“I need to teach you something, Madre. Now!”
I notice the twinkle in 5-year-old Neville’s eyes and I figure he’s found a spider, or another grub, and wants to teach me how to hold it without squirming . . . . or screaming. Continue reading
yoga
To the Lighthouse
My gentle kind yoga teacher suggests to the class that we can be lighthouses of peace to those around us. A lighthouse to our friends, to our community, to the world.
“Breathe in, ‘Om.’ ”
“Breathe out. ‘Shanti (peace).’ ”
In the early evening class, I find myself beaming.
Literally.
Om, breathing in.
Shanti, breathing out.
“Use this in your daily life,” he says. “In traffic. In the dentist’s chair. Be a lighthouse.”
I float out of class, late spring raindrops fall like sugar dust on my airy head, breathing in, breathing…
OUCH.
Continue reading
The Weight of Thoughts
Some times I can feel my bones straining under the weight of my thoughts. And that’s wrong, all wrong, so I strain more in the down dog position, where my arms and wrists and shoulders take on the weight of my trunk.
My trunk. What a word for my body, which is pack full of multi-grain toast this morning, as well as three cups of hot green tea that have not found a way to warm my too-cold fingers as I type about my bones.
My bones. I imagine my bones are light as a skeleton, while the rest of me – my muscles, my blood, my skin – is too heavy for what lies within.
But the heaviest weight is definitely my thoughts. Continue reading
Sun Salutations
Photo thanks to Susan Licht (http://lichtyears.com/)
The outlook is bleak for millions of us as we peer outside our windows. We now live in a gray and white world.
I’m begging for some color. So I go inside to my imagination. Isn’t
that the place we all should enter, when life becomes too monochromatic?
I want sun, no, I NEED sun like the birds and the bees and all the flowers (not) on the trees… Ah ha, I know what I’ll do. Continue reading
A New England Fortune
Before the snows begin, and the ice and sleet, I walk in my new neighborhood to become familiar with all of the dips and cracks in the sidewalks and the wooded paths nearby. On this chilly day, I wear a decades-old red LL Bean overcoat and even older soft black gloves that I didn’t need when living in the San Francisco bay area.
I grumble a bit, allowing some self-pity.
At “home,” I’d still be wearing shorts and a t-shirt.
At “home,” I’d need a baseball hat to protect my face from the gleaming sun.
As leaves crunch beneath my shoes, my gloved third finger discovers a small crunch in its tip. Is it a years-old crumb? A small pebble from long-ago? Continue reading
