This Ground, This Breath

Gift from Santa for my children  me Beginner's Mind. Ground of Being. Emptiness.  Buddha Nature. Christ Consciousness. Awakening. Different belief systems from the East and the West have similarly expressed the experience of being fully present (in Christianity and other monotheistic religions, being connected to God )--along with teachings for cultivating this state, e.g. through mindfulness, prayer and other contemplative practices. Recognizing our thoughts and feelings (sometimes called ego), which originate from our preconceptions, as being just thoughts and feelings sets us free. This is called beginner's mind or "don't-know" mind. While it's a simple practice, it isn't easy. As little ones we begin being taught what we're supposed to do each and every moment in order to stay alive and hopefully thrive. But over time we begin chasing frantically after an ideal of what we've come to believe life is supposed to be. We become ...

Photo Credit:  FiberArtGirl I had the privilege of attending an on-line yoga seminar with Matthew Sanford yesterday, thanks to Yoga Alliance (and to my teacher, Julie Rosier , who told me about him years ago). He's been practicing and teaching yoga for 30 years from a wheelchair, paralyzed from the chest down since an accident at the age of 13. He said many brilliant things that I tried to capture. One that stuck with me is t his: "Principles of yoga don't discriminate. Yoga poses do." He went on to explain that everyone has a different outer body, but the inner, subtle body, where you feel yoga, where you experience being alive, does not discriminate. Thus, my job as a teacher is to guide people to experience the subtle body, not just do poses. It's what I hope I've been accomplishing these past 15 years. My trainer, Esther Myers (d. 2004), conveyed this same, powerful concept through three principals of finding the ground, feeling the breath, ...