Live more Love more

Well, I’m off. Actually I left about a week ago (this post has been queued up for quite some time).

Flying into Bangkok, Thailand, then doing a 12-day Thai Massage course in Chiang Mai.  I’ll be spending the rest of the summer in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, I hope to keep posting from there. If you’re in KL or have any recommendations for places to visit, please message me!

Let go, relax, smile, just be. Feel the rain, feel the sun, feel joy, feel free. 

World sits outside the door
A voice in your heart is calling
The ends of the world await
Traveling daughter
Feel the sunshine on your face
Starlight guides your feet
Earth and Sky will carry you
Journey after journey
One mountain to the next
Voice in your heart is calling
- Abigail Washburn, Song of the Traveling Daughter

They will declare: Every journey has been taken.
You shall respond: I have not been there.
They will insist: Everything has been spoken.
You shall reply: I have not had my say.

They will tell you: Everything has been done.
You shall reply: My way is not complete.

You are warned: Any way is long, any way is hard.
Fear not. You are the gate - you, the gatekeeper.
And you shall go through and on . .
— Alexandros Evangelou Xenopouloudakis, Instructions for Wayfarers 

Never give up…

“I went to Yosemite National Park, and I saw some huge waterfalls. The highest one there is 1340 feet high. And I thought it must be a very difficult experience for each drop of water to come down from the top of such a high mountain. It takes time, you know, a long time, for the water finally to reach the bottom of the waterfall. And it seems to me that our human life may be like this. 

We have many difficult experiences in our life. But at the same time, the water was not originally separated, but was one whole river. Only when divided into many drops can it begin to have or express some separate feeling. Only when it is separated does it have some difficulty in falling. It is as if the water does not have any feeling of being separate when it is one whole river. 

After we are separated by birth from this oneness, as the water falling from the waterfall is separated by the wind and rocks, then we have such feelings. And you have difficulty because of such feelings. You attach to the feeling you have without knowing just how this kind of feeling is created. When you do not realize that you are one with the river, or one with the universe, you have fear. Whether it is separated into drops or not, water is water. Our life and death are the same thing. When we realize this fact, we have no fear of death anymore and we have no actual difficulty in our life.” — Shunryu Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

Mother carry me, your child I will always be. Mother carry me, down to the sea.  

That’s pretty much EXACTLY what it’s like.

Life is what you make it.  

Picture: Moon Essence by Kirk Quilaquil 

The world shines about me,
luminous as the moon, smiling like a rose,
and a sweet benediction
flows through everything existing.
How beautiful life is.
I marvel at people who are not in love with life.
You, my girl, are beautiful,
and your beauty,
like the beautiful thought of peace,
belongs to the eternity.
Detest war and destruction.
When you go to the riverbank,
and the sun sets in the evening,
the waters of the river will be rippling softly,
and from a distance, in the twilight, you will see white sails.
A song of the boatman will come from there.
‘Today no suffering, no suffering.’
The world shines about me,
luminous as the moon,
smiling like a rose.
- Hamza El Din, Desse Barama (Peace)

(Source: artsfantasia, via you-are-another-me)

More acroyoga fun!

Top pics from KG photography featuring the illustrious Daniel Scott and Natalie Weinstein (both from the Bay Area) and the bottom pic from those beautiful Barcelona Acroyogis.

Me doing a forearm stand/scorpion pose in Oakland, CA (left) and Caye Caulker, Belize (right).  

“We are slowed down sound and light waves, a walking bundle of frequencies tuned into the music of the cosmos, we are souls dressed up in sacred biochemical garments, and our bodies are the instruments through which our souls play their music.”

(pulled the picture and quote from fb, not sure the source of either)

I was browsing decolonizing yoga and came across Yee Won Chong’s talk, Beyond the Gender Binary. Yee mentions that 9 out of 10 transgender people have experienced harassment, mistreatment or discrimination on the job.

As terrible as that is, in most places, it’s perfectly legal. Only 37% of Americans live in an area which bans discrimination based on gender identity or expression.

He also offers the following tips on how to be a great ally:

1. Assume that everyone knows what bathrooms they’re in.
2. Do not assume everyone goes by he or she.
3. Ask yourself, would I want someone else to ask me that?

Also check out: What Does it Mean to Be Genderqueer? by Marilyn Roxie, Sweden’s new gender neutral pronoun and microaggressions tumblr.

As someone who has been an MD for over twenty years, I can tell you that yoga is quite simply the most powerful system of overall health and well-being I have ever seen. Even if you are currently among what might be called the temporarily healthy, as preventive medicine, yoga is as close to one-stop shopping as you can find. This single comprehensive system can reduce stress, increase flexibility, improve balance, promote strength, heighten cardiovascular conditioning, lower blood pressure, reduce overweight, strengthen bones, prevent injuries, lift mood, improve immune function, increase the oxygen supply to the tissues, heighten sexual functioning and fulfillment, foster psychological equanimity, and promote spiritual well-being. And that’s only a partial list! — Timothy McCall, Yoga as Medicine 

Something occurred to me the other day as I was looking back on my childhood. I remembered learning about the phases of the “water cycle.” You know, where rain falls to the ground which forms rivers which flow into oceans which evaporate into clouds which condense back into rain.

I think what they neglected to tell me was that this cycle is a continuous process. It does not go in stages like one after another but it is a nonstop circle that feverishly flows through and around the globe. That water molecule that dripped off the tip of your nose in the shower this morning is already halfway to Paris by now.

We think we can chop the world up into pieces and come to some understanding of this little piece and that little piece, but it all slips through our fingers. We forget that change and motion are not concepts but the underlying cause of it all.

I too am inextricably tied into it. I am 70% borrowed water. I inhale oxygen that was exhaled by trees and those same trees inhale the carbon dioxide that I exhaled. The calcium and magnesium in my teeth exploded from stars and spun into the earth before coming into my body when I was just a child. The energy flowing through my fingers as they type type type away was absorbed by the leaf of a plant from the very sun that lights up every morning.

Everything that you think is you is simply one point in this continuous flow called life. You are less an object and more a candle flame, continuously burning the light of your heart into this world. You are the living earth in this particular form.

Did you know that lightning strikes the earth eight million times a day? Ions and electrons continuously shifting, changing, floating up with the vapor.

And then a FLASH comes, and a BOOM, and the entire sky lights up. And it all happened so quick but goddamn was it quite a show. Yeah, life is kinda like that.

All you need is already within you, only you must approach your self with reverence and love. Self-condemnation and self-distrust are grievous errors. Your constant flight from pain and search for pleasure is a sign of love you bear for your self, all I plead with you is this: make love of your self perfect. Deny yourself nothing — give your self infinity and eternity and discover that you do not need them; you are beyond. - Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

A fellow colleague, now 66 years old (in his words: as stale as 66 year ol’sourdough), recommended that I read Sri Nisargadatta’s I am that. He implored, “Do read it, it’s the most important thing you’ll do in this lifetime!”

Now that I’ve started, I am starting to agree with him. And yes you too can read the whole thing here. 

TIL: Truth is knowing who you are and recognizing your true nature is pure love. 

I came across these beautiful acroyogis from Barcelona and simply had to post them.

If you haven’t tried it yet, acroyoga is so much fun! 

yugen

To watch the sun sink behind a flower clad hill. To wander on in a huge forest without thought of return. To stand upon the shore and gaze after a boat that disappears behind distant islands. To contemplate the flight of wild geese seen and lost among the clouds. And, subtle shadows of bamboo on bamboo.

(Source: myprettyuniverse, via breathe-om)

The Buddha pointed out that the fixed idea that we have about ourselves as solid and separate from each other is painfully limiting. It is possible to move through the drama of our lives without believing so earnestly in the character that we play. That we take ourselves so seriously, that we are so absurdly important in our own minds, is a problem for us. We feel justified in being annoyed with everything. We feel justified in denigrating ourselves or in feeling that we are more clever than other people. Self-importance hurts us, limiting us to the narrow world of our likes and dislikes. We end up bored to death with ourselves and our world. We end up never satisfied. Entrenched in the tunnel vision of our personal concerns, what we ignore is our kinship with others. — Pema Chodron, The Places That Scare You

To be empty of a fixed identity allows one to enter fully into the shifting, poignant, beautiful and tragic contingencies of the world. It makes possible an acute awareness of life as a creative process, in which each person is inextricably involved. — Stephen Batchelor 

You are not ‘in the now’; you are the now. — Eckhart Tolle