Breathing fast and slow

Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill up with snow. It is said that when Robert Frost sat down to write what has been called by some his most perfect poem Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening , he did so in one inspired push. Frost would likely have said he was merely following delight. But he had the good sense to stay in his chair as delight took form, and surprise followed surprise, until at last he had on the page in front of him something resembling wisdom. Frost says as much in his essay The Figure a Poem Makes , in which the venerable poet attempts to describe the process involved in writing a poem. It could also be described as the process of getting out of the way of the poem that wants to be written.  As any good crafts person or artist or parent will tell you, the process involved in bringing anything into being--whether it be a poem, a painting, a piece of furniture, or a...

Sometimes, when life interferes and I am prevented from practicing yoga as much as I would like to, I have to remind myself: This is why there are eight limbs on this path. Balance, as it turns out, is about more than the practice of postures. In yoga, the creation of a balanced life-- Artha --is one of life's primary aims. I recently went with my family to the Eastern Sierras for a backpacking trip. We hiked with a group of friends out of Lake Sabrina, which is located approximately 14 miles from highway 395 off Main Street in downtown Bishop. It was a great trip. My youngest daughter caught her first fish--a very small trout that was thrown back into the lake. Catch-and-release, another first for my daughter. Joining us on our trek was our nine-month-old puppy, a Chihuahua-Jack Russell mix we adopted from our local shelter at the end of March. Señor Chico, the runt of the litter, mind you, completed a 10-mile round trip hike and camped out like a seasoned vet (no pun intended) ...

Last Saturday night, I traveled to India, but I only had to drive as far as Laguna Niguel to Itay's Shala where I joined my fellow yogis and met India's many deities by listening to and learning about the divine music of this vast land. Sangita Yoga, the yoga of music, is a devotional practice intended to reunite the physical practice of yoga--known as asana--with chanting or, more importantly, the voice of the practitioner. Along with my fellow ashtangis, I was introduced to this vital aspect of yoga by Naren K. Schreiner, director of Sangita Yoga, who believes that our breath, and hence our voice, is a channel for our divinity. Hatha Yoga is known as the the yoga of postures, or, as I mentioned before, asana. Bhakti Yoga is known as the yoga of devotion, and kirtan, or chanting, is part of this devotional path. According to Naren, the physical and the devotional aspects of yoga were traditionally practiced together. Movement and Music. This makes sense to me. We begin the p...

A few weeks ago while driving home from work on a Monday evening, I listened to an interview conducted by Dick Gordon on his radio show The Story. The Story is broadcast nightly by the public radio station KPPC, and the interviews I hear never fail to intrigue. Many times, these interviews I hear reveal an answer I've been seeking or they impart wisdom I didn't even know I needed. They're sort of like a horoscope that way only with more erudition. On this night a few weeks ago, I heard a newlywed couple speak about marriage and their mutual and individual ideas of commitment. You would expect that from a newlywed couple, yes? What I did not expect about this newlywed couple was the age of the husband and wife: He is 90 years old, recently widowed, and she is 67 years old, and for her, a first-time bride. They have not been married all that long, but they sound as though they have been married for years, and not in a bad way. What I mean is, they sound as though they truly f...

I first practiced yoga in college during the late 70s. It was offered as a one unit PE class, and was taught by a gentleman I will always remember, Professor Ken Ravizza. My fellow yogis and I did not see Dr. Ravizza as our professor, and, no, he was not seen as a peer. Rather, he was a beloved leader--a guru, if you will, though we did not address him as such--intent on bringing the practice of hatha yoga into our lives. And bring it, he did. Thirty-five years later, I am still practicing yoga, and, although the journey has not been one long bliss-fest, I recognize it as mine, a living, breathing human adventure that I continue to wake to. In the thirty-five years since I began to practice yoga on a mat on a concrete floor in a university gymnasium, the discipline has become practically mainstream. It took a couple of decades, but now elements of hatha yoga, which is another way of saying the postures or asanas or the physical limb of the yoga practice, show up as standard routines ...