Everyday Sacred

Finding a Port in a Storm

One of the benefits a consistent yoga practice yields is the ability to weather the emotional storms that inevitably arise in every life. Don't think that enlightenment means you never get upset. The trick is to be able to apply emotional first aid so that you recover fast and without doing harm. Next time a storm hits, take note of the phase of the moon. We are constantly being bombarded by cosmic forces that play upon human nature and sometimes make for a bumpy ride. We are now in the second full moon of the Spring season. Both this full moon and the next are Scorpio moons (read emotionally intense). In this season of manifestation, you can also manifest some things you wish you hadn't.

Your yoga practice will give you the emotional hardiness to become less reactive and to witness your triggers without needing to act on them. Let's take a closer look at what happen in the emotional body...

Energy blocks in the body are called 'marmons' in Sanskrit. They can arise as a pattern of perception that causes a tight muscle, a twisting away in the torso or even an injury. These are somatic responses that block the flow of life force energy to a particular part of the body. They originate as a protective response to block a feeling that is too threatening to experience. Emotional blocking can be experienced as an inability to move through the emotion to resolution. Whenever life stops you, you are blocking the natural creative flow. Mental blocking can be a preconceived idea, a prejudice or a thought loop that keeps bringing you back to the same conclusion, resulting in the same outcome. Mental blocking, emotional blocking and physical blocking are perfect mirrors of one another.

Underneath all of this is an unconscious belief that is subtly interwoven into your world view. Once these unconscious beliefs become conscious, they are exposed for their falseness. Then, it is easy to replace them for something that serves you better. Beliefs like "All men will betray me." or "I'll never succeed." set up circumstances that cause us to react to life through that filter. We exist as bodies, emotions, minds and beliefs. We carry our personal stories in our bodies and the less dense layers of us. We also carry familial, ancestral, tribal, cultural, and genetic patterning. All of these patterns overlay our original truth, the essence of who we are. Real change must filter through every level of us. It is not enough to affirm mentally. It must also be embodied. The body is the earth realm of us, our densest layer. This is where patterns become habitual and unconscious. As a pattern of reactions build up, it gets more and more difficult to respond appropriately to changing circumstances. Such a lack of flexible and fluid thinking is evident in our resistance to adapt to climate change. Good yoga increases your ability to see false constructs in your thinking. You understand your role in perpetuating them and then you develop creative solutions. At this stage, creative blocks dissolve. You access the flow of ideas and innovations as naturally arising phenomenon. Your natural state is to be endlessly creative.

In the next post, we'll discuss a simple technique to become aware of these unconscious patterns.

North is a Buzz in my Head

What signals the start of Spring to the seed in the ground? How does it unwind from its tight shell, spiral around and find its way up and out of the ground? Something is drawing it upward to the light. Some desire stirs it from sleep and some sense of direction draws it upward toward the increasing light.

Our crown chakras are located in the head in the area of the pineal gland. This gland has vestiges of occular tissue that no longer sees. It does, however, respond to light. It has the latent ability to help us locate True North. It helps us find the verticle axis and it ignites the function of the crown chakra to become the positive pole. Hopefully, your winter practice has opened your hips to give you the negative pole in the perineum. When these poles are functioning, your bioelectric body wakes up from its hibernation and you are ready to move forward feeling inspired and brimming with creative potential.

This is the season of waking up the pineal gland. It happens when the pituitary gland, just beneath it, begins to hum with a new frequency. The pituitary is your third eye or 6th chakra. This is the chakra of creative vision and the organizational will to create the systems to birth that vision. The inspiration that seeds the vision is actually from a combination of chakras 6 and 7. One way to open the third eye is to look at a drishti as if your eyes were located deep your head. This gives your gaze a deeper dimension and is preferable to the inner focus upward to the third eye which can be ungrounding.

When the pituitary gland opens, you will begin to feel your body as larger. You feel more connected to the world around you. You get a palpable sense of your own potential to be powerful. The pituitary will vibrate at a higher frequency and that, in turn, wakes up the pineal gland sitting just above it. You may, at this point, get a sensation that your head is expanding. Think of the crown of the Buddha or the halo of saints. This is the energetic expansion of your 7th chakra which is your connection to your purpose and Divine Mind.

In future posts, we will discuss the structure of consciousness known as the witness. When these upper centers become active, we access the witness as the bridge to integrate the ego with the True Self. It is so much easier to uncover unconscious material and see recurring patterns in yourself when you are observing yourself as an impartial, loving witness. This is the only way we can really forgive and become truly compassionate.

We still have time. Spring will get rolling by the new moon of Aries. You will feel a real thrust building by then. Now is the time to fortify the form so it can hold an increased charge of life force without breaking down. Root deeply. Embody with your full presence. Make space for the uninvited guest. It's time to let things go and to let energy move through you. This week, in class, we will be doing a lot of uktanasanas (chair poses) with many variations (demi point, 1 leg crossed in pigeon, as the wheel of manifestation) so you become strong and formidable. That way you build the ground for your creations to move through you to completion.

One more thing to practice this week are twists. Once you are rooted and aligned, revolve the torso and head around your central axis. Be careful not to whip lash your head sideways. Keep it on the axis. Otherwise, you don't get the energy to flush the pituitary and pineal and you miss the overview. Another caution in the twist is to get the energy to move through the torso. It can get stuck in a toxic liver or a rigid lung. It is easy to miss this because the shoulder girdle is so flexible that you can fool yourself into thinking you are twisting your torso when actually all you are doing is over opening your shoulder.

The remedy for this? Keep your focus in your body's center. Bring your energy into you and then radiate the heart energy through the sternum, 90 degrees directly to your side. Have the point between your blades point directly back from the sternum. Clock your upper arm to the ceiling, your lower arm to the floor. How may points of reference are you able to reference without becoming mental? Stay embodied. Stay with the flow of the pulse, the phrase of the wave of life force.

Now, while you're still turning, lift a line of energy from your heart up into your head. Find the middle of the third eye and open it, forehead to the ceiling etc. You find yourself in space, directionally, but from the inside, from the living intelligence( not from the one who wants to control, not from the little tyrant). If you find the little tyrant taking over the pose, notice what part of your body has become tight. It will probably be your liver and diaphragm. This is the third chakra, seat of your personal will. In the absence of the big picture the witness provides, the third chakra will try to run the show. Congratulations! You are now in the dialogue. Big Mind meets Little Mind meets Big Mind meets Little Mind meets Big Mind until, one day Little Mind is a wave in the sea of Big Mind.

Until then, we need to get our bearings and find our way directionally in space and time but not of space and time. We need to find out how to be eternal beings in linear time. So, pick a point, call it center and go.

Working with Archetypes, Part 2: The Ground, The Path and The Fruit

So, to review, archetypes are types of arcs to a wave pattern of energy. We encounter as many as there are forms in creation. There are major ones, minor ones, personal ones (like victim, hero etc.) and impersonal ones (like winter, spring, summer and fall). As we develop witness consciousness, we hold our awareness in the center and experience the wave moving through us without getting swept away.

The ground of a good yoga practice is to yoke or join together the various archetypes of consciousness as the periphery in equal proportion to the center which is known variously as the nondual, Brahmin, universal, God-awareness.

The path of a good yoga practice is to learn how to set up your pose to create a standing wave of energy to move through you. We do this to get insights about the archetypes we harbor in our unconscious, archetypes that shape our drives and make us crazy. At any moment, you are either identifying and resonating with your ego or identifying and resonating with the Divine. Ego identification, in the words of Buddha, brings suffering. Divine identification brings freedom, joy and bliss. It is crazy to continue choosing suffering over freedom. So, the yoga practice shows you where the most dense, habitual part of you (your body) continues to unconsciously create the conditions for the archetypes that bring suffering to move through you.

Practitioners who know how to work with the archetypes of solar and lunar waves know that the transition points (between the seasons and at the new and full moon) are especially potent. At these times, the heavens are setting up standing waves that can be catalysts for our transformation.

Standing waves occur when 2 waves of identical frequency move through a defined medium in opposite directions. When they meet, the old pattern gets disrupted causing a new wave pattern ( the standing wave) to appear. If the boundaries of the form are weak, the increased force of the meeting vortexes just dissipates. This is why we see many stormy days before spring has sprung.

There are several ways we manipulate form and flow to create standing waves in a yoga pose. When building the form, think of your pose as a mandala. Then it will have geometric integrity that carries its own archetypal charge. The ancients did not use mandalas and geometric forms are mere decoration. They knew the deep symbolism inherent in them. Geometry is the universal language. Geometric forms have information encoded in them. They are the matrixes underlying forms in nature, consciousness and thought. The circle is unity; its center is the central generative point. An axis is the meeting of opposites. The vertical axis is the river where personal and transpersonal energy meet. The cross is the intersection where God and man meet. The square is a stable form capable of creating order out of chaos.

The fruit of a good yoga practice comes when you know how to hold the center and charge the form. Then the conversation begins. It is a conversation between your human self and your divine self. This is really the ultimate mindfulness practice because you fix your attention, body and breath on the NOW. Can you be equanimous? Where ever you say NO is where life is stopping you in this moment of NOW. Stay rooted, refine your form, build your charge through your breath. Everytime you want to muscle through, stop and surrender to form and flow so you don't push the wave. You let it roll through. When you feel the forces against you, find your directions and open up. The spaceous center will set you free.

Working with Archetypes, Part 1

There is a lot of confusion about this subject. What is an archetype? How do I "work" with one? Why even bother?
O.K. let's review some yogic fundamentals.
1. God (Brahma) is absolute awareness becoming the universe becoming aware of itself as Brahma.
2. On the atomic level, all phenomenon vibrate as standing waves. Standing waves appear with finite boundaries. Our bodies, organs, cells, etc. are standing waves. They emanate from a center point (or bindu) and radiate out harmonically in spirals of the Golden Ratio.
3. The four elements: Earth, Water, Fire and Air are archetypal standing waves, meaning they are types of arcs in the face of the wave. This is important because these make up the template of creation. They help energy become matter.

So, these are the fundamental archetypes of creation. There are multitudes of created forms and there are multitudes of archetypes. Some relate to a particular situation in the human story. For instance, women's life stages are reflected in the maiden, the bride and the crone. Men's are reflected in the lover, the king and the magician. All of them are held in the collective unconscious.

When I taught at the Barbara Brennan School for Healing, I spent years leading hundreds of people through sacred ceremonies. Ceremonial archetypes are much stronger forms than the ones you connect with in a yoga pose. I have seen people connect with this type of energy and become very disoriented and accident prone. I have seen inflated types negatively merging with the archetype only to become distorted and physically sick. Instead, you want to use these energy systems relationally. You need to stay centered and grounded in YOU and meet the archetypal pattern with a balanced mind, body and breath.

Perhaps the best thing I've ever read on archetypes is Ego and Archetype by Edward F. Edinger. This book describes Carl Jung's discovery of the collective or archetypal unconscious. Jung informs us that we are both individual and archetypal. Our awareness is informed by our personal experience and by the conscious and unconscious dreams, drives and experiences of the collective of all humanity (perhaps all life), throughout all time. Somewhere in us, everything is recorded, everything is known, past, present and future.

This treasure trove of knowledge is stored and accessed through geometric patterns, dreams, fairytales and mythological and religious images. Joseph Campbell taught us how these mythological themes recur transculturally.

The treasure trove, as well as every other bit of personal information, like the name of your first grade teacher, is stored in the Self. The ego is the part of the Self that holds your personal information. At first, ego is enclosed in the Self, but as we mature, it begins to separate from the Self. That is what we know as the spiritual journey but it is really a developmental phase of human adulthood. To be continued...

"If You Build It..." High Energy Pool Part III

Many people get to the higher realms of consciousness in a good meditation but fail to integrate them into their lives. Many others use their yoga to work out or get relaxed but fail to make any changes in their consciousness.

Ken Wilbur discusses the difference between a state and a station of consciousness. A state is an experience that you have very little control over. For instance, you have a profound, nondual experience in meditation but your ability to get back there or understand it is hit or miss. A station of consciousness is a place you can return to. You have mapped it out and you can continue to explore it. You have made it a part of your experience. This is how you stabilize and integrate it. This is conscious evolution.

Like meditation, your yoga practice is also a path to conscious evolution. It is important to develop stations of awareness so that you can grow your experience into realms not collapsed in the ego.

The path of yoga understands that the physical and energy bodies must be able to sustain these higher realms, these high energy pools. If not, you can get sick or become unbalanced. It's like asking your system to upgrade from 110 volts to 220 volts. You must know how to create a coherent container, ground it and increase the charge through the contact with the earth and the yogic breath.

If you take my class, you know how to map out the energy centers in the pelvis, heart and head. You know how to find yourself in 3 dimensional space. Many of you are exploring the techniques of witnessing and spinning. This is really just the next step. There are other energy centers above and beyond the 7th. Think in octaves and just keep going. You build a scaffold, like a radio tower, from the lower centers. Cross reference each one, connecting a lower one with a higher one. You will need to remember to root and build the power through the ujayji breath.

Once you make it up to level 8, about 4 inches above the head, you can construct a platform. Map it out, inhabit its center and spin it. Each level, or chakra, is a different dimension of consciousness.

As we come to winter's end, the pineal gland/crown chakra comes to life again. This is the season of divine inspiration that will become the vision that fuels the restlessness of manifestation. Don't miss this opportunity to hone your higher centers.

In these high energy pools, you can untangle yourself from the energetic webs of your personal stories. The webs do not disappear, you simply do not attach to them anymore. You see the whole pattern. You get it and it no longer gets you.

You can jump into the high energy pool and swim with the best. You don't have to be a shark to make it in this pool because you understand that being a predator is really the same thing as being a victim. Both are trapped in the same web, just playing opposite poles.

In the high energy pool, you balance effort and grace. You understand the web of interconnection. You want to help one another float because that helps you float. Eventually, you all ride the current home together, like the Bodhisaatva sea turtles in Finding Nemo.

How to Swim in the High-Energy Pool

We're past the second full moon of Winter. Each season has approximately 3 lunations. That means we're in the depth of winter. As you know, as soon as you go far enough in 1 direction, the pendulum swings back. This means that the light is beginning to draw us out of winter's depth.

In class, we are rooting deeply through the perineum and spinning the legs down and in. We're also rising up to the light. The crown chakra and the pineal gland can become activated by sending your awareness there. Map it out so you can really occupy its center. Spin it so you can transform it into an organ of perception. The pineal gland has occular tissue. When it responds to light, there is a kind of "beam me up" feeling. The body elongates and you can access higher realms while your feet are firmly planted on earth.

We do a whole series of reach and hangs, backbends and forward bends from this perspective. It is in the service of transforming the back from rounding, contracting and armoring to gently enclosing the front body like a womb while you incubate your potential. It is the front body that moves our desire into manifestation. The front of the chakras are our emotional centers. This is where you feel your passion, focus your will, follow your heart and find your true voice. The back body connects us with our heritage but a rigid back is a sign of being stifled or held back. The lungs retreat to the back body and you lack the courage to swim in the high energy pool of life.

Please remember that this practice is a tool for conscious evolution. The rooting and spinning of the perineum doesn't just provide a good base for a pose, it is really your launching pad. Accessing higher realms is not just psychic whoopie. If you regard it as just another nice experience, to add to your collection, you won't change. In fact, you may become even more entrapped. You need to name these states as the nondual experiences they are and acknowledge the fact that you are integrating this dimension into your daily experiences more and more. You are not alone, many other people are as well.

You are the growing tip of a wave of conscious evolution that is the hallmark this new era. Once you can actually see these experiences as information from a higher dimension of you (not some disembodied 800 year old shaman - remember channeling?), then the insights gleaned from your yoga become stepping stones to integrating your Buddha Nature with your egoic self. Because the higher vibration always wins out over the lower, eventually ego's hold on us is less and less intense. Eventually, you don't experience the world through your emotional reactions; you experience it through your wisdom and you are called to skillful, compassionate action. To be continued...

The Womb of Creation

If what we call your roots (your 1st chakra and perineum) are symbols of your relationship with the soil (i.e. your ability to grow and manifest things) then, your crown (your 7th chakra and pineal gland) are symbols of your relationship with the universe, our understanding of seasonal rhythms and our ability to see patterns setting up.
A full winter practice includes both poles because being able to respond creatively to challenge requires vision and action. Speaking of vision, the pineal gland contains occular tissue. It responds to vibrations from the optic nerve. Could this be the third eye? The pineal gland produces melatonin and seratonin. When days get shorter, our bodies respond by producing more melatonin and less seratonin. We sleep more and play less. This could be the reason for Seasonal Affective Disorder.
So, when you sleep, you dream and when you dream you access the unconscious and perhaps, a vision. You could be a melatonin junkie though, and still miss the big picture. It's easy to miss because most of us don't function at that level. We tend to interpret life through fixed beliefs and language that can only reference what has already occured. New visions cannot arise within this context. What is needed is Direct Relationship with unfolding reality. The universe is always trying to teach us something. Unfortunately, most of the time, we miss it.
It is possible to listen deeply, to see far and still notice the importance of little things. Whatever is showing up, wherever life stops you, even if its the most mundane thing, when seen and experienced (instead of resisted) can open up worlds of understanding.
The pineal gland/crown chakra is our organ of dialogue with heaven. We can access the conversation directly. We don't need a middle man. You can receive oceans of understanding about the suffering of your soul. You can fathom the Laws of the Universe.
You won't get any of this when all your attention is drawn outside yourself. There are millions of ways to siphon off the energy required for self-reflection. A good yoga practice will take care of that. It will bring you back into yourself and then you can get some action.
Action has to do with balance and directness. You want to be poised when you act. You want to be in relationship, not fantasy, when you take action. To do this, you need good timing. You need to understand rhythms. You need to be sure that you are not missing the message and acting out of some agenda of yours or someone else's. You need to be "awake" to the moment. You can't do this when every challenge gives rise to a running commentary on it, complete with judgement, opinions and condemnation.
So what's a yogi to do? Sometimes life just comes too fast. Things get unglued. After all, we are living through the birth pangs of a sea change in consciousness.
This is why I love the winter practice. It gives me a chance to pause before I act. If I'm feeling fearful or angry or physically sick, I know that this will get me back on track. While I'm in my forward bend or Uttanasana, I remember water. I become like water with what's stopping me, it's edges touching the soft water of my presence. Water is the element of winter. It is associated with the kidneys. Find the true seat of your poses in the perineum not the low back and the kidneys become soft and plump. We become fluid. Water the element becomes water the spiritual intermediary.
You see, water is truly awake. It responds to every breeze along its surface, every change of temperature and every waterbug that comes in for a landing. Water knows how to meet the unexpected by flowing around it. It balances all things by sending out perfectly circular concentric rings to swallow disruption into stillness. Robert Frost wrote a poem called "West Running Brook" about two streams running in opposite directions and meeting each other. Where they connect, they create a pocket of stillness. That little pocket of stillness is the womb of creation. It can birth tadpoles and galaxies.

Bodhisaatva Fitness

I was born under a balsamic moon, whatever that means. ( I've often wondered: is this when you put up balsamic vinegar or uncork it and what does the lunar energy do to the vinegar anyway?) On Friday, January 4th, we enter the waning crescent or balsamic phase of the moon. This is the final phase before the new moon of Capricorn on the 8th.

In a balsamic moon, your hindsight is ripe. It is a great time for detecting personal and social patterns (both past and future if you know how to read the signs).

Hindsight and foresight occur naturally in deep quiet practices like the Winter Practice of forward bending and restorative poses. Pranayama and meditation can reveal and release deeply held patterns of physical armoring and blocked emotion. It is amazing to discover how many layers of self are held in place by patterns in the breath. Just be careful not to lull yourself into some happy place that sidesteps your growth. Did you ever notice that the difference between Meditation and Medication is the "c"? That's because you have to supply the "see" and the eye that sees is not the personal one that supports your egoic fantasies. The eye that sees is the eye of the witness who wields the double edge sword, the Sword of Truth. This sword cuts both ways. It cuts through the bullshit in the world and in you.

We humans live in a world of ideas, opinions and beliefs. Many are conscious, many more are not. This running commentary has twisted our mind, body and soul. It has distorted our energy field and separated us from Direct Knowing.

We need to see ourselves and our environment as Fields of Living Energy. We must view all our relationships as interactions between living fields. Then we can add coherence to chaos as Islands of Peace. We become a resonant field of harmony creating more harmony via magnetic resonance.

That is how we make a difference, one act at a time.

How do you understand patterns and watch them setting up like waves? How do you see the patterns of your own story, where you are thrown off axis and trapped in the bardo of emotional reaction? How do you live in the flow and not get broadsided by obstacles and karma? How do you navigate through life with grace and unfold your glory?

Where do you repeatedly get stopped by life? Your story matters AS the key to your freedom.

These are the issues addressed in a yoga practice that teaches you about your life as alignment and flow as a multi-faceted, multi-dimensional phenomena of existence.

Your body is the metaphor and the material manifestation. The difference between matter and spirit is the rate of vibration, not what is vibrating! We hear vibrations of sound above 20,000 cycles per second. We don't hear vibrations below that but we know they exist.

Do your yoga awake as the co-creator you are. It is Bodhisaatva Fitness and you are the growing tip of conscious evolution.

Something Precious

Even though the solstice is still 3 weeks away, winter has descended upon New York. It's getting dark at 4:00 and the moon's light is waning as we descend into a new moon on the 9th. All of Nature is resting. Many esoteric traditions consider these days to be the most sacred and contemplative.

Yet, I have lost entire Decembers to parties, Nutcrackers, shopping and decorating. The external busyness and merriment and the internal pull toward quiet and solitude makes me edgy. The time of the greatest external darkness is the time of the greatest internal light.

We descend into darkness guided by a faith in something greater than us but, knowing that there are no guarantees. Sensing that there is really nothing except this dream we are dreaming and, what... the consciousness that is dreaming it? Half-believing that we could wake-up or, maybe, dream a different dream.

How does contemplation fit in with this crazy-busy life and an even crazier month when, if you make it to class twice you're feeling lucky?

Truth be told, more and more of us are being called to do just that. Conscious-evolution is a participatory event and no road map exists for where we're going. The old methods of monastic living to cultivate the spiritual seed don't serve us now. Too many of us are waking up (even if it's just for a flash). We're feeling deeper. We're unravelling ourselves from our dramas. We're practising lovingkindness. It's too late to turn back now.

This is when you change your yoga. When the seasons change, change your practice. You're playing with a different archetype now. The fall practice is about the hero/alchemist in us. We work the lungs. We do alot of warrior poses. We come out of fall with a deeper capacity to feel our grief and the courage to find happiness with what is.

The greatest gift of the winter practice, greater than precious gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, is the gift of the birth of a new archetype in us. This is the one who saves us from our suffering and separation, the transformed one, in us.

In winter, we work the kidneys; we guard our essence; we replenish. We do alot of forward bending. We become very concentrated and rooted. We surrender our compulsion to control outcomes. We engage in deep listening.

There is an opportunity we get at this time of year. Something precious can be born in us, if we don't miss it. Some deep insight, some piece of soul recovered, some obstacle dissolved. It's like this time 'round, you reach for the brass ring and you get it! Instead of just going around in circles, you're spiraling to the next level. You get a wide-angle view and it all makes so much more sense now.

It feels so good to be alive. It feels good to be in the game. You're heart holds so much love.

What if you could do lucid-dreaming and dream yourself back here, whenever?

And what if you could?

And what if you did?

And why don't you?

The Yoga of Gratitude

While the turkey is cooking, I actually have a bit of time to blog. I am grateful for that and for take out trimmings.

Today, the topic of conversation is gratitude. Now, a 1 day harvest celebration of gratitude is a wonderful thing but, what about gratitude as a practice? What about gratitude as an art of perception? What would this do for us? How challenging would this become?

A harpist friend of ours, who died of cancer several years ago (on the same day as my Dad died), spent her last days in deep gratitude for the beauty she saw around her. She was moved to tears by a bowl of apples, a song, her daughter's smile. She knew something about paradox and perfection that we have forgotten. If you really open yourself to such radically deep gratitude, it will bring you,weeping, to your knees. To live in total appreciation for what is real. To love what you have not what you want. To drop the agendas, preferences, opinions, judgements and any other conceptual filters we place over our experiences is the highest Tantra. It is the adoration of the manifest as the growing tip of God.

I am wrapping up 3 months of an autumn yoga practice. Autumn energies are predominantly Air Element (Metal for the Taoists). An autumn practice is designed to make the whole person more oxygenated. It generates winds that move out dead orgone energy held in the body (especially the lungs). A good autumn practice will evolve over the 3 months of the season to:
1.Build strength and stability
2.Dredge up unconscious material that has been keeping you stuck
3.Detoxify the body, surrender old emotional patterns, make informed choices

Lungs are the organ of the autumn practice. They repesent a spectrum of emotions ranging from courage to grief. Depending on how these emotions are expressed, they can be toxic or healing. In balance and with stability,we find the courage to grieve and the courage to be happy.

This takes time. We are cyclical creatures. Last autumn, I was still in the initial phases of grieving my father's death. I needed to go through a whole turning of the wheel before I was ready to be released from the grief-cycle. I needed to come into another Lung Season to let go.

Hatha means sun and moon. The early yogins knew the powerful influences of cosmic forces. They also knew the secrets of how to use them for transformation. The mid-autumn practice comes in the sign of Scorpio (secrets, the unconscious). The Scorpio full moon fell in Taurus (what we have). The full moon's energies have a way of popping your issues into full view.

They sure popped mine. I received many insights about my self-identity (in relationship to my father) and how this actually was reflected in the life I've built. That insight came after a big piece of grief-work, of finding the courage to really feel the pain and the hurt around that relationship.

It's no coincidence that I've had a respiratory infection for 2 weeks. The body, the Earth element, is the last to reflect the change. No transformation of consciousness is ever complete until it has been integrated on all levels of our being. This takes time.

It smells like the turkey is done. It's time to receive what we've harvested (all the fruits, both bitter and sweet) and embrace it all,
with gratitude.