Opening the heart center (and a foot chart)

One of my friends recently took a beginning yoga workshop. She has practiced a little yoga at home and decided she would try it with experienced instruction.

I know she has a physical history of childhood heart surgeries and had recently been spending quite a bit of her personal energy healing some emotional childhood hurts. So I encouraged her to go, but suggested she tell the teacher about her medical history.

Not long after the end of the workshop, I met her for tea. She looked happy and relaxed.

“How was it?” I asked.

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Making Love

In a previous post, I’ve mentioned maitri – the yogic concept of lovingkindness that is known as metta in the Buddhist traditions – the practice of unconditional love.

Loving the whole world is a good idea, right?

But what about the guy who honked at me in traffic yesterday? Do I have to love him?

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Right Action and Reaction

I know this woman, very neatly pulled together, who always has a vertical crease down the front of her pullover shirt. And she has the habit of constantly checking this crease and smoothing down the front of her shirt.

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Dogs: Upward, downward, and otherwise

People and dogs have cohabitated for many years. One group of researchers at UCLA thinks that dogs may have been domesticated as far back as 100,000 years ago.

So what does living with dogs teach us?

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Could salt be the spice of life?

A true child of the Wonder Years, I grew up reading classic children’s literature. No Captain Underpants for me. I read about Hans Brinker and The Black Stallion, and the Bobbsey Twins, and Nancy Drew. My voracity for reading kept the librarian at the downtown library delighted and on the lookout for new finds to keep me busy.

So as I was writing my first blog entry, about the name “Yoga Like Salt,” I had a nagging suspicion that there was something in early my literary background that felt familiar and had probably influenced me.

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What is an avatar?

In the past year, one of my friends lost a family member to cancer after a struggle of many years. Even though this death was inevitable and expected, witnessing it was tougher than she had anticipated, as she provided care at home through the final hours.

After months — even years — of anticipation and preparation, my friend she thought she was ready for the space this loss would leave in her life. So, six months later, a downward spiral into depression took her by surprise.

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Why yoga is like salt…

One of the things I love to do at the end of a yoga class, when my students are settling into savasana, is to read them a poem. Sometimes the poems relate directly to yoga, other times, the connection is less obvious.

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