Ananda Yoga Thunder Bay

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Tisha

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Aug 3, 2024, 5:23:00 PM8/3/24

to dangbiztverlay

The meals slowly evolve as we eat. Through anecdotes from the day, and investigations into the taste of a certain cheese the mealtime and communion unfold. The stories are all true of the French gastronomy: the importance of eating well and eating together.

The salad might be made once the first course is eaten. Would you like some salad? Of course everyone does. The home made olive oil and balsamic vinaigrette salad dressing is a Swiss staple in my mind. So good on a simple butter lettuce with leaves left large. Perhaps a ripe tomato. Perhaps not, simply plain. Someone wants more omelette? A second egg is scrambled. The cheese course is nothing formal. Someone asks for cheese. Which kind? Perhaps several are produced. The cheese is passed around, the rind being cut in the process. Then more water is drunk.

The meal is convivial jovial light hearted and very busy, lots of activity, everyone bubbling with conversation. An hour passes easily in this manner, even for the midday meal when the children come home from school. The chopping, cooking and table setting as well as the washing up and putting away are community affairs and bookend the meal.

Dr. Dhru introduced the Moon Salutation to many of us for the first time a few months ago during our Synergy Yoga Teacher Training. Here I riffed off of my poor memory of that series to create the Geneva Moon Salutation.

I began on the perch of the church yard overlooking the crescent that is Lake Geneva. With the moon above, the lights of France across the water, the vineyards of Vaud stretching out before me, the fresh mountain air and the crickets all around I unwound the day. The moon salutation of my interpretation is a cooling, soothing and grounding dance. This series is bourn of moonlight, yet can also create the moonlight effect on demand if the fiery dosha of pitta is in need of balancing.

Mountain Pose Tadasana, Extended Mountain Pose Urdhva Hastasana, Forward fold Uttanasana , Half-Dog Pose Ardha Svanasana, Forward Fold Uttanasana, Extended Mountain Pose Urdhva Hastasana, Mountain Pose Tadasana, Starfish Pose, Warrior Pose II Virabhadrasana II, Peaceful Warrior, Triangle Pose Trikonasana, Half-Moon Pose Ardha Chandrasana, Triangle Pose Trikonasana, Yoga Push Up Chaturanga Dandasana, Upward-Facing Dog Urdhva Mukha Svanasana, Downward-Facing Dog Adho Mukha Svanasana, Horse, Mountain Pose Tadasana, Dancer Natarajasana, Standing Tree Revolved Extended-Leg, Chair Uktasana, Eagle Garudasana, Sleeping Eagle, Mountain Pose Tadasana, Extended Mountain Pose Urdhva Hastasana,

Like any of the great texts that survive the ages and offer instruction on living, the yoga sutras are worthy of a lifetime of study. And as the Yogananda somewhat confidentially illuminates, a few of those lifetimes are centuries or millennia long when the person in question is an avatar, a very advanced yogi here to facilitate the teachings.

After a prolonged back and forth that felt like it had no solution, I was rapidly loosing my patience. My friend remarked that she thought I was being extremely patient but I did not feel that way, quite the opposite. I had no choice but to see it through, maybe that presents as patience. Lake also had no choice but to wear the hat. We were both cross and irritated with our predicament. I decided what we needed was to change the conversation.

This morning I watched the dawn turn to day on Lake Geneva and the sun rise over Mont Blanc. After four days solid of rain, mist, fog, thunder, full cloud cover and white outs, the sun on the lake and mountains were a refreshing surprise. The day begged for a formal greeting, and a dozen classic sun salutations were naturally in order. Luckily they had fit neatly into my minimal luggage and I could produce and enjoy them on the spot, even in this foreign locale.

I've told them that at this point I recognize that everything can fall apart and I will still be okay. There is an underlying sense that I can handle the hard things in life. I trust that I can both take on and survive adversity. I have access to a deep pulse that drums steady even as everything around me- or inside me - feels unstable, unsafe, or just flat out wrong. I have this sense precisely because I have gone through transformation over and over again in these practices. Having gone through it, I trust it.

It's important to acknowledge that it's not a safe world out there. This can get buried in contemporary yoga culture with it's emphasis on bliss and freedom, power and release. We have to acknowledge adversity, suffering, and unfairness or we're participating in repression. We have to acknowledge suffering or we alienate huge swaths of the population who are living with adversity. Simply saying 'feel peace' or 'relax' or 'recognize your innate goodness' can rankle people and turn them away. This was my first experience of yoga, to be sure. Self-help and self love seemed cheap and unrealistic. And they are cheap and unrealistic in much of their contemporary expression. The vast majority of yoga studios and teachers left a sour taste in my mouth. Yet there was something in the yoga itself that drew me in. There were a few teachers, and hints in many of the teachings that took me years and years to draw out and find and come to terms with, that embraced me as I was and suggested my inner conflict was both very real and okay. That it was, actually, promising. There was, beyond any argument, my own experience.

Of course all of this is true not only of 'the world' - or within yoga culture where it shows up in projecting 'wisdom' onto the body of a teacher, attachment to or objectification of the body, escapism and magical thinking, addiction to what feels good in the moment or for ourselves - but it's true within our heart. We can't heal the world unless we're also able to acknowledge our own guttural need for healing.

We've all been wounded in some way. And we all have needs. These needs go beyond simply needing food and shelter and physical safety. We need to feel heard, seen, connected, and that we are vital. We need to feel that we matter. There are far too many of us walking through the world feeling that we don't.

We're half way through the year. The summer solstice has passed and the eclipse season is coming. This full moon involves Capricorn, ruled by Saturn, and occurs with Mars in retrograde. Saturn is the planet of being ringed in, constricted, a reckoning with all our limitations. It invokes honesty and reality. Mars is our sense of personal power or core identity, the essence of our deepest values and beliefs. In retrograde, all the qualities of Mars turn backwards or twist. That is, we're likely to question or doubt our values and core identity. We're likely to doubt or berate our selves.

This moon is likely to feel a little cold and dark. It could provoke detachment or withdrawal, even regression or retreat from the face of things. Fear is present, weather consciously or unwittingly influencing our moods and behaviors. Pessimism might leak in. Doubt and insecurity. There can be suffering, including suffering of the undue and unfair and unrelenting kind. There can be an urge to shut down. Worry. Worry. And however we personally respond to worry.

The gift of Capricorn, and of limitations themselves, is the way they teach us to step into our own lives. Capricorn's lesson is how to become ourselves, paradoxically, by overcoming ourselves. The end point is integrity without harshness, an ability to do the work of our lives without becoming attached to power or frozen by fear. Capricorn is tremendous in harnessing power, order, structure, in melding intention and actual behavior. But that behavior tends to be motivated by the will and detached from feeling. There is dedication and will galore, but without tenderness and vulnerability and feeling the will turns to stone, and loneliness comes.

Capricorn is ruled by feminine Saturn, which means limitation - Saturn's rings - reflecting upon herself. It isn't like Aquarius, the masculine sign ruled by Saturn, where wisdom and the gifts of wisdom are poured out into society. It's an inner parsing. Saturn forces us to face the essential truths of life - including the obligations we acquire just by being born and members of society.

Saturn takes a very very long time to go through a full cycle, unlike the moon that does so every 30 days, the sun that does so once a year, or other planets like Mars who completes a cycle in two years.

Saturn takes 28-30 years to complete a full transit of the zodiac. Therefore, he represents time and the wisdom that comes with age. There is a very real sense in which every seven years or so, or one quarter of Saturn's transit, a person will go through a new stage of personal development. A different chapter in their life story.

Time is a really hard thing to reckon with or wrap our minds around. The inner pressure and awareness that we need to be safe and protected into the future comes from Saturn. We not only need to eat food today, or need a place to sleep today; we need a place to sleep and food to eat tomorrow and for the rest of our lives. Saturn is also the awareness of the past and what has happened to us, and is related to the ways in which we hang onto the past and have it dominate our thinking in the present.

The enormity of time and our relationship to it is the very the nature of Saturn and through Capricorn, we reflect upon this. We seal that relationship in our mind and heart, for better or worse. Capricorn is always a little bit scared of making mistakes, therefore very calculating and rational. An earth sign, Capricorn plays out in questions of structure and material reality, wealth and resources.