KonaYoga.com

Graceful Moves

A graceful and honorable old age is the childhood of immortality. -Pindar

I will often say in class, "Come out of the pose as gracefully as you went into it". This is a reminder that all of the actions leading into, holding and coming out of a pose, are parts of the pose. Yoga suggests that we seek fluid intentions rather than halting decisions.

I think I've mentioned before that it was a vision of myself as an eighty-year old woman doing a headstand in the middle of a room, that took me to my first yoga class. I decided that I wanted a pliant spine to support me as I aged. I didn't think about the possibility of failing or falling or how long it would take me (although I did wonder what I would be wearing).

That simple whimsical wish, changed the course of my life. I can now do a headstand and I still have some time before my 80th birthday. Every year, I see improvements rather than decline. Of course my point of interest may be different from the norm, but it serves me.

The little girl in the photo perfectly illustrates what I have learned: I can worry about something or make a choice and go with it. Hopefully with the same glee she shows. Every choice will more than likely sprout another but I'll already be headed in the right direction. It's all a part of the pose.

What I now want to be able to do, is to go out of this life as gracefully as I came into it. It's a choice that could change the rest of my life.

Photo: -RR-

Memory, a relative to truth.

Memory is a complicated thing, a relative to truth, but not its twin. ~Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

Just before we did the three seated poses in the Mother Sequence this past Tuesday, I was inspired to ask, "Of course you're all accessing feelings of joy while inhaling, aren't you?" I tallied the smiles and smirks as I moved into the poses myself.

This is the one class in which I participate in every pose and offer little or no corrections, aside for the blaring safety issues. When I twisted into the pose, Matsyangasana, a thought popped into my head: "So....if I have the choice to feel happy in the present moment, why can't I do the same about something that happened in the past?"

In the next few breaths (out of the requisite twelve) I ran through scenes from the past few years and literally edited them. I changed the sound bytes for the stored mental videos and altered accusations into accreditations, given and received. I felt better about myself and all of the other characters in my scenes.

Call me psychotic for not facing reality but what good does memory serve if it doesn't enhance your present or your future? Besides, even short-term stress has been found to impair memory and learning so you may not even have a firm grasp of the details of that displeasing event anyway.

After class, I found an e-mail message with a thoroughly fascinating video of Jill Bolte Taylor, described best by TED:

One morning, a blood vessel in Jill Bolte Taylor's brain exploded. As a brain scientist, she realized she had a ringside seat to her own stroke. She watched as her brain functions shut down one by one: motion, speech, memory, self-awareness ... Amazed to find herself alive, Taylor spent eight years recovering her ability to think, walk and talk. She has become a spokesperson for stroke recovery and for the possibility of coming back from brain injury stronger than before. In her case, although the stroke damaged the left side of her brain, her recovery unleashed a torrent of creative energy from her right. From her home base in Indiana, she now travels the country on behalf of the Harvard Brain Bank as the "Singin' Scientist." Watch the video (18:00)

By the end of the eighteen minute presentation, I felt as though I had reviewed and understood my entire life, thoughts and actions: it's been a constant foray between the left and right sides of my brain. Yoga, particularly the Mother Sequence with it's focus of blending movement, breath and emotions, has taught me how to waltz between the hemispheres. I think, the next sequence will teach me how to tango.

Original Photo: Jerrie Stafford

Jehangir Palkhivala, creator of the Mother Sequence, at Kona Yoga: April 25-27.

January 1- REFLECTIVITY

The Twelve Nights of Christmas: #8, Reflectivity

Let an image from the outer world settle in your mind and write down five thoughts you associate with it. Reflect on it and how you might transform it.

When I sat for a few minutes this morning, eyes closed and gazing into my heart center, I saw a shaft of light (as I always do) much like the vertical rays in the photo. I knew then that I wanted to find a photo of light entering a cave for this 8th Night posting.

Here are my five thoughts, aroused by the photograph which I have named "My Heart Center":

1. I am never alone. The solidity of my soul is represented by the rock on the right side of the photograph, Source Energy is the Light that enters from the top and goes right through me.

2. This is my retreat. Cool and clear water trickles through, the air is crisp and clean and I am at peace when I'm here.

3. This is my fortress. This space is physically inaccessible and safe from the energies that do not sustain me.

4. The rays at a forty-five degree angle symbolize interaction. I intend to offer and accept only what is good for all.

5. Where both lights intersect, Love exists. May I always be aware of this.

Photo:straightfinder

The Twelve Nights of Christmas

Seeing within changes one's outer vision.
-Joseph Chilton Pearce

Did you know that Christmas was once banned in Boston? The Puritans apparently viewed the celebration as a form of English decadence. In modern America it's all a fuss about Merry Christmas or Happy Holidays. Let's give it up and not even take part in that conversation, it's bad for digestion and circulation.

I was raised in the Buddhist faith but we always had a tree, exchanged gifts, believed in Santa Claus and said "Merry Christmas". I have never spent a single Christmas in the snow but a brisk,cool Hawaiian breeze instantly evokes the sound of sleigh bells and the scent of a pine tree. "Merry Christmas" releases a flood of endorphins within me so my memories of Christmas are all good and I intend to keep it that way.

This year I'm trying something new. I read an article in the December issue of Ode Magazine that suggests turning the Twelve Days of Christmas into a few minutes of reflection each evening from December 25 through January 5. Here's what's been suggested by Lynn Jericho, a counselor in New Jersey:

• Dec. 25-RECEPTIVITY. What gifts from the universe have you declined to accept or acknowledge?
• Dec. 26-GENEROSITY. Think of three people and what you can give of yourself to them.
• Dec. 27-HUMILITY. Think about how humility can become a great source of strength and power for you.
• Dec. 28-NOBILITY. Make a list of people from whose noble qualities you can learn.
• Dec. 29-SOLIDITY. For 12 minutes, simply feel your soul's solidity.
• Dec. 30-FLUIDITY. Consider the importance of flow to your well-being and happiness.
• Dec. 31-LUMINOSITY. Look back at your darkest moments of the last year, and remember what qualities in yourself and others lit the way for you.
• Jan. 1-REFLECTIVITY. Let an image from the outer world settle in your mind and write down five thoughts you associate with it. Reflect on it and how you might transform it.
• Jan. 2-EQUANIMITY. Pick a recent event and review it in light of various possible emotions like happiness, anger and fear.
• Jan. 3-FECUNDITY. Celebrate the richness of your imagination. Hold this vision and then plan tomorrow's activities. Keep it alive during the day.
• Jan. 4-SAGACITY. Think of yourself as an elder who has learned from the trials and triumphs of experience. What are some profound lessons?
• Jan. 5-UNITY. What ideas, yearnings, themes or insights have come together for you through the holidays?

Will it end with an Epiphany, or Darsana, at the end of Twelve Days? Hopefully, it will be more than the vision of one mynah bird in one papaya tree. Merry Christmas!

For those who just want to be entertained:

*Watch Lynn Jericho's Inner Christmas movie.  NOTE (12/26/07): According to Lynn, the Ode Magazine article printed the 2006 Twelve Nights list. If you sign up for her list this year, it will be different from what I have above.

*The 12 Days of Christmas (YouTube, Straight No Chaser). A beautiful, a capella rendition.

*12 Days of Christmas from the Rainbow Warriors for football fans.

Photo of the Pantheon in Rome: by Soren Daalsgard from Astronomy Picture of the Day

Best Friends

Friends are the family we choose for ourselves.
-Edna Buchanan

On Saturday, I went to a memorial service for Adelheid (Heidi) Paik who passed away on October 19 in Honolulu. She and her late husband, Kwong Sin Paik, had four children who attended Konawaena: William, Heidi, Bernadette and Linda. Linda and I have been friends since the fifth grade and as I looked at all of the family photographs on display, I realized that her mother had an influence on my life too.

Adelheid Kreft grew up in Germany and followed her mother, on foot in 1944 to escape the Nazis and then the Russians, from Danzig to Berlin and on to Bavaria. A year after the war ended, she met a young man from Hawaii and then a year later, found herself on a coffee farm in Kona.

Heidi lived an affluent life before the war and when she became a coffee farm wife and mother, she shared her experience-rich life with, and through, her family. My first and lasting exposure to opera came from Heidi by way of Linda's voice. Musetta's Waltz from La Boheme was my favorite and Linda sang it beautifully even in her pre-teen years. She always prefaced her rendition by letting me know that it wasn't a song for a "nice girl". I'm sure her mother told her that.

Heidi sought out and befriended other German brides and had a circle of friends with whom she enjoyed kaffee klatches and singing. But she also appreciated the ethnic mixed plate that is Hawaii.

I sat at the front door of the church on Saturday with another grade school friend, Nellie Pulido Medeiros, where we looked after the guest books and received the cards and offerings of condolences. So many people stopped to tell me that they, or someone close to them, had been Heidi's best friend. Some had German accents, others were Filipino, Japanese and Hawaiian. They were all her best friends.

I sat behind the congregation at her service and noticed many of my classmates. Many were there to help, as well as be there for their best friend, Linda. Like mother, like daughter.

Some people have a magnetic attitude, always extending an open arm into a circle that already looks full and occupied. Linda opened her arms to me when I was a new kid at her school. She always encouraged others to sing with her, even though her clear soprano notes could outlast and override us all.

Adelheid Kreft Paik opened her arms to embrace a new life, a new family and new friends here in Hawaii. Her reach continues to grow through all of us touched by her and her children. Where is it written that we can have only one, best friend?

Photo:Home and Garden

Blessings Come Down

"Blessed are those who give without remembering. And blessed are those who take without forgetting."
-Bernard Meltzer

This is a first: I am writing this newsletter early Monday morning, the time when most readers are checking in. My usual Sunday writing spree was pleasantly interrupted by a phone call from my son.

Just seconds before, I stood up from my desk and looked around at my half packed room and wished that I was moved and settled into my new space on Alii Drive. The disorder of it all was what I wanted to change and I thought about Brede and what he might be doing.

"Watcha doin', mom?"

I laughed before I answered, "I was just thinking about you." Ever since we watched the movie Dune when he was barely five years old, Brede and I have assumed a wireless thought transmission.

"I was thinking that we should move your stuff today instead of trying to fit it in during the week," he (?) decided.

End of story. You get the picture. I shut down the computer and packed it up. By the time we were done I was too tired to Google.

I am living a life of multiple blessings, going from one beautiful space to another. I seem to be on the receiving end of an assembly line of material and emotional abundance.

There's an old proverb that insists, "prayers go up, blessings come down". Could it be that my prayers are louder than others? Is it possible that my simple wishes and whims are heard as prayers?

Maybe my mother was right: "You were born under a lucky star!" She, of all people, should know.

Photo: camera_rawanda

A loud family!

"Good family life is never an accident but always an achievement by those who share it." -
- James H.S. Bossard

I'm back from my trip to Las Vegas where we celebrated my dad Fred's, eightieth birthday. The photo above may be the only one taken with us all together. We stopped talking and laughing just long enough to take a serious picture and resumed as soon as it was snapped. We're a loud family, from left to right: Les, Jason, Clara, Fred, Mel and me.

I'm the oldest of the brood, followed by Mel who lives in Las Vegas. When he lived in Kona, Mel had a machine shop and besides fabricating car and truck parts, he manufactured coffee pulpers and roasters used by many private label Kona Coffee farmers. His love of cars and racing took him to Las Vegas,  he has a machine shop and is the driver on a drag-racing team.

Les lives in San Francisco and works at the Huntington Hotel, a beautiful place on Nob Hill. He loves to travel and he's a track and field fan so he's flying to Japan next month to watch a championship event.

Jason is the youngest and works in New York. I got to visit him last October and got a taste of what life is like in the "big city". I helped him learn to read before he even went to kindergarten, and he now helps me with all things web-connected. A task that doesn't end, unlike learning to read.

We all have our own families so Fred and Clara have five grandchildren and one great-grandchild as well as the bragging rights for each child. We're a strong, happy family, in my opinion. We each have our talents, likes and dislikes, strengths and idiosyncrasies, parents included. We manage somehow, to treat it all with humor. No one ever says, "just kidding", which tells you that there's a basic amount of love and trust in each verbal jab.

In the opening chapter of Tolstoy's Anna Karenina, he says, "Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way." There are dusty theories of birth order and sibling rivalry which for us, time and separation seem to dilute. Our intent was to celebrate, catch up with our lives and make sure our folks enjoyed themselves. Nothing stood in our way.

"It don't mean a thing, if you ain't got the swing!"

Don't cry because it's over. Smile because it happened.
~Theodor Seuss Geisel (Dr. Seuss)

Our dear friend, Armand Singer, has made his departure, leaving his body on Thursday, July 12. It was an arduous week for family and friends, yet one that was filled with love and generosity.

Tuesday was my birthday and amid the celebratory e-mails and phone calls, I learned that Armand had decided that his body had taken enough of a beating. He wanted all medical procedures to cease. The day then turned into a fine tuned picture of my life. Birth contrasted with death, and a bright future, layered over one that was dimming. I felt as though Armand was trying to tell me something by choosing the start of my new year, to declare his last. I wrote about it the next day in The Best Yet.

I lit the same candle that led me through Krista's birthing process, it was a birthing of another kind, after all. For the next two days I listened to some loud-big band-jazz as Armand listened to the same on his iPod. I imagined him dancing.

I wrote my first Where's Armand article in June of last year and in describing Armand said:

An Abraham-Hicks assessment on longevity recently said, "...intending for long life assures that you must be leading the parade; people don't start diminishing their life until they stop leading and start falling back into the ranks of the parade, trying to do what others are leading them to do."

Armand leads the parade. He sets the beat and goes for miles on end. He's had many opportunities to stop and take on a pedestrian role, but appears to pause for only a few minutes while he picks out a new beat and route.

As a new week unveils, I feel as though Armand has once again picked up the beat and drawn a new route. Memorials are being planned and stories are being told. Those of us who stood on the sidelines and watched him traipse through life, are sensing the beat. If we can fall into the rhythm, pick-up the pace and move forward with half the passion and vigor of Armand Singer, our lives, and the lives of those around us, would be so much richer. Imagine multitudes of people, leading their own parades yet holding high, banners that read "Where's Armand?"

He's somewhere way ahead waiting for us to pick up the beat. Snapping his fingers as he sings, "It don't mean a thing, if you ain't got the swing..."

In his memory, play this song: It Don't Mean a Thing, a film clip of Duke Ellington and his Orchestra in 1943 (02:44). This is the kind of music that turned Armand on! He'd stop talking and start dancing.

My Father's Gift

"He didn't tell me how to live; he lived, and let me watch him do it."
- Clarence Budington Kelland

Here's a photo of my dad, Fred, probably taken about the time when my mom's photo was taken. He's leaning on a bicycle with a steering wheel, next to an engine that he was overhauling. In the 50's and 60's, the existence of a 'daddy' way of childrearing was not recognized as it is today and at least in my memory, my dad communicated through his main interest: the automobile.

His work during the day was at his repair garage or out at night on a "trouble call". He left early and came home just before dinner and he knew the condition of nearly everyone's car. When I wanted to ride with some friends to watch a football game in Kohala, he quickly said, "No, her tires aren't good enough for the trip." That was it, but he took the day off to drive me all the way to the game, along with a few other girlfriends.

When I was old enough for my driver's license, Fred decided that I needed to learn how to parallel park, the day before my road test! I remember him standing in the drizzling rain in the Konawaena School parking lot as I bumped into imagined parked cars, over and over until he thought I was ready. Luckily, I wasn't asked to perform it for my road test, which I passed. He bought me a used '57 Chevy.

As the owner of a service station, he took an interest in hiring the disabled: a man with a missing arm and another who could not hear or speak. Some years later, when I was about to place a classified ad in the local paper for an autobody repair manperson, Fred said to ask for a man or woman. "A woman can do just as much as a man in this job."

Although he didn't deliver any long lectures, his terse one sentence comments and directions were totally consistent. Just by watching him move through his life I felt protected, cared for and loved.

More articles on Dads and Parenting:
The Importance of Dads in the lives of Children
Father Facts

Let It Go!

The tighter you squeeze, the less you have.
-Zen saying

If you were to tell me your age, I have a mental spot for you on a number line that moves in different levels from left to right. All the other people of the same age that I know, are standing there together like a line up. It has more to do with a point of reference for me than the labels young or old. Days of the week are of a particular color and placement too.

Only within the last few years have I learned that this lifelong mental ordering of mine is known as synest hesia. It's a neurological condition that's quite harmless unless someone makes me queen of the universe and I try to make everyone see things as I do, altering calendars and even history.

Other "truths" or long held beliefs that I have may not be as harmless. As Ezra Bayda offers in At Home In The Muddy Water,

The most troublesome beliefs are related to our attachments, which are often hard to identify. Attachments are simple beliefs-fantasies, in fact - that have become solidified as "truth" in our mind. They also partake of the energy of desire, which is based on the underlying belief that without some particular person or thing, we can never be free from suffering. Attachment also takes the form of avoidance, we believe we can't be happy as long as a particular person, condition, or object is in our lives. To experience negative attachment, just think of your least favorite food or person.

Well I guess I asked for it. Months ago when I read this, I was of the opinion that I had everything I needed to be happy. It felt so good to be happy and I wrote in my journal, "Show me what beliefs I hold, not conscious to me now, that don't serve me. Let's clean house!"

Shortly after that, I began experiencing pain in my arms and hands. Throbbing pain woke me at night, there were days when it was painful to drive and finding the cause of the symptoms consumed me. Then about a month ago I captured the flu bug that was making its rounds and ended up in bed for several days. When I got back on my feet, a hacking cough moved into my chest and I'm just getting over it . The hand and arm pain comes and goes, often with pain in my feet when I get out of bed in the morning. Bleck!

When I decided to write this newsletter, I couldn't come up with a positive thought so I pulled Bayda's book from the shelf and re-read the above paragraph as I had many months ago. Bang! went the gong in my neurologically conditioned head. That's it! It's been my belief that I can't be happy when I'm in pain or when I am sick. The desire to feel good and to be healthy isn't the problem, it's the string of terms and conditions that I have tied to it that has me resisting the natural flow.

Ultimately, what we all want is to be happy. What we need in order to be happy is governed by our individual belief systems. But, says Bayda, holding these beliefs guarantees that we cannot be deeply satisfied, because we will always be anxious at the thought of losing what we believe makes us happy. If we wish to be really happy, we have to give up our attachments.

It does not mean that I have to give up a pain free and healthy body, just my attachment to it as a condition of my happiness. It has worked in many other parts of my life so I know it is a truth I can accept. But separating myself from my physical form, that's pretty tricky and requires more focus.

Bayda continues, as I intend to,

When we fully see through and experience our attachments, the result is freedom. When we see through our fears, the result is love. When we see without our filters, judgments, and desires, the result is appreciation and the quiet joy of being.

Life is up for grabs. We reach in for a handful but then the only way we can enjoy and share it is by releasing our hold. It's also the only way we can reach back in and grab more.

Photo:yospyn