will care again. But right now...right now I just want to listen to Nirinjan's 'Jai Tegang' and cry:

Jai Tegang

Khag khand bihandan khal dal khandan at ran mandan bar bandan

'The sword breaks through and cuts down the demons of the mind and body. This beautiful and powerful weapon adorns the battlefield of life.'

Bhuj dandh akhandan tej parchadan jot amandan bhaan prabhan

'It is an extension of the arm, unbreakable, terribly fast. It's awesome splendor overshadows even the sun.'

Sukh santaa kamang durmat damang kilbikh hamang as samang

'It protects the peace and happiness of the saints and destroys any powerful negative energy. It has erased the negativity and guilt that I carry. I seek it's refuge.'

Jai jai jag kaaran srist ubaaran mam pratipaaran jai tegang

'Praise, praise be to the great doer of the world, savior of the creation, my great protector, praise be to the sword!'
-words and trans.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

"And so we came forth, and once again beheld the stars."

The words from Dante's long poem, both in Italian and English, are drumming on my mind like the rain has drummed outside on the windows. But not only his uplifting words...the words as well of The Cure's lyrics to the song 'Lullaby", which a former lover freakishly played while requiring that I succumb yet again to his sexual addictions. I hear the strains of 'Lara's Theme' from "Dr. Zhivago" interspersed between The Cure's melody. It is like a very wierd movie in my mind. Only when I go to look up the lyrics to 'Lullaby' do I find myself leaving the state of curiosity and moving toward a black rage:

"On candystripe legs the spiderman comes
softly through the shadows of the evening sun
stealing past the windows of the blissful dead
looking for the victim shivering in bed
searching out fear in the gathering gloom and suddenly
a movement in the corner of the room!

And there is nothing I can do
when I realize with fright
that the spiderman is having me
for dinner tonight!

Quietly he laughs and shaking his head
creeps closer now
closer to the foot of the bed.
And softer than shadow and quicker than flies
his arms are all around me and his tongue in my eyes.
'Be still be calm be quiet now my precious boy
don't struggle like that or I will only love you more
for it's much too late to get away or turn on the light
the spiderman is having you for dinner tonight.'

And I feel like I'm being eaten by a 1'000 million shivering furry holes
and I know that in the morning I will wake up in the shivering cold
and the spiderman is always hungry."

I think of stories in Konstantino's "Gothic Grimoire", of spells to control the thoughts of others, of Black Tantra, of Raven Digitalis' tongue-in-cheek depiction of the musical taste of MopeyGoths, and of William Styron yet again:

"Near the end of an early film of Ingmar Bergman's, 'Through a Glass Darkly', a young woman experiencing the embrace of what appears to be profound psychotic depression, has a terrifying hallucination. Anticipating the arrival of some transcendental and saving glimpse of God, she sees instead the quivering shape of a monstrous spider that is attempting to violate her sexually. It is an instant of horror and scalding truth. Yet even in this vision of Bergman. (who has suffered cruelly from depression) there is a sense that all of his accomplished artistry has somehow fallen short of a true rendition of the drowned mind's appalling phantasmagoria. Since antiquity - in the tortured lament of Job, in the choruses of Sophocles and Aeschylus - chroniclers of the human spirit have been wrestling with a vocabulary that might give proper expression to the desolation of melancholia. Through the course of literature and art the theme of depression has run like a durable thread if woe - from Hamlet's soliloquy to the verses of Emily Dickinson and Gerard Manley Hopkins, from John Donne to Hawthorne and Dostoevski and Poe, Camus and Conrad and Virginia Woolf. In many of Albrecht Durer's engravings there are harrowing depictions of his own melancholia; the manic wheeling stars of Van Gogh are the precursor's of the artist's plunge into dementia and the extinction of self. It is a suffering that often tinged the music of Beethoven, of Schumann and Mahler, and permeates the darker cantatas of Bach. The vast metaphor which most faithfully represents this fathomless ordeal, however, is that of Dante, and his all-too-familiar lines still arrest the imagination with their augury of the unknowable, the black struggle to come:

'Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita
Mi ritrovari per una selva oscura,
Che la diritta via era smarrita.

'In the middle of the journey of our life
I found myself in a dark wood,
For I had lost the right path.'

"One can be sure that these words have been more than once employed to conjure the ravages of melancholia, but their somber foreboding has often overshadowed the last lines of the best-known part of that poem, with their evocation of hope. To most of those who have experienced it, the horror of depression is so overwhelming as to be quite beyond expression, hence the frustrated sense of inadequacy found in the work of even the greatest artists. But in science and art the search will doubtless go on for a clear representation of it's meaning, which sometimes, for those who have known it, is a simulacrum of all the evil of our world: of our everyday discord and chaos, our irrationality, warfare and crime, torture and violence, our impulse toward death and our flight from it held in the intolerable equipoise of history. If our lives had no ther configuration but this, we should want, and perhaps deserve, to perish; if depression had no termination, then suicide would, indeed, be the only remedy. But one need not sound the false or inspirational note to stress the truth that depression is not the soul's annihilation; men and women who have recovered from the disease - and they are countless - bear witness to what is probably it's only saving grace: it is conquerable.

"For those who have dwelt in depression's dark wood, and known it's inexplicable agony, their return from the abyss is not unlike the ascent of the poet, trudging upward out of hell's black depths and at last emerging into what he saw as 'the shining world.' There, whoever has been restored to health has almost always been restored to the capacity for serenity and joy, and this may be indemnity enough for having endured the despair beyond despair.

"' E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle.
'And so we came forth, and once again beheld the stars.'"

Like the storyteller in Wim Wender's "Wings of Desire", I am listening to my mother's music box, hoping that if I let my personal demons have their say, that they won't drag me like Persephone into Hades' realm again. But if they do, the breadcrumbs I will leave on the path back for myself will be this music box playing 'Lara's Theme' and Yogi Bhajan's Apple Kriya. I have so many apples in my refrigerator. In case the dark winds blow and the monsoon comes, I am prepared. And I know all too well how to smile through the pain, but this time, if a Dark Night of the Soul comes, I will do all I can to stay as light as possible as I embrace it and dance with it like dancing with David Bowie in "Labyrinth", like dancing with death and making friends with it. In Nachiketa's pose after Bound Lotus, I know the boons I will ask from Yama, the God of Death in the Katha Upanishad.

Monday, February 22, 2010

"E quindi uscimmo a riveder le stelle."

Like the poet Dante I have beheld the most horrifying madness, utter despair, and tortured souls...at so many different times in my life...each time to 'rise above the sun and smile', in my own words. My last descent into mental hell began in January 09', upon telling a friend of good news and finding that he could have cared less, preferring rather, that I join him in misery. Teetering on the edge of the abyss as I was, it was not difficult to fall. I fell headlong from about mid-January to May 1st, when I was well enough to decide to crawl out of the grave, resume my yoga practice, and the thirst for life. Through it all I chanted what was a dull monotony of Sanskrit chanting, that literally kept me from killing myself. Chanting has been my saving grace. It is now, as I chant for hours daily, including, most importantly, the Reman Shabd while in Bound Lotus. Like the monks who became sick and melancholy when the Catholic church stopped the plainchant, and until it resumed for those monks, I am indebted to chanting and singing mantras for my relative evenness of mood. When I stop, or cut back, I become like Cinderella after midnight.

Being from a family where suicide is historically prevalent, as well as debilitating depression and mania, I am well acquainted with misery and it's depths. What surprises me now, is my almost hypnotic gravitation toward things full of darkness, especially when I have not been able to sleep without the lights on for more than a decade. At night I do not like the dark.

But this morning, I am drawn to re-read William Styron's "Darkness Visible: A Memoir of Madness." I am drawn to listen to The Cure's 'Lullaby', and yet, curiously, also the tinny plinking sound of 'Lara's Theme' from the movie "Dr. Zhivago". This amuses me. All of it. I have my ideas about what all of this means, and as I am in no hurry to revisit the depths of despair I found myself in at it's worst last March and April, I will continue what is now practically 4 hours a day of yoga, meditation and chanting. Even though, during that time I touch the madness and the pain from my past, I feel that it is coming up from the very depths of my soul to be healed.

Dangerous but necessary work this is...

And so this rather long essay (it appears) is a meditation on madness and the way it can transform into peace and joy.

I think of Wim Wender's strange and beautiful film: "Wings of Desire", and the 'storyteller' listening to a tiny music box. I see myself bending my ear close to listen to first the small keychain music box my mother placed in my Christmas stocking one year, and the beautiful blue intarsia one I gave her years later. Both play 'Lara's Theme', a favorite of my mother's and a sound with the regenerative effects much like Albinoni's Adagio has for the residents of Sarajevo in "The Cellist of Sarajevo", and that Brahms Alto Rhapsody had for William Styron.

I am sad. I am hurting. I am remembering the indescretions of my grandfather and grandmother, the sexual misuse of my body many, many boyfriends, being treated as if my only purpose in life were to serve men's sexual needs, uninvited to movies, shows, concerts and other outings, but useful in the bedroom. Remembering the grief of nearly dying from pregnancy, and the uncaring thoughtlessness of the man in my life. Remembering stories of a great aunt who hung herself upon hearing she was pregnant with twins. She had six children already. Remembering how horribly sick my mother was with me, her physical and emotional abuse toward my sister and I, and her changing as a mother, only to hate herself for who she had been. This long saga...miasma of grief and misery stemming back to my grandmother's rape and abuse at the hands of her stepfather. Memories not even my own...and they come up in the meditation room to be healed. Which is what I do. I am a healer of others and myself.

Each time these pains and griefs return the damage they can do to my life lessens. Working the grief out slowly feels like I imagine the writing of Dostoevsky's "War and Peace" to have been. It is rough going, but necessary work, as pills and therapy never worked for me; I expect because on the one hand pharmeceuticals like Ativan and Seroquel created psychosis for me, and on the other because I had really bad luck with therapists. Except for one. But that is another story.

Wounded Healer that I am, I use everything I can: Chanting, meditation, reflection, devotion, Reiki, crystals, healthy food, walks in nature, the re-reading of books. And here, while I want now to read Sobin, Woolf, Plath, Hedayat and Styron I feel a monsoon of tears on it's way. I know I have more grief to air out into the sunlight. As I read Styron, I find an incredible depth of feeling in his words, his explanation of the path through the darkness to the light:

"The morbid condition proceeded, I have come to believe, from my beginning years - from my father, who battled the gorgon for much of his lifetime, and had been hospitalized in my boyhood after a despondent spiraling downward that in retrospect I saw greatly resembled mine. The genetic roots of depression seem now to beyond controversy. But I'm persuaded that an even more significant factor was the death of my mother when I was thirteen; this disorder and early sorrow - the death or disappearance of a parent, especially a mother, before or during puberty - appears repeatedly in the literature on depression as a trauma sometimes likely to create nearly irreparable emotional havoc. The danger is especially apparent if the young person is affected by what has been termed 'incomplete mourning' - has, in effect, been unable to achieve the catharsis of grief, and so carries within himself through later years an insufferable burden of which rage and guilt, and not only dammed-up sorrow, are a part, and become the potential seeds of self-destruction.

"...So if this theory of incomplete mourning has validity, and I think it does, and if it is also true that in the nethermost depths of one's suicidal behaviour one is still subconsciously dealing with immense loss while trying to surmount all the effects of it's devastation, then my own avoidance of death may have been belated homage to my mother. I do know that in those last hours before I rescued myself, when I listened to the passage from the 'Alto Rhapsody' - which I'd heard her sing - she had been very much on my mind."

- to be continued-

Sunday, February 21, 2010

My spine is vibrating when I sing!

I can feel it on the 11th day of chanting the Aquarian Sadhana mantras, and especially during the 'Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Da Ni Sa Ta Na Ma' meditation. Of course I don't feel it while doing Bound Lotus. Bound Lotus is getting really difficult to do again, and it is irritating me to do it; that means both that it is working and changing me, as well as that it makes sense too because I am nearing 120 days straight, which is the number of days to solidify the new habit gained at 90 days and make it your own...eventually Bound Lotus should feel as natural to do every day as brushing my teeth. I am supposed to get to the point where I would feel bereft just at the thought of not doing it. Right now, though, I feel that way, even though it irritates me. The peace I feel afterwards is indescribable!

But I am aware that I need to strengthen my third chakra, my navel center. If the navel center is weak, than the energy a person builds up can slip away as if there were a leak in a cup of water. That still happens to me to some extent. I used to be like a sieve - no energy stayed contained, and people could just drain me. I've been working on balancing the 1st and 2nd chakras, and that seems to be changing...interesting that at Kundalini Winter Solstice I seemed to be clearing stuff for both the Earth Tattva of the year before, and the Water Tattva of 2009. This year is the year of the Fire Tattva, then 2011 is Air Tattva (the 4th chakra; the heart), and 2012 is the year of the Ether Tattva (the 5th chakra and throat - historically my weak spot, hence all of the chanting and singing to strengthen it). God how I would love to be a singer traveling and giving concerts singing Kirtan and doing yoga!

Saturday, February 20, 2010

The White Swan and 'the heart-drop'

There are two advanced meditations I feel drawn to try: 'Hunsani Meditation on the White Swan' that Yogi Bhajan said the early Christians used to do in caves...and 'Meditation on the Life Current of Your Heart Unto Infinity':

A) Sit in easy pose with spine erect like a perfect yogi. Make the hands flat like discs, facing the eyes. The disc of the hand will cut through half of the vision of each eye. Move the hands six inches from the face. The hands do not touch each other. The small fingers are seperated by about three inches. If you look straight the two small fingers will appear to intersect and form a heart-like figure. If you look up or down, it will not be there. A simple adjustment of the distance may be required for that little red drop to form in the center. Meditate on the heart drop and see what color changes it goes through. Look into the distance, not at the little fingers. Hold the hands perfectly still. After 5 to 11 minutes, inhale and relax the hands.

B) In easy pose and hands in gyan mudra on the knees, chant in a monotone:

Gobinde, Mukunde, Udhare, Apare, Hariang, Kariang, Nirname, Akame.

Each sound is seperate. Do not run one on top of the other. A short but complete pause is essential. Chant for 5 minutes.

COMMENTS: This is not an easy, light meditation. It affects the central part of the brain and stimulates the entire nervous system. As the nerves adjust, you may get a pressure near the eyebrows and see color changes. The meditation brings a lot of changes and is very unboring. It gives the ability to make decisions clearly and the ability to know future thought forms.

Friday, February 19, 2010

I Love Kundalini Yoga!

I may not trust many people, but there are a few that I do: my father, Ammachi (or Sri Amritananamayi), and Yogi Bhajan. The practice of Kundalini Yoga is a combination of Hatha Yoga, Kriya Yoga, and Raja Yoga...making it more complete than most forms of yoga we know in the West. I love the yoga! I may not like the name 3HO gave me, and refuse to use it, but I love the yoga! I trust that the yoga works. I trust Yogi Bhajan. I don't trust organizations. I trust Ammachi, but not necessarily everyone in her organization. And even so, Ammachi is in human form, and so was Yogi Bhajan. I trust Yogi Bhajan, and at the same time know that he was human and capable of mistakes. Humans can make mistakes, and according to Yogi Bhajan, even God can make a mistake. So maybe everything isn't exact, but it works!

I feel deeply drawn to Kundalini Yoga and have been doing several sets including one called 'Heart of Gold' that leaves me feeling so warm and fuzzy. I also very much resonate with Saul David Raye's Ritam Yoga, and follow what I learned in his immersion as a daily Hatha Yoga practice. And, as well, I have learned a lot about alignment through Anusara. Yin Yoga, irregardless of whether Anusara practitioners believe it works or is safe...works for me, and is an integral part of my practice. The warm-up poses for Kundalini Yoga are very similar, and without either that or Yin Yoga, I become stiff and tight. Basically I love it all!

So, today I've kept up with a set at Sat Inder's for 'Balancing the Depository System', which is in the GuruRattan Kaur book, and I sang Aquarian Sadhana to Wah!'s early CD. Praanpathi Namo Namo, Kirtan Kriya, Releasing Fear, Aakhan Jor, Sa Re Ga..., Heart of Gold, and Bound Lotus. It is 40 days to change a habit, 90 days to create a new one, 120 days to confirm it as your own, and 1'000 to mastery. Of course, if the reasons for doing the kriya are ego-based and not heart-centered, that changes everything. It needs to come from the heart.

Thursday, February 18, 2010

IF I told the truth...

...about everything, I would not be where I am today. I told the truth for years and watched it get used against me. Friends, lovers, bosses, doctors, therapists...used the truth to hurt me. It wasn't always conscious or consistent, but it was enough to keep me in the rut I was in, to be boxed in, fantasized about and treated with disrespect. Now I 'neglect' to mention certain things about myself. I omit. I equivocate and prevaricate because believe that not everybody needs to know my business. I've had a Sikh friend recently suggest that I tell the truth about everything. Too much disclosure. Some things are better left in the past for everyone. And he has really never been in my shoes or anyone else's. Telling the whole truth can sometimes really hurt people too...you can damage lives. Sometimes, and I know I am going out on a limb here because I can talk alot, but sometimes it is better just to shut up. And it occurred to me as well that if you want to be really truthful, it is a bad thing to take the truth about someone and then gossip to your friends about them. I've had it done to me, I've done it, and consequently, at this stage of the game, I think there are some things I don't need to know about people, and some things I will never tell about myself or others. As open as I may seem, I am actually Mata Hari about some things. It just depends. I know, most of the time, when to keep a secret, and when not too. Pandora's Box gets opened for me the more I sit with Bound, but that doesn't mean that everyone I know needs to know what I know. Just speaking metaphorically at this point...or am I? Who knows? But if someone tells me a secret and asks me to keep it, unless it is about hurting someone or is meant to hurt someone, I'll keep it. I don't have to outright lie. I just don't have to talk. I think it is good when you can tell the truth, but I also think some things are not everybody's business. I have secrets that I will never tell, not even to those who are just bored and want something to gossip about. Oh, especially not to those people.

In other words, as I would like to say to some of my friends, if you want the whole truth from me, you have to earn my trust. But the truth about me, means the truth about you as well. If you open that door...it isn't always as titillating and exciting as a tabloid headline.

Having said that, I'd like to mention that today marks 108 days of Bound, and today, prior to doing it, I did the "Heart of Gold" Kriya from Guru Rattan Kaur's book. I felt really, really good, and my shoulders and back heart opened up as in a way never before...I shared the Kriya with students after a scheduled class, and they loved it! They said they felt just a little high and kinda buzzy. Cool. And that's the truth. Ha!

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

The 'crazee squirrel' rides again!

Alrighty! Life has been throwing some punches, i.e., pushy surrogate bosses, financiers with really bad attitudes trying as hard as they can to lose their houses and the shirts off their own backs by being shitheads, and, well old man Winter. But never fear, I have some apples. Yesterday and the day before I did the Apple Kriya for positive ions again, but forgot a crucial ingredient: Breath of Fire! Today I did not forget, and now I have a fire lit under my happy ass. Furthermore, today is 40 days of Releasing Fear with 'Aadays Tisai Aadays'! I began it, without realizing it...on none other than my fat ex-stalker's (I hope!) birthday...butterball turkey that he is...and am ending it, actually on the day upon which he logged on a website I was on, while using my name...exactly five years ago. Today. No shoes! Bumblebee Skunk!!! Merry Farts! Ta-Da! 40 days to RELEASE FEAR! Noooooooow!!!!

So 'Aadays Tisai Aadays' is a meditation to stop others from hurting you, and there is another one to stop you from hurting others... "drum roll please!": 'Aakhan Jor'. 25 times a day according to Guru Nanak. The Sikh Guru, the very same one that Patanjali of Patanjali's Yoga Sutras prophesied would come in the Kali Yuga. That's now. So I began the meditation yesterday, along with one to attain Vac Siddhi and make my voice beautiful if I master it. Since I assume mastery at the very least entails a 1'000 day practice...ahem...I shall do this 'Sa Re Ga Ma Pa Di Sa Ta Na Ma' for 1'000 days, starting today. Let's see, when would that end? So 1'000 days of Bound Lotus, and 1'000 days of this mantra. That is, I guess, of course, unless I lose my voice!

But anyway, I am feeling much better seeing this day pass. I feel relieved. I had a conversation with my boss yesterday, and she didn't wipe me out! A friend of mine is having a really, really bad day and it isn't wiping me out either. Maybe I'll buy 39 more apples and go for the gold on Ash Wednesday, no less, and give up being pissy and bitchy for 40 days, while bobbing for apples in the refrigerator every morning. I have Honeycrisps and Pinatas...which will I have tomorrow? Bound Lotus, of course, is a given. Goes without saying. Hm.

Monday, February 15, 2010

It just dawned on me!

The day I fell on my head and injured my spine, was the same day that our back asswards state of Missouri passed legislation to tax Yoga. And if one of my new bosses keeps up with her ridiculous desire to have a 'Singles Yoga Class', she will effectively be making the State's case. But so many people desire their Yoga to be a 'workout'; it is too painful to do the spiritual work that is part and parcel of doing Yoga. Maybe someday more people will "get it". Eventually, even if you do Yoga for the wrong reasons, i.e., to check out the hot babe or hunk with the cool black toenail polish on the mat next to sweating and breathing while making orgasmic sounds, Yoga has a way of changing your reasons for doing it. But personally, until such time as that happens, I'd rather not hear about that damn 'Singles Class' one more $&%@! time! Jesus! Buddha! God help me before I whip out the duct tape! Oh how I would like to use it... -laughs maniacally-

But otherwise, I did the 'Apple Kriya' again...if only to keep from knocking a few people out cold on their asses, and then finished my other kriyas. Kirtan Kriya is the one to release past negative sexual experiences, and if the last few days are any indication, it is a rough way to go. Yet, it disconnects inappropriate attachments to your aura, and moves you forward on your spiritual path.

I was flabbergasted by the spacey behaviour of my chiropractor today, and the massage therapist blew my mind by telling me about a horror flick she saw. What the hell? I'm tryin' to relax here. My major financier is also pitching a hissy fit as we'd say in Chattanooga, and about to get his house foreclosed on because he is an ignorant cuss to people. He could have avoided this whole issue by going to the BBB, but he didn't, and then he bitched about it to me for an hour on Valentine's Day. No wonder he isn't married. Gosh I'm harsh, but it's true. People are just strange as far as I'm concerned right now. I need a break from them.

Oh, I forgot, Bound Lotus was a major pain in the ass, literally today...but I did it anyway. In the words of one lady's grandson: "Bumblebee Skunk!!!!" I'm thinking of the name Sant Saroop? 3HO - you guys are so friggin ' rigid about names, I'll just pick my own; I'm certain I am NOT the first to do so.

Sunday, February 14, 2010

Chocolate extends life!

To have read in the Riverfront Times of a woman who lived to be 122, and attributed her long life to her 2 pd a week chocolate habit, warms my heart on Valentine's Day! The article, about two bean-to-bar chocolatiers in Missouri, made me want to run over to Straub's for some Asknosie chocolate from Springfield, MO. I've had some Patric chocolate and it was a divine experience. Those Madagascarian beans...But right now I am savoring Yogi Tea with raw cacao, that contains waaaaay more antioxidants than acai berries, blueberries or pomegranates. I feel like an Incan princess sitting down to my cup. Soon I will become a human pretzel again, for the 104th time in 104 days. Then I shall rise up and go buy some Askinosie chocolate, and get on with my goal of living beyond the age of 100 while still being flexible, strong, feisty, outspoken, funny and kind. I love life! I love chocolate! I do not love Bound Lotus...but I do it anyway because I like the way I feel afterwards.

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Affirming my own Spiritual Name

Phoenix Amira Lei...or really what sounded like Phoenix Amora Lei, or Phoenix 'A'-something-'Moora' Lei...was given to me in a dream in 2007. When Ammachi would not yet give me a Spiritual Name, I needed a name to start my business that felt right and would not alert my stalker at the time to my whereabouts. I heard this name in my dream. I couldn't quite make out the 'Amoora' part, but it sounded like Amora. When I spelled out Phoenix Amora Lei, I realized that the middle name with the last initial looked like the word: amoral; so I changed it to Amira, which is Arabic for "female leader". Yesterday, as I sang the Aquarian Sadhana mantras for the 4th day in a row, I looked down at the words: Akal Moorat, and thought: "That's it! That's what they said in the dream!"

But 3HO insists otherwise. Akal Moorat was not even what I wanted as a Gurmukhi name in the Kundalini Yoga tradition...I wanted something that would remind me of my birth name that I can no longer safely use. But, oddly, Akal Moorat resonates with me. It means: Deathless, Undying. That fits with Phoenix too. The name 3HO gave me was supposed to be chosen astrologically. But that can't be true. I know enough about astrology to know that they would need not only the latitude and longitude of my birthplace, but the birth time as well. The form I filled out did not ask for this. Their name they gave much less personally through the e-mail cannot be my destined name in the Sikh tradition. It feels all wrong.

They've told me as well that Yogi Bhajan said a Spiritual Name can be given only once. But he also used to chose people's spouses for them, and in later years, before he died, that was not the case. So why do they have to insist I accept a name that does not feel like me at all? They don't. And I politely refused to align myself with their choice, while thanking them anyway. Thinking about accepting made my soul feel crushed. I felt awful. Choosing to reaffirm Phoenix Amira Lei as my name filled me with the energy and blessings it has since I took it in 2007. As I sit in Bound Lotus THAT name is what I will meditate upon...

Friday, February 12, 2010

Kriya to balance 3rd chakra...

...and meditation. Today started painfully with Kriyas at Sat Inder's that made weep soundlessly for almost a half hour. My head hurt all day. It got worse as the day went on. For the 4th day in a row I have done Aquarian Sadhana in the morning and Kirtan Kriya in the afternoon. I knew Kirtan Kriya could release painful sexual experiences, I guess I just hoped it would be painless to release the pain. Not so. But today, while doing the meditation to Aadays Tisai Aadays, I never dropped my arms! In Bound Lotus I stayed on my forehead for the full 15 minutes on each side, instead of coming up to practice the bind. And Praanpathi Namo Namo was peaceful and easy. Kirtan Kriya made me vibrate all over, and left me buzzy. Peaceful. I recited Kirtan Sohila and made Yogi Tea with raw cacao for bed. I hope sleep is peaceful. Tomorrow I may do the Apple Kriya again.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Day 101...

...and what happened on November 5th, 1974. I was seven years old. I developed asthma because I was told not to cry or talk about what my mother's father did on that day. He took me down into his basement workroom where he did woodworking, making dollhouses and his nick-nack shelves, and he did something to me. I can't be sure what it was, but it involved some kind of abuse, molestation or rape. It is possible that it was oral. No wonder my grandmother was protective of me and practically smothered me. Now I know why she touched me, to see if he had hurt me. But by 18, I was still a virgin. After that day though, November 5th, 1974, I was never allowed to go down in the basement with grandpa anymore. Grandma would see him shuffling off with me and come running to say she needed me to pick raspberries. Always raspberries. I told her. She made me promise not to tell. It would be our secret she said. Because if Mom or Dad knew, they would not bring my sister and I to visit anymore. So when I woke up in the middle of the night, and came down to the kitchen past her bed next to grandpa's on a rollaway, she would have me crawl in with her, and squeeze me to death out of fear that he would touch me again. She'd married a man who was an abuser, but the pillar of his community. A man who was an abuser, just like her stepfather. He was supposed to save her, and he betrayed her trust and mine. I thought these next few days leading up to the completion of 40 days Releasing Fear while meditating to "Aadays Tisai Aadays" were significant for another reason, Because February 17th, 2005 is significant, and it is, but this is more so... No wonder I felt I should have waited to begin Bound Lotus on November 5th, instead of the 3rd. It was the day my life changed forever. November 5th, 1974. And now, on February 11th, the day after 100 Days of Bound Lotus, and the day after the 5th anniversary of my stalker purchasing my domain name and taunting me with it, I know why I cried so hard in meditation yesterday morning. I know why I was even more sensitive to the rudeness of one of my boss' new employees...

I know why I awoke from a dream where a Spanish lady asked me if I remembered what happened on November 5th, and why I woke up howling in my sleep with grief, saying out loud what had happened to me for the first time in 36 years.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Day 100

That's pretty much all I have to say, cause I'm too tired even to do yoga with apples. Actually, I'd like to put my apple on top of a certain someone's head and play the William Tell Overture while I draw my bow, saying: "This will only hurt a little bit." Tomorrow I hope I can do yoga with an apple again, and dance around like a squirrel on acid.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Sleeping under the Yantras...

Oh my God! I feel like a million bazillion trillion gadzillion hundred thousand fabulously wonderful awesome jumping smiling and screaming smackaroos!!!! No wait! A gazillion trillion billion million smackaroos!!!!! Hot damn I'm five again! If starting out my day singing ALL of the Aquarian Sadhana mantras didn't make me bouncy enough...after finally doing that crazy Kundalini 'Apple Kriya' for positive ions, I have transmogrified into Tigger, or Hobbes, or something! I can't stop smiling! And I feel like this buzzy Sun Yantra. It's Summer in my meditation room...I'm at the beach collecting stones and skimming them, climbing sand dunes in my mind! Holy Cow! This is the remedy for Winter. I think I could do Bound Lotus for two hours if I could sit still.

Now here's the problem: How do I get to sleep? Wheeeeeeeeeeeee!!!! I feel better than after Saul David Raye's workshop, better than I did at 16 on my birthday. Dude. This crazy Kundalini stuff rocks. Yeah! -zips around room like a crazed squirrel-

Monday, February 8, 2010

Kirtan Kriya is kicking my ass...it seems.

Day 98 of Bound. Hm. 6 days so far of Praanpathi Namo Namo meditation and Kirtan Kriya. I had a massage today, and when the tightness in my hips released, I felt a lot of grief. It feels like the same kind of release of painful sexual memories from Kirtan Kriya. This is hard work. My hips are tighter. It seems like they are holding on for dear life to the pain. Afraid of the change. It's okay. I'm patient with my body about this...like a good lover should be, and I love myself. Finally. After years of intense self-hatred. It's been a slow process of making friends with myself and caring enough to be kind to myself.

Sunday, February 7, 2010

The Arrows Cannot Reach the Sky With Our Huntress Watching

Sisters: Let us go with the fleet-footed huntress!
Let us fly like doves to rest among the stars.
The night sky will be a vast, domed temple
and in the bell tower of the heavens our wings
shall flutter and we shall softly mourn
the death of our sister below on the rich,
red pavement etched with whorls and
spirals of her blood; a feather lost
in her breast. Rough youths at play
in the cavernous arcades of that watery city
shall never know the beauty hidden
in the safest of all places, so far, yet
right above their curled and careless heads.

- first poem written in 5? years. What title?

The wasp had stung sweet Ariadne at her loom
Fool! Was I not to cry?

I feel like my teaching is changing, but then again, maybe it is just that I feel more self-confident. Confident enough to clear the energy in the studio just before teaching. Of course, in silence. But I feel it changes everything. No overarching, feeling of being micromanaged by anyone...just clear that out I say! So I taught class this morning after a creative bout that brought the poetry muse I haven't seen since my former stalker found me online and tried to claim ownership to all of my writing. Yay! I'm writing again! Pretty soon I'll be painting again. I can't help but think that this surge of creativity will spill over as enthusiasm for my classes and infuse itself into the gifts I am able to give to my students.

I took Sat Inder's class and he has changed so much recently in his teaching style. I love it! He integrates everything he knows...the way Saul David Raye does. I have tremendous respect for them both as teachers, and I have a lot to learn from each.

At home, I felt exhausted out of nowhere after a conversation with one of my bosses, and then crashed for two hours, before getting up in time to beat the clock again with Bound Lotus and my three Kriyas. I fell asleep relaxed and easy after clearing my meditation room, and cutting cords.

Saturday, February 6, 2010

Visions of sugarplums dancing in my head...

I feel like a kid at Christmas, and want to leave out some milk and cookies for Saint Nicholas, or any saint. Guess I'll give my chocolate to Ganesha. My phone is my constant companion, my 'timer' for Bound, for cooking; the soundtrack to my life and my yoga classes (at least at one studio); and my connection to all the wonderful people I've met in the past few months. It also brings me e-mails from this girl I like. I feel all giddy. Oh well. She might not like me that way....

I think my desire for chocolate is renewed. Just a little. I feel a little lovesick. Gonna go do Bound, go to bed and read the poetry of Wang Ping and Ho Xuan Huong.

I feel like Cinderella in so many ways...

...not the least of which is trying to beat the clock to get home and finish Bound Lotus again so I don't turn into a pumpkin, or have to watch the glass slippers on my tiny feet turn into worn silk slippers with holes. 95 days and counting. Only 905 more. This means sometime in 2013, I believe, is when I'll finish. I haven't done all the math for that, but I have for how it will change and has changed my life. Yesterday I told a creepy stalker type who was pestering me inappropriately for a private yoga session to essentially fuck off. Not in so many words. I was acerbically polite. Today, I was privvy to the knowledge that, yet again, apartment employees have been judging not only my past, but trying to recreate it in the future, ignoring who I am now. With a little help from my friends, and a caring boss, I've resolved to write these high-school-minded, bored, gossipy people off as the miserable, unhappy, jealous, unfulfilled and pathetic people they are. If they want to be miserable let them be. I refuse to join them anymore just because they want to pull me down into the pot where they are boiling alive in misery and regret for lost dreams. They'll need to do more than call me crazy, or a witch, just because I used to be an alcoholic and drug addict who was seething with 100 times more bitterness than I've experienced in recent years, or because I leave the house sometimes with a turban on to do Kundalini Yoga. Their pathetic, uneducated, untraveled Midwestern, and closed-minded attitudes rival the jealousy at my happiness. If they want to be miserable can I really stop them?

Yes I know I'm a duck out of water here, and every cool person I ever meet leaves St. Louis. I plan on doing so myself one day. I'm a hippy-chick just passing through. I plan on traveling and teaching, moving nearby some large body of water such as the ocean, in a warm climate, with a kind lover or partner and enough money to live comfortably and hopefully pay back my benefactors who've literally saved my life with their help. I plan on dancing with the sunrise tomorrow to celebrate this goal. Most of all, as I sit again, I want to have a heart big enough to hold even the bastards who make me sad.

Friday, February 5, 2010

I love teaching yoga!

My students in Granite City are the most wonderful group of kind, loving, friendly people. They come EARLY to class to chat with each other, to share chocolate with each other, and stay after to talk. Yoga class is a social event, which is what it is for both Anusara and Kundalini Yoga...the two traditions I'm drawn to the most. I'm a Tantric Yogini and I love life! Yoga should be fun, and for my students it is...

Feeling the sangha, the kula, the group energy, I came home to do a blissful Bound Lotus, and my other Kriyas. I found a lovely e-mail from someone I have a crush on, and fell asleep wondering what that all means, and the fact that she is a she. I'm not used to being drawn to women, and so it feels strange. I find myself thinking that this to shall pass, and is part of the awakening back into life I'm having, but something about her tugs at me. She's funny, she's fiery, beautiful, probably bisexual too, and very well-read. It's strange to feel this way, cause all my life my crushes have always involved kinky fantasies, not making someone breakfast or walking on the beach together. It is finally love and not lust that is turning me on. I think staying celibate for so long broke the addiction to having a heart closed to genuine affection and love. Whatever happens I am glad she figured in my awakening.

I have a scarf of hers and some flip-flops she wore. I offered to send them but she said the flip-flops weren't hers, that she just wore them. Nice cushy Ops. Sometimes I slip my feet into them and smile because her feet are as small as mine. What if we'd been Chinese with bound feet in a past life, and had exchanged 'nu shu' letters of affection because of our mutual affection and same shoe size as Wang Ping describes in her book: "Aching for Beauty"? Whatever she is, will, may or may not be to me, she feels like home.

Thursday, February 4, 2010

Praanpathi Namo Namo and Kirtan Kriya

I feel really strange. I still want chocolate, but not excessively. Yesterday, I thought I just decided to eat better in honor of my mother's birthday; now, I'm actually craving certain foods like crazy: broiled raw garlic toast with ghee; couscous with tomatoes and cucumbers; baked potatoes with crushed, raw garlic, raw ginger, salsa and ghee; more toast; an entire pot of Yogi Tea (cinnamon, clove, cardamom pods, black pepper, sliced ginger, and a tiny bit of Assam black tea); Golden Milk (turmeric, cardamom, grains of paradise, rice milk, ghee and raw acacia honey); apples, bananas, blackberries and oranges. Amazingly, I didn't think about chocolate every waking minute. What I crave the most is broiled raw garlic toast!!! If this keeps up, I'll need to buy one of those garlic braids because, all told, I ate a head of garlic spread out over the day today. I drank a quart of Yogi Tea. I pooped three times in one day, just like in Florida at Solstice! I feel radiant.

But of course, there are low points. A male student who wants a private yoga session for the wrong reasons that I'm going to have to politely say 'no' to...but without asking him why he is so manipulative, or directly accusing him of asking for photos of me for the wrong reasons. I've got a hunch about him. I've also got an old friend who did something very careless today in regards to my name, and I want to ask him: "Are you fuckin' stupid?!", but I won't. And I was all excited to get the two CDs I ordered from Spirit Voyage, but darnit, they only sent one. I don't get to start the kriya I wanted to today. Pfft. So, I'm irritated, impatient, annoyed...but my skin glows and I'm eating healthy again for the first time in 40 days.

Hm. I guess 90 days of Bound Lotus and 40 days of Moon Kriya did what they were supposed to do, huh? Kundalini Yoga is incredibly powerful. For that matter, on Sunday when I finished 90 days of Bound, I went to Guru Sandesh's class. I got dizzy from the exercises in a group, and from her palpable radiance.

Today I did Praanpathi Namo Namo Kriya, which works on opening up the energy at the juncture of C7 and T1 (right where the compression to my spine was the worst), and also T8 behind the heart. My energy has been blocked here for years. Sat Inder, wonderfully tolerant and kind friend that he is, gave me the Kriya. I felt a HUGE opening after I did it the first time! I did Kirtan Kriya for women as well, resting on my chin to release past negative sexual associations with men. Funny that when my ex dropped me it compressed the physical doorway at C7 and T1 for releasing this stuff, including my connection to him...and these kriyas are opening the door.

I'd begun my day chanting Ek Ong Kar Sat Nam Siri Wahe Guru for 3 minutes, Sat Narayan Hari Narayan Hari Narayan Hari Hari for 9, and a 3 minute meditation involving Sat Nam and Wahe Guru. Then the meditation to 'Aadays Tisai Aadays'. I felt fabulous! My fatigue after getting up to teach my 6:15 am was gone! I did the two new Kriyas and then rested with ice on my neck while listening to Yogi Bhajans Gong CD for 20 minutes. I felt buzzy and seriously energized. In Bound Lotus my lifted more than two inches from their normally crunched position around my heart. If I wasn't before, I'm convinced that Kundalini works! The last month has sucked with days of gasping for air, a practically tubercular and painful cough at times, low energy, food cravings and intense bouts of seething rage and anger for long past bullshit. Today, with it's healthy food cravings, new kriyas, and minor frustrations was like a cakewalk. Yeah, I'll keep goin'.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Finishing 40 Days of "Moon Kriya"

It's Groundhog's Day!!!! My mother's birthday!!!!!! Big day. Huge! Usually...I am morbidly depressed on this day. Not today! Hm. I'm drinking Yogi Tea, eating garlic and ghee toast to cleanse my system, and I don't crave chocolate anymore. I think the craving was part of the cleansing.

Ah. Sunlight makes it easy to be happy, chat with my friend Katie and laugh at Bill Murray in 'Groundhog's Day'! Darkness brings some grief and rage...though not what it used to be every year on this day. I see her body floating like an angel above the cement, and I miss her. I feel rage still for the arresting of my grief so long ago...for the lack of compassion from teachers and lovers as her body lay warm in the ground. And I see the importance of continuing to practice Bound Lotus. I miss her so much. I want her to know I have not forgotten the message from the Ouija board I will never use again. She said: "I am with you in your yoga". And she is. And that is sometimes why I sit when I want to quit. That blinding light...

Monday, February 1, 2010

It's 40 days since finishing White Tantric Yoga!

All in all today was really beautiful...a wonderful morning class with Carson and Krissy, practising variations on Dhanurasana; doing some Pigeon variations on my own, and falling asleep on the studio floor in time to get up and go to Sat Inder's class - which was so beautiful; later getting into a funk, while a crow sat down and cawed on my 11th story windowsill ( birds don't come up here normally); narrowly missing five accidents on the way to my chiropractic appointment; then teaching class. One of my favorite students, Kristen, brought me the entire Led Zeppelin collection! I was so excited!!!!!!!!!!!! She said she would if I finished 90 days of Bound Lotus, and she did. So nice to be around people who love and support you.

I love my job teaching. I love the students. I love watching them grow and change, and the fact that they allow me to grow and change as a teacher...they said they loved my classes because everytime I teach it is always something new, and the enthusiasm is contagious. They complimented me and said that I give so much personal attention, that the adjustments made them feel as if I really cared about aligning their spines, and I quote, "even if I have to personally get every vertebra in the right place myself." I was just blown away...

In Illinois, the students are truly a community. In St. Louis it is getting that way. My students in Illinois have seen me doing Bound Lotus and commented that if it brings as much peace upon finishing as they saw it brought me, then maybe they would do it too... Yoga is such a special gift.

Bound Lotus got done late today, and I was really tight and sore. It was hard to get myself to do it, oddly on Day 91. I want to rest, but as Yogi Bhajan said: "Keep up and you will be kept up." I feel that there are 'angels' looking after me...like the sniper Arrow in "The Cellist of Sarajevo", looking out for me, and rooting for me as I keep my commitment to do 1'000 days of Bound. I find myself asking if it is coincidental that the day I first thought about reading "The Cellist of Sarajevo" and listening again to Jacqueline du Pre playing Camille Saint-Saens 'The Swan' was the day one of my students, Natasha Rubenstein died. The day on which services were held for her at a church around the corner from me, I began the book. She'd told me a few months ago, that she played cello. She said she loved the Rasa piece I played that featured a cello...I found myself all this time hoping to see her and talk about the book, and about Steve Lopez' "The Soloist", and how much I love string instruments, particularly cellos and harps. Until the 30th when I heard she had died.

I think there is what Tibetan Buddhists call a Bardo state, between absorption into Oneness and consciousness of this earthplane school. I think my mother is still there. I think Natasha, or Ruth (another woman with a 'professional name') just arrived there. There's my mother in my mind's eye, at the gateway to the hall of Akashic records, like a cosmic librarian, filing demon that she was...looking at Natasha's fading bodily form and thinking: 'Did you see my daughter? What news do you have from that far off land? Is the world changing? Are people learning to love each other?' My mother is still in the Bardo, I know she is...not willing to leave her post as a sniper shooting down the attempts of dangerous people trying to screw up her daughter's path. And Natasha is there too, getting ready to be absorbed into the light and the sound. Being welcomed into the cosmic symphony that created the Universe. The Om. The Aum. The Amen.