Not grey inside this mandala / Gratitude

Still not true colors but good enough until I can have this series professionally scanned.

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Restorative yoga in the early morning

1.  Full set up.

2.  Before adding quilt and comforter.

3.  Basic set up.

I'm grateful to have been moved to take a single series of yoga classes in 1970 while R was in Vietnam.  When I was 27, I began taking weekly classes at the first yoga school in Bellingham and continued classes along with a home practice  until I was in my late 30s and physical limitations became a deterrent to taking classes but did not keep me from continuing my own home practice and refraining from poses that weren't appropriate for my body.  When I was in my 40s, I took classes from different yoga schools that had opened in Bellingham, including classes in restorative yoga, continuing my early morning home practice.  

During the early years of my blog, I continued a vigorous home yoga practice, finding myself able to do poses that I had not been able to do as a younger woman.  The years of yoga practice had strengthened my upper body and given me a sense of confidence in my body that had been missing from my years prior to discovering yoga.  In my 60s, I began letting go of poses that had the potential for causing injuries and those which clearly put stress on my strong but aging body.

Now that I am in my early 70s, I have had to let go of more and more poses due to a low back that has been susceptible to injury since I was in my 30s.   I've lost some of my height and can no longer do backbends without causing a flare of low back pain.  And yet, I am able to do a fairly vigorous yoga practice that combines a basic series of sitting, standing, balancing, stretching, bending, inverted and reclining poses that I have done since I was in my 20s along with restorative yoga poses.

Here's a pose I can no longer do because it hurts my knees.  I was unable to do this pose at all until I was in my 50s.

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There's something to be said for letting go to make space for something new.

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Mandala #37:  Woman Moved By Gratitude

Practice

While doing my asana practice this morning, I noticed light on the second of the two pillows I bought in March of 2008, the one on the left. The pillow on the right was a gift from an old friend who made the beautiful print in the photo below this one:







































Then I drew two peacocks with a #6B pencil:






















Listen

Translated from Sanskrit by Ravi Shankar and Dr. Nandakumara:

May there be tranquility on earth, on water, in fire, in the wind, in the sky, in the sun, on the moon, on our planet, in all living beings, in the body, in the mind and in the spirit. May that tranquility be everywhere and in everyone.

This morning I had a good talk on the telephone with another old friend who lives in North Carolina and who reminds me that a sense of humor is essential. We've been friends for 44 years, beginning with our freshman year in college.

Today is the first of my two days off. Yesterday was exactly one year since I began working at home at my new/old job of proofreading medical reports.

This is the 903rd post on my blog (-:

Thanks to all who continue to stop by!

Babar and Celeste

After dropping into a Yoga class at the studio where I first practiced Yoga, I have resumed a vigorous early morning asana practice. At the end of this morning's practice, as I was in the corpse pose, something in me said to draw the elephants from one of the two pillows I bought on the morning of March 21, 2008, a few hours after I had learned that Richard had a Stage IV brain tumor.

It's been a long time since I have felt like drawing, but I am newly inspired by Suze Rotolo's Art Books:





















The inspiration may also have come from,

















a copy of which sits close to where I practice the asanas (-:

or

"... the elephant in the room of my life ..."
(from A Freewheelin' Time, by Suze Rotolo)

WEAVING YOGA WITH HUMOR

Any weavers out there who can see the humor in this photo?

An unexpected benefit of my yoga practice is an increasing ability to experience humor where I was once able to experience only tears and frustration.

"Practise what you know, and it will help to make clear what now you do not know."
-- Rembrandt van Rijn (1606-1669)

BALANCE / HEALING HANDS / SACRED MUSIC

(35-minute drawing time, 5:50 to 6:30 a.m., using two "Paused" images from the PBS film "Muhammad: Legacy of a Prophet." The first image is of a hospital nurse and the second image is of her hands holding the hands of an elderly man in her care while they talk. Click on the pictures for a clearer image. I haven't figured out why the image degrades when I save it. I used the Appleworks6 "Painting" program on an iBookG4 while listening to nothing except what was in front of me.)

(Today, while writing, I am listening to "LIVE: Ravi Shankar at the Monterery International Pop Festival. Two friends and I were there in 1967 and heard this performance.

On Sunday, June 18, 1967, two other 17-year-old young women and I drove from Redwood City, California to Monterey, California for the afternoon concert of Ravi Shankar at what came to be known as the Monterey Pop Festival. We had just graduated from high school a few weeks earlier. Two of us had been to the Magic Mountain Music Festival, earlier in June. As it states in one of the links, Monterey was the first "widely promoted" rock festival in the world, but the first rock festival was the Fantasy Fair & Magic Mountain Music Festival which took place at the summit of Mount Tamalpais in Marin County.

None of us were familiar with the music of Ravi Shankar, but the only tickets left were for his concert on Sunday afternoon. As it turned out, we were extraordinarily fortunate to have heard that astonishing and memorable concert. The beautiful and complex energy of Ravi Shankar and his friends performing the sacred music of India couldn't have been more moving. The music lifted me, carried me and set me down again in amazement. I have listened to this concert again and again, always with renewed awe and gratitude.)

I have a perpetual calendar with daily images of quilt patterns. The names of quilt patterns fascinate me. Today's pattern is called "Balance."

When practicing yoga postures, balance is not a fixed state. Early in my practice of yoga postures, I thought the goal was to be as still as a statue. I felt like a complete failure in those poses which required balance. Then one day, while my yoga teacher was demonstrating a pose that involved balance, I noticed that her foot was not still at all but making constant tiny adjustments which resulted in balance. From then on, although I still found it difficult to balance on one foot, I gave up the idea of being motionless in a balancing pose. In fact, in some of the balance postures I am constantly about to fall dramatically, one way or the other. I let that be okay.

The same goes for a balanced life. Not easy, but I keep practicing.

FINDING BALANCE / NORVAL MORRISSEAU

While practicing asanas (yoga poses) this morning, I noticed the moon in the clear sky before sunrise. The poses I find most difficult are those that involve balance on one foot. After all these years of practicing asanas, I still lose my balance on a regular basis. Fortunately, I find humor in that. Only recently have I been able to hold something resembling the pose called natarajasana (king of the dancers pose) for more than a few seconds.






















"I hear the ancient footsteps like the motion of the sea. Sometimes I turn, there's someone there, other times it's only me. I am hanging in the balance of the reality of man, like every sparrow falling, like every grain of sand."

As I do every morning, I visited wood s lot. I learned of the recent death of Norval Morrisseau and was deeply moved by his art.

The cover art for the Bruce Cockburn album, Dancing in the Dragon's Jaws, is a painting by Norval Morrisseau.

Three Trees (2002)

I like this painting. Not sure what it is about.

Recently I have not had much extra energy. I've had a hard time responding to email. Maybe it is for good reasons. I have been doing art work daily for 51 days, which now includes weaving on an inkle loom. Maybe it's because I just took an exhilarating trip to Cariboo Country in British Columbia, requiring a 6-hour drive to get there. Maybe it's because so much of my energy goes toward trying to figure out how to get back into the work force without losing my creative momentum. Maybe it's because I think I'm younger than I am. Who knows?

Reading other blogs, being exposed to so much lively creative energy, and looking back at my previous art work has resulted in renewed creativity for me and less time for writing on my blog and making comments on other blogs, although I continue to visit a handful of blogs daily and am committed to posting my 40-year retrospective and then my ongoing art work.

This morning in a 7 a.m. pranayama (yoga breathing) class I've been taking, a class which meets every other week this spring, the teacher said that if all we can do in our daily pranayama practice is to lie down on the yoga mat for a few minutes and observe our breathing, that is okay. She compared pranayama to standing quietly offering an apple to a horse, rather than chasing a horse around a field in order to give the horse an apple. Maybe I'm tired in a general way because I've been chasing the horse, instead of letting the horse come to me as it would do naturally.

I'm seriously considering doing medical transcription again because it is something I can do at home and can define my own schedule. For all my searching, I have yet to find another line of work that I am suited for that doesn't require several years of expensive training, I am acutely aware that I am close to retirement age and financially vulnerable. It is disappointing to have failed so far to find another way of making a living. Starting Monday, I am taking a two-week evening refresher course in medical transcription. If that goes well, I will take the course that follows, ending in mid-June. I will try to think of myself as holding an apple and waiting for a horse and resist chasing a horse.