His: THERE IS NO TIME TO RUSH

Gary's Yoga Log

7/15/13

After a wonderful beginning to my summer, a 200 hour yoga teacher training at Prajna and the week I spent with Jen traveling through Southwest Colorado that included Durango, Mesa Verde, and the very beautiful Ouray where we took an all-day hike into the mountains and soaked in the hot mineral springs…After a wonderful beginning, reentry to my life in Florida has been a little difficult. I need to design a good habit of practice that incorporates what I have learned at Prajna.

Here is one of the practices that I created with the help of my in-home guru:

 

 

7/16/13

Heart, equanimity, and…there was one other—the three things that were obvious five minutes ago, the three things I would focus on for the final month of my summer vacation. Maybe it will come as I write my journal entry.

Ah yes! Now I remember—effort without strain.

Heart, equanimity, and effort without strain.

 

Tias, Surya, Jen, and me

7/17 – 29/13

Secret to practice

• Observe the body w/compassion

• Constant nonjudgmental scanning

• In any mind-state the movements becoming centering and nourishing

• If struggling, start and end with breath—always go back to the breath

 

Radical Acceptance of the body

• It is what it is.

• No wish for it to be other than it is.

7/30/13

The slower and more mindfully I practice, the faster it appears to go by. Practiced for 2 ½ hours with increased nonjudgmental awareness on the subtleties of the body and on the “who that is observing.”

Felt a deep sense of gratefulness for this summer’s Prajna yoga training, for Tias and Surya, because the space of the sacred has come back into my life. To enter this realm is to be washed by the surf of a forgotten ocean; it envelopes the true soul with an encompassing security.

The hip injury from March is improving oh so slowly. Yet today I remembered what Surya had told me this summer. The hips tend to hold a lot of psychic trauma.

Instead of fighting against the pain or developing a working toleration of the pain, today’s grace-filled insight is a deep gratitude for both the injury and the pain. With tenderness and compassion, I relaxed into meditation and encouraged these old psychic wounds to release, to let go. Instead of the gnawing near intolerable pain, the wounds felt as if they were warmly bleeding out from the hip crease. Perhaps I had become psychically ready for both the injury and the healing.

My wife’s hands

8/1/13

Continued my daily practice, which went for 1 ¾ hours. Then while swimming a wisdom-nugget appeared in my head: protect the moment, guard the now.

Protect and guard against what? Against anything that threatens the full participation in the moment.

How long is a moment? About 3 seconds.

How do I protect it? With a compassionate heart.

8/4/13

Today the goal is to finish my first of the ten sequences that I need to complete for this project. Jen will be evaluating each sequence to make recommendations for improvement. This sequence was actually due yesterday. I am definitely feeling a bit less overwhelmed, partly because Jen recommended some good resources to use: Judith Lasater’s 30 Essential Yoga Poses, David Swenson’s Ashtanga Yoga, and Miriam Austin’s Cool Yoga Tricks. The last title sounds less reputable, but information is helpful, especially for designing sequences.

8/5/13

I reread the article by Swami Rama on the Joy of Meditation and felt inspired. One idea particularly interested me: Freedom comes from within. It begins when we become more aware of our habitual reactions to thoughts, sensations, and outside events.

I then settled into my “Closed Hip” yoga practice with no thought on how long it would take. I simply guarded the moment and observed my body with compassion. My practice lasted 2 ½ hours but seemed timeless.

8/6/13

Yesterday’s practice appears to have been a good one. The pain in my hips and lower back appear to have subsided today. I worry after longer practices whether I have subtly injured my body. As I age, not only does the healing take longer but injuries sometimes seem to hide for a couple of days.

It becomes a constant search for just the right amount of work. Right effort: not too much and not too little. I can still hear Tias’s voice, “Effort without strain,” which has become one of my mantras. “Loosen the muscles in your face; relax the jaw.”