I just realized (yes just today) WHY practicing yoga puts me (and most people) in such a super-content (santosh-ic!) good mood! To practice yoga is to become one with the Divine, which resides WITHIN US.

Therefore, when practicing yoga you are doing something very special, you are connecting with something so much greater than the YOU you usually consider. And it's so amazing that that YOU, that DIVINITY is within you and you have access to it, anytime.

I spent my lunch hour practicing in my office and then came home to a longer home practice with the heat cranked up in the house. When finished I was just dancing around the house making a salad and listening to Wah! (I am such a yoga nerd sometimes), and that is when this revelation, that really isn't a relevation, but something very simple, hit me!

Then I heard a loud THUD!
Having no idea what it was, I inspected from whence it came and lo and behold my kitty cat, Ella, had knocked my mat down from it's resting upright position andhad it rolled out whereupon she was seated on it like the freaking Queen of Sheba. Oh Ella, you too can connect with your divinity!

OBAMA!

Today I did a long intuative vinyasa practice at my house, focusing slightly on the hips and sacrum. I was hungry when I started my practice and thought I might cut it short to eat something, but that hunger faded and I ended up having a nice very long meditative flow. Afterward I sat in meditation and chanted:

Om Namah Shivaya Gurave

Saccidananda-Murtaye

Nishprapancaya Shantaya

Niralambaya Tejase

which translates into:

I bow to the goodness within myself,

known as the Lord Shiva, who is the true teacher.

This essence inside takes the form of truth, consciousness, and bliss.

Always present and full of peace, this essence inside is completely dree, and sparkles with a divine luster.

How can one go wrong with that!?

While chanting my thoughts came to two of my friends that have passed away, one a month ago today. He was someone I would "go to the mountain" with, meaning we would have deep spiritual discussions that sometimes lasted late into the night. Consequently, the other friend that past away nearly two years ago was also a "go to the mountain" friend. I miss them both intensely, and while in meditation I almost cried for the loss of them, but then, I recalled a poem that I used to comfort me after Audrey's death. It's too long to type here, but it in sense presented death as a very beautiful passage - a drop of water reentering the ocean. When I remembered the poem I then pictured the souls of my two friends meeting somewhere beyond and although they never met in this life, they were kindred spirits and I like to think of them connecting somewhere.

Someone reads this blog!

Downward Deegs was included in a Top 100 Yoga and Meditation Blogs. I am very happy to be recognized as such!

Huffington Post debunks yoga myths

I thought this was an interesting read and even moresore considering it came from the political site, Huffington Post.
Yoga Bunk: Debunked

Be careful what you wish for!

I think "be careful what you wish for" is my rubric for October. And I think I have learned my lesson. It started at the beginning of this month when I was up in northern Michigan with my husband at really great bed and breakfast/inn called Neahtawanta Inn that also had a fantastic yoga space that was always open to use. We also brought our road bikes and on Saturday did a long ride all through the Mission Peninsula. That felt so good, we decided we would go back to the inn, do some yoga and then head to Traverse City for dinner, on our bikes. The ride would be about 20 miles there and back. It was also cold outside. But I was game! So we set out, got to town and had some great fish tacos and well, then I didn't want to ride back at all. I was not looking forward to it. I was wishing I didn't have to. But there was no other way home. So we got on our bikes and not three blocks from the restaurant, I crashed! My tired got caught in a seam in the concrete, and since I was clipped in and it happened so fast I was just face down on the ground before I knew it. And ripped my new pants! Bloody of knee and jarred to boot, Chad and I agreed that I could not make the 11 mile ride back and I would have to wait at the bookstore for him to ride back and then come pick me up in the car. I got my wish! But not how I expected to or wanted to! I was sore for a week and still have a crapped up scabby knee to show for it.

My second lesson came yesterday at Power Yoga. I last posted about how the thighs were underworked in yoga and I felt that I needed to work on strengthening them. Well, I wasn't exactly sure I how I was going to go about doing that, but I didn't have to know because the opportunity came in spades last night at yoga. It was like Jo (the teacher) read my post and was trying to whip my ass for saying such things about yoga! It was so ironic to me that in the middle of class I had to laugh to myself - once again, I "wished" for something and "received" it, though not how I would have expected to.

What's the real lesson here? Let up on expectation. Let up on wishes. Just accept the moment and do not grasp at what is not there, or else, it'll BE there!

The thighs have it, or not!

Yesterday I went to a new fitness class called Pure Barre. It's pretty much a hybrid between ballet, Pilates and weight-training. Well, it was pretty great because today I am totally sore! The class spends a lot of time each area of the body (upper body, legs, bum & all the while, the core), and the thigh section 'bout did me in. The rest I could totally handle swimmingly, but when it came to thigh work I realized where my weak point was. Then I got to thinking about how my yoga practice has increased my strength in a major way, especially my upper body and core, but uhhhh, the thighs? Not so much. Then it dawned on me that in the Ashtanga yoga practice (at least not the primary series) there really isn't THAT many poses that really require a ton of thigh strength. There's Chair Pose and the Warrior sequence, but aside from that I notice the thighs just aren't asked to work as much as say the arms or core. While I knew this on some level because the Warrior poses are never my favorite, I came face to face with the deficit in my legs yesterday. My thighs just vibrated with the work I was asking them to do. Sure, I run along with doing yoga, but obviously this was something on a whole new level for my sturdy gams. I am way excited about this though, I am looking forward to bringing more power to my legs and I anticipate I will enjoy the Warrior poses more in general.