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Do You Hear What I Hear?

"There is something in every one of you that waits and listens for the sound of the genuine in yourself. It is the only true guide you will ever have. And if you cannot hear it, you will all of your life spend your days on the ends of strings that somebody else pulls."
-Howard Thurman

I've been entertaining the flu for the past two weeks. All that's left is a lagging and unwelcome cough, but during the first week I was only able to get out of bed long enough to discern that I was alive and living somewhere in Hawaii.

I might have had a fever, I don't know. I wasn't awake long enough to feel hot or cold, or sore, or hungry. During one lucid moment I told myself that I was behaving like a retired slug!

Deprivation is a stern teacher of appreciation. As I regain my usual energy level, my senses (sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell) are what I appreciate most. One would assume that taste would be first and foremost but I find that I'm enjoying and craving, the sense of hearing.

I'm in love with sounds of my exterior: roosters crowing, trucks braking, and birds arguing for position at the feeder that hangs from a tree outside my door. All of the sounds within my living space are melodious and rhythmic: the whirring fan in my laptop, my wind chime and refrigerator, even the the trilling geckos.

Then there are the sounds archived somewhere in the seams and folds of my brain. I remember my old friend Mr. B., singing 'I don't want to set the world on fire', as he tossed golf balls onto the mat for me, making sure I stayed on the driving range. That's a memory sound byte that's nearly 30 years old but in the last few days it's played over and over. Watching

Celine Dion sing with Elvis on tv last last week, extracted some of the most well-aged sounds within me. You do remember my Elvis-obsession- confession and my wish for a life of Elvis sitings?

We experience, interpret, and remember life through our five senses. As we grow and mature, we learn to trust and follow our own senses, rather than those of the masses. In yoga, the next evolutionary step is to release our attachment to our senses. It is the practice of pratyahara.

Here's what I interpret the yoga sutras to say about this: "You've put your senses on cruise control, auto pilot. You'll continue to believe that you have no control until you remember that YOU and cruise control are distinct and separate entities."

That might be the opportune moment to ask for what we would like our senses to perceive: everything I hear, is music to my ears; all the sounds I recall, are happy love songs; I see only what is good in people; only the foods that are good for me, taste good, etc. When our senses and/or our beliefs are held in suspension, we lie open to divine suggestions. If I truly learned a lesson, I guess my days in stupor did not mean I was ill. I just took a few days off to get better.

Listen to: I Don't Want To Set The World On Fire (by The Ink Spots)

Read: Did You Hear?, another post I wrote about the subject of hearing. The 2 comments that follow are worth the time!

Photo:CultivateGreatness.com

Spiritual Balance

The greatest art in spiritual life is finding balance. The entire teachings of the Buddha are summed up in his encouragement to find and travel the middle path. To seek neither the extremes of mortification and aversion for life, nor the extreme of indulgence, losing ourselves in pleasure-seeking. The balance between these two is the path of awakening and freedom. The path of balance is to be with what is true in life and to love that, to be committed to the truth on every level of our being.

--Christina Feldman and Jack Kornfield, Stories of the Spirit, Stories of the Heart. Quote courtesy of Tricycle Magazine.

Last Monday morning, I was reveling in my reading materials: the uplifting e-mails from newsletter readers, the April 9 issue of Time Magazine and a slideshow on Forbes.com entitled the 20 Emerging Markets.

People were happy. Time reported that the Earth's tenants appear to be rallying to stop and reverse environmental pollution and depletion. Forbes Magazine recognizes once war-torn countries as up and coming economic players in the world. It's beginning to look like the world I've envisioned for the last 20 years.

Then I saw a sentence about the shootings at Virginia Tech. Once I comprehended the magnitude of this lone man's rage, I was also saddened that this news would now overtake everything else for at least the next month. Sad, not because the story should not be told, but because we might begin to focus, for too long, on our own fears and insecurities.

It seems that there's always a story or two of heroic efforts in tragedies such as this. Many will discover that their lives were saved by an intuitive detour and long estranged relationships will be mended. I will wait for those stories while I ignore the rest. All that, in time. Families must grieve and loved ones will rage.

Rather than for life to go on as usual, I would like it to go on stronger and better. Balance is so beautiful, but it often takes tremendous strength to gain and maintain it. When we're knocked to the side, either side, we must insist on the chance to regain our sense of balance with the knowledge that it often lies in a new place.

Photo: Ahmad Anvari

Green Dimes and Spam

HeartRise Practice #3 is all about balance: locating and maintaining an equilibrium between all parts of our life. Our environment, whether we focus on our immediate or global surroundings, plays a large part in our emotional and physical well-being.

I got home after my 7am yoga class on Friday to find over 500 e-mail messages assigned to my spam file in g-mail. Do they procreate in the humid recesses of my hard drive?  Does Spam sit on a Maui beach while all his minions continue to litter our in-boxes? I wish for it to cease but meanwhile I'm very happy that g-mail separates my mail for me.

Later that day, I came across Green Dimes. For a dime a day, Green Dimes will stop your junk mail (of the slow encounter-type) and plant a tree in your name at the same time. 100,000,000 trees and 28 billion gallons of water is what it takes to produce all the junk we receive as catalogs and credit card offers. I read that Matt Damon was so impressed by Green Dimes that he's now a board member.

While it was not the solution I was seeking earlier in the day, it's a solution of broader impact. I like the way my life offers me answers.

Read: How Green Dimes works

Photo: Bacon Unwrapped

Down for the Count!

That's what I felt like today: down for the count. Three times. I kept getting back up for more only to be summarily knocked down again. Shades of Rocky V!

I have all of the symptoms of a chest cold and some leftover prescription-do-not-operate-heavy-equipment-while-on-this-medication-cough-syrup. One teaspoonful every 12 hours. Shazam! My cough has been supressed and my equipment is heavy.

I credit myself for cancelling my massage appointments in order to stay home and rest. I credit the pharmaceutical grade knock-down punch for making sure that I truly got some rest.

"I feel good! You know that I would now." -James Brown

Photo:AndreaHarner.com

Raw Colors

Now and then, a link will catch my eye and lead and weave my attention through various websites and topics.

As an example, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, CNN's health correspondent, has written a book entitled Chasing Life: New Discoveries in the Search for Immortality to Help You Age Less Today.  He reports that during the course of writing it, he has learned some lessons which have been incorporated into his own life:

1. He tries to eat at least seven different colored foods a day.
2. He consciously tries to reduce stress in his life.
3. He has added weightlifting to his exercise routine in order to avoid broken bones and pneumonia in his later years, while managing his weight, gaining strength and improving his posture now.
4. He does his best to maintain a positive attitude because of its profound effect on physcial well-being.

The concept of eating by color, intrigued me the most since yoga brought the other lessons into my life a few years back. I've read a few articles about the importance of eating fruits and vegetables of different colors. Many researchers prescribe 5-6 different colors because fruits and vegetables contain varying nutrients, depending upon their color.

Articles and books for more information:

Food Colorings. A Science News on-line article.

The Color of Nutrition. A New York Times article.

The Color Code. A Revolutionary Eating Plan for Optimum Health (paperback).

Book Review: The Color Code, by a professor from Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

What Color is Your Diet? A book by David Heber, M.D., Ph.D.

Photo:Media.Knuttz.net

Happiness, underfoot.

The foolish man seeks happiness in the distance, the wise grows it under his feet.
- James Oppenheim

What good is it to feel good? A group of researchers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have this to offer:

"Our science to date tells us that genuine positive emotions may in fact be the single most important active ingredient in this recipe for flourishing. When this ingredient is lacking, or in poor supply - people get stuck. They lose their freedom of choice. They become stagnant and painfully predictable. But when this ingredient is in ample supply - people take off. They become generative, creative, resilient, ripe with possibility and beautifully unpredictable. Our research team is working to show how it is that being moved by positive emotions can move you forward, and not only lift you to your higher ground, but also create a world that is worth giving to our children."

Senia Maymin, is the editor of Positive Psychology News Daily and in her blog post on Friday, wrote about the AfterLife. The "after this" and "after that" life where we promise to do all of the things we keep meaning to do. She asks, "what are you doing in the now-life to make yourself happy?"

I hear you: "You mean it's not enough that I floss everyday, drink 8 glasses of water, save my money for taxes and retirement, submit to a colonoscopy and laugh at my bosses pointless humor? I have to be happy while doing it?"

I'm sure no one would fault you for not being able to reach the state of joy while having a colonoscopy, but if you are able to hold thoughts of any kind of future that is beyond the next 60 minutes, don't you have something to be happy about in this moment?

All it takes is a little practice. If you've had a yoga practice for any length of time, standing or sitting up straight just feels much better than slouching. It's quite the same with emotions.

If you make it a practice to complain and criticize, you'll find a circle of like-minded people and circumstances gathering around you. Meet the world with an open heart and always reach for a happier thought, even if it's a fraction of an inch up the emotional scale, and the grumps start to turn away or turn into happy people.

Not convinced?
Optimists Live Longer
What kind of a Tater are you?

Illustration:Threadless T-shirts

Ascent and Assent

When Yoga for Women was first offered, Krista and I wanted to address the typical female issues from the viewpoints of yoga and Traditional Chinese Medicine.

During the first year, we based our classes and discussions on The Woman's Book of Yoga and Health by Linda Sparrow and Patricia Walden. The moral of the story, the bottom-line for each class, turned out to be: take care of yourself, first. It's the only way you can insure the health and happiness of your loved ones.

Lately, we've been focused upon the subject of Happiness and the class seems to attract happy women. Women of all ages and in various stages of their lives. Strong women, not willing to fit into a cultural mold. Flexible women, willing to yield to disparate views.

Daily Dharma's post entitled Mountain Guides, an excerpt from "When the Iron Eagle Flies" by Ayya Khema offers this as a description of what we are experiencing:

A good spiritual friend who will help us to stay on the path, with whom we can discuss our differences frankly, sure of a compassionate response, provides an important support system which is often lacking. Although people live and practice together, one-upmanship often comes between them. A really good friend is like a mountain guide. The spiritual path is like climbing a mountain: we don't really know what we will find at the summit. We have only heard that it is beautiful, everybody is happy there, the view is magnificent and the air unpolluted. If we have a guide who has already climbed the mountain, he can help us avoid falling into a crevasse, or slipping on loose stones, or getting off the path. The one common antidote for all our hindrances is noble friends and noble conversations, which are health food for the mind.

Photo:Climbing Equipment

Watch the Bouncing Ball!

No, the class did not have a lesson in karaoke. They brought their exercise balls to class today and did some birthing exercises with Krista. When I saw her handout with the sweet-pregnant-stick-moms, I had to post them for the world!

Print yourself a copy. If you'll be using it as a handout in your own classes, please credit:

Krista Anderson Graves, [email protected] for her drawings and incredible desire to share and promote yoga for pregnancy and birthing.

Download a PDF file: Birthing Room Yoga

Yogafont

  Bill Grainger, a yogi from the UK, has created an ingenious way for us to have access to asana pictures through type fonts, yoga-type fonts. The pictures above are the result of typing KONA YOGA in Yogafont.

I had them downloaded in my old PC and had forgotten all about them until I was ready to update the Kona Yoga printed schedules this afternoon. The download is free and much too good to keep secret. Just go to Bill's site, look it over and easily download it for your own use.

I sent Bill a "Thank you" message when I first came across his fonts, I think it's time for another note of Mahalo!

YogaFont site: http://www.yogafont.co.uk/

Did you hear?

COSTCO in Kailua-Kona (does anyone need a map?) now has a hearing aid center. I saw it for the first time today and was surprised to see a young man standing at the counter, appearing as though he was waiting to be served.

I smiled at the thought of a local query: "Eh brah, COSTCO get hearing aids now." The best reply would be. "Hah? What you said?"

Unfortunately, hearing aids may be working their way into the ear canals of people sooner than later due to modern living (iPods, booming car stereos, etc.). While there are various physical reasons for, and descriptions of hearing loss, a preventative measure aside from turning down the volume, would be to insure that what your ears perceive is what you love to hear.

What do you consider to be music to your ears? I would love to hear from you.

Cartoon:HistoryCooperative.org