Saturday, June 1, 2013

Monsoon yoga

I made it through my first week of yoga.  My body has adjusted to all the twists and turns and i've now increased my practice to twice a day.  

The monsoon came in the middle of class flooding the room and forcing us to move.  The rain pounded on the tile roof as I exhaled into downward dog.  A serenity washes over me.  I am in a state of bliss.  I am exactly where i am suppose to be.  If only I could stay forever in this downward dog breathing to the sound of  raindrops...how will I ever convince myself to go back to prelims and dissertations?  Maybe in another lifetime I was meant to be a yoga teacher on the beaches of Thailand.

Something about coming to my mat.  It pushes all else away.  My mind no longer wonders or worries, I am present as I inhale into and exhale out of each posture.  

"And inside of you, there is a peace and refuge, to which you can go at every hour of the day and be at home at yourself."

I met a Taiwanese woman today studying yoga.  She's in her 50s and traveled all the way to India on her own speaking very few words of English.  

"I often think about how I would want to die...I would pick some remote place where nobody would ever find my body, and from which I could enjoy an especially beautiful view.  I'd lie down facing that view and take my morphine.  That would be the best way to die...with the last sight I see being a view of Montana as I want to remember it."

"Why be elated by material profit?  The one who pursues a goal of evenmindedness is neither jubilant with gain nor depressed by loss.  He knows that man arrives penniless in this world and departs without a single rupee."

Maybe if we spent more time thinking about death, we'd know how to live.  
   

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