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Dear Friends and Yogis,
I hope this finds you all happy, healthy, and well.
Welcome to the new look of my newsletter! After some hiccups the past few months with email delivery, I've sprung for a service that manages my list. Yey for technology. :-)
This month, my newsletter focuses on acting consciously without attachment to the outcome. Sometimes, that means simply being at peace with where we are in our life process so that we can remain balanced. Sometimes, this means making a conscious stand to fight against tyranny. Neither choice is simple: both demand that we remain strong without falling prety to attachments and worry. And that's the hardest part of all.
In writing news:
I have a review of the Krishna exhibit at Pasadena's Norton Simon Museum (ongoing through May 12) in the April issue of LA Yoga magazine. Look for "Tales of the Blue Lord." For those of you that missed my article on Bali in the March issue, I'll soon have it linked online for you.
To skip forward to the Breath Exercise, Cool Happenings Around Town or my teaching schedule, please click on one of those fancy links to your left hand side.
Thanks for supporting Yoga with Aria.
Blessings,
Aria
:-)
| | Stepping Up To Our Heart's Challenge
|  Acting Consciously, Without Attachment
One of the most troubling dilemmas I've been facing lately is how to take a stand for something while still maintaining inner balance, and not falling into worry or frustration about the outcome.
On one hand, I believe that our experience here on Earth is just an experience, one in the midst of many that we will undertake. Ultimately, this means that on a soul level, there is no good or bad in experience. It simply is. This belief requires me to be unattached to the outcome of my experiences, so that everything from incredible luck to incredible suffering is merely a choice that my physical form (body) is having.
And yet, there's another part of me that reacts incredibly strongly to experience, especially when I perceive others: people in pain, countries in conflict, animals in suffering. Just watching the Humane Society's video, this week, of baby seals in Canada being beaten to death for their pelts or reading about the injustices of war puts me into a state of tears. So how do I reconcile the two? Here I am, having a very emotional reaction to a human experience. And yet, I believe in non-attachment to outcome. Does this mean that I need to stand up against these things, if they move me? Or, do I merely waltz through life, being totally unattached to everything?
Arjuna and the Bhagavad Gita
Let's detour for a moment and examine the story of Arjuna, the great warrior and of Krishna, the deity who is both Arjuna's friend and his illuminated teacher. Krishna urges Arjuna into a sacred battle, but Arjuna hesitates: he will have to fight members of his own family. Arjuna learns, however, that has no choice: this battle is part of his destiny. He was born to fight, to be a warrior and to uphold righteousness, without consideration of personal loss, consequence, or reward. Arjuna goes into battle, looking into the face of his kin as he charges forth.
This is a beautiful parallel for me, because it tackles so many difficult subjects. How can war be righteous? How can killing your own kin be justified? Though the study of the Bhagavad Gita is another subject entirely, what we can gather from this pared down story of Arjuna and the great battle is that human beings will never be free from war as long as there is injustice and tyranny in the world. War ought never be the first or second or even the tenth choice that we undergo when in a state of conflict, but if it is the only and final choice, it is one that we must embrace, with full consciousness, without consideration to outcome.
Duality of Human/Spirit Experience
Herein is the key to all of this for me: the duality of existing in spirit and in body means that, on one hand, we must look at all experience, from a soul perspective, as neither good nor bad. Therefore, war and death and tyranny and beauty and evil are all just words that we place on experience. However, from a human experience, there are emotions and experiences that exist as good and bad. We can all agree, for example, that the murder of a small child is a horrific thing. From our human perspective, then, we ought to prevent the murder of small children and if necessary, are justified in going into battle to uphold this belief. And yet, from a soul perspective, everything, us going into battle, is just an experience.
Duality is a mind bender, I agree, but this is our challenge here on Earth. Our duty is to fight for what we believe in, to stand up for whatever causes our heart to sing and fight against whatever diminishes our soul. In doing so, however, we must release our attachment to the outcome. Should we die during the process, it is merely a choice our soul made. Should our loved ones perish, it is merely part of experience. In fulfilling our destiny, we must sometimes go into battle against our family (which can also represent our belief systems.) However, in remembering that we chose this human experience so that we can feel, live, love, and learn, we are only doing what we chose to experience.
This doesn't mean that we ought not to react with sadness or happiness to life. We are, after all, human. But we ought not to get stuck in these reactions. We ought to strive to live in truth in each moment and simultaneously surrender our experience as one experience amongst many, in this experiment called Life.
Living Consciously, In the Now
This is living in the now-- living without attachment, and yet, living in complete and honest truth. This is the hardest part of all. It's easy to wax judgment about others without doing a darn thing about it. It's just as easy to engage in a constant state of anger and protest over what we don't believe in, without ever feeding the positive aspects of what we believe in. The hardest single thing is maintaining inner balance while living in the present moment. Sometimes this means working for the side we believe in. At times, it may mean going into battle against the side that we feel is being tyrannous. But always, it means doing everything with complete consciousness, in complete passion, choosing to do so because that is exactly what your soul asks of you in that particular moment. And then, releasing any attachment to outcome.
This is a question I have to ask myself: Can I act in conscious awareness, no matter what I choose, no matter where my path might lead me, and no matter how the end result might be?
It's springtime. Time for new beginnings. Time to sprout new seeds. Time to engage with life.
Thanks for reading.
| | Breath Exercise |  Alternate Nostril Breath - Ultimate Balance
To welcome springtime energy into our lives, let's revisit Anuloma Viloma, or alternate nostril breath.
Please find a quiet spot where you can sit undisturbed for 3 - 5 minutes.
Sit comfortably, with your back supported, and your sit bones feeling evenly grounded. Begin to lengthen the back of your neck. Adjust your shoulders over your hips. Take a deep breath, into your tailbone. Let that breath rise through every vertebrae up the spine, and exhale, sending that breath back out the tailbone. Do this a few times, until you feel that your spine feels relaxed and long.
a. With your right thumb, plug your right nostril and breath in through the left nostril. Breathe in for up to a count of twenty.
b. Use your third and fourth fingers to plug your left nostril.
(Step c asks you to retain your breath. DO NOT DO THIS if you are pregnant or have high blood pressure. Instead, skip ahead to paragraph d.)
c. Both nostrils now plugged, hold your Breath for up to a count of twenty.
d. Lift your right thumb, exhaling out your right nostril for up to a count of twenty. (Your third and fourth fingers are still plugging your left nostril.)
e. Continue, in reverse.
Keeping your third and fourth fingers where they are, inhale through you right nostril.
Plug both nostrils.
Hold only if this is appropriate for you (see paragraph b, above.)
Exhale through your left nostril.
Do this for as many rounds as you like. Feel free to hold the breath for as long or as short as you like. The main idea is to keep all breath inhalation, retention, and exhalation even.
Enjoy!
Pranayama Science: Every hour or so, the body tends to breathe more heavily in and out through one nostril, and then, it switches to the other. This natural cycle balances out the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. If our natural cycle is disrupted by stress, this breath cycle may also become disrupted. Once the breath cycle is balanced, the bodies systems began to fall back into balance. | Cool Happenings Around Town
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April is Earth Awareness Month
Perhaps some of you already kicked off Earth Awareness last weekend and participated in Earth Hour. For more info, check out: Earth Hour
Saturday, April 5: Groove Armada Outdoors, Downtown, L.A. 6pm - 11pm/midnight.
If you like to shake your groove and love that bass, don't miss this sure to be fabulous show on the steps of City Hall. Tix still available: Groove Armada Tickets
Saturday, April 12: Santa Monica Earth Day on the Promenade. 10am - 7pm. Free.
Stroll by the beach while you enjoy a fantastic array of exhibits and booths, all dedicated to promoting awareness about products and lifestyle changes that can reduce carbon emissions and lessen the effects of Global Warming. Live music and animals make it fun for the whole family. On the Third Street Promenade
Body Worlds. California Science Center. $11.50 - $18.95
IIf you didn't catch this fascinating exhibit last time it came through town, you must not miss it, this time around. Body World showcases plasticized bodies interacting with their environment, as if frozen in time. Some jump in mid-air, some are partially costumed, and all have their inner workings exposed. Muscles, tendons, joints, bones, and organs like you've never seen them before. Body Worlds Info
Friday April 24 - Sunday April 26: Coachella Valley Music and Art Festival. 11am - Midnight.
Over the past nine years, Coachella has grown into one of the most well respected and spectacular music festivals in the world. If you've never been before, this one is not to be missed. How can you go wrong, dancing with thousands of folks, outdoors on a grassy polo field, surrounded by palm trees? Coachella
| | Thanks for supporting Yoga with Aria.
I hope to see you all, somewhere out there, on the beautiful springboard of life, sometime soon.
Blessings, Aria | | |
