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JANUARY 24, 2010:  Gosh during the Winter it gets just a tiny bit more challenging to maintain the internal fire of enthusiasm.  Ok to be honest it’s more than just a little hard.  It is just out right challenging.  I’m cold and surrounded by snow what is physically easiest is to CONTRACT.  This is the exact reason why during this time of year here in the Midwest we must try harder to remain enthusiastic and light up our lives from the inside.  By this I don’t mean reflect on how great summer was or day dream nonstop about Spring for those things take us out of the present.  The only time we can be really happy is now.  Heed the advice of the Alchemist, “Because I don't live in either my past or my future. I'm interested only in the present. If you can concentrate always on the present, you'll be a happy man.”

Happiness is a direct experience of enthusiasm.  It is what we show on the outside to the world about how we feel inside.

This speaks directly to a favorite quote from the Alchemist, “There was a language in the world that everyone understood. It was the language of enthusiasm, of things accomplished with love and purpose, and as part of a search for something believed in and desired.  We are riding the wave when what we think and what we do are done from love with great enthusiasm and vigor.  This happens when we are living in “the present.” 

So there is a way here to use the challenge of Winter to help ourselves feel more alive!  It is in this way that the emotional challenges of life are an opportunity to feel more human.  “Even sadness opens a hidden doorway into being more alive! Just as anger can be a doorway into strength, even sorrow can trigger humility, and other profound spiritual emotions.”

This is why I so strongly encourage us to gently attempt these postures. I know you might say to yourself I can't do them but I’d rather have us face the discomfort of experiencing ourselves as beginners then get stuck or trapped in endless repetition of what we already know whereby our enthusiasm for life diminishes.  You see when we give up in the face of challenge, we cheat ourselves of the immense satisfaction that follows from building any skill into understanding. It is not how or when we accomplish something it is that sense during the process of enthusiasm in just trying our best.  Today, don’t wait until Winter is over to radiate joy and become interested in your life.  Do it now.  Life is too short not to stay engaged with ourselves.  Love yourself, love your day, love your life! Silvia

It’s good to leave each day behind,
like flowing water, free of sadness.
Yesterday is gone and its tale told.
Today new seeds are growing.
~Rumi

This practice of poses and breath brings about an awareness of what we are feeling.  For most of us when we start yoga we haven’t made time to even ask ourselves this simple question. We’re either too busy going faster and faster or really good at avoiding what we are feeling.  Denial or argument with our feelings has become a way of life. But also a formula for suffering. 

Tantric practice encourages us to embrace all of who we are.  The sadness and the joy, the tiredness and the vigor, the fear and the love.  This is a nondualistic approach to see that there is not a winner/loser or bad/good that we don’t have to battle our emotions, thoughts or feelings any longer.  Running away from what we feel will only prolong it.  And all of our feelings can be put into 3 buckets: pleasant, unpleasant and neutral.  So as hard as it might be to heal and remain in a state of being healed we are taught through yoga to embrace your feelings, care for them like you would look after a younger sibling.

A great meditation from Thich Nhat Hanh suggest we take a feeling, let’s say sadness, and talk to your feeling: say to your sadness “breathe – I am taking care of you now.”  Acknowledge this feeling is you and as you breath out, let it go.  Then allow for the next moment to unfold and the next feeling. Breath into that one.  Take one at a time and stay with the flow. 

Most importantly know that whatever you’re feeling is part of your humanness, love and hurt co-exist, one is the compliment to the other so to prevent staying in a state of suffering it helps to embrace all you feel and care for yourself.  This practice of being human is put into poetry by the poet Kahlil Gibran who wrote, “all these things shall love do unto you that you may know the secrets of your heart.”  We literally learn about ourselves as we experience emotion, feeling and thought.  We also become expert through this in the human experience. We can by caring for our own feelings learn how to care and offer compassion towards how others feel. 

“In that calmness we begin to understand that peace is not the opposite of challenge and hardship. We understand that the presence of light is not a result of darkness ending. Peace is found not in the absence of challenge but in our own capacity to be with hardship without judgment, prejudice, and resistance. We discover that we have the energy and the faith to heal ourselves, and the world, through openheartedness.” (From book All About Love)  So may you all take away from your time on the mat the courage to “CARE FOR YOUR FEELINGS” as they arise, holding them gently and then surrendering them to the next moment. Love in all ways, Silvia