I Love the Trees

Outside D's there are trees that drench the studio with wonderful energy. I love the studio. It is hard work teaching to one student for almost every class, but I love the students and I love the studio. It has a good feel...then I love the students in Granite City, just not Granite City itself. Tonight's 'Kundalini Rising' class I have planned as a Heart Kriya for rebuilding the nervous system. 11 minutes of kissing your palms, 5 of rocking in and out of plow pose, then 10 of shavsana, and 3 11 minute long Heart Meditations. I've done it already and feel fabulous!

I've been finishing up my knitted beanies for Solstice, and have bought some more clothes for Solstice. Even Target is expensive! I am a little anxious about going, and hoping that it will all work out in the end. I need a tent and sleeping bag so badly... But I also have bills to pay. This new car payment takes a bite out.

Bound is done again and I am ready to teach and also make it clear to my one student that his fantasies are not innocent, and he'd best stop them. Opening one's heart also includes learning to love yourself enough to say to others: "Hey, get out of my energy bubble!"

Bittersweet YinYang

I've been skimming through Phil Hine's primer on Chaos Magick, which is really eclecticism in magick. If one process works from a different tradition, you blend it with what you are doing, or you change it. So I consider Kundalini Yoga to be a sort of 'magic' in how it heals specific issues so deeply through the most bizarre exercises that make me giggle sometimes. And I love it, but sometimes doing that work only raises my energy and doesn't protect me from being drained by the bugs at the lamp like the ritual Banishings of The Golden Dawn. So I still do them. It's faster than Sat Kriya even, and more effective. I speculate that is because it is a balance of dark and light, of many things...

It is a 'Western Yoga'. In reading, as well, Peter Carroll's "Liber Null", I can see the workings, conscious or subconscious of all of us when we seek to expand our consciousness, and when we seek control. I think it is better to be informed about it all. I see what might have been perpetrated against me in the past through the darkness, and I see how it can be counteracted through the work I am doing. Both in lifting up my consciousness and protecting myself.

After all, Yogi Bhajan said: "The basic purpose of life is just to be human and deal with life as a human being. Don't become so bitter that somebody will throw you away or so sweet that someone can eat you up." I am bittersweet.

It's been a very long day...

...but it is done, and so is Bound Lotus. Oddly enough, after telling that asshole where to go, and getting someone else to help me with the iPod, my hips and shoulders just keep opening up even more every day. I can sit in Full Lotus, as part of the practice, for 4 minutes of the 15 on each side!

My last 6:15 am is done, and my Yin class now has another student. I am psyched!

Lunch and Goodbyes to Katie and her kitty!

I had a wonderful lunch with my friend Katie before she takes off for home! We shopped at Target for stuff we both need, dined at Little Saigon, which is my favorite restaurant, and where I met her. We shared crispy Vegetarian spring rolls, Vietnamese coffee sips and Mango smoothie. We chatted and people-watched. We hung out in my crystal room and I loaned her the pair of moldavite and green tourmaline earrings that Ashley gave me so many years ago to start me on my journey back. We stopped at AAA where they made her itinerary into a book! We ate chocolate and I met her friends and said goodbye to her cat and her...but I'll still chat with her, and I'd love to go visit sometime.

Hugs. Then goodbye again.

I left to teach to 1 person, but all this teaching to 1 is making me a better teacher. I did Bound and went to bed. I got up and re-did the Banishings just to be safe...then back to a peaceful sleep unmarred by visions of that ridiculous giraffe of an ex. I could feel the good energy in the apartment. I've come so far to be able to stand up to the abusive men in my life and smile!

It is getting easier to teach...

...and not have to do everything along with the students. Subbing tonight was fun, and I taught preps for hanstand, headstand and forearm balance. I also got my new traction device to help get my cervical curve back. I also got a slew of 'abusive' text messages from various businesses that I had to text 'STOP' to, and a certain someone denies being the mastermind. He also sent me another condscending and patronizing e-mail at "exactly" the moment I began my Banishings to clear space, Invocations and Middle Pillar to raise energy, and Liber Vel Reguli to sever the connection between us. I burned Tetragrammaton incense, and personal effects, then closed the ritual to find this new message. I fired back and let rip on all the things I wanted to say three years ago about sexual addictions, manipulations, hospital visits, hypocricy and lies. I told him that I thought it funny how he was re-using my exact words from three years ago to get back at me. I said I definitely don't have to listen to his bullshit if he doesn't want to talk to me, and to get off his high horse.

I guess he thought I'd apologize for his bad behaviour like I have in the past. I guess he thought he could manipulate me again like he did when he broke up with me in '07 just before my 40th, because I wouldn't have sex with him when he wanted it, only to try to entice me back with promises of changed behaviour and offers to finish setting up my website...none of which materialized. I guess he thought, like he did at New Year's '08 when he broke up with me again because I wouldn't have sex right then, that he could just make me feel like shit for askng him to be a decent human being. He's wrong.

I verbally ripped his throat out with that e-mail I sent back, and I burned all of his pictures in my ritual banishing. I watched as the sky at dusk lit up with two clouds: one shaped strangely like the dragon-headed incense burner his photo's ashes were smoldering in, the other like my carved goddess from Oaxaca, Mexico. They are opposite each other in my meditation room, and they were opposite each other in the sky. The goddess cloud had a bunch of little fluffy dinosaur figures behind her, and I watched as her cloud seemed to lunge at the dragon and then lightning flashed behind the dragon and burnt a hole in his middle!

I was honestly psyched. I was so angry at him back in '08 after my ER for bleeding abrasions internally that I wished he would reap what he sowed, literally. He kinda did back then...he fell and badly scraped his hand. I relish the thought that he's had his hand slapped this time too. I've had enough. Tired of being compassionate. Kali and Durga are behind me, I'm sure, and I feel righteous in defending my energy because his bull was draining me AGAIN, and guess what? After Banishing him so brutally, my hips and shoulders are MORE open in Bound. Must not have been a bad thing. Must have been a much needed release from him. If he were actually smart, he'd be as dangerous as the man who stalked me, but he isn't. He's just a pathetic jerk I said goodbye to...

What a lovely day!

I am still miffed at my ex, and ocassionally wondering why I ever gave him another chance to grind me under his thumb, big overgrown manipulative giraffe that he is...but I did. I seem to attract jackasses who love nothing better than to excuse their own faults away just because I happen to have some too.

But no matter. Teaching this morning was renewing. I had to search for music, because I realized I'd passed on everything I use to one of my students to put onto my iPod replacement. What a wonderful thing for her to do! I gave her a Kundalini Yoga book and a hand-knitted beanie as a 'thank you'! I am so appreciative, and class this morning was a joy to teach. Then Sat Inder's class. He was in rare form. I loved the poses. He seemed at one point to be subconsciously taking his aggressions out on me by digging his thumb into my piriformis, but then he softened. He hasn't assisted me in a long time, but today he did, and he showed me his new Kirpan pendant.

I felt he'd forgiven me and himself for both our bad behaviour. He's good that way, unlike some other people who are 'faky' spiritual...ersatz sattvic. Sat Inder is real. He's not perfect, neither am I, and we both know it. No projection. Just the truth. A good man, even when he is annoying. He makes me want to be a better person. My ex does not. He is too petty and childish. Always has been. But today negated most of that, and then I had the double joy of gifts of homegrown lettuce and chives from my Sunday evening student. Yum! So much love goes into growing and picking vegetables and fruits. I feel blessed. Still a little put out, but blessed nonetheless...

Heart Chakra Kriya!

I feel really worn out from dealing with my ex energetically, and my heart strings need a tune up. So I'm planning on doing the Heart Chakra Kriya, the one where you kiss your own palms for 11 minutes...and thus it begins...

That was wonderful! I felt so drained from my ex's passive-agressive attack on me through the e-mail, that I was weak, coughing and developing a bladder infection. After this Kriya, while listening to Sat Kartar's 'Laya Yoga' from "Listen", I felt whole, and then vibrating with energy. Her music, which samples "The Nutcracker Suite" 'Dance of the Sugarplum Faeries', made me feel like the five-year-old I used to be, who would sleep under the grand piano while Mom played Tchaikovsky and Edvard Grieg. Magickal! It used to take days to get back onto an even keel after an interaction with him - But today I am once again hale enough to do Bound again. I think it partly might have been Akal Sahai's suggestion of Sat Kriya as well. Kundalini Yoga is powerful stuff!