Birds and Tears

Yesterday morning I had to have a little cry at the beginning of my yoga class. Before teaching I'd done my meditation and had pulled Pema Chodron's book, When Things Fall Apart, off my shelf for comfort. She describes ways to use the pain of a heavy heart to come to a peaceful place. When you can't ignore the thoughts or just notice them and let them be, you can breathe into them, like take them in.

It was hard to breathe in the feelings yesterday as I had such contrasting images in my mind. The idyllic, pre oil poisoning of the region, and the newer images of the destruction of the animals in the area that are showing up now. I'm not vegetarian, I drive a car, and I'm looking at my role in this disaster. The grief was present.

I still haven't edited the video we took in the winter for a yoga DVD. I just grabbed this folder and put it out there as a slideshow as a way to remember. I was there. I admired the birds. I felt the water.

Standing some more inside a giant jar of peanut butter

This is the final cut for now. Titles, music, and now it's time for dinner!

Standing Inside a Giant Jar of Peanut Butter

This is the draft of the video. I meant to edit voices out of this one but the way I did it meant that's not doable - I'll have to go back and work on it some more. I'm learning lots! I can hardly wait to shoot some yoga video stuff in front of a green screen. I'll have to work on a spot in Ottawa though as my time in Florida is quickly coming to an end.

It's fun!

Chilly in Florida

It's cold here. I heard it may even snow tonight! They cancelled a Mardi Gras parade in New Orleans due to cold weather yesterday, which is about a 6 hour drive west of here. I was considering doing some yoga video stuff here but it's been so cold that to do anything on the beach hasn't felt like a good idea. We're not even driving back to see Swami J again. Things worked differently than we'd planned and so I'll stay put in Tallahassee for the weekend.

What I did do today though was stand in front of a green screen and do my "scraping outside the inside of a giant jar of peanut butter" thing. I'm hoping to find a good match of a peanut butter jar and my scraping and see if I can get it to look as planned. I've got a few more steps to do before that's finished though. So there's nothing here for you...oh here's a picture of a jar and one of me in the Circle K cafe using their wi-fi.

It feels funny not to be teaching yoga for so long. This will be the longest I've gone not teaching in I can't remember how long. Years for sure. I've taken a week off before but this will be over a week! I do like it too. It's really nice being on vacation, I must say. Even though there's weather and ups and downs and all of that, but all in all it's good.

Mind Wrap

One of the exercises we did on the weekend was to allow our minds to take the shape of certain things - in this case we were using our bodies. So we'd wrap our mind around our head and allow our mind to take the shape of the head. Then remove the mind, letting it rest in the heart and then put it in the arms, letting it wrap around that and become the arms. It progressed from there.

It was a cool exercise for me because I hadn't noticed that my mind actually takes the shape of the thing I've wrapped my mind in. It actually becomes that thing and loses sight that obviously, it's not that thing. Consciousness is just consciousness but it gets close to objects and takes their form. In this type of example, the object that the mind wraps itself around could be an idea just as easily as a physical object. When that's happening, it's so clear that thoughts and ideas are form as well - they're matter just as much as a knee or table or anything outside.

So today my mind took the form of an idea or a sense that things aren't the way they should be; that I'm not the way I should be; and my mind wrapped around that mental object and has been holding on tight. I've tried unwrapping it, letting it go back to my heart centre, but it is super-clingy and just gets stuck again on "things aren't going the way I want them to," and I must say, it sucks. It's interesting to watch on the one hand, when I can get around to that, but then it just goes right back to forming the object that includes self-judgement.

And then my mind does something so powerful - it actually becomes the object and then I get to be a zombie or robot and all of a sudden I'm on auto-pilot, unconscious and acting from a place of being the object of "rejection" or "rejecting" and there's pain. And then I unwrap, notice my super-powers, look around, notice my body, and then the mind wraps around something else. "I'm on vacation, I'm supposed to be having a good time. I don't have room in my experience right now for things not working out the way I want them to," is one of the objects my mind forms.

So I'm watching. And it is kind of neat. As I've said lots before, the only way to really practise attachment is to notice where you're attached. This is the same thing. My mind is attached to certain objects and the way to have it reform into something else is to be well-aware of what my mind is currently in the shape of/wrapped around. Then I can see if that is serving me or not serving me and go from there.

Mac Takes a Trip

I wish I could show you a picture of my new computer in Florida but it's taking the picture so I can't get a picture of it right now. So here's a picture of me instead.

I made it to Florida last night and today's a day just to relax and chill before heading out tomorrow to do some visiting with a swami in Ft. Walton Beach.

On the way down I read a book by Swami Rama, who's the main teacher of Swami J, www.swamij.com, who I'm going to visit tomorrow. I've heard about Swami Rama before and I was at a conference back in the early '90s that his people presented and I must say, I was a bit apprehensive to learn more about his teachings based on what I've read on the internet. So basically, in the end, the guy was a creep and a sexual predator, which seems to be a common story for these gurus who come from the east to the west. I decided to read the book based on the fact that the guy I'm planning on seeing tomorrow mentioned that it would be a good one to have read before coming, and we happened to have it on the bookshelf at Rama Lotus, so I bought it. I had an open mind and a lot of time on my hands yesterday so I read it.

The main thing I resonated with was that we need to appreciate and train our inner worlds as much if not more than our outer worlds. The inner needs attention too. That I can get on board with.

So I'm at a cafe spending some time with my new computer, letting my body thaw out after the deep freeze that I left back in Ottawa.

Video Blog

I'm taking lessons at the Apple store on things I'm into. Like making little movies, for instance. This one is really not very good, but I'm practising! This incorporates the rough footage taken this past weekend in Florida, it has a soundtrack made from another clip later in the trip, plus I did voiceover. And put it up here. Right before heading to teach the Beginning Yoga class at Rama Lotus tonight at 7:30!