Reflections after teaching Step 1 Training – See It From My Side
Thinking about your own Step 1? The full pathway and how to take it from anywhere: children’s yoga certification online.
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Snow White and the Seven Chakras
(Inspired by Patanjali’s Yoga Sutra Chapter II, v. 42
samtosad anuttamah sukhalabhah)From contentment,
Highest happiness is obtained
Snow White’s Seven Dwarfs
Are invited to explain….Consider us each a chakra
An energy gate of sorts
That we open, clean and balance
For optimal support.Work on passing through
The seven chakras {or gates}
In order to visit the underworld
And ascend to blissful states.Let’s begin in MOUNTAIN with SLEEPY,
Awaken abundant roots.
Stand with both feet straight
Ground heavy in your boots.
Each time you inhale,
Think, I HAVE THE RIGHT TO BE HERE.
Each time you exhale,
Root your feet a little deeper.Reach up high with outstretched hands
FORWARD FOLD and touch the ground.
Prepare to balance GRUMPY
Who needs some healthy bounds.
Whenever you breathe in,
Think, I HAVE THE RIGHT TO FEEL.
Each time you breathe out,
Circle your hips like a water wheel.Step your right foot back
Into a STRAIGHT LEG LUNGE
Here we balance DOPEY
Soak up power, like a sponge.
Each time you take breath in,
Think, I HAVE THE RIGHT TO ACT.
Each time you release breath out,
Stretch your belly with great tact.Step your left foot back
Press hips up into DOWNWARD DOG
Open up to HAPPY
Melt your heart free from smog.
Receive your in breath and
Think, I HAVE THE RIGHT TO LOVE.
Give your breath out
Feel Unworthiness? Get RID of!Shift forward into PLANK
So BASHFUL can get clear.
Soften your throat back
And open up your ears.
Each time you breathe in
Think, I HAVE THE RIGHT TO SPEAK WORDS.
Each time you breathe out
Say, I HAVE THE RIGHT TO BE HEARD.Lower knees, chest and chin
GRATITUDE for SNEEZY’s insight and vision.
Draw back of eyes toward back of head
To focus on decisions.
Each breath in
Think, I HAVE THE RIGHT TO SEE.
Each breath out
Cross your eyes to a degree.Stretch your crown forward and up
To balance DOC in SNAKE
Straighten legs behind you,
Connect to what’s awake.
Each time you breathe in
Think, I HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW
Each time you breathe out
Stretch from head to toe.Lower back down
Prepare to pose in reverse
Remember your rights
Remember to immerse.SNAKE back to GRATITUDE
Breathe into your poses
Up PLANK to DOWN DOG
Your rights are like roses.STRAIGHT LEG LUNGE to FORWARD FOLD
And back up to MOUNTAIN
Keep moving and grooving
Till your rights flow like fountains.When we know our rights,
And pass through chakra gates~
We develop a sense of contentment
And more deeply relate.Happiness is indeed obtainable.
When we follow the path of contentment
Accept the ups and the downs
of our very own presentment.May we be content with GRUMPY work
Or no work at all~
DOPEY or HAPPY states
BASHFUL or baseball.May we be content when SLEEPY
Or wide awake~
SNEEZY or Doc
It’s our right~For Goodness Sake!Namaste
Said my young friend who wants a connection:
“I wave. I shake hands, with no objection.
No pain, no remorse, no one intervening
a choice I make without much thought or meaning~”“…Is there a gesture that honors each other?
That celebrates greeting sisters and brothers?
Can you show me HOW to express happiness
with social and spiritual significance?”YES, my dear friend, I can show you a mudra~
a gesture of sorts, for kings, friends and sudras.
Place hands together from fingers to wrists~
like a knife, cut through difference that may exist.This immediately gets you to the shared ground~
of ALL people, of all cultures, of all sound.
It’s a recognition, a united force~
that honors equality of all from the Source.Close your eyes and tune into your own inner light;
your divine spark that forever burns bright.
That’s the key, my dear friend, you must see your OWN
in order to recognize others’ light shown.BLEND your five fingers of action on the left~
with five fingers of knowledge on the right~
to achieve the symbol of perfection
the union of opposites; interconnection.
FInd the Connection of your brain and your heart;
your sun and your moon; your stop and your start.
Marry together reason and emotion~
unite thoughts and feelings, stillness and motion.Join positive and negative; hot and cold~
theory with practice, silver with gold~
Wisdom with Method, intellect with instinct~
talent with genius, and feelings with think!Exhalation and inhalation, ,brain and heart~
Align in harmony, right from the start!
There is indeed no sphere of our existence
untouched by the symbolic significance~of Namaste~
Namaste
Sweeping Breath- Dr. Seuss Style (Siva Sutra 1.2 jnānam bandhaḥ)
Bondage and ignorance and limitation!
Oh my!
We contract like a sneeze~
You want to know why?
These are the roots of our issues,
You see~
Unworthiness, insecurity, feeling un-free.These deep darkened roots,
known as Anava Mala,
cloak our awareness
like pollen all upon ‘ya.This pollen of unworthiness
Helps us forget~
How miraculous we are~
We recoil ~we regret.We regret and we doubt.
We feel separate and small.
Our pimples and frizzes
Keep us enthralled.How, do we, how do we
How DO we re-remember?
Our goodness, our freedom
From here to September?Good question, my dear!
So at your request~
I’ll teach you the tools
To elevate your quest!Your breath is the broom
that sweeps away pollen,
Shines light on the ignorance
Which is hidden and smallen.Sit tall, close your eyes,
Tune into your spine.
Inhale your breath
Down the left side lineSweep your breath out~
On the same side,
From bottom to top~
Deep inside.Sweep your breath in,
Down the right side this time.
Get real close and real low~
To release dust and grime.Sweep your breath out~
From bottom to top.
Keep sweeping your spine~
No reason to stop!No reason to stop~
Till you feel lighter and free!
Relieved of unworthy
Pollen and debris.The pollen of ignorance~
And debris of limitation~
Can be swept to the surface
For expansive illumination.Each time we remember,
We grow and expand~
We become more real!
And that is quite grand!.Little Bo Breath
Little Bo Breath has lost her depth, And can’t tell where to find it: She closes her eyes, tunes inside And breathes from hips to armpits. When you feel shallow and dull, deeply breath to get more full. Settle your seat and settle your feet. Close your eyes and visualize a cave in each armpit; …
The Okey Dokey Yogi
inspired by Dr. Seuss’s Sutra: the Zax and Patanjali’s Sutra: yatha abhimata dhyanadva (Chapter 1, v. 39)
One day, making Okeys
In the mountain of Dokey,
Posed a West-Going Yogi
And an East-Going Yogi.{See, an Okey is approval,
An endorsement as such.
Each yogi seeked okeys
So very much.}And it happened that both of them posed in a place
Where they bumped. There they stood.
Foot to foot. Face to face.“Look here, now!” the West-Going Yogi said. “I say!
You are blocking my mind. You are right in my way.
I’m a West-Going Yogi and I always think west.
Get out of my way, now, and let me do best!”“Who’s in whose way?” snapped the East-Going Yogi.
“I always think east, making east-going okeys.
So you’re in MY way! And I ask you to move.
And let me go east in my east-going groove.Then the West-Going Yogi puffed his chest up with pride.
“I never,” he said, “take a step to one side,
And I’ll prove to you that I won’t change my ways
If I have to keep posing here thirty-nine days!”“And I’ll prove to YOU,” yelled the West-Going Yogi,
“That I can pose here in the mountain of Dokey
for thirty-nine years! For I live by a mantra
that I learned way back in West-Going Tantra.
“Still the mind! That’s my mantra. Still the mind is the best!
I’ll pose here, quite still! I can and I will
If it makes you and me and the whole world stand still.Hey… said East-Going Yogi
I learned that as well.
Let’s check yoga sutras
Won’t that be swell?Chapter1, verse 39
to be quite exact.
Focus on things that
you won’t find distract.There are numbers of ways
For the mind to become still.
Focus on what you please
To Fulfill!It is the process of focus
Which makes us a yogi
Not the specific practice
You see, Okey-Dokey?Patanjali says to practice
Right from the heart
Allow this to deepen,
For that is the art.Fix the mind!
Any object you choose,
As a focusing prop to
Fully fix and bemuse.Get absorbed in your focus,
Without distraction.
You can attain stillness
And sweet satisfaction.Unlieable
Unlieable – To be filled with ones own truth, to the extent that no lies can enter ones being, either form within or withoutMeet Ben. While working on an exercise to illustrate what we stand for, Ben introduced me to a new word… unlieable.
When I asked Ben what this word meant, he said, with complete assurance, that to be unlieable is to not lie…. Duh
Bondage and ignorance and limitation!
Unlieable – To be filled with ones own truth, to the extent that no lies can enter ones being, either form within or without