A 6-week yoga specialty series countering poses for gardening positions! In this series, we’ll explore yoga as preparation to haul dirt, dig, plant, weed and water. Open the groins with alignment for squats, learn low back stretches, shoulder alignment and strength, and more.  Also includes recuperative and restorative poses to release muscles and open joints after the gardening hours. Brief guided meditations will help us savor the gardener’s  communion with earth, sky and all the forces of nature. ($99) Register soon!

This is one of the assumptions of the Tantric worldview (the philosophy behind Anusara Yoga) that is particularly liberating and fruitful.

Divine Awareness chooses to manifest itself as the world. Divine creativity and freedom condenses itself as us and everything else. That’s what connects us all together.

And awareness at its core nature is joyous. This remains true even when everything seems to be totally screwed up!

So that means there is a big OK-ness that infuses life and circumstances. At any moment, we can choose to tap into this over-arching awareness.

Ahhh – that’s a nice premise to rest in, at the start and end of everyday and anytime in between.

~Andrea

Durga is sometimes depicted with her steed, the lion that represents the ego, or at other times a tiger that represents personal power. The idea is to harness the ego and one's own power for the greater good. We'll get crackin' on that small task too!

She is the warrior, the “mother bear”, protecting all from poverty, sufferings, famine and evil habits. She is the destroyer of injustice, cruelty, irreverence, and laziness. Can’t think of anything not covered there!

Despite this tall order that gets her into some tight spots, Durga is known for maintaining a sense of humor. To defeat her most fearsome foe, the demon Mahish, she sips divine wine, and then laughing, emits a paralyzingly beautiful light. Immobilized, the tough guy is easily slayed.

I wish I could say that I always laugh in the face of difficulties, check in for divine guidance, then produce so much enlightened behavior that the problem is solved. But I think it’s a good idea!

And as the stories of gods and goddesses in the yoga tradition show us aspects of ourselves, anything is possible!

PS. Many thanks to Margaret Pitkin and Amy Reed for their Heart of the Goddess Workshop which inspired this series.

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But she’s scary. Wearing a necklace of skulls, with fingernails dripping blood, she is black like the darkest night, the deep earth, the womb.

Kali is like the black hole that birthed the universe; the darkness before the supernova flares.  If we have Kali-tude, then we are willing to delve into the darkest, nastiest places to make a beginning.

From any opaque uncertainty, sweet light eventually arises. As a dawn, a garden, or a new life. It’s the honeyed reward for affirming the goddess of time and change.

So bring it on. Cop a Kali-tude this week.

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When you realize how perfect everything is, you will tilt back your head
and laugh at the sky.Buddha

Bill and I have been reading the “Chet and Bernie” mysteries. Chet, a mixed breed dog who failed police training, narrates his life with Bernie, the hapless and occasionally brilliant detective. While Bernie bumbles through relationships and jobs, Chet savors every moment, finding intense pleasure in anything. From riding shotgun in the car, to finding a french fry under the dining room table, to leaping through the air and tackling a perpetrator. His favorite expression is, “Does it get any better than this?

Taking a cue from Chet, Bill and I look for as many uses of that expression a day as possible.Does it get any better than fresh local blueberries for breakfast? A crescent summer moon in the west? A heart opening back bend? A chore accomplished?

I think that’s what enlightenment is – experiencing the best in any circumstances. Because every moment holds the incredible power, momentum and goodness of the pulsing Universal.

Is it that simple? Chet would think so!

Our hearts transport  blood around our bodies,  a thousand times in a  day. As well as a physical pumping station, the heart is the hub of the fourth chakra or energy center of the body that corresponds with love and compassion.

It’s fun to draw parallels between the physical and the energetic heart. One is transporting the oxygen-poor and oxygen-rich blood for filling and dispensing. Could the other equally be drawing in all manner of separateness and pain and transforming them with love?

I like to think so. 1000 times a day.

I speed regularly, take corners quickly, and strategically maneuver from lane to lane like a chess board advance. My hubcaps and bumpers are dinged from close encounters with curbs. But I’ve never had an accident, other than being rear-ended while waiting at a stop sign, and only one speeding ticket as an adult.

Bill, my husband, was following me one day as I sped off and screeched around a corner. He swears the angels got dumped off and had to fly really fast to catch me again!

I do believe the perfection and protection of Grace follows us closely in all we do. The presence of the Perfect Self consistently offers guardianship as well as the opportunity for kind and joyous thought and action.

As we slow down, Grace easily overtakes us. (If you would only do that in driving, Bill says.)

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