The sun came out today!

We decided to welcome Spring energy into our yin yoga class today.

Look at this beautiful light in our warm and sunny studio.

Practicing yin poses to support the liver and gallbladder meridian pair: legs up the wall then dragonfly with legs up the wall, figure 4, happy baby, twists, frog pose, sphinx pose, supported bridge, sleeping swan.

Inviting in energy of renewal, growth, the element of wood to support our transition toward Spring, balancing strength with flexibility to change, grow, expand, flow with. Imagining a strong tree moving with the wind. Flexibility as strength.

Cultivating healthy liver qi, spiritual growth, creativity and courage. Calling in solar plexus chakra, manipura, supporting our sense of identity, growth and courage.

Finding the archetype the peaceful warrior as one who is empowered, one who knows themself, one who is resilient, one who has stamina to meet physical and emotional challenges.

Basking in warm light, opening up to new channels of growth and expansion, cultivating Spring.

Readings

The Journey by Mary Oliver

One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice --

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"

each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voice behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do --

determined to save

the only life that you could save.

Lost by David Wagoner

Stand still. The trees ahead and bushes beside you

Are not lost. Wherever you are is called Here,

And you must treat it as a powerful stranger,

Must ask permission to know it and be known.

The forest breathes. Listen. It answers,

I have made this place around you.

If you leave it, you may come back again, saying Here.

No two trees are the same to Raven.

No two branches are the same to Wren.

If what a tree or a bush does is lost on you,

You are surely lost. Stand still. The forest knows

Where you are. You must let it find you.

For Courage by John O’Donohue

When the light around you lessens

And your thoughts darken until

Your body feels fear turn

Cold as a stone inside,

When you find yourself bereft

Of any belief in yourself

And all you unknowingly

Leaned on has fallen,

When one voice commands

Your whole heart,

And it is raven dark,

Steady yourself and see

That it is your own thinking

That darkens your world.

Search and you will find

A diamond-thought of light,

Know that you are not alone,

And that this darkness has purpose;

Gradually it will school your eyes,

To find the one gift your life requires

Hidden within this night-corner.

Invoke the learning

Of every suffering

Now is the time (Excerpt) by Hafiz

Now is the time to know

That all that you do is sacred.

Now, why not consider

A lasting truce with yourself and God.

Now is the time to understand

That all your ideas of right and wrong

Were just a child's training wheels

To be laid aside

When you finally live

With veracity

And love.

Now is the time for the world to know

That every thought and action is sacred.

This is the time

For you to compute the impossibility

That there is anything

But Grace.

Now is the season to know

That everything you doIs sacred.

You have suffered.

Close your eyes.

Gather all the kindling

About your heart

To create one spark

That is all you need

To nourish the flame

That will cleanse the dark

Of its weight of festered fear.

A new confidence will come alive

To urge you towards higher ground

Where your imagination

will learn to engage difficulty

As its most rewarding threshold!

Trusting Prana by Danna Faulds

Trust the energy that courses through you. Trust.

Then take surrender even deeper. Be the energy.

Don’t push anything away. Follow each sensation back to its source in vastness and pure presence.

Emerge so new, so fresh, that you don’t know who you are.

Welcome in this season of monsoons.

Be the bridge across the flooded river and the surging torrent underneath.

Be unafraid of consummate wonder.

Be the energy and blaze a trail across the clear night sky like lightning.

Dare to be your own illumination

My Heart Soars By Chief Dan George

The beauty of the trees,

the softness of the air,

the fragrance of the grass,

speaks to me.

The summit of the mountain,

the thunder of the sky,

the rhythm of the sea,

speaks to me.

The faintness of the stars,

the freshness of the morning,

the dew drop on the flower,

speaks to me.

The strength of fire,

the taste of salmon,

the trail of the sun,

and the life that never goes away,

They speak to me.

And my heart soars.

Mary Oliver Gathering – the Poems

On Saturday, September 9th we gathered to honor the poetry of one of our most treasured poets, Mary Oliver. We walked from the yoga studio up into Macleay Park and found a lovely spot to share snacks and share some of our cherished Mary Oliver poems. I will include the poems shared so that you may come to cherish them too.

Franz Marc's Blue Horses – read by Nancy

I step into the painting of the four blue horses.
I am not even surprised that I can do this.
One of the horses walks towards me.
His blue nose noses me lightly. I put my arm
over his blue mane, not holding on, just commingling.
He allows me my pleasure.
Franz Marc died a young man, shrapnel in his brain.
I would rather die than try to explain to the blue horses
what war is.
They would either faint in horror, or simply find it impossible to believe.
I do not know how to thanks you, Franz Marc.
Maybe our world will grow kinder eventually.
Maybe the desire to make something beautiful
is the piece of God that is inside each of us.
Now all four horses have come closer,
are bending their faces toward me
as if they have secrets to tell.
I don't expect them to speak, and they don't
If being so beautiful isn't enough, what
could they possible say?

First Yoga Lesson – read by Nancy

“Be a lotus in the pond,” she said, “opening

slowly, no single energy tugging

against another but peacefully,

all together.”
I couldn’t even touch my toes.

“Feel your quadriceps stretching?” she asked.

Well, something was certainly stretching.
Standing impressively upright, she

raised one leg and placed it against

the other, then lifted her arms and

shook her hands like leaves. “Be a tree,” she said.
I lay on the floor, exhausted.

But to be a lotus in the pond

opening slowly, and very slowly rising–

that I could do.

Good Morning – read by Judy

1.
"Hello, wren" is the first thing I say. "Where did you come from appearing so sudden and cheerful in the privet? Which, by the way, has decided to decorate itself in so many white blossoms."

2.
Paulus is coming to visit! Paulus the dancer, the potter. Who is just beginning his eightieth decade, who walks without shoes in the woods because his feet, he says, ask to be in touch with the earth. Paulus who when he says my poems sometimes changes them a little, according to the occasion or his own feelings. Okay, I say.

3.
Stay young, always, in the theater of your
 mind.

4.
Bless the notebook that I always carry in my pocket. And the pen. Bless the words with which I try to say what I see, think, or feel. With gratitude for the grace of the earth. The expected and the exception, both. For all the hours I have been given to be in this world.

5.
The multiplicity of forms! The hummingbird, the fox, the raven, the sparrow hawk, the otter, the dragonfly, the water lily! And on and on. It must be a great disappointment to God if we are not dazzled at least ten times a day.

6.
Slowly the morning climbs toward the day. As for the poem, not this poem but any poem, do you feel its sting? Do you feel its hope, its entrance to a community? Do you feel its hand in your hand?

7.
But perhaps you're still sleeping. I could wake you with a touch or a kiss. But so could I shake the petals from the wild rose which blossoms so silently and perfectly, and I do not.

Just As The Calendar Began To Say Summer –
read by Molly

I went out of the schoolhouse fast
and through the gardens and to the woods,
and spent all summer forgetting what I'd been taught—
two times two, and diligence, and so forth,
how to be modest and useful, and how to succed and so forth,
machines and oil and plastic and money and so forth.
By fall I had healed somewhat, but was summoned back
to the chalky rooms and the desks, to sit and remember
the way the river kept rolling its pebbles,
the way the wild wrens sang though they hadn't a penny in the bank,
the way the flowers were dressed in nothing but light.

Song for Autumn – read by Veronica

Don’t you imagine the leaves dream now
how comfortable it will be to touch
the earth instead of the
nothingness of the air and the endless
freshets of wind? And don’t you think
the trees, especially those with
mossy hollows, are beginning to look for
the birds that will come—six, a dozen—to sleep
inside their bodies? And don’t you hear
the goldenrod whispering goodbye,
the everlasting being crowned with the first
tuffets of snow? The pond
stiffens and the white field over which
the fox runs so quickly brings out
its long blue shadows. The wind wags
its many tails. And in the evening
the piled firewood shifts a little,
longing to be on its way.

The Humpbacks – read by Katherine

There is, all around us,
this country
of original fire.
You know what I mean.
The sky, after all, stops at nothing, so something
has to be holding
our bodies
in its rich and timeless stables or else
we would fly away.

Off Stellwagen
off the Cape,
the humpbacks rise. Carrying their tonnage
of barnacles and joy
they leap through the water, they nuzzle back under it
like children
at play.

They sing, too.
And not for any reason
you can’t imagine.

Three of them
rise to the surface near the bow of the boat,
then dive
deeply, their huge scarred flukes
tipped to the air.
We wait, not knowing
just where it will happen; suddenly
they smash through the surface, someone begins
shouting for joy and you realize
it is yourself as they surge
upward and you see for the first time
how huge they are, as they breach,
and dive, and breach again
through the shining blue flowers
of the split water and you see them
for some unbelievable
part of a moment against the sky–
like nothing you’ve ever imagined–
like the myth of the fifth morning galloping
out of darkness, pouring
heavenward, spinning; then

they crash back under those black silks
and we all fall back
together into that wet fire, you
know what I mean.

I know a captain who has seen them
playing with seaweed, swimming
through the green islands, tossing
the slippery branches into the air.
I know a whale that will come to the boat wheneve
she can, and nudge it gently along the bow
with her long flipper.
I know several lives worth living.

Listen, whatever it is you try
to do with your life, nothing will ever dazzle you
like the dreams of your body,
its spirit
longing to fly while the dead-weight bones
toss their dark mane and hurry
back into the fields of glittering fire
where everything,
even the great whale,
throbs with song.

The Fish – read by Eugene

The first fish
I ever caught
would not lie down
quiet in the pail
but flailed and sucked
at the burning
amazement of the air
and died
in the slow pouring off
of rainbows. Later
I opened his body and separated
the flesh from the bones
and ate him. Now the sea
is in me: I am the fish, the fish
glitters in me; we are
risen, tangled together, certain to fall
back to the sea. Out of pain,
and pain, and more pain
we feed this feverish plot, we are nourished
by the mystery.

Why I Wake Early – read by Karen

Hello, sun in my face.
Hello, you who make the morning
and spread it over the fields
and into the faces of the tulips
and the nodding morning glories,
and into the windows of, even, the
miserable and crotchety–
best preacher that ever was,
dear star, that just happens
to be where you are in the universe
to keep us from ever-darkness,
to ease us with warm touching,
to hold us in the great hands of light–
good morning, good morning, good morning.
Watch, now, how I start the day
in happiness, in kindness.

The Summer Day – read by Katherine

Who made the world?
Who made the swan, and the black bear?
Who made the grasshopper?
This grasshopper, I mean —
the one who has flung herself out of the grass,
the one who is eating sugar out of my hand,
who is moving her jaws back and forth instead of up and down —
who is gazing around with her enormous and complicated eyes.
Now she lifts her pale forearms and thoroughly washes her face.
Now she snaps her wings open, and floats away.
I don't know exactly what a prayer is.
I do know how to pay attention, how to fall down
into the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,
how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,
which is what I have been doing all day.
Tell me, what else should I have done?
Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?
Tell me, what is it you plan to do
with your one wild and precious life?

Picking Blueberries, Austerlitz, New York, 1957
read by Laela

Once, in summer
in the blueberries,
I fell asleep, and woke
when a deer stumbled against me.

I guess
she was so busy with her own happiness
she had grown careless
and was just wandering along

listening
to the wind as she leaned down
to lip up the sweetness.
So, there we were

with nothing between us
but a few leaves, and wind’s
glossy voice
shouting instructions.

The deer
backed away finally
and flung up her white tail
and went floating off toward the trees -

but the moment she did that
was so wide and so deep
it has lasted to this day;
I have only to think of her -

the flower of her amazement
and the stalled breath of her curiosity,
and even the damp touch of her solicitude
before she took flight -

to be absent again from this world
and alive, again, in another
for thirty years
sleepy and amazed,

rising out of the rough weeds
listening and looking.
Beautiful girl, where are you?

Spring – read by Laela

Somewhere
a black bear
has just risen from sleep
and is staring

down the mountain.
All night
in the brisk and shallow restlessness
of early spring

I think of her,
her four black fists
flicking the gravel,
her tongue

like a red fire
touching the grass,
the cold water.
There is only one question:

how to love this world.
I think of her
rising
like a black and leafy ledge

to sharpen her claws against
the silence
of the trees.
Whatever else

my life is
with its poems
and its music
and its glass cities,

it is also this dazzling darkness
coming
down the mountain,
breathing and tasting;

all day I think of her -—
her white teeth,
her wordlessness,
her perfect love.

Poems to welcome Spring

These are only a few poems that remind us of Spring. Please feel free to add your own. Happy Spring everyone!

Near Spring Equinox by Jeanetta Calhoun Mish –

A ruby crocus near the porch sends up

hope—winter of sorrow is waning

the dire moon of almost-spring rises

full with promise of renewal,

shaming twinkling city lights in its splendor. 

I search for my faith, wonder where

I lost it, find it in deep cinnamon

mud smushing up between my toes.

Across a spent field, a lake in shadow

serenades curvature of earth.

As if on cue, a comet streaks

across somber roiling river of sky.

+

Spring by Mary Oliver –

Somewhere
a black bear
has just risen from sleep
and is staring

down the mountain.
All night
in the brisk and shallow restlessness
of early spring

I think of her,
her four black fists
flicking the gravel,
her tongue

like a red fire
touching the grass,
the cold water.
There is only one question:

how to love this world.
I think of her
rising
like a black and leafy ledge

to sharpen her claws against
the silence
of the trees.
Whatever else

my life is
with its poems
and its music
and its glass cities,

it is also this dazzling darkness
coming
down the mountain,
breathing and tasting;

all day I think of her -—
her white teeth,
her wordlessness,
her perfect love.

Welcome by Caryn Mirriam-Goldberg –

You come through the gate,

and your life on earth begins:

green wavering into the hue

of early spring, the growing

heat pouring leaf into form

just as you did, are doing,

will do with lack, rain, rivers,

kisses, wind, and horizons

that come each turning.

You stand up in your dream,

lean on the fence, look wide

toward the lights spilled

across the black expanse

that carries the world.

The next destination pours

toward you as you walk.

A thunderhead powers upward,

spends itself over the past,

behind you to your left.

You turn and look one direction,

then another until you’re back

where you started: welcome

as rain in the tall reach of the weather

of your body, of this life

that breathes in time, breathes out light.

+

Revery by Fenton Johnson –

1. 

I was the starlight 

I was the moonlight 

I was the sunset, 

Before the dawning 

          Of my life; 

I was the river

Forever winding 

To purple dreaming, 

I was the glowing 

Of youthful Springtime, 

I was the singing 

Of golden songbirds,—

        I was love.

            2. 

I was the sunlight,

I was the twilight,  

I was the humming

Of winged creatures

    Ere my birth; 

I was the blushing 

Of lily maiden, 

I was the vision 

Of youthful striving, 

I was the summer, 

I was the autumn, 

I was the All-time—

      I was love