From a few nights ago

Penumbra eclipse on a full moon. There's a bright star and the water tank looking like a space shuttle...

Small things, Great Love

Tomorrow starts the second week of work. I am excited. This is a strange sentiment on a Sunday night.

Yes, I am back to working in an office and already, of course, there is so much to do. Thankfully, in this "new" job, there are familiar faces. This job is truly a gift.  It was given at a perfect time and in a perfect way, with people I believe are wonderful. I prayed to be able to serve in the best way I know how, to give back and make a difference in my little ways, to fulfill my duties as a householder with bills to pay and a family to care for. But I wanted to be part of education, youth, arts, culture, communities...I wanted my yoga to come alive outside of the shala while doing the other things I love to do - plan, create, move. My answered prayer is this job. That is why I am sweetly excited (in the midst of the efforts in equanimity). :)

In the morning, I practice before heading to work. At work, I practice my karma yoga - yoga off the mat - to serve in my small ways. On weekends, I teach once or twice. Next year, I will add one weeknight class after work. The rest of the weeknights are with friends and family. Sunday is family day. Every day is for the Lord.

"Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love." ~ Mother Teresa

May Goodness Happen For All

I just finished reading Vipassana Meditation: Healing the Healer and The Experience of Impermanence by Dr. Paul R. Fleischman. The booklet published by the Vipassana Research Institute is a good Sunday morning read after sitting. 

In the first essay, the writer connects the practice with healing and the healer, often wounded but bears noble suffering. In the second article, he shares a more poetic discourse on anicca.  The style in which it was written brings a glow to the Vipassana experience. 

Click here for an excerpted article on Healing the Healer.

Click here for an excerpted article on The Experience of Impermanence.

Sharing this clip...Sabka mangal hoye re chanted by SN Goenka on Metta

It's a lovely, sunny Sunday. Have a beautiful one.

What's for breakfast?

Spinach (or kale), banana, mango...

Here's what I tell the kids when they look at the color of my drink du jour.

Vipassana Experience (Part 2)

The experience within meditation is not the goal.

Still, I relish the awareness and richness of those moments. During the 10-day Vipassana course, each session and each day presented a different experience, distinct from my moments in mantra meditation. All are very beautiful. The journey was not easy but truly necessary to me.

In the beginning, we were introduced to apana meditation, the mind sharpening with the awareness of the incoming breath and outgoing breath, focusing with each touch of the breath. I felt the awareness of my boundaries dissolve into what I felt like the skin of a water bubble, colored like a puddle marred by oil. As we refined the technique in the next few days and amidst the craziness of my own thoughts, the experience became a clean white space of stillness.

On the fourth day and upon learning Vipassana, the experiences became more powerful - from the tingling sensations of honey flowing slowly from the top of my head to golden stardust in shimmer sweeps from head to foot and foot to head -- and then to a hundred samurais piercing top to bottom and side to side. The entire body was bright with currents of sensation.  This was a first for me as these are usually concentrated on my hands and arms. These are not visualizations, though. My metaphors are just my own interpretation of the sensory experience. In this technique, there is no use of imagery, words or imagination.

In Vipassana, sometimes my hands would move into mudras. I did not know what these more complex gestures mean but have begun my research. The first time, my hands turned up to open palms and in the following experiences, moved into interlaced fingers, index fingers touching, thumbs touching. At another session, one hand rested on my knee while the other in jnana mudra, resting at the center.

At one point during the 4th day, the sensations of discomfort became so immensely intense on my knees but I stayed focused on the technique. The next sensation was one that lifted me from the pain. My spine lengthened. The sensation remained present but the aversion was gone. I was above it in that elevated state. And stayed seated in half lotus long after the session was over. At the end, I was transformed. In yoga, this must be the tapas burning away samskara (sangkara, as explained in the discourse). Amazingly enough, the knee pain left and sitting became relatively comfortable after.

During the 4th and 5th day of Vipassana sessions, I would also feel various sensations of choking at the throat, pressure at the heart and at the solar plexus area. This left me after a day. I felt also that lengthening of the spine - on the periphery thinking how tall I could sit as if my entire torso to the top had extended itself. I did not open my eyes. There was also a sensation of buoyancy, of being lifted as if by balloons, and then that pulsating pressure in the space above in between my eyebrows. That remained until the last day. On that last day, I felt pressure in the middle of my palms and a clockwise spinning on both. I do not know what these mean just yet.

Even as these experiences happen, I succumb to the mind drifting into various thoughts and memories. A hundred hours of sitting can cover plenty of recurrent mind trash, and as intensely as I thought and remembered, these were purged - sangkaras floating to the surface, rising up like bubbles and bursting into infinitesimal nothing.

My breakthrough would be the breakdown of the last of the painful ones, the thoughts of unforgiven hurts, the ones I kept and fed in secret. I thought they would survive the ten days. I was in tears. Just in time though, after the years, they are finally forgiven.

 These are my Vipassana experiences - surreal, unexpected, welcome, and at times, overwhelming. And yet, I remain detached from them. Thankful for what they are and nothing more.

At the end of my ten days, I ran into the arms of my waiting husband. Grateful to be, in a deeper sense, free.

Vipassana

I am finally home after my 10-day Vipassana Meditation Course as taught by S.N. Goenka.

This was a long time coming since I first learned about it, drawn to it through a documentary we watched almost exactly 3 years ago. I wanted to take the course then but the seed needed more fertile ground. As with the gifts that have been presenting themselves these days in impeccable timing, this came right before I begin on a new road, and specifically at this particular point in my yoga practice and teaching.

The ten days were a profound experience, learning this deeply effective meditation technique.  The work was intense from within. We sat in stillness, hour upon hour, with all these sensations arising and passing - gross and subtle as we swept or scanned part by part. We worked diligently, persistently. We tried to remain vigilant. Day after each long laborious day. The words are still so clear in my head.

In those days of complete surrender to purely meditation, I did not practice Ashtanga (asana). Tomorrow, I will begin again. I feel my practice will change from this.

From the Vipassana, I was able to draw parallels to strengthen the foundations of my Ashtanga yoga practice.

For now, I will only write phrases of insights from memory.

Wisdom in Breath as the link.

Experience of using the body as the framework.

Awareness of sensation. 

No Raga (Attachment) and Dvesha (Aversion). No me, no mine, no I.

Equanimity. Yogas citta Vritti nirodha.

Sthira. Ease. Enlightenment. Awareness. Sensation. Equanimity.

Do your practice. Work Continuously.

Grateful for the lineage.

Metta and Yoga off the mat.

Bhavatu Sabba Manggalam. Lokah Samasta Sukhino Bhavantu.


Incidentally, I am home on the day of Diwali in India. May the light shine within and upon us all.


----

I am re-reading Michael Stone's Freeing the Body Freeing the Mind. Writings on the Connections between Yoga and Buddhism.

 "Yoga and Buddhadharma offer a profound blueprint for reorienting ourselves toward that which really matters. At the heart of what matters is the reality that everyone aspires to achieve happiness and avoid suffering. Happiness derives not from wealth or progress but from inner peace, one that each of us must create by cultivating the most profound human qualities, such as empathy, humility, and compassion, and by eliminating destructive thoughts and emotions such as anger and hatred..." 

      ~ Michael Stone

Innovate. Integrate.

Innovate. This is the word that has been following me around these days. My life is finding real union and integration.  For all those cycles of disintegration, I welcome this balance. How I found myself here is through what I like to think of as divine innovation.

I had just finished Scott Anthony's Little Black Book of Innovation and I found it to be a great life reading, beyond business. Scott Anthony is one of the wonderful management consultants I've had the pleasure of meeting. In his book, he describes innovation to mean "doing things differently with impact." He shares plenty of insights and a practical 28-day DIY program to grow the innovator within.

Why is this so important to me? It's because life calls for us to change, innovate and integrate. It calls for us to participate, perpetually experiment and then learn from experience.

That's where I find clarity as I transition into the next chapter, maybe even level, in doing fulfilling work and finding that true balance.

I have chosen to work with a wonderful foundation for a conglomerate I truly respect and admire.  This is where I will continue to do work that I love - communicating, building relationships, conceptualizing ways to grow, develop and sustain. Meanwhile, I will continue to teach in Yoga Manila, keeping my advocacy to share yoga as a way to transform from within.

So yes, the innovation keeps happening. That's the yoga of it all. That's how we make the best of changes. These changes bring us to balance over and over.

Transformation comes from within. We are our own innovators -- from the way we observe and see things, then the way we act upon these. We start from ourselves and radiate these outside. These shifts bring us closer to fulfilling our purpose - to learn how we can serve in our best, brightest, and most joyful way possible. The impact? Ourselves and a world made better.