Let it snow, let it snow... or rain?

It's 3 pm and I have just returned inside from removing snow from my deck. After weeks of storm after storm, the layers of ice and snow are too thick to remove it all. Still as I pondered what more weight and freezing temps tonight would mean to the overall integrity of the deck, I decided I better make a move.
As I stepped out onto the deck, I was a little worried about the deck, the dogs and myself all detaching from the house and landing in the flower garden. Fortunately that didn't happen.

As I chucked each shovel load over the railing, I was thinking about my neighbour, for whom this work would definitely be physically too much. Then I was thankful for my massage on Saturday and my practice. My asana practice. I have a pretty regular practice that involves lots of low back, mid back and low abdominal strengthening. After many years as a professional climber, one who suffered from a little low back pain, I discovered how to strengthen my low back and even more crucially, my low abdominals to protect my back.

As I reach over to pick up a shovel full of snow, I draw my low belly powerfully to my back body. I hold this contraction, feeling it support my low back as I heave the snow over the railing. I have been fortunate to have been practicing this way for a pretty long time. If it is new to you, I suggest just start by doing this action in forward folds, exhaling as you fold forward, reaching to touch your toes. Practice holding this contraction as you breath in and come up. It's trickier than you may think.

Love... not elusive, just a choice

Love is one thing we all long for, and yet the expression is unique to each heart.
True love is without attachment to being loved.
True love exists even when we disagree.
Real love listens more than it speaks.
Real love is fire in the heart that must be shared.

Truth lies in the Heart

It's so easy to say and yet so hard to do! What would you imagine if you couldn't think of the reasons it wouldn't work? What would you live that you are not living now? Our brains are designed to keep us safe, to ensure we survive. Yet our brain is not always the best at accurately predicting the future. Nor is the brain great at seeing our best long term survival; it tends more to project our more immediate future.
The heart is where the truth lies. Still the body, still the mind and find the truth in your heart. Then live it.

Internal Power

A wonderful image and article found at Yoga International. Thank you YI for your amazing resources.

Making the Uncomfortable Loveable

We are forever striving and rarely resting.
A friend just completed an amazing feat of climbing arguably the hardest long multi-pitch free climb in the world. It was covered in the news because it is such an amazing feat. The practice and preparation took 7 years. The actual ascent took 19 days of sleeping on the side of a rock face hundreds and thousands of feet above the ground. Eating, sleeping in a hammock like tent. Yet, this is one of many ascents he has done, all of which have required some level of discomfort. And it will not be long before he will be planning the next ascent. The next unclimbed project to try.

Phot credit - Nick Sagar collection
This is how we are as humans. We long to accomplish great things and we also long for security, safety, comfort and ease. When we achieve the success we work so hard for, the comfort and ease, we can enjoy it only briefly before we long for something else. It is the longing itself that makes us uncomfortable.

Swami Rama said, "Know your dharma (purpose) and learn to love it." This is one of the key teachings of the Bhagavad Gita. Tommy Caldwell, a lifetime climber certainly is living his dharma... to climb the next impossible line. And he has certainly learned to love the parts of us that most of us could not tolerate.

What is the think that you must do above all others, despite the discomfort? And can you learn to love the discomfort?

Just Rest

sukham = comfortable, ease filled; sthira = steady, stable, motionless
These two ideas are the goal of Yoga practice, these are the practice. Ease filled comes first. Moving into a pose with ease and steadiness, as if these words cannot be separate.

Yoga off the mat... moving through life, all positions, actions with this same ease filled steadiness.
This can only be achieved, on or off the mat, by letting go of the fruits of our actions. It is our striving for something that puts tension around. It is our resistance that makes it awkward and uncomfortable.

Just rest.

Love; a luxury or a necessity

The experience of love is either a necessity or a luxury. If it be a luxury, it is expendable; if it be necessity, then to deny it is to perish. So simple is the reality, and so terrifying.
Ultimately there is only one place of refuge on this planet for any person -- that is another person's heart. To love is to make of one's heart a swinging door. ~ Howard Thurman