Categories
Healthy Living

Summer Time’s Over – Autumn is HERE:)

Fall back by an hour our clock to Fall into …this Golden Season of abundance and gratitude – harvest the fruits of your labor with that intention:

“Inside of us, there’s a continual autumn. Our leaves fall and are blown out over the water.” – Rumi

Happy Monday:) We are entering into the Metal or Gold 金 season …It’s a time of transition this week and next. So interesting that there’s overlaps and common wisdom between Rumi, who is Persian poet from 1200’s and … ancient Chinese medicine and … Ayurveda … Ultimately it’s all connected and shared knowledge :

Your hand opens and closes and opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralyzed.
Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as bird wings.

Rumi

While Fall season showcases the theme of cornucopia of abundance and generosity … like falling leaves, there’s that element of losing something, letting something fall and going … bare.
For some, rather than the sense of abundance and golden harvest, Autumn season may be when we are reminded of losses and diminished energies … shorter days, longer nights, crummy weather reports, dreary, dry, grey with chills… some may even experience sadness, even grief dwelling in the past.

How does one transcend the impending darkness of Winter? Do we simply ignore unpleasant emotions, feelings, internalize and carry on ? OR ? It’s time for exercise and eating well better than ever – it’s about supplements and support. It’s about managing our energies, surrounding ourselves with people and things and nature – beauty – that boosts our energies, avoiding toxic or negative energies that saps our already depleted energy. It’s about heart warming slow cooked soul foods that truly nourishes. It’s about recharging and regenerating more with compassionate self-care.

Next post – all about being courageous, authentic and finding … acceptance. To face what scares us squarely; feel the pain; maybe even – gasp – suffer …but resolved to grow more resilient, but not hardened – while remaining open, receptive and kind. Pretty soon – we will rediscover that spark … chakra jewels within us will sparkle and shine. With yoga, we practice to peel away layer by layer those muffling veils what dims and clouds that crystalline pure light within. The power, the beauty, the truth … JOY … all that’s precious is within like that gift we unwrap with anticipation and wonder.

It’s all within if we learn to just … be.

Categories
Healthy Activities Yoga

Brain weight … 3lbs or 1300 gm-ish

and the HEAD weighs about 11-12 lbs on the average. Which means ? When we realize that a 3 months old baby weighs about 12 pounds, it’s a bundle of joy up there. It’s not an uncommon discomfort to carry those all familiar knots in the shoulder girdle region (which controls the most mobile joint for that full range limb, the arms) and the neck – literally we are saddled with heavy burdens on our shoulders or with TLC and erect posture with open chest, a bundle of joy. You might hear the the creaking, cracks of a stressed neck if you have a posture that does not carry the head gracefully …or have to engage in work that requires you to stoop or curve your back in such away to cause blockages of energy up the spine.
Neck grinding and cracking? What would alleviate that – shaking your head ? No, steady, gentle and well calibrated … stretching would help.
Engaging in self-study and then … act of self care, proceeding with mindful care in the process – in fact, enjoy the PROCESS not so much about the full expression of the pose.

Just going over the basics of basics in class to reclaim more freedom in that trouble spot this week – feel better.
BTW, if you are becoming an anatomy nerd, then this site might actually be FUN !

Categories
Beautiful Things Healthy Living

Gifts from Jerusalem 


Was surprised to receive an array of herbal oils lugged over from the Holy Lands. Very curious to learn how these exotic oils are used in that part of the world. I already love Lemon Vebena oil – benefits for skin, moods and digestion – yes, but what about Sidr?  Can’t even imagine what it smells like as I look at the sealed bottle … and how about:

– cabbage oil?????
or
– cactus oil?

Is that like another breed of Aloe Vera? These are of course not for cooking but for medicinal use so very interested in exploring the herbs 🌿 used in self care in the holy lands. Had expected a key chain or something of that touristy nature; so thrilled to receive these precious petit bottles, ready to expand my apothecary knowledge.

Thank you for a generous souvenir 🙏  Thank you. Looking into medicinal herbs from the ancient times to go with the ancient practice of yoga and healing from Japan and around the world. Streams of dark news seem to keep coming but it’s within us to find the light within and give others even just a little … lift in this hard times of loss, sorrows and fear. In Chinese Medicine, Autumn is a season when we are acutely aware of that feeling of … sorrow … but also of COURAGE. There’s so much courage all around us … courage.

Let the flower of courage seeds germinate in the mula-bandha to take root from the sit bones; allow the seeds to fertilize in the gut to sprout towards your heart – nudge open the windows, let the light and breeze flow into your heart , let the warm sunlight our inward with the pure intention of lotus flower blossom at the heart center; let it be nourished and so it grows to the crown of your head and beyond – up and up towards the sky – towards the sun and the moon and the beautify all around.

Let it blossom

, one petal at a time into a full bloom – a glowing lotus blossom in full bloom, to light up all around you.

Find an affirmation that resonates or … create your own and see what happens to your breath.

I embrace today for it is a new day.
I move past fears to find courage.
I am ready for whatever today brings.
I am not a worrier but a warrior.
I possess the strength to find meaning.
I am filled with endless possibilities.
I am a person of great inner strength helped by the divine.
Today I release my attachment to perfection. (or whatever – fill in the blank)
Today I clearly see the beauty in a flower in every detail.
Today I allow my perspectives to shift with an open mind.
Today I am practicing honesty in all my thoughts, words, and actions.

*** *** ***

COURAGE

***

Namaste:)